Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas James Bruce Bourgett Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

JAMES BRUCE BOURGETT

(transcribed by Sheryl McClure)

James Bruce Bourgett, retired farmer and stockman, and for years identified as a reporter with the Wichita Daily Eagle and the Augusta Daily Gazette, is one of the widely known residents of Kansas. He probably knows as many persons and as much history of this section of Kansas as does any other man. James Bruce Bourgett was born in Bartholomew County, Indiana, August 25, 1865, the son of Jacob Buchanan and Anna Marie (Thomas) Bourgett. When he was born, his parents lived in an imposing two-story house on a hillside in Burnsville, Indiana. His sisters were Ella Rebecca, who married Cletus Xerxes Dougherty, and now lives in Hollywood, California; and Ida Evaletta who died Thanksgiving Day, when she was nine years old, in Greenfield, Indiana, three months after the death of the father, which occurred in February of 1870 in Burnsville.

Mr. Bourgett devotes much time to the secretaryship of the Butler County Tax League. Although he is supposed to be a Lincoln Republican, he attends the political conventions of both parties and always has been an ardent supporter of former congressman W. A. Ayres. He is a personal friend of Mr. Ayres and of Governor and Mrs. Alfred M. Landon, with whom he spent Memorial Day of 1934.

James Bruce Bourgett was educated in the public schools of Greenfield, Indiana, where in early life he acquired an ambition for newspaper work. He learned the printer's trade on the Hartford City News owned by his uncle John M. Ruckman. Later, while he was clerking in the Greenfield post office his mother left Indiana for Wichita, Kansas, to visit her sister, Emma Josephine (Mrs. Orlo W. Schick), who had come to Wichita with her husband in 1885. During Mrs. Bourgett's visit Mrs. Schick read, in the Wichita Eagle, Z. M. Johnson & Sons' advertisement for a bookkeeper in a meat market, at 217 East Douglass. Mr. Schick went to see Mr. Johnson and told him of James Bourgett's qualifications for the job. Mr. Johnson wired young Bourgett and he and his sister, Ella Rebecca, came to Wichita, September 17, 1887.

Mr. Bourgett remembers that at one time his employer bought fifty sheep from W. H. Sluss and a number of steers from Dan Cupp of Towanda. After staying six years with the meat market, Mr. Bourgett was, for a time, a railway mail clerk on the Rock Island and Santa Fe before entering the Wichita post office as a night dispatcher for three years. He then became a reporter on the Wichita Eagle staying there until 1896 when he married Miss Mayme Lee Guthrie, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. John Wesley Guthrie. From the time of their marriage, Mr. Bourgett and his wife shared the Guthrie family home on a farm near Bodarc, Mr. Bourgett engaging with his father-in-law in general farming and stock raising, making a specialty of thoroughbred Poland China hogs.

Mr. and Mrs. Bourgett moved from the farm to Augusta in 1902. They were the parents of three children. The eldest, Ernestine Guthrie Bourgett, was born in 1900. She was graduated from Augusta High School and Fairmount University, Wichita, and taught Domestic Science in the Augusta schools before her marriage to Virgil Hammond, a son of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Hammond, and a grandson of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Hammond, pioneer residents of Butler County. Ernestine and Virgil Hammond have two sons, Virgil Richard, born December 17, 1930 and John Wesley, born August 18, 1934. The second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bourgett was Ruth who was born in 1904 and died when four months old. The only son, John Bruce, was born March 1, 1906. Five days later, on March 6, 1906, Mrs. Bourgett died. John Bruce Bourgett attended Augusta High School and the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago. He is an artist, excelling in the painting of portraits.

James Bruce Bourgett, his daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Hammond and their children, and his son, John Bruce, reside in the family home with Mrs. John W. Guthrie, at 237 Main Street, Augusta.

Mrs. Guthrie, who will be ninety years old April 9, 1935, was Miss Nancy Jane Hope before her marriage in 1869, at Perryville, Kentucky, to John Wesley Guthrie. Mr. and Mrs. Guthrie lived on adjoining farms in Kentucky. Their fathers owned slaves. They came to Kansas on a stagecoach, through Sycamore Springs, and settled in Bloomington Township, Butler County, in 1870, Mr. Guthrie buying sixty-four acres and later forty acres adjoining Augusta. Mr. Guthrie was a director of the First National Bank of Augusta, and one of the substantial citizens of Southern Butler County where he lived forty-six years. He was born in 1848 a son of H. H. and Elizabeth Stewart Guthrie and died in 1921. The daughter, Mayme Lee Guthrie Bourgett, was born in 1874.

James Bruce Bourgett's paternal grandfather was John Boston Bourgett who came from France and settled in Pennsylvania in 1835. The town of Bourgetts-town, Pennsylvania, was named for John Boston Bourgett. Subsequently the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where James Bourgett's father, Jacob Buchanaan Bourgett, was born in 1845. An epidemic of cholera when Jacob Buchanaan Bourgett was a mere baby had proved fatal to his parents. They were buried in Cincinnati, Ohio. John Boston Bourgett's sister, Mrs. Ann Schien, took Jacob Buchanaan Bourgett into her home and reared him. Subsequently he came to Bartholomew County, Burnsville, Indiana, and was employed by James Thomas, who later became his father-in-law.

Mr. Bourgett, speaking of his boyhood days, said:

"My mother was the child of James and Ann Marie Thomas. Her parents named her for her mother, but being the eldest girl she went by the nickname of 'Sis.' She was born September 2, 1846, at Liberty, Union County, Indiana, and her brothers and sisters were Orlando, who died in infancy; Sarah Helen, and Virginia Ballard, better known as 'Dinnie;' Bruce Jefferson, who, at 16, enlisted as a volunteer in the Eleventh Indiana Volunteers, under General Lew Wallace, and lastly, Emma Josephine, who was married at Hartford City, Indiana, to Orlo W. Schick. Bruce Jefferson was wounded in the battle of Shiloh and died in Evanville Hospital. Dinnie's husband was editor of the Hartford City News, and on that paper I was a 'devil' and learned the printer's trade while attending school. Subsequently I returned to Greenfield, Indiana, and worked on the Hancock Democrat, published by William Mitchell. Mrs. Shick, 'Aunt Em' as we called her, made her home with us after my grandparents' death, my mother having returned to this home of my grandparents after my father's death. My aunt 'Din' taught school and practically kept up the family. My aunt, Sarah Helen, had married J. W. Jones, who came from New Albany to attend college. My mother took up dressmaking and millinery.

"While working on the Hancock Democrat, in Greenfield, Indiana, I had the opportunity of setting in type almost every poem that James Whitcomb Riley wrote at that time. The Indianapolis Journal heralded these poems to the world under the non de plume of Ben Johnson of Boone County. Jim (I was reared with James Whitcomb Riley) alluded so often to home scenes and people, that when he came out with the poem, 'Old Band,' mentioning War Barnett and Nat Meek, the editor placed his name in brackets, thus—(James Whitcomb Riley) exposing his identity to all. I set this poem in type. I also set the poem 'Up and Down Old Brandywine.' It was a strange coincidence that James Whitcomb Riley's saintly old father, Reuben A. Riley, and I were fishing just below the Old Swimming Hole in the small stream, Brandywine, that emptied into Blue River, the day that Jim outlined his wonderful poem, sitting under the old sycamore tree, with the sketch book that he always carried.

"The last time I was back in the Indiana old home town, the old gang that had belonged to the Shoe Shop Crowd, congregated one night in my honor and we discussed the times that Jim would get hold of his fiddle in Farmer's Saloon, and make it fairly sing 'The Mocking Bird,' and wind up with his own verse such as 'Tom Johnson's Quit,' and 'That Old Sweetheart of Mine.' Sad to say, our Old Swimming Hole is ruined by having been filled up and converted into a site for Riley Park. Jim came to Wichita one time on his lecture tour, and was entertained in our home, and gave me a handful of complimentary tickets. One time when I was returning from a Soldier's Reunion in Boston, I called to see John Riley, brother of James Whitcomb Riley, who had been stricken with illness. We said a touching farewell."

Mr. Bourgett belongs to three fraternal orders, Knights of Pythias, Modern Woodmen of America and Knights of Mapira. Regarding three long-existing friendships, Mr. Bourgett said: "It was principally through the loyal friendship I held for the late J. Bunyan Adams that I became a member of the Mapiras, Mr. Adams having instituted the Mapiras as well as the Kafir Corn Carnival. I place the late Judge Granville P. Aikman, Hon. J. Bunyan Adams and Mrs. Alice Murdock Pattison as the three that became enshrined in my heart as more than simply passing friendships. In my estimation the latter was the “shining star” of the Murdock contingency."

Following is an excerpt from a story concerning Mr. Bourgett that John Burtis Doze, managing editor of The Wichita Evening Eagle, published December 20, 1934:

"Jim Bourgett, old-timer of Wichita and Augusta, came into The Eagle office yesterday to read the Butler County newspapers and I sprung the Little Walnut panther story on him. Jim is an agnostic. He neither believes nor disbelieves that there is a panther roaming the Little Walnut country, although he has talked with folks who say they have heard the panther scream. From panthers, we jumped to hunting and before long I got out of Jim what I was fishing for—a story for this column.

"Along about 1890, Jim Bourgett went to Colorado and came home by way of Grant County to visit his uncle, John M. Ruckman. Jim went hunting and along in the afternoon, was hailed by a settler from the vicinity of old Appomattox, who told him that an antelope was nearby.

"Jim got a big rifle, he thinks it was a 40-82, mounted a pony and started out for the antelope. The antelope was moseying along, headed northeast. Jim struck out to head off the fleet-footed animal by guiding his pony in a way to try to fool the antelope into an impression—if an antelope can have one—that it was not being pursued. It was a long chase and the sun was a big red ball in the west when Jim decided that he would have to chance a shot. So he slipped off on the far side of the pony, holding to the rope halter, and worked out into the clear where he could get a shot. The antelope finally came to a halt and Jim took careful aim and pulled the trigger.

"His first and only shot struck the animal and down it went. Then a hard job confronted him—getting that heavy antelope on the pony's back without help. He had to rely solely on main strength and awkwardness. It was about sundown when Jim got his antelope on the pony's back. He had slit its throat, bleeding it as every old-timer would do to a deer—an antelope is a deer. The ground was bloody when he mounted and started for Appomattox, miles away, for he had worked north almost to the sandhills south of the Arkansas river before coming up with the prairie deer. As soon as the sun went down he began to hear coyotes. It seemed that there were thousands of them about him and hundreds following him. They had scented blood and were hot on his trail. They charged so close to the pony that looking around he could see their shining eyes. But Jim clung to his kill and arrived at last at the homestead shack of a preacher, where the coyotes left him.

"That was about the worst fright in the life of Jim Bourgett, so he admits, and the Little Walnut panther story reminded him of it."