Jackson County (Mo.) Historical Society

Historical Perspective

by David W. Jackson

Old tale follows a family

Neighbors in south Kansas City’s Timber Ridge subdivision are making plans to restore and maintain the Mount Pleasant King Cemetery, a family graveyard nestled in the middle of their subdivision located east of Wornall Road at 125^th Street.

Mr. Urial Holmes, who came to Missouri from Tennessee with his parents in 1853, related the fact that the site had been used for burials many years prior to the time they came to Jackson County. About 1878, Holmes and Dr. James Ellis Watson platted the ground into lots. Imagine the many stories that may be told about the lives of the people who rest there.

A Watson family may well have some connection to American cultural history. Dr. Watson, who was born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, November 26, 1834, married Abigail Benscooter on December 15, 1859. They migrated to Jackson County, and for a number of years Watson practiced medicine near the now defunct town of New Santa Fe. Two years after their daughter Nellie was born in Kansas City on May 25, 1867, Mrs. Watson died. Her husband decided to return her remains to Pennsylvania for burial. He also planned to leave his two-year-old daughter with her mother’s family.

On the train trip east, Nellie could not be consoled. A querulous woman, irked by the child’s fretting, said, “Why doesn’t that man give the baby to her mother so she will stop her noise?” Dr. Watson, a man with much dignity, quietly said, “Madam, I wish I could, but the child’s mother is in the baggage coach ahead.” Family tradition is that this chance remark by Dr. Watson inspired the once famous song, “In the Baggage Coach Ahead,” that was set to music and published in 1896 by Gussie L. Davis. (Not to discredit this family’s lore, but I did find online another family’s tradition with remarkable similarities).

Whatever happened, Dr. Watson did not leave Nellie in Pennsylvania. I found him, Nellie, his second wife, Lou, and their two children, Frank L. and Lou Alma Watson in the 1880 U.S. Census for New Santa Fe, Washington Township, Jackson County, Missouri. Lou Lipscomb was born in New Santa Fe July 15, 1845, and married Dr. Watson on November 1, 1871. While Dr. Watson is buried in the Mount Pleasant King Cemetery, his second wife reportedly died in 1928 and was buried in the Fairview Cemetery in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Nellie married James M. Klapmeyer. They are buried in Forest Hill Cemetery.

According to a short obituary, Gussie Lord Davis was born on December 3, 1863, in Cincinnati, Ohio (other accounts say Dayton). Denied formal admission to Nelson Musical College in Cincinnati (other accounts say Cincinnati Conservatory of Music) because of his race, he agreed to exchange his services as a janitor for the college in return for private instruction. His obituary said he was a graduate of Gaines College in Cincinnati.

Davis's versatility made him the first commercially successful African American composers; and, he was the first black songwriter to win international acclaim for his ballads. He composed songs that fit the most popular categories of performance: sentimental ballads, comic minstrel songs, art songs, and choral music. Davis composed the words and melody to his first song at age 17 in 1880, “We Sat Beneath the Maple on the Hill” (a friend wrote the score). In 1885, Davis married Lottie B. Stark, of Cincinnati, who gave him the inspiration for one of his most successful songs, “The Lighthouse by the Sea,” published in 1886.

In 1890, they moved to Whitestone, Queens Borough, New York, where he soon became one of Tin Pan Alley's top songwriters. In 1895, he won second place in a contest for the ten best songwriters in the United States. His early experiences as a railroad porter found expression in the 1896 song that turned out to be his single most popular composition. "In the Baggage Coach Ahead," he said, was based on a real incident. Unfortunately, he had sold all the rights to the publisher for only a few dollars, so none of the profits from its popularity went to him.

By the time of his untimely death due to heart disease at age 36 on October 18, 1899, Davis had published over 300 songs.

Words to “In the Baggage Coach Ahead”

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1382793

Mt. Pleasant Cemetery Website

http://home.ix.netcom.com/~dcvolts/

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