Pat O’Neill knows Kansas City’s Irish history.

For years, O’Neill, a retired Kansas City marketing and public relations professional, has served as the community’s convener of the clans, co-founding the annual Kansas City Irish Fest and presiding as a former president of the Kansas City Irish Center.  

He also has served as chronicler of the area’s Irish community, publishing several books that have increased the larger community’s awareness of the local Irish. In 2000, O’Neil published “From the Bottom Up: The Story of the Irish in Kansas City,” and added more details to that story with an updated version in 2015. 

And now, with a new book, O’Neill has narrowed his focus to examine the role his own family played in that story.

In “The O’Neill Family in America: Would-Be Saints and Sometimes Sinners,” O’Neill tells the story of his great-grandfather, John P. O’Neill, who found a foothold in the growing political organization of “Big” Jim Pendergast, the St. Joseph, Mo. native who by the 1880s had begun organizing the meatpacking and stockyard employees of the Kansas City’s West Bottoms district into a distinct voting block.

In 1892, those workers elected Pendergast to represent the First Ward on Kansas City’s Board of Aldermen.

O’Neill, the operator of two Kansas City shoe stores, came to know and assist both Jim Pendergast and his younger brother Tom, and he soon would have his own seat on the board. 

Over time, O’Neill became known as the “Bell Goat” of the Pendergast machine. 

The word “Goat” referred to the name at one point given to the West Bottoms supporters of the Democratic Party Pendergast faction, as some of them lived in shacks on the district’s high bluffs and apparently were fond of keeping goats. 

As the “Bell Goat” term was apt, O’Neill came to be recognized as the Pendergast machine’s chief lieutenant and spokesperson for the “Goat” faction.

By Pat O’Neill

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The Annual Dinner of the Jackson County Historical Society - “A Patriotic Celebration of History” - is scheduled Friday, March 27, at the Midwest Genealogy Center auditorium at 3440 S. Lee’s Summit Road in Independence.

To find information about tickets, go to jchs.org/annualdinner

The deadline to order is March 19.

This month’s E-Journal is an updated version of a recent story posted on https://flatlandkc.org/ in advance of the Ken Burns documentary, “The American Revolution.”

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Three Black women, Ann Shipp Taylor, Alversia Brown Pettigrew, and Bea Johnson Agee, were lifelong friends. All three women graduated from William Chrisman High School: Ann in 1955, Alversia in 1962, and Bea in 1963. While all three woman grew up in Independence, MO during the 1950s and 1960s, their experiences were vastly different.

By Gloria J. Smith

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This month the Jackson County Historical Society observes Black History Month in two ways.

First, the February JCHS “E-Journal” examines how the legacy of 19th century African-America wagonmaker Hiram Young continues to be curated and maintained by scholars and admirers.

One example is the work being done by representatives of Truman Heritage Habitat for Humanity, which operates out of the former Hiram Young School in Independence. To learn more about the mission of Truman Heritage Habitat for Humanity and to support its efforts to develop a “Historical Museum Classroom Space” at its headquarters at 501 N. Dodgion St., go to trumanhabitat.salsalabs.org/museum/index.html

Secondly, the Society has installed a Black History Month exhibit at the Mid-Continent Public Library’s North Independence Branch at 317 West U.S. 24. This display includes information on notable African American individuals in our county and the impact they made in our community.

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This month’s E-Journal is based on the diary entries of police officer Max Gould of Independence, who documented in real time his service on Harry S. Truman’s security detail. Gould’s work grew into a friendship and influenced his family for generations to come. This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 JCHS Journal. It is republished here to add a postscript explaining how Gould’s grandson, John Pritchard, is continuing his family’s Truman connection in a unique way.

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Back in the day, there were “photo albums.”

Families would curate them by pasting or taping in hard-copy photos, sometimes also called “snapshots.” 

Often such albums would be filled with pictures documenting special occasions or holidays, such as Christmas.

We here at the Jackson County Historical Society have a pretty big photo album. It’s called the Digital History Database (https://jchs.catalogaccess.com/).

For the holiday season we decided to enter the keyword “Christmas” into its search engine, and many photos appeared.

In observance of the season we present our 12 days, uh, photos which appear below.

They document how Jackson County residents over the years observed the holidays. We found images of Christmas cards, trees, dances, dinners, office parties and more. 

Friendly reminder: While the Society is always ready to welcome new members, you don’t have to be a member to browse through the database and order prints or digital files. Go to https://www.jchs.org/archive-orders

Give it a try. Maybe you’ll find something we missed. And happy holiday season from the Jackson County Historical Society. 

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Thanksgiving is, for the fortunate, a time to give thanks for blessings and plenty.

That was true in Jackson County 100 years ago - again, for the fortunate.

For those not so fortunate, there were places like Kansas City’s City Union Mission, a relief agency which recently observed its 100th anniversary.

This story, in slightly different form, previously appeared on FlatlandKC (flatlandkc.org), the nonprofit digital newsroom operated by Kansas City PBS. The Jackson County Historical Society appreciates the opportunity to re-post it here.

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Historical society members cheer launch of the 1870s one-room structure’s preservation project; completion of mission’s first phase expected in November.

The Howard Schoolhouse is owned and operated by the Jackson County Historical Society; for more information, go to jchs.org. To learn more about how to donate to the historic structure’s restoration, go to jchs.org/save-our-schoolhouse.

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It was one of the prominent Jackson County weddings of 1919 and, accordingly, it received front page coverage.

The bride wore a gown of white lightweight Georgette fabric, part of which consisted of braille, a decorative cloth known for its raised, dotted texture.

The groom’s apparel went unrecorded.

Still, the wedding of Harry Truman and Bess Wallace was one of “unusual beauty and interest” according to The Examiner of Independence, the newspaper that has covered Independence and eastern Jackson County since 1898.

The very specific details regarding the June wedding and what the bride wore have been available to researchers, historians and genealogists - as long as they’ve had the patience and determination to find a library holding microfilm of the archival Examiner - and then go there, thread the microfilm into a microfilm reader, and then roll the film to the June 28, 1919 edition.

But, since this summer, researchers have received a more convenient and efficient way to access the archival Examiner.

By Brian Burnes

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When President Harry Truman announced the unconditional surrender of Japan on August 14, 1945, it was time to celebrate.

Jackson County residents reacted in a fashion similar to what was seen in communities large and small across the country. The scenes of huge crowds in New York’s Time Square were repeated, on a smaller scale, in Kansas City and Independence,

One difference in Jackson County, of course, is that President Truman and his family happened to live in Independence. Many local residents knew individual Truman family members as a friend, or neighbor, or the occasional customer at the Maple Avenue and Union Street gas station. As described here, in this month’s E-Journal, Independence Examiner journalist Sue Gentry, a friend of Bess Truman, witnessed the president’s White House announcement and quickly transmitted her story back to Independence.

But other than that, the Jackson County celebrations - just like many across the country - included impromptu parades, the throwing of pillow feathers from high windows, and the indiscriminate hugging of strangers. 

To Jackson County residents of 2025, the scenes recall the recent Union Station victory celebrations following Super Bowl and World Series victories.

But to compare the end of World War II to professional sports championships trivializes what was being celebrated in 1945 - the vast and palpable relief that the war was over and the soldiers and sailors soon would be returning home.

Eighty years ago, nobody knew of an atomic bomb. 

They just knew - beginning on May 8, when Truman had declared Victory in Europe - that a traditional invasion of the Japanese home islands was being planned, with the projected number of casualties too terrible to contemplate.

Accordingly, the widespread feeling in Jackson County, as Brad Pace writes, had been one of “dread.

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On Friday, March 15, 2024, residents of several communities in Platte County, Missouri, just northwest of Jackson County felt - in a most subtle way - the earth move beneath their feet. 

They felt compelled to report the experience to the U.S. Geological Survey. Accordingly, the agency soon confirmed an approximately 3.5 magnitude earthquake had been recorded at a shallow depth of about six miles below the surface just northeast of Kansas City International Airport. 

The quake, according to the Kansas City Star, had struck at approximately 1:45 p.m. Residents reported light shaking, while airport workers described a slight tremor. KCI representatives soon reported on social media that no damage had been discovered.

Meanwhile, if any Jackson County residents had felt anything, they didn’t notify the authorities.

So - it was no big deal.

That hadn’t been the case more than two centuries before at Fort Osage, some 27 miles northeast of the Truman Sports Complex. What happened at the recently constructed federal outpost not long after midnight was sufficiently unnerving that details of the event made news as far east as Philadelphia, with witnesses struggling to explain it.

This month’s E-Journal, in slightly different form, first appeared on FlatlandKC, (flatlandkc.org) the nonprofit newsroom operated by Kansas City PBS. The Jackson County Historical Society appreciates the permission to reprint this article.

By Brian Burnes

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Affordable housing remains a continuing issue in 2025 Kansas City.

So it was some 100 years ago, when a vibrant post-World War I economy and a migration of rural Americans seeking work and prosperity in emerging economic hubs like Kansas City created a need for properties that could be called home by those earning moderate to lower incomes.

In this “extra edition” E-Journal Ethan Starr, a Kansas City native who is the executive director of Historic Kansas City - the nonprofit organization that long has worked to protect and preserve local historic structures and landmarks - looks with fresh eyes at the residential homes and apartment units built by Kansas City developers eager to meeting that growing demand.

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A “clarion call” is like a spiritual bringing forth. It is the ushering in of the gifts embedded into a person, drawing them to fulfill a divine purpose already predestined for them. It is a sound measured by one’s restlessness of the harsh realities of life and drawn in by the cries of inequality on the basis of one’s human rights. 

Lucile Harris Bluford heard “the call” and decided to act. In doing so, she carried the plight of African Americans with the power of the pen, even stepping into the headline to become the story. She had effectively done what the black press often encouraged. She fulfilled the prophetic activism of African American women in general, and, in particular, her mentor, Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

By Dr. Delia C. Gillis and Keana Jarvis

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President Harry Truman’s decision to issue de facto recognition to the infant state of Israel 75 years ago was one of the most consequential moments in 20th Century world politics.

The international ramifications of that decision were profoundly significant in 1948, and remain so today.

The account of how Truman reached that decision included a remarkable Jackson County story.

That involves the president’s longtime Army friend and later haberdashery business partner, Eddie Jacobson. 

The story is told here by Shirley Christian, a Kansas City area journalist and historian.

Christian worked as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the Miami Herald,

In 1980 she joined the Herald’s Latin America Bureau, where she covered the wars then being fought in Central America. 

She received a 1981 Pulitzer  Prize for international reporting.

Her first book, “Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family,” appeared in 1985.

She also is the author of “Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America’s Frontier,” published in 2004.

This article first appeared in two parts in 2014 in the Jackson County Historical Society Journal. 

The Society is pleased to reprint this article, and it thanks the author for her permission to do so.

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In this month’s E-Journal, Scott Cauger, former Jackson County Historical Society board member, details the history of his family’s film production business which operated for years in the Englewood district of Independence.

Scott’s father, the late Theadore “Ted” Cauger, Sr., who for a decade served as the historical society’s treasurer, operated the business begun by his father, Arthur Vern “A.V.” Cauger, whose career in the film industry began when he operated a nickelodeon in downtown Kansas City in the early 1900s.

Jackson County can boast of a rich film industry legacy, which includes the “Film Row” district of Kansas City, where Hollywood film studios coordinated the distribution of motion pictures throughout the Midwest. Yet the story of the Cauger family film business is unique in the range of services it offered, which included the production of commercials for small business clients, to the eastern Jackson County distribution of feature films produced by the Hollywood film industry.

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A newly-formed Missouri nonprofit group, Friends of Englewood Theater, is in the process of acquiring the former theater at 10917 E. Winner Road in Independence.

The group is led by Brent Schondelmeyer, a former president of the Jackson County Historical Society and author of this month’s E-Journal.

The movie theater operated for decades, and in more recent years served as a country-western music venue. But it has been closed for almost 20 years. The nonprofit is also purchasing the former Ben Franklin store that stands adjacent to the theater.

Both properties are being acquired from the estate of Wade Williams III, who passed away in 2023.

Williams owned several Kansas City area movie theaters and was well known in the film industry for owning the rights to an extensive collection of vintage sci-fi films.

The pending acquisition is the latest development in the Englewood Arts District, where community residents are today supporting an array of shops, galleries and restaurants located about two miles southwest of Independence Square. In his article, Schondelmeyer details how Independence annexed the Englewood neighborhood in the late 1940s and how community opinion was divided about that idea at the time.

To learn more about the nonprofit, its plan to acquire the buildings and how to donate to its redevelopment efforts, go to englewoodtheater.org.

BY BRENT SCHONDELMEYER

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Kansas City area writer and photographer Bruce Mathews, with collaborators, has published several books documenting the beauty of local cemeteries and the diversity of those families whose loved ones chose to be interred there. 

In “Mount Washington Cemetery: In Search of Lost Time,” Mathews details the grand chapel built by the family of Kansas City Star co-founder William Rockhill Nelson, as well as the vision of George Kessler, the landscape architect who designed the cemetery.

Mathews reminds us that, many years ago, cemeteries were not exclusively a site of sorrow but a place of refreshment and contemplation.

Further, the book details not only the resting places of many prominent and accomplished Kansas City area residents, but also the varied and fascinating lives they lived before their passing.

On Memorial Day, May 26, the Mount Washington Cemetery Historical Society will be hosting an open house at the Nelson Memorial Chapel between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.The cemetery is at 614 S. Brookside Avenue, in independence. Copies of Mathews’ book will be available, with proceeds benefitting the Mount Washington Cemetery Historical Society, for the preservation of the Nelson Chapel.

For more information, go to mwchs.org, or call the cemetery office at 816-252-4141.  

BY BRUCE MATHEWS

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It’s February and students across Jackson County are in their classrooms, immersed in their spring semesters.

But one Independence school building remains closed. 

That’s the Howard Schoolhouse, the one-room 19th century building that had been open to visitors at the 1859 Jail Museum since 1960.

The 12-by-16 foot schoolhouse, which stands adjacent to the jail at 217 N. Main St., was placed on its current foundation in 1960. Concerns have arisen about the stability of the foundation and the Jackson County Historical Society, which owns both the jail and the schoolhouse, restricted visitor access out of an abundance of caution last autumn.

Beyond the possible foundation problem, the schoolhouse’s windows need to be repaired or replaced, as does its front door and transom. The building’s exterior walls need to be scraped of its peeling paint and re-painted; the schoolhouse’s interior walls need new paint, as well.

Still other issues include the restoration of the interior wood flooring and wainscoting.

Society board members hope to one day to re-open the schoolhouse to visitors if it can secure the needed funds.
“The Society intends to be a proper steward of the historic structures that have been entrusted to it,” said Gloria Smith, Society president. 

“Just as the Society recently received generous financial assistance to complete needed repairs to the 1859 Jail Museum, it now respectfully asks supporters to consider assisting in the restoration of the Howard Schoolhouse,” Smith added.

The society received the building as a donation in 1959.

Both it, and one-room schoolhouses across the country, have a long legacy.

BY BRIAN BURNES

To learn about how to donate to the restoration of the Howard Schoolhouse, go to jchs.org/save-our-schoolhouse

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The 1859 Jail and Marshal’s Home on the Independence Square has a long and storied history. It held countless felons, petty thieves, and even a few outlaws. Meanwhile, just a few feet away from the cell block, generations of jailers and their families lived in comfortable domestic quarters in the adjoining home built for their use.

Of all that has played out at the jail over the past century and one half, one of the most dramatic and tragic events was the murder of Sheriff Henry Bugler on the evening of June 13, 1866. The shooting of one of the area’s most prominent law enforcement officers sent a shock wave through the county, which was still struggling to heal deep wounds from the just-ended Civil War. With controversial Reconstruction policies being implemented across the South and the border states, the murder carried political overtones and was covered by newspapers nationwide.

Despite the attention it received, no one was ever charged or convicted of the crime. To this day, mystery surrounds the events of that violent night. All the witnesses and participants have long since passed away. We will never know for sure who fired the fatal shot. What we can do is review the known facts and consider who had the motive and the means.

By: BRAD PACE

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He was the leader of the free world and he would be home for Christmas.

That’s what Harry Truman, alone in Washington, decided. In the earliest days of presidential air travel, he authorized a dicey flight through winter storms to Kansas City on December 25, 1945.

A photograph of Truman taken the following day just outside his family’s Independence home - cradling an armful of presents with a wide smile - presented the personification of the bountiful life put on hold during the world war that had ended only months before.

Behind the home’s front door, however, the mood was way more bah humbug. Upon returning from Washington the president had found a scornful spouse, not impressed with his efforts to bring in the holiday right.

“So you’ve finally arrived,” Bess Truman told her husband. “I guess you couldn’t think of any more reasons to stay away.

“As far as I’m concerned, you might as well have stayed in Washington.”

From the perspective of 2024, Truman’s 1945 holiday looks like the white Christmas that no one was dreaming of - an icy post-World War II case of contemporary holiday stress.

Perhaps it started with unrealistic expectations of yuletide bliss bumping up against the pressures of presidential imperatives, leading to a marital spat, complicated by concerns over health and workaholic fatigue.

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