Two Mysteries

My sister Emily sent me a batch of old letters years ago, but they just sat around. Emily told me when she sent the letters that they gave the details of my grandfather's death; I'd always known he was lost at sea, but I never knew much about what happened. So I finally decided to go through them and write up the details. I put those old, faded letters in chronological order and began to read them, copying excerpts that were pertinent to the story.

My mother was raised by her grandfather, Georg Karl Jacob Manner; seems as if I've always known that. She told me very little about that situation until shortly before she went to a nursing home in her old age, having lost touch with the world. At that time she explained that her mother deserted her--went off and left her--and her grandparents found her and took her in. In our family we didn't discuss unpleasant things very much, so that was news to me.

Here is what I found.

Alfred Eugen Manner, my grandfather, fell to his death from the main upper topgallant yard of the barque Lord Templeton on June 23, 1905, one day out of Newcastle, N.S.W., en route to Hawaii. That we know. What wedon't know is exactly how he came to be taking in sail on that yard, in that ship, at that time.

We also know that he left behind a two-year-old daughter and a wife, who loved that baby dearly, but didn't live with her. We don't know how that situation came to be, either.

The first surviving letter of Alfred Manner he wrote to "Mama," Katerina (Kate) Manner, at the family home in Dallas, Texas, from Chickasha, Indian Territory, on June 21, 1902. In it he said he was working for the Southern Rock Island and Pacific railway company for $1.75 a day and "having a good time." Chickasha was still a village with unpaved roads, but Minnie Manner, Alfred's older sister, said when she saw it in 1903 that it was charming. In August, 1902, he wrote home from Omaha to say he was going to Chicago.

AEM was married to Agnes Freeman on November 27, 1901. His daughter, Katharyn, later to be my mother, was born September 2, 1902, when he was twenty-one. She and her mother, Agnes, lived with his mother, father, and two sisters at 329 Routh Street in Dallas at least until August, 1903. The baby continued to live there after that date. At some point in 1903, AEM came home and held his daughter in his arms; here is a photograph.

In November, 1903, AEM sent a post card to Annie Meyer, his half-sister, in Los Angeles, saying he was in town but didn't know how long he'd be there.

He sailed from San Francisco to Alaska on March 17, 1904, and came back to Seattle on Sept. 9. He left Port Townsend, Washington, on Sept. 26, 1904, for Australia as a member of the crew of the ship Olivebank, registered in Glasgow. He was discharged as a member of the crew on May 4, 1905, in Newcastle, N.S.W., with marks of "very good" for conduct and ability. On May 7, he wrote home from Sydney, saying he had been in thirty-two states before he left the U.S. He'd made a thousand dollars "trading" in Alaska, come back to Seattle, gone to Chicago, and returned to San Francisco, where, he wrote, "I went broke."

His friend Elmer Jaekel, a Wisconsin boy out to see the world, was a fellow crew member on the Olivebank. Elmer wrote two letters, one to George C. Manner and one to Minnie Manner, after the accident. He told of his great respect and admiration for AEM, and said, "I never had a better friend." Though he didn't know the addresses, or even the full names, of three other Olivebank crewmen who stayed with them in Australia, he found out AEM's address after the two of them nearly drowned one day when they were on a Sunday sail in a small boat.

Elmer and AEM and the others stayed about two months in Newcastle, except for a short visit AEM paid to Sydney, all the time looking for berths on a ship headed for the United States. Alfred spoke often of home, Elmer said, and wanted to get back to the States so he could earn enough money to pay his way back to Texas. They both were almost broke when they got word of "a chance" on the British barque Lord Templeton--they had fifteen minutes notice, he said. They paid a boatman their last coins to take them out to the ship, which was lying far out in the harbor. (The picture isn't the actual ship, but it's the same kind.)

And here is where Elmer's story and that of the ship's captain, Thomas Sladen, have begun to diverge.

Elmer said that he and AEM were boatswains of different watches. Sladen said they were stowaways, who turned up after the ship sailed with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and were not required to work. Elmer said AEM undoubtedly went aloft that stormy night of his own accord. Surely that would be the case if that was AEM's job, but Sladen said AEM simply offered to "lend a hand." Both of them say that AEM fell to the deck, crushed his legs, suffered a serious head injury, never regained consciousness, and died soon after.

George C. Manner, AEM's father, considered suing the ship for damages, but apparently the suit never really began; certainly evidence for the Manner position was weak, with only one crewman available to testify against the captain and his officers.

Who was telling the truth, Elmer or the captain? The captain could well have realized the danger of a suit, and embroidered the story to avoid it. On the other hand, stowing away is not good form, and Elmer, who was a middle-class young man, may have wanted to protect his own reputation. Yet the detail that the ship was lying far out in the harbor rings true, and if it is, five would-be stowaways would have had a hard time getting aboard unnoticed. I lean toward Elmer's position, simply because the argument against his story is weaker than that against the captain's. It's most unlikely that we'll ever know for certain which one was lying.

The story of Agnes and AEM is even harder to sort out.

Who knows why a young man would leave his wife? The family story is that Agnes was a bad woman, who deserted her child, but we haven't heard what Agnes might have said. My mother obviously was too young to remember anything about these events; she only knew what she was told. All we have to go on, really, are two statements: Annie Meyer, off in California, wrote in an undated letter, "Is Agnes still at Mamma's? So it is her fault after all that they don't agree." And Annie Black Manner, wife of AEM's brother Herman, wrote the following on June 26, 1905, three days after AEM's death, but before anyone in Texas knew it had happened:

"No, I have never seen Agnes since the night you left and Minnie I hope that she will never forget herself as far as to come to see us for we certainly do not want her and she never has been invited by either of us so I dont ever expect her. And if I should see her I would only speak I would not tell her about Fred. I dont intend to speak to her at all if I can avoid it. I felt so sorry for her the night you left and I didn't think that she did care so much for the baby as she seem to.

"Minnie I told Susie & Arthur about Fred letter I didnt think you'll would care for them and they both seem so glad to hear from him But I can't smooth that over for their nothing to smooth only I wont say anything more about it and I dont think Susie will tell Agnes."

Annie obviously didn't care for Agnes. Three months later, in another letter to Minnie, she made that even more clear:

". . . to think that he try to live here and be happy with his wife and she drove him from his own home, father & mother sister's and brother is it it is too bad for him to die and for her to live but she will repent, I never did like her, but Minnie dear, think how it would be if it were Herman I don't think I could stand it for our home has grown so dear to us both. And Fred poor boy didn't know what it was to have a wife's love and a home of his own and I know if he had he would have been contented and happy. If he had been nearer home so you all could have been with him it would be so different but he is at rest and no pain or sorrow can reach him now, and Agnes is bad woman and will live to repent."

I never knew Annie very well, but I remember clearly that I didn't like her. How a five-year-old could judge that someone was a fairly fierce know-it-all I can't imagine, but that's what I thought of her.

My mother, the baby, told my sister and me that once Earl and Reese, Agnes's two brothers, tried when she was still very young to kidnap her at gunpoint and failed. That's what she had heard, and that was nearly all she told us until she was very old.

But we don't know Agnes's side of the story. What we do know is that Agnes loved her baby. Here's a note she enclosed in a letter she wrote on June 28, 1905, to Minnie Manner, who apparently had been corresponding with her for some time after she left the Manner house:

"My darling Baby.

"I have not had a letter from you in over a week dear what is the matter with you all. have you been enjoying yourselves so well you have forgotten your old Mother. don't do that darling for remember wherever you are you all on 'earth' Mother has. tell Minnie to hold your little hand and you write Mother a letter your darling little self. make someone often and tell me how you are dear for Mother had rather get a letter from her little girl than anything else on earth nothing will drive away the blues so much.

"Bossie (?), Ted and Grandma have gone off the train.

"Dear Uncle Earl got his hand burned with Electricity so bad has not used it for over a week he is coming home the fourth of July for a few days.

"Well dear it is time for the Postman so I will close tell Mamma to kiss you for Mother and to write real real soon and real real often to poor

"Mother."

We don't even know if our mother ever saw that letter. I rather doubt that she did, for at that final talk we had she told me she had seen Agnes occasionally, but always avoided her. She remembered taking my hand and leading me across the street, away from that bad woman. Throughout the years, they never met, and I came to understand that I shouldn't ask questions. Yesterday, I disobeyed my mother, dead a long time ago. And somehow, from those faded yellow pages, my grandmother Agnes finally spoke to me.

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Note: Sources in colllection of C.J.