The Lost Tribe of Coney Island

by Claire Prentice

  In 1913 little Catherine died of complications following measles. By this point Truman was crippled by pain resulting from Bright’s disease that frequently prevented him from working. The former showman had no money to bury his and Sallie’s fourth daughter, and was too ill to attend her funeral. Sallie’s father, Patrick Gallagher, traveled to Iowa to collect the infant’s body and he and Sallie had her buried in the Gallagher family plot alongside Sallie’s mother at the St. Louis Catholic Cemetery in Louisville.

  The same year that Catherine died, Truman and Sallie had a son, Truman Leo, known as Leo. He was an angelic looking boy with blonde hair and big blue eyes. Sallie was smitten with her first son. But at nineteen months, Leo contracted infant polio, which left him crippled. His right leg was five inches shorter than the left. All the muscles in his affected leg were atrophied, rendering the leg useless and making him dependent on a carer at all times. He was mentally sharp but couldn’t dress or bathe himself. He walked with two crutches and had a bodily tremor.

  Truman’s own health deteriorated rapidly. He self-administered regular injections and frequently felt so weary and sick he was forced to take to his bed. He could do nothing for himself and grew irritable and increasingly difficult to be around. When Truman’s mother died toward the end of January 1916, Truman, Sallie, and Leo took over her home. Three weeks later, on February 16, 1916, Truman Hunt died in St. Luke’s Hospital, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His funeral was held two days later at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.

  The last mention of Truman in the newspapers he had once filled with farfetched stories of his Filipino charges was a small notice placed by his family in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. It read: “Card of Thanks: We wish to express our appreciation for the many acts of kindness and for the assistance given us at the time of the Death of Dr. Hunt.”29 It was signed by Sallie, Truman’s sister, Dora, and his daughter Calista.

  The showman’s body was buried in the Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Cedar Rapids. No headstone marks the grave of the great self-publicist.

  Truman was forty-nine. Despite the vast wealth the brilliant showman and physician had accumulated during his lifetime, he left no life insurance policy, no assets, and no means of financial support for his wife and disabled child.

  Sallie and Leo Hunt: If Truman thought he had been cursed, his third wife had every reason to believe the spell had been passed on to her and their son, Leo, too. With four daughters dead and buried and a severely disabled son, Sallie faced a future of severe hardship and unspeakable sorrow. All she had left of her marriage were memories and her marriage certificate, which “she prizes very highly.”30 Life must have seemed as if it couldn’t get any worse, but the year after Truman’s death Sallie’s beloved father, Patrick, died.

  Sallie couldn’t work with Leo to care for, and turned to the Veterans Administration for help, applying for a widow’s pension for herself and a dependant’s allowance for her son. She became a regular correspondent with the VA over the next twenty-two years as she fought to get every penny she could from the government to put food on the table and a roof over the heads of herself and Leo.

  In her correspondence she stated: “[Truman and I] had five children born to our marriage but all but one died in infancy and my living child is in poor health and almost constantly under the care of a physician.”31 In another letter she described Leo as “a victim of that dreadful scourge, Infantile Paralysis . . . He is a great expense to me in the way of shoes and of braces and what limited medical treatment I can afford . . . He is a bright little fellow at the head of his class in the sixth grade and I think exceptionally advanced.”32 The doctor sent by the VA to examine Leo noted the following about the boy’s condition. “General appearance Bad; state of nutrition poor; development impaired; carriage languid; gait limp; posture stooped . . . spits up and vomits food often,” due to an impairment in his digestive system. The report concluded, “his disability is total.”33

  Sallie claimed in her application that Truman’s death from Bright’s disease was caused by his military service. If this was found to be true, Sallie would have been entitled to an augmented pension, paying her an additional twenty-five dollars a month. Sallie’s claim for the greater amount was “rejected on the ground that claimant is manifestly unable to show that the officer’s death, Feby. 15, 1916 from disease of kidneys, was a result of his military service in line of duty, there being no record in the War Department of said fatal disease and no medical or other evidence on file showing origin thereof in service or its existence at date of claimant’s discharge, or continuance thereafter.”34 Whether Truman had told Sallie he contracted Bright’s disease as a result of his time in the military, or whether she had invented the story in a desperate bid to get money, is lost to history. Either way, her story has the ring of something her husband might have said for financial gain.

  Truman’s widow was indefatigable and enterprising in the pursuit of her case. She enlisted the help of Congressman Charles Ogden of the Kentucky Fifth District, who in 1920 wrote to the commissioner of the Bureau of Pensions in Washington, DC, describing Sallie as “a personal friend,”35 and appealing to the commissioner to increase the allowance paid to Leo to help cover his medical expenses. Congressman Ogden referred to Sallie’s difficult personal circumstances and portrayed Truman Hunt as a distinguished public servant who had done sterling service in the cholera hospital in Manila in 1902.

  Despite his intervention, money remained tight and Sallie and Leo were reliant on the kindness of family, friends, and strangers. Sallie, who had always dreamed of having a house to call her own, trailed around her home state in search of a place to stay. She spent some time in Parr’s Rest, a home for indigent women in Louisville, and she and Leo lived for a while with her sister Margaret and her husband, and their five children.

  Then, four years after Truman’s death, Sallie got married again, to Jacob Wingfield. The couple settled with Leo in Buechel, Jefferson County, Kentucky. Sallie and Jacob had two children together, John, who was born around 1923, and Sara (the name Sallie’s parents had given her) around 1927. Jacob worked variously as a farmer and hotel porter but was frequently unemployed and struggled to provide for his family. Meanwhile, Sallie’s time was divided between raising her two young children and providing round-the-clock care for Leo.

  Leo took after his father intellectually. He showed great promise at school and went on to study political science at the University of Louisville. His teachers described him as a very able student who could go on to a great career. But during his first year at the university, in 1933, his pension was cut from thirty-six to twelve dollars a month. Leo was living with Sallie and Jacob on a farm in Buechel, Kentucky, but the couple were penniless and heavily in debt to the bank.

  Sallie was determined her eldest son should complete his education and took her complaint about the drop in her son’s pension straight to the White House. Sallie addressed her letter to the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, to “My dear Mrs. Roosevelt” and went on to describe the plight of her son, who, “notwithstanding his affliction . . . is ambitious and anxious to acquire a thoro education. Twelve dollars per month hardly pays transportation expenses between our home and the university of Louisville where he is a sophomore in the College of Liberal Arts.”36 Sallie added, “Please do not think me bold in my appeal to you Mrs. Roosevelt. I think you can understand my anxiety in assuming to address you. Our farm is so heavily encumbered by default of payments on loans we will surely have to lose it if something does not materialize soon . . . I mention this to point out how hopeless [is] the boy’s chance of aid from home. I shall be most grateful to you for your least effort in behalf on my son. Very truly yours, Mrs. Sallie G. Wingfield.”37

  By 1934 Sallie had enlisted the help of US senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky (later Harry Truman’s vice president). Senator Barkley wrote to the acting director of the Widows’ and Dependents’ Claims Service, requesting that Leo’s allowance be increased. He was informed that the bo
y was entitled to twenty-seven dollars a month and not a penny more, and the decision was final.

  Leo was two years into his university degree when, in 1935, the VA sent a field examiner out to reassess his physical condition. In his report the field examiner wrote, that Leo “is a likable boy, smart and ambitious. He is a bad cripple . . . The ward hopes he can find some way to continue his education, as he realizes that this is his only salvation.”38

  The government turned down Sallie’s request for another increase in Leo’s allowance. By this point Jacob Wingfield was out of work again, and Truman’s only surviving son was forced to drop out of university. He died three years later, on January 25, 1938, at age twenty-four, of a pulmonary abscess empyema, in Louisville, Kentucky. His medical and funeral expenses totaled $609.70, including an itemized bill from his hospital doctor, R. R. Slucher, for “Two House visits $6.00, Thirteen Hospital visits $39.00, Two Blood Transfusions $40.00. Total $85.” Sallie applied to the government’s War Pension Fund for assistance, which was provided.39

  Sallie’s fighting spirit kept her going through decades of torment. She finally gave up the fight on June 31, 1964, when she died in Kentucky, aged seventy-eight. She had outlived Truman by almost half a century and Leo by twenty-six years.

  Sallie left behind her own mystery: in her letter applying for a widow’s military pension she wrote, “The certified copy of the public record of my marriage to the soldier gives my name as Sallie A. Gallagher. I was baptized under the name of Sara A. Gallagher, but since my marriage to the soldier I have used the name of Sally G. Hunt, and I respectfully request that my name so appears in my pension certificate, if one be issued to me.”40 The document is signed “Sally G. Hunt.” To move from “Sallie” to “Sally” is unimportant. But for Sallie to adopt an entirely new first and middle name on her marriage to Truman seems to suggest that Truman was not the only person in his world who enjoyed reinventing himself, and that he drew people into his orbit who had the same desire. Sara A. Gallagher became Sallie G. Hunt, wiping out her former identity as she stood in the Portland, Oregon, church where she and Truman married. It was only after Truman’s death that she needed to excavate the different layers of that transformation.

  Calista Hunt: After the death of her mother, Myrtle, in 1893, and the departure of her father, Truman, Calista was raised by her aunt Dora and her grandmother (Truman’s mother), Eunice Melissa Hunt. In 1921 Calista met and married Leo Max Creglow in Iowa. He was a farmer and had served in the Sand Storm Division during the Battle of Mons in WWI. In 1924 Calista and Leo had a son, William. Calista died in Santa Monica, California, in 1969, at the age of seventy-seven.

  Else and Philip Hunt: Shortly after Truman’s release from jail in February 1907, the Bureau of Insular Affairs received a letter from Mrs. Else Hunt asking whether the bureau knew of the whereabouts of her husband, Truman Hunt, whom she’d been trying to find ever since he left Coney Island in September 1905. McIntyre replied that Truman had been a prisoner in Memphis but that he had recently been released. He continued, “I should state in this connection that during Hunt’s incarceration in the Memphis jail he was in correspondence with his wife in Louisville, Kentucky.”41

  Else was finally granted a divorce from Truman on May 9, 1908, after she hired a private detective who provided evidence that Truman had committed adultery and had cohabited with Sallie in New York during the summer of 1905. Truman did not show up in court or send a representative. Else was given full custody of their son, Philip Hunt. It was recorded in the divorce documents that Truman was accused of committing adultery not just with Sallie but with several women. The detective had also visited the Reverend Father James Black in Portland, Oregon, who was shown photographs of Truman and Sallie and confirmed in a sworn statement that he had married them in December 1904, when the groom was still married to Else.

  Following her divorce, Else wrote Truman out of her life entirely, and described herself as a widow. She raised Philip, her son with Truman, with the help of relatives. When Philip was eleven, Else got married again, to Wilbur Marsh, a Manhattan stockbroker. Their marriage was a long and stable one and Wilbur raised Philip as if he were his own son. Philip dropped the surname Hunt and became Philip Marsh.

  For the first time since meeting Truman, life seemed finally to be going well for Else. But then in October 1920, tragedy struck: at age seventeen, Philip died of pneumonia at the Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois, where he had enlisted earlier that year.

  Else died in 1958 at age eighty-seven, six years after her second husband, and forty-two years after Truman.

  AMERICA AND THE PHILIPPINES

  The debate over America’s involvement in the Philippines and the rights of Filipinos to rule their own country reached a milestone with the passing of the Jones Act of 1916, which formally declared the US government’s commitment to Philippine independence. But another three decades passed before the issue was finally resolved: on July 4, 1946, America handed sovereignty of the islands back to the Philippine people with the signing of the Treaty of Manila. In the eyes of many Filipinos, the Americans had done nothing but harm; others celebrated the introduction of public education and widespread political elections.

  Despite the controversial role that America played in the Philippines for nearly half a century, the ties between the two countries have endured. According to the US Department of State, there are an estimated four million Americans of Philippine ancestry in the United States today, and more than three hundred thousand US citizens in the Philippines.

  As I noted in the introduction to this book, the idea of exhibiting human beings for entertainment is rightly considered grotesque today. Understandably, the subject of the Igorrote exhibition trade is regarded by many modern Filipinos as a shocking example of the subjugation and degradation of their forefathers. I hope that this book, in telling the story of the Igorrotes who were taken to America in 1905 does something to honor their extraordinary lives.

  A LAST WORD

  Much was said in the corridors of power and written in the press about the manifold ways in which America could “civilize” the Igorrotes, but the tribespeople had their own ideas. Before he left Coney Island, Chief Fomoaley shared his impressions with a journalist.

  “I have seen many wonders [in America], but we will not bring any of them home to Bontoc. We do not want them there. We have the great sun and moon to light us; what do we want of your little suns [electric lighting]? The houses that fly like birds [trains and cars] would be no good to us, because we do not want to leave Bontoc. When we go home there, we will stay, for it is the best place in all the world.”42

  Acknowledgments

  Truman Hunt led the Igorrotes, and later Barker, on a wild dance across America. Tracing every step of that journey has led me on an equally merry dance, through libraries, museums, court and newspaper archives, along with state, city, county, and federal government archives, and has seen me quizzing experts across the globe. Along the way I have developed a huge admiration for the talents and tenacity of librarians from Manila and Bontoc to Little Rock, Arkansas, and from Chicago and New York to Edinburgh and Aberystwyth.

  My special thanks go to all the wonderful staff of the New York Public Library, specifically in the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History, and Genealogy; the Billy Rose Theater Division; the Manuscripts and Archives Division; the Microforms Reading Room; and to Kate Cordes and her colleagues in the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division. I am especially grateful to Sachiko Clayton and Philip Sutton in the Milstein Division, which became my second home as I researched the book.

  I would also like to thank the staff of the following institutions: the Vancouver Public Library; Winnipeg Public Library; Adele Heagney and Amanda Bahr-Evola at the St. Louis Public Library; Chicago Public Library; Onondaga County Public Library in Syracuse; State Library of Iowa; Mason City Public Library; Spokane Public Library; Seattle Public Library; Memphis Public Library; Ka
nsas City Public Library; Fiona Laing at the National Library of Scotland; Central Library in Edinburgh; the Hugh Owen Library at Aberystwyth University; Irene Wainwright at the New Orleans Public Library; Ken Wuetcher at the Louisville Free Public Library; Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; the Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library in Florida; Boston Public Library; Atlantic City Free Public Library; Nashville Public Library; Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon; Dallas Public Library; Connecticut State Library; Westport Public Library in Connecticut; Tulsa City-County Library in Oklahoma; the Research Center at the Chicago History Museum; New Haven Free Public Library; Brooklyn Public Library; Chris Child at the New England Historic Genealogical Society; Todd Gilbert at the New York Transit Museum; the wonderful staff at the Brooklyn Historical Society; the New-York Historical Society; the Museum of the City of New York; Barbara Mathé at the American Museum of Natural History; the State Historical Society of Missouri; Charlotte Branch Library; Arkansas State Library; Garland County Library; Ronald A. Lee at Tennessee State Library and Archives; Godfrey Memorial Library; Meg Miner at Illinois Wesleyan University; Diane Disbro, Union Branch, Scenic Regional Library, Union, Missouri; the Missouri History Museum and Library and Research Center; Florence M. Jumonville at the Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans; Reme Grefalda and colleagues at the Library of Congress; Charleston County Public Library in South Carolina; the University of Michigan; Kara Tershel at Georgetown University; Charlotte Bare at the Washington Memorial Library; Joshua Ruff, curator at the New York City Police Museum; the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian; Ken Cobb at the New York City Municipal Archives; the University of Tennessee; Pennee Bender at the City University of New York; Westport Historical Society; the Newberry library; the Chicago Bar Association; the John Marshall Law School; and the Spertus Institute.