History Knox: When the mayor of Mount Vernon played detective to find a thief

MOUNT VERNON — Those of you who attended the Mound View Cemetery Tour last year will have seen Larry Evans and I portray Mount Vernon’s most famous feuding figures, Democratic newspaper editor Lecky Harper and Republican politician Robert C. Kirk.

This week, I happened upon a story involving a member of Kirk’s family, Desault B. Kirk, Robert’s son, who for many years was a successful businessman in Mount Vernon.

In late October of 1881, Desault took the train to Mansfield, most likely in order to tend to some business.

Finding himself with a long wait before the southbound train would take him back to Mount Vernon, Desault decided to stretch out on a bench in the B.&O. Railroad station in Mansfield, and take a nap. When he woke up, he reached for his gold pocket watch to check the time.

It was gone.

This was no small matter to Desault, for that pocket watch was made of gold, and he was not going to take the theft lying down. (Well, except for the fact that he was lying down when it was stolen.)

He contacted the Mansfield police and demanded that they make a thorough investigation. One can bet they said they’d get right on that, with a bored and jaded expression.

Dissatisfied with the response, Desault caught the evening southbound train and went to fume to the Mount Vernon police chief Marshall Magers about the theft the following morning.

Chief Magers immediately set out to inquire at the Mount Vernon B.&O. depot about any suspicious characters that may have passed through the previous day or this morning (or, as the article in the Mount Vernon Republican newspaper quaintly puts it, “this forenoon”).

Desault continued on to the mayor’s office and informed him of the situation. Mayor Major Brown said he’d get involved in the investigation, too.

The police chief’s inquiries turned up a report of three suspicious characters spotted disembarking from the Mansfield night train. Chief Magers targeted these unknown individuals as his suspects, and began searching around town for other encounters with these men.

Meanwhile, at about the same time, the shop door bell tinkled as a man entered the store of jeweler W. W. Young in downtown Mount Vernon. The man wished to inquire about the value of a gold watch which he was considering selling.

Young examined the watch and found that it was a nice timepiece. He said that he would offer the man $10 for it, which in today’s money would be $339, which is not high-end luxury pricing, but is hardly cheap, either. The man accepted the offer, and signed the sale receipt.

When the police made the rounds of local jewelers, they found Young’s account of the sale, and his description of the customer matched one of the three suspicious characters seen on the night train. When the chief informed the mayor, the mayor was able to confirm that the watch Young bought matched the stolen item perfectly.

The name which the mysterious man had signed was Gus Weaver. He was evidently a known individual in Mount Vernon, because the mayor made a beeline to Weaver’s residence and asked him about the watch.

Weaver, of course, claimed to know little about the watch, claiming that he had bought it from his friend Patsey Sullivan, whom he said was “hard up,” and needed the money to buy a ticket for the noon train to Wheeling, West Virginia.

Sullivan was another known local quantity who just happened to match another person in the suspicious trio from the depot (though the third one was never found).

By this point, it was past noon, so if Weaver’s story were true, it would mean Sullivan was gone. Mayor Brown didn’t believe it.

Brown instructed the police to spread out, with instructions to arrest Sullivan on sight. He headed back toward his office. To his surprise, he spotted the very man he was looking for.

Sullivan was approaching on the sidewalk ahead of him, but the suspect turned and entered Elliots Photograph Gallery. The mayor realized he’d have to go at Sullivan obliquely, instead of addressing his suspicions directly.

He entered the gallery himself and pretended to discover Sullivan there. He started chatting with the man and remarked that Sullivan might be able to help him.

Sullivan evidently had worked with Sells Circus when it came to town earlier that October, so the mayor wondered if they could head back uptown so the mayor could ask him some questions about it.

Sullivan agreed. (As an aside, we examined a story that unfolded at the same time that circus was in Mount Vernon in the two-part History Knox column, “The Battle for the Body,” last year.)

The newspaper article states without further elaboration that Mayor Brown wanted to ask Sullivan about rumors of “tea peddling” at the circus.

What is “tea peddling”? Is it literally an issue about someone selling tea? That seems unlikely. What came to my mind is the later use of “tea” as slang for marijuana, a usage that was definitely in place by the early 20th century, although this is 20 years earlier.

But if the mayor made it sound like a drug investigation, then Sullivan may have welcomed that as a distraction from the issue of the stolen watch, and decided to play along in order to keep the distraction rolling.

Whatever the case, he willingly walked with the mayor up to the jail on High Street.

Inside the jail, the mayor dropped all pretense and instructed the police to arrest Sullivan on the charge of theft of the watch. He was placed in a jail cell.

Sullivan claimed that, yes, he had sold the watch to Weaver, but he had originally bought it from a man on the train. Sullivan said that he never even got off the train in Mansfield, and therefore couldn’t have stolen the watch.

The mayor didn’t believe that for one moment, either. As the newspaper put it, that story “was too thin to wash.”

Desault Kirk confirmed that the watch at Young’s jewelry shop was indeed his gold pocket watch. He reimbursed Young the $10 he had paid for the watch and said that he was just glad to have been able to get the watch returned, for which he thanked Mayor Brown and Chief Brown for their swift detective work.

We’re still waiting to hear from the Mansfield police about their ongoing investigation.