Beautiful Jim Key

by Mim E. Rivas

  On the way to our lunch, David Hoffman and I had passed by the stretch of North Main where William Key had purchased his first two and a half acres that became his veterinary offices and then later those of Dr. Davis.

  At the Mid-Way Café, where the desserts alone are worth the trip to Bedford County and my long-lost Tennessee accent came back after only a couple bites of buttered corn bread and collard greens, I heard more recollections of these various sites from Thomas Johnson Jr. The same “June bug” who had helped his father move Jim’s white chalky bones to his final resting place, and had been reared on his aunt Cora’s talking-horse ghost stories, Thomas was now a collector and entrepreneur. He told me and the rest of the group how ten years earlier he had stopped by Dr. Key’s former offices on North Main Street just after the demolition crew had finished tearing down the place. Looking for anything of interest, he then paid a visit to Thomas Glover, whose company did the demolition, and learned that there were a couple of steamer trunks they’d salvaged from the barn behind the offices. If Thomas wanted them, said Mr. Glover, a man in his seventies, he would sell them, but only if Thomas promised to take care of them and the items inside. The contents told the history of a great African-American whom too few remembered, Mr. Glover explained. Both leather trunks were wrapped in canvas with the crisply stamped name of “Jim Key” on them. Inside were treasures indeed, everything from the copies of Black Beauty that George Angell had given to Dr. Key, to his printing template for the Keystone Liniment bottle label, to the lesson plans he had written while training Jim.

  Thomas Johnson Jr. soon made the connections and felt that this was more than coincidence. “God, who He is,” said Thomas, “does things with purpose.” The trunks’ treasures have revealed to Johnson the immense respect that personified Bill Key. “He had it for people, and things, and himself. It was pride, the way he kept his things, wrapped neatly with pieces of material, made to last.”

  The person responsible for organizing this gathering and the definitive treasure hunter, Marilyn Wade Parker, had asked David Hoffman a crucial question before consenting to become the lead researcher and genealogist for this book and the documentary that Hoffman will produce and direct. In her seventies, Marilyn is a former beauty queen and the president of the local chapter of the DAR; she lives in a mountain-style cabin with eight dogs and three horses. She knows history, the Bible, animals, and especially horses. Though she knew very little initially about the story, her question to David Hoffman was whether he believed that horses went to heaven or not. And then before he answered, she explained that, whereas human beings had to be judged, it was written in Scripture that all creatures were of God. David didn’t disagree with that, and that was enough for Marilyn Parker.

  She miraculously uncovered much of the early history of Bill Key and, like a true archaeologist, helped me assemble it. “Time erases so many things,” she said, somewhat wistfully. “But not everything.”

  Marilyn was surprised by my question about why and how the story had gotten lost. Her question was the opposite. How didn’t this story get lost? After a catastrophic flood and with the courthouse destroyed four times, still it prevailed. It lived.

  The history was never lost at all.

  NOTES

  An additional acknowledgment is due to David Hoffman, who initially took the research lead on this project and introduced me to many of the indispensable individuals who generously shared their discoveries and collections. Hoffman’s historical insights also helped shape the narrative I created, and served as a valuable jumping-off place for my research. Our discussions reinforced my belief that context is necessary to give meaning to facts.

  A list of factual and contextual sources follows. Chapter notes mainly cite quoted sources, though I have referenced general and background sources. My interviews (author’s interview abbreviated as AI) were conducted either in person, on the phone, or via written correspondence. A detailed time line for Beautiful Jim Key’s performances can be easily constructed from the newspaper headlines that are listed by date in the sources. It should be noted that some newspaper clippings and some items of correspondence from the William Key scrapbook (WKsb) and Albert Rogers scrapbook (ARsb) were faded or partial, or did not have dates or newspaper names available.

  In mapping these chronological and geographic journeys, I hope to present a travel guide to Jim Key archaeological sites that still invite more digging.

  1. Prehistory

  For the account of the meeting between Alice Roosevelt and Beautiful Jim Key, I relied on the narrative supplied by Albert Rogers in his “Information Regarding Jim Key” (various drafts, 1913–1945, unpublished article/manuscript).

  For detailed description of Opening Day, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, see generally: Clifton Daniel, editorial director, Chronicle of America 542, “Ice cream cones, iced tea at World’s Fair”; Caro Senour, Master St. Elmo: The Autobiography of a Celebrated Dog; David Francis, The Louisiana Purchase Exposition; Mark Bennett, The History of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition; from www.boondocksnet.com/expos extract from Marshall Everett, The Book of the Fair, chapter 7, “Wonders of the Pike”; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 5/1/1904: “The Greatest of World’s Fairs Impressively Opens” (1a), “Cooler and Perhaps Rain” (1a), “Birdseye View and Key of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition” (6–7a), “The Crowd Rushing onto the Pike Eager to Spend Money” (9a), “Truly Biggest Show That Ever Came Down the Pike” (9a), “Free Entrance to Pike Shows” (1d).

  For background on Alice Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Nicholas Longworth, I relied generally on Hermann Hagedorn, The Roosevelt Family of Saginaw Hill, and on Betty Boyd Caroli, The Roosevelt Women; www.politicalgraveyard.com (Theodore Roosevelt, Nicholas Longworth); The 20th Century: Year by Year, general editors Fiona Courtenay-Thompson and Kate Phelps, “White House’s Black Guest,” 15, “Teddy Bears (and Teddy Roosevelt),” 19.

  “Open ye gates!”: David Francis, The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 174.

  “Alice, where art thou?”: Chicago Tribune cartoon in Hermann Hagedorn, The Roosevelt Family of Saginaw Hill, 187.

  “slender, supple lissome figure”: referenced in Hagedorn, 265, San Francisco Call.

  “I can do one of two things”: Roosevelt to friend Owen Wister in Betty Boyd Caroli, The Roosevelt Women, 400; Hagedorn, 186.

  “comin’ down the Pike”: St. Louis Dispatch, 5/1/1904, 9a.

  “crime equal to treason”: Chronicle of America, “Booker T. Washington, White House Guest,” 535.

  “Can he spell Alice Roosevelt?”: Rogers, “Information Regarding Jim Key.”

  “Grin, Jim”: Caro Senour, Master St. Elmo, 146; Essie Mott Lee, Dr. William Key: The Man Who Educated a Horse, 51.

  “Nicholas Longworth!”: Rogers, “Information Regarding Jim Key.”

  “Alice Roosevelt Longworth”: Ibid.

  given the underlying prehistory: David Hoffman AI, 3/3/2003; Hoffman’s Riding for America; for early horse prehistory, generally see Anne Charlish, A World of Horses: Evolution, History, Breeds, Sports, and Leisure; IMAX film Horses.

  PART ONE OF THE HISTORY

  Unless otherwise noted, all quoted conversations in chapters 2 through 5 between Dr. Key and Albert Rogers come from publicity materials generated for the 1897 first edition of “He Was Taught by Kindness,” later renamed “Beautiful Jim Key: How He Was Taught.”

  The structure and time line for chapters 2 through 5 was drawn from notes and correspondence from the Annie Mott Whitman Collection of Jim Key Materials (ARsb, WKsb). Posterity has been fortunate that Rogers had an abundance of carbon paper.

  2. Inauspicious Beginnings

  August 7, 1897: Lee, Dr. William Key: The Man Who Educated a Horse, 31.

  train depot on the corner of Church and Walnut: Sherman, A Thousand Voices, 12.

  eighteen-year-old Stanley Davis: Dick Poplin AI 4/3/2004; Marie Davis Harris letter to Dick Poplin 2/6/1985.

  Jim’s instincts were to trust the stranger: Monty Robe
rts, The Man Who Listens to Horses, 15.

  “mother wit”: generally defined as common sense, horse sense, sixth sense; for connection to folk medicine, see as a general reference John Lee and Arvilla Payne-Jackson, Folk Wisdom and Mother Wit: John Lee, an African-American Herbal Healer (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993).

  “a liniment which I called ‘Keystone Liniment’”: more on the subject from Thomas Johnson AI 3/27/2003 and Keystone Liniment label press.

  heyday of the patent medicine era: see generally Brooks McNamara, Step Right Up; David Hoffman AI 11/11/2002; “From Patent Medicines to Prescriptions,” 1969 Historical Edition Shelbyville Times-Gazette.

  lynchings were on the rise: see generally Howard Zinn, A People’s History, 203–10.

  a gray mare standing: Lee, 11.

  Arabian blood was valued for other traits: see generally George Conn, ed., The Arabian Horse in Fact, Fantasy and Fiction.

  “tongue of oil”: Key and Rogers in “He Was Taught by Kindness,” 1897 edition.

  “Give the preference”: E. Daumus, “The Horse of the Sahara,” 1863, in Conn, The Arabian Horse in Fact, Fantasy and Fiction, 49.

  “Sell, Lauretta?”: Key and Rogers, various editions “How He Was Taught.”

  “’Twas a moment”: Ibid.

  “drawing such crowds”: Ibid.

  using pins and sharp tacks: David Magner, Magner’s Art of Taming and Educating Horses, 334–37.

  “All men are equal”: attributed to Lord George Bentinck, cited in Robertson, The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America, 43; also Kevin Conley, Stud, 82, “The connection between wealth and horses goes back to the beginning of civilization.”

  geological fluke of equality: see generally for bluegrass regions, Robertson, 41; Conley, 26.

  two varieties of limestone: 1988 Shelbyville Times-Gazette compilation, “Early Bedford County—Where We Live,” 8; Bob Womack sample formulation; Womack AI 3/6/2003.

  options in his home state: Tennessee as leader in Thoroughbred world, see Robertson, 41–44, 131, 282; Belle Meade Plantation Museum, visit 3/3/2003, special exhibit; Annie Whitman AI 3/7/2003 (Dr. Key links to Robert Green, famous black jockeys); Herman Justi, ed., Official History of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, “The Negro Department,” 193–204.

  Standardbred turf heroes: materials from Gail C. Cunard, Harness Racing Museum; Conley, 121–22; Stanley Dancer, introduction to chapter on harness racing in Anne Charlish, A World of Horses, 340–41.

  Hambletonian was an elite name: on story, see www.harnessmuseum.com; Anne Chunko, USTA, research; Catherine Medich research; Bob Womack, The Echo of Hoof Beats, 39.

  “both fine ones and fast steppers”: “Keystone Driving Park,” Shelbyville Gazette, 6/23/1887.

  “bountiful repast of substantials”: Ibid.

  “The doctor is doing”: Ibid.

  Kentucky Volunteer: Catherine Medich research.

  Webb School: Shelbyville Times-Gazette 1969 Historical Edition, “‘Old Sawney’ Established Nationally Known Webb Preparatory School in Bell Buckle”; Shelbyville Times-Gazette Bicentennial Edition 1988, “Early Bedford County Communities and Their Histories,” “Bell Buckle Strives to Retain 1800s Charm.”

  “raggle-taggle, trashy man”: Lee, 15 (quoting various press versions).

  “gotten above his raisin’”: Bob Scruggs AI, 3/28/2003.

  3. The Human Who Could Talk Horse

  For Jim’s early training, I relied on Key’s accounts in various press and looked at Magner’s Art of Taming and Educating Horses, chapter 14, “Dialogue Between Man and Horse,” 449–56. Generally Magner didn’t espouse horse whispering techniques; also, I drew generally from Roberts’s “The Man Who Listens to Horses,” which echoed so much of William Key.

  My main source of information for conditions affecting people of color in these years was Chase Mooney’s Slavery in Tennessee; the HBO Documentary Unchained Memories provided an emotional anchor for Mooney’s statistics. Marilyn Parker’s genealogical and other research was indispensable to my telling Bill Key’s early story.

  Marilyn Parker AI 10/3/03: “To me the will of John Key of Albemarle, son of Martin Key, I should say the tenor and implications of its contents express of possessiveness of family I have rarely seen. ‘If you don’t have any heirs—what you have or received from me is to go to those we do!’”

  “Sit”…“Good dog”: ARsb, interview with Rogers; retold to Nashville American, 2/12/1899.

  reporters to note: “Jim Is Highly Educated—Can Both Spell and Figure,” Post-Standard, 9/7/1902.

  “Must be one of the boys”: Key retelling episode to Rogers, “He Was Taught by Kindness,” various editions.

  “Doctor, Doctor!”: Ibid.

  Busbey, Offutt, and Rarey: Magner, 449–56.

  special status: Marilyn Parker research; Annie Whitman AI 3/7/2003.

  “as a feme solo”: divorce book, Sumner County, Marilyn Parker research.

  Richard Houston Dudley: “Chesterfield Among Horses,” Nashville American, 2/12/1899.

  “dangerous niggers”: Mooney, 95.

  “nigger gibberish”: Ibid., 96.

  “don’t mind them darkeys”: Ibid., 94.

  the rabbit’s foot: www.luckymojo.com.

  Underground Railroad: on Dr. Key’s knowledge of routes references to guiding “another darkey” north, “How He Was Educated”; Shelbyville Times-Gazette 1969 Historical Edition, “Union Underground Railroad Operated in Bedford County.”

  extremes of living: for a look at the treatment of animals and slaves, see Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery.

  a doctor of color: Herbert Morais, History of the Afro-American in Medicine, 16–17, 21–25.

  slave-holding increasingly distasteful: Shelbyville Times-Gazette 1969 Historical Edition, “Study of Early Politics Explains Secession Vote”; Mooney, “Anti-Slavery Sentiment,” 66–85.

  4. War Stories

  Several sources were extremely helpful in my understanding of the context in which Bill Key’s war stories took place. For dates and statistics, I referred frequently to the Web site state.tn.us/environment/hist/PathDivided. The Ken Burns documentary series The Civil War provided visual texture to the famous battles on Tennessee soil. For the war’s impact on Middle Tennessee, I was guided by the Shelbyville Times-Gazette 1969 Historical Edition’s entire Civil War coverage, and Bob Womack’s Call Forth the Mighty Men, based on diaries of Middle Tennessee Confederate soldiers. Bedford County historian Dick Poplin’s writing on this era was also significant.

  Marilyn Parker’s genealogical and other research provided details of the military service of John W. Key’s sons, as well as insights from documents pertaining to other Key family members. The name Merit appears with different spellings in different records.

  Doc Key paid attention: McNamara, 21–45.

  “You are dying, Sir!”: Ibid., 45.

  “bots and colic”: 1890s descriptions found in Magner, 886–94, 912–15, and Bell’s Handbook to Veterinary Homeopathy, 11, 29.

  The first to secede: on sequence of secessions, Chronicle of America, 1861, “One by One States Join Confederacy,” 364; Zinn, 189.

  “an unconditional Union man”: Shelbyville Times-Gazette 1969 Historical Edition, “Anti-Secessionist ‘Parson’ Brownlow Detained Here by Rebel Soldiers.”

  stubbornness as with his humanity: Clara Singleton Nelson, “My Civil War Connection,” Shelbyville Times-Gazette, 2/17/2003; Clara Singleton Nelson AI 3/28/2003.

  “I have learned the name”: for John Gumm’s 4/8/1862 diary entry at Corinth, see Womack, Call Forth the Mighty Men, 126.

  In this hell: for the pattern of the three battles observed by Key, see Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club, 49:

  The Civil War was fought with modern weapons and premodern tactics. The close-order infantry charge, a method of attack developed in the era of the musket, a gun with an effective range of about 80 yards, was used against defenders armed wit
h rifles, a far deadlier weapon with a range of 400 yards. The mismatch was responsible for some of the most spectacular carnage of the war. In Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, whose failure broke the back of Lee’s army, 14,000 Confederate soldiers advanced in a line a mile wide across open fields against Union guns, and only half came back. But the tactic was responsible for a lot of unspectacular carnage as well, and one of the reasons the North finally triumphed was that it found in Grant a commander unafraid to throw wave after wave of troops at entrenched Confederate positions. The North had the bigger army, but the South, for the most part, defended, and in most battles the advantage was with the defense. The Civil War was therefore an unusually dangerous war for every soldier who fought in it.

  “keeping a close watch”: ascribed to A. W. Key by Dr. Key to Rogers in “He Was Taught by Kindness,” various editions.

  When Sherman began cutting: R. W. Best AI 3/24/2003, Nashville, oral history of the Civil War.

  “about 12 years old”: 5/19/1865 diary entry of Samuel Foster, in Womack, Call Forth the Mighty Men, 512.

  “mens minds can change so sudden”: Ibid., 537.

  “upon their return”: notes from Mayor Dudley for 2/13/1899 Nashville American interview, WKsb.

  townspeople and relatives: Lee, 6; various interviews in Shelbyville: Annie Mott Whitman, Dick Poplin, Bob Womack, Thomas Johnson, the week of 3/26/2003.

  “When I ran my restaurant”: WKsb, New Jersey newspaper clipping.

  Most of the black citizens: Annie Mott Whitman AI 3/31/2003, Nancy Campbell Barnett AI 3/28/2003.

  “any action looking”: Freedmen’s Bureau report published in Shelbyville Times-Gazette 1969 Historical Edition, “Social and Political Unrest Reflected Change During Reconstruction Period.”

  he had transcribed: Thomas Johnson AI 3/31/2004.

  5. Higher Calling

  For Rogers, I was helped immeasurably by Catherine Medich, New Jersey State Archives research as to genealogy and major biographical events; ARsb correspondence provided much insight into his inner life.

  For the details of Nashville’s 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition, I relied on the Official History of the Tennessee Exposition, insights from Susan Gordon of Tennessee State Library Special Collections, and materials from the Parthenon Museum in Nashville.