Rumor has it

On February 29, 2008, I spoke to about 200 people at a luncheon given by the Women’s Resource Center at Schoolcraft College in Livonia Michigan.

My topic was that fading white pile on the main square of Plymouth, Mich. It’s called a mansion, though it’s not as big as an average contemporary McMansion. But it’s a big house with quite a story. I called my talk, “Plymouth’s Markham-Wilcox House: “Rumor Has It.”

Here it is:

“It is rumored that there was a well-worn path cutting across the park to Miss Shortman’s.”

Okay, let’s stop right there. “It is rumored” is not how a responsible writer would make salacious allegations about any person — if that person were alive. I would not stand up here and say Detroit’s mayor had an extramarital sexual affair with his chief of staff without those oh so salacious text messages that make my statement bullet-proof from a libel standpoint.

But in the story I’m about to tell you, many writers over the years, including me, have made that kind of statement with impunity about two onetime residents of Plymouth. We were able to do it without danger of a lawsuit because the subjects of our stories are dead. We have walked a different path, and it was indeed well-worn.

Seeing themselves as immune to legal troubles, writers have taken liberties. I’m here today to break at least one part of the myth of the purported triangle involving the inventor of the BB gun, William Markham, his first wife, Carrie Markham and the woman many have painted as Markham’s mistress who became the second Mrs. Markham when Carrie Markham died.

I plan to cast doubt on much that has been written about these three people.

I know that’s not why you asked me to speak. Last May 6, the Detroit Free Press ran two articles by me that re-told the old Markham story. For my story, I relied on accounts by a former Plymouth museum director, Beth Stewart and I also interviewed Wendy Harless, a founder of the Plymouth Preservation Network which wants to keep the old Markham house from being destroyed to make way for stores, condos, offices or some combination of the three. The most important source for me was a paper written by architect Gregory Presley called “A Study of the Wilcox House, Plymouth, Michigan,” dated 1983. Unlike most authors, though, Greg Presley and I did cite our sources.

Here is the Markham story as it’s been re-told in the Free Press, Detroit News, Observer & Eccentric, Plymouth Mail, a magazine called The Gun Report, also by the late Plymouth historian, Sam Hudson, who wrote newspaper columns and books about Plymouth history, and by local history buffs.

William Markham applied for and received a patent for the first commercially successful air rifle. His Markham Air Rifle Co., started manufacturing BB guns in 1886. The patent came in 1887. His BB guns, made of wood with a brass and later steel tube in the barrel, were an instant hit. He was making money.

But according to all whose articles I’ve seen, Markham had a problem. It was his wife, Carrie. “A religious nut,” one writer called her. A contemporary Plymouth Mail notice lists her as a leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, but although I searched the archive of the Plymouth Historical Society, I could find nothing more about Carrie Markham’s alleged sanctimonious character.

The accounts all describe the couple as a mis-match. Markham was a hard worker but loved to have fun, though I don’t know where that information came from. Carrie supposedly didn’t like the fun-loving life.

Here is the most florid description of their relationship, from an article in the November 1999 issue of The Gun Report: “Things were not well in the Markham household. Phil Markham and his wife, Carrie, had been living together for years under strained circumstances. Carrie was what we would call today a religious nut. She believed it was a sin to dance, party, smile too much, or be idle in any form. She was a devout member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and at one time served as its local president. Phil Markham, on the other hand, was just the opposite. He loved to dance, to party, to join in with others for picnics and get-togethers; he enjoyed good wine, good food, good conversations, and good friends. He financed construction of an athletic field for the local high school, and often played trumpet in the town band. Phil believed in working hard, but he also believed in enjoying life to its fullest. In short, the Markhams were totally incompatible in every way.”

In all of his long article, Perkins doesn’t give one source. He seems to have had access to many interesting and colorful details, but he doesn’t give readers an opportunity to assess the reliability of his information.

In 1900, things changed for William Markham. He hired a secretary, 19-year-old Blanche Shortman.

Here is how Perkins describes it, again without citing a single source: “And then Blanche walked in. It was 1900, and Markham had just hired a new secretary. Her name was Blanche Shortman, and she was young, brunette and very pretty. He soon fell madly in love with her, and asked his wife, Carrie (still in Detroit) for a divorce which she refused, moving back instead to Plymouth.”

Is there any independent confirmation of any of these statements? Personal letters, diaries, newspaper accounts? Not in the Plymouth museum archives. No writer cites the kind of solid primary source material that makes historical judgments credible.

No text messages.

We know because we can see it today, that Markham built what Presley called a “temple” for his mistress a short walk across Plymouth’s Kellogg Park from his own house, which was situated where the Box Bar is now. None of these “facts” have been questioned. I recently asked Wendy Harless for proof that Markham asked Carrie for a divorce. I haven’t heard back, though she assured he she’s convinced of Markham’s “infidelity.”

Text messages?

Here’s how the architect, Greg Presley, described the origin of the big house on Kellogg Square: “Markham was not a happily married man. His wife Carrie was a good woman but could not, or would not, adjust to the more lavish lifestyle of success that Markham preferred. She was as committed to her own beliefs as Markham was to his, only in the other direction. Carrie became intensely involved in the local WTCU, for many years as president. As the marriage drifted, Markham turned his attentions to his work and eventually to a pretty young secretary, Miss Blanche Shortman. Time and nature took their course, and Markham soon asked his wife for a divorce. With strict societal attitudes toward divorce as her buttress, not to mention the responsibility of tow children, Carrie would not agree. So in 1901, Markham did what seemed to be the next best thing, thereby shocking that little Victorian society down to its proverbial bustle. Not only did he build a house for his mistress in town, but he constructed it at the apex of Kellogg Park, literally just a stone’s throw from his own home on the park.”

Markham built the house, a big Queen Anne-style building with tall columns and large first and second-story windows overlooking Kellogg Park. There is a story often retold — I heard it from Wendy Harless and Beth Stewart — that the women of Plymouth were so disgusted with Blanche Shortman that they made nasty remarks when she sat on the second-story porch. Kids threw stones at her. So Markham had wooden louvres made so passersby couldn’t tell when Blanche was sitting on the porch.

Here’s what the late Sam Hudson wrote about Plymouth society’s rejection of the couple: “The women of Plymouth, who had sided with the first Mrs. Markham, refused to accept Markham’s second wife. Markham, who was then 60, decided to pull up stakes. Leaving E.S. Roe to run his air rifle plant, he moved, in 1911 to Hollywood.”

The idea that Plymouth ostracized this couple, prompting them to depart, runs through every article I’ve seen. Nearly everyone — the Observer & Eccentric, the News, even, gasp, yours truly, used the word “shun.”

“In memory of Carrie and her devotion to civic affairs, the citizens of Plymouth shunned the new couple,” according to Greg Presley, the University of Michigan architect. “Whether Blanche insisted or W.F. had outgrown small town constrictions, the new Mr. and Mrs. Markham sold their peersonal estate in 1911. They headed west in 1911, leaving Markham’s business partner to run the business.”

I’m not going to argue that there wasn’t some ostracism going on. I would only state that there is no documentary evidence for it, other than lots of articles in newspapers. So why should I feel obliged to believe in it? Besides, I have a hard time believing that one of the wealthiest men in town, builder of a high school sports field, trumpet player in the band and well-known reveler, would be cut out of anything. I suspect he had his detractors too, and that over time, their voices have been amplified and those of his friends have been lost or suppressed.

Shame did not drive Markham out of Plymouth. There is another, more powerful reason than shame why the Markhams headed to Los Angeles.

Money.

Making money, lots of it. Realizing perhaps that his gold mine, the BB gun plant, was in a downward spiral. And noticing there was money to be made in land speculation around LA.

But before I delve into that line of argument, let me share with you my reasons for digging into this story. A few months ago, Thea Greenshields at Schoolcraft College’s Women’s Resource Center asked me if I would talk about the stories I wrote May 6, 2007 about the Markham house. I agreed, thinking it would be a piece of cake to recap those yarns for you. But as I re-read my stories and my background materials, they triggered questions I’d had when I wrote the story last year. Problem was that with deadline looming, I had no time to invest in further research. I did what other journalists and historians had done before me — I trusted the local historians and I wrote my story.

Now I’m retired. And doggone if I can’t put a little more time into things than back when I was bucking deadline. I started reading more carefully and I developed what I call my theory of the “ur-source.”

The original source. One voice that has dominated all others and set down all the elements of this tale. That ur-source is the late Jack Wilcox, whose father bought the big house on the corner of Penniman and Union from Markham in 1911. Jack Wilcox died in 2000.

I asked Greg Presley where his information about the house’s history came from. He had several long interviews with Jack Wilcox, he told me. Almost everything he wrote about the legend of Markham came from Jack Wilcox. Then there is the illustrious Sam Hudson. Sam Hudson is dead, but the language of his writing tracks with Presley’s and that of others. Jack Wilcox told that story over and over for years. It is Jack Wilcox’s “facts” that have set the stage for the Markham story.

But think about it. Jack Wilcox was born six years after the Markhams moved to California. He never knew them. Yes, he may have heard stories about the Markhams growing up. But intimate facts like William asking Carrie for a divorce? Hey, I’m even willing to believe Markham didn’t break his wedding vows. Where is the proof he did? He built an apartment on the rear of the big house so Blanche’s parents could live there because they didn’t think it was proper — supposedly — for their daughter to be living in the house otherwise.

Show me the text messages.

What would Jack’s motive be for telling these yarns? Well, they cast the former owner in a bad light and make the Wilcox family out to be civic-minded folk.

Look at the photos of that house from the early 1900s. Presley was right. It was a temple. There was a park with a pergola centered on a Greek-style statue and fountain with tall white columns, a pagoda, goldfish ponds, three live deer, lots of exotic trees and shrubs to attract birds, which both Markham and Blanche liked to watch. Inside, there was much ornate millwork.

Over the years, the Wilcoxes filled in the fish ponds. The pergola and its statue and columns are gone., the pagoda is gone, and according to Jack Wilcox, he either sold the statue of Mercury, or it was stolen. Reliability was not his middle name. In fact, one of those stories, and maybe both, is a lie.

It occurred to me that embarrassment — his own brand of shame — might be the motive for Jack Wilcox casting shame on Markham. Shame at how his family had defaced a local treasure.

But shame doesn’t move people far. Money does. The first mention of flipping the property came in the Plymouth Mail in 1926 with an announcement that George Wilcox had sold the house to a Detroit group who planned to build a theater on the site. The deal fell through.

We also learn that in the 1930s, Harriet Wilcox, Jack’s mother, was a bit strapped for cash. Leasing the house to the government for war housing in World War II has been portrayed by some writers as a civic thing to do, but it appears the money helped. But the government stripped the ornate woodwork from the house. What remained went to family members but never was returned to the house.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Jack Wilcox tried to sell the place and eventually succeeded just before he died. Once again, there is fear that the house will be destroyed. The city of Plymouth wants Stan Dickson, the owner, to fix code violations. Dickson has asked what it would take to demolish it. I’m told by one of his colleagues that Dickson doesn’t plan to raze the house: “The city pushed us and we pushed back.”

Back to Jack Wilcox: Could it be that he hoped a gussied-up story, no matter how lurid and undocumented, would help him sell the house?

Frankly, I think he was embarrassed. His house was described as an “eyesore” in the city’s plan. Why not create a moral eyesore in Markham?

But getting people to take a second look won’t be easy. Even today, I think some people who want to save the house may be wedded to this overblown but poorly sourced yarn.

Why do I think shame was not the force that propelled the Markhams out of Plymouth? I didn’t find the real reason written up in any of the so-called histories of the Markhams. I found it in a book called “It’s A Daisy!”, a history of Daisy air rifles by Cass Hough, longtime president of the company.

In an early chapter called “The Demise of Markham,” Hough wrote: “Markham was doggedly hanging in the ring, but losing ground to Daisy every year, ‘Captain’ Markham ‘ decided he’d had enough, and offered his interest (90 percent) in the Markham Company to” Daisy. The sale was made December 31, 1912.

Hough’s book claims Markham had met his match in Daisy. Here’s how I figure it: In 1900, Daisy’s profits were $100,000 and the directors agreed to invest 20 percent, or $20,000, of profits into advertising. According to other admittedly questionable sources, Markham didn’t advertise. But in 1901, he built the mansion at Kellogg Park at a cost of $25,000. In 2007 US currency, that’s roughly $615,000. He was busy living the good life, again according to articles that don’t quote sources other than Jack Wilcox. Markham was chauffeuring Blanche around in a handsome, horse-drawn carriage, spending weekends at his resort at New Baltimore where he sailed his 47-foot yacht, while Daisy was sending salesmen around the world selling BB guns.

It wasn’t scandal and shame that ran Markham out of Plymouth. It was a better business plan.

Markham had a better plan, too. He took his BB gun winnings to Los Angeles and bought land in what is now known as Hollywood. He sold lots to movie studios and at his death was worth in today’s currencty, about $25 million.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com