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George W. Bunn, Jr. Memoir

B884G. Bunn, George W. Jr. #1 (1890-1973) Interview and memoir 3 tapes, 222 mins., 57 pp.

George Bunn, Springfield businessman, discusses his family's history in Springfield: his grandfather's 1840's businesses, formation of the Marine Bank, and the Springfield Watch Company. He recalls his education at Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and Princeton University, work in New York as a reporter and editorial assistant, WWI service, and Springfield during the Depression. He also discusses his involvement with the Abraham Lincoln Association, his tenure as trustee and president of the Public Library Board, War Fund Council 1941-1945, the Springfield Art Association, and the Hobby Horse press.

Interview by Sally Schanbacher, 1972 OPEN See collateral file: Interviewer's notes, a copy of The First Ten Years of the Hobby Horse Press 1934-1944, and article on the Princeton Triangle Club.

Archives/Special Collections LIB 144 University of Illinois at Springfield One University Plaza, MS BRK 140

Springfield IL 62703-5407

© 1972, University of Illinois Board of Trustees

George W. B u m , Jr. Memoir

Comections and C o m n t s by Paul M. Angle

December 1973

P. 15, 3rd l ine from bottom. Durstine, Osborne, w o n . That was the famous, o r infamous, Bruce Barton.

P. 17, l ine 3. Our M r . Wrenn, not Rand.

P. 19, line 7. Neuilly-sur-Seine, not Nevilly.

P. 20, 4th l ine f r o m bottom. Saint Nazaire. I ' m sure Gib pronounced it "San Nazaire", which i s good French.

P. 24, l i ne 2. Fables in Slang.

P. 25, l i ne 10. Izaak Walton. And I ' m doubtful about the Itchen but I can't find it.

P. 28, l i ne 2. Terrain Hotel? o r Tremnt?

P. 30, l ine 7. By this tim, the Ridgely Famners Bank.

P. 32, l ines 17-18. Lyman Bryson.

P. 33, l ine 6. Originally called the Lincoln Centennial Association.

Bottom of page. Paul Angle graduated from M i d University, not Wabash, and at the time he was se l l ing books for the American Book Co., not Ginn & Co. The two f i r m s were b i t t e r r iva ls .

P. 37, 2nd l i n e from bottom. Lindstrom, the name was.

P. 44, l i ne 3. Mrs. Leigh Call.

P. 48, l i n e 9. Journal of the I l l i n o i s State Historical Society.

P. 50, l ine 6. Graustauk.

George W. Bunn, Jr. Memoir #1 - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS

PREFACE

This m u s c r i p t i s the r e su l t of a ser ies of tape-recorded

intendews conducted by Mrs. Sally Schanbacher f o r the Oral History

Office with her father , M r . George W. B m , Jr., daring 1972.

Mr. BwLn reviewed the t ranscr ipt with Mrs. Schanbacher and helped

ed i t it f o r final typing.

M r . Bunn was born in Springfield, I l l i n o i s In 1890 and has

l ived there a l l h i s l i f e , except f o r absences t o attend preparatory

school and college, t o work i n New York City as a newspaperman, and

t o serve in the m d forces during World W a r I. His active c a e e r has

included wholesale grocering, banking, writing, pr int ing and publishing,

leadership of the Abraham Lincoln Association, philanthropy and a

variety of c ivic ac t iv i t i e s .

Readers of this ora l history memoir should bear i n mind tha t it

i s a t ranscr ipt of the spoken word, and that the interviewer, narrator

and edi tor sought t o preserve the informal, conversational s t y l e tha t

i s inherent ln such h i s to r i ca l sources. Sangamon Sta te University i s

not responsible f o r the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor fo r views

expressed therein; these a re f o r the reader t o judge.

The m u s c r i p t m y be read, quoted and c i ted fYleely. It m y not

be reproduced i n whole o r i n part by any means, electronic o r mchanical,

without permission in w i t i n g f r o m the Oral History Office, Sangamon

State University, Springfield, I l l i no i s , 62708.


G. W. Bunn, Jr., October 4, 1972, Springfield, Illinois.

Sally Bunn Schanbacher, Interviewer.

!This is an Oral History interview with Mr. George W. Wznn, Jr., who was

born in the year 1890, corducted in his library at 1636 West Laurel.

The interviewer is his daughter.

Q. Dad, pick a year and pick an incident and l e t ' s just start.

A. I've been asked t o give impressions of Springfield in the middle

or l a t e 1890's and the tm of the century. I can push my memory back

t o 1893 t o the World's Fair in Chicago and the ferris wheel and a lagoon

with gondolas, but that is rather isolated ard extremely dim. W n t in

1896 ad thereafter, I can remember pretty clearly and pretty consecu-

t ively what happened.

One of the principal events of 1896 was mch ing in a political parade

with my father and brother, my brother and I were in soldier suits. My

father was George W. Wmn, Sr . , and brother was Willard Bwm. We were

marching in the parade for McKinley ard his nmrhg-xmte,' mnnbg for

bes ident against W i l l i a m Jennings Bryan ard Ad1a.i Stevenson. I remem-

ber McKinley1 s rwnning-n-ate because I either carried a sign bearing M s

nam or marched right behind sorebody who was. It was Garret A. Hobart,

who cer ta in ly is a forgotten man today.

Of course, Presidential campaigns came only every four years, but in

between, in the sunmrtkne, there were plenty of circus pmades. When


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 2

the circus came t o town, it brought with it much excitement fo r the boys

of Springfield. The circus grounds were in the area called the Comet

grounds, which was a f l e ld bounded on the east by Fif th Street, on the

north by South G r a n d , on the west by the C and A railroad tracks and on

the south by open country. We used t o get up at three or four otclock in

the morning ard go out t o see the circus unload on the switch, just off the

C and A tracks. The more intrepid of us would get a job carry ing water fo r

the animals1 breakfasts and even having a place in the parade which always

came ?tn the morming of the afternoon and eve* perfomnances,

The Comet growlds were the site of a couple of baseball f i e lds ard a good

many people in t h a t part of town tethered the i r cows there overnight, We

had a ba l l team of youngsters of eight, ten, twelve years old, called

the L i t t l e Potatoes Hard To Peel. Some of the members of the team were

my brother W i l l a r d , Art Baird, Goin Lanphier, Noah Dfxon, Djxon Grout,

Clyde Horton, Adair Stadden, and one or two others, Of those t h a t Xvye

win'&, I am the only s w f v o r . Whenever we would win , ~ n e of us would go

dawn t o the newspaper office and put the scores i n the paper, an3 for

brevity's sake, would leave off the ' H a d To Peel' part of our baseball

t i t l e , There were, X recal l , four newspapers a t tha t time; the Journal,

whfch was a mmivlg, the Register, an afternoon paper, the News -9 an

afternoon paper, and the Springfield Modtor, which did not suxvi~e through

a very long period,

Q. In the early years t h a t you're talking about now

1897, do you recall what the town of Sprhgfield was

, p~obably about

like?


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 3

A. Well, Springfield of course was a small ci ty of between twenty and

th i r ty thousand i n these days of the l a t e 1890 s. The s t reets ran

parallel north and south, parallel t o each other east and west, divided

into rectangular blocks with an alley down the middle. The alleys were

pretty essential because a great m n y people kept cows and horses. The

other means of transpoyStation were the street cms.

The street cam covered pretty w e l l the whole terr i tory of the city,

although it was rather d i f f icul t for a young man i n the north end of

town t o ca l l on his young lady i n the south pa& of town. In the first

place, he had to change cars, i n the second place, he had t o break off

his ca l l before the owl car, which was generally midnight. I remember

particularly the south of the Fif th Street c w line, which ran f m m what

i s now Lincoln Park t o South Grand Avenue, where the conductor reversed

the trol ley and reversed the t r i p back t o Lincoln Pmk. One means of

entertainment i n those days were open air trolley rides in the s m e r ,

where a trolley was chartered and f i l l ed with the guests who merrily rode

over one of the routes and were deposited dmtown where they had ice cream

sodas a t Stuarts on North Fifth Street. Other exciting mthods of enter-

taining one's self were t a f Q pulls, which don't sound very exciting today,

but i n the days of rea l sport were quite popular.

Q. Do you recall what Springfield was l ike downtown?

A. Well, of cowse downtown was the center of activity, particularly

the area mud the s q w . I recal l seven banks [around the square], the

lxrgest of which was probably five million dollars i n t o t a l assets as

compared with the largest banlc today which i s almst two hundred f i f t y m i l -

lion. O f the merchants who did business mund the square and everybody


G. W. Bum, Jr. 4

I can remember, four o r five are still in business, the Myers Brothers,

John Eressmer and Company, Maldanerls, h e r ' s Shoe Store, possibly two

or tWee others which I can't remember.

Saturday morning was a very busy nmrnbg, because that was the day the

country folks jnvariably came t o town. The men would gather around the

Farmer's National Bank, on the southwest corner of Sixth and Adams Streets

and thel r wives and daughters were easily distinguishable a s country folks

f'rom their dress, son~thlng which of course doesn't happen today, because

the country people, fewer i n number, are just as c i t i f i ed a s the regular

ci t izens are.

Q. Would there have been any movie theatres in these early years of

Sprbgfield?

A. I think the movie theatres c a m a t the very end of the 18901s. I can

remember a number of them, M r . Loper had a theatre next t o his restaurant

on South Fi f th Street. %re was a movie theatre across from the Leland

on South Sixth Street, a movie theatre on the west side of the square,

and one on the north side of the square. Another method of recreation i n

those days were the frequent bowling al leys which were generally rather

small ones of two or three al leys each, about four or f ive of them located

within a block or so of the square.

One of the interesting features of that period, I think, was the nurnbey

of young men f3m-n Springfield who went East t o college. Princeton was fa r

and aww the most popular college for those who went east, Yale was a pre t ty

good second, Haward a very poor third. O f the boarding schools, Lawrence-


G . W. Bmn, Jr. 5

v i l l e was far ahead of any other. The collegian who came back on vacation

or after finishing college brought with him some of the resul ts of the

l i f e on the Eastern seaboard--the mst notable being the gam of golf.

The first golf course which was founded by young collegians who had seen

the game ard learned samething about it awing their college years, was

a four-hole affair located on the inside of the race track at the Fairpowads.

A t l eas t it whetted the appetite for golf so that in the very l a s t of the

1890's a club was formed, the Springfield Golf Club, ard the course is

still in existence; i t 's now Pasfield Park.

Q. When did you actually become interested in the game of golf?

A. Well, I think it was when I was about eight or nine years old. There

was a r ea l golf fever in Springfield. I remember that we had a very small

course in our yard of two or three holes. The hole w a s a tomato can sunk

Sin the ground, and it sewed as a sort of practice course. I think that

I took up golf at about the age of eight or nine and continued it fo r

years and years la ter . It was one of the g e a t e s t pleasures I ever had.

Q. You mentioned sinking the tomto cans in the back yxd. Where was the

back yard, where was your horn at that time?

A. Home a t that time was at 1001 South Sixth Street, which was occupied

un t i l n-y motherT s death 3n 1945, and is now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. John

Sankey .

Q. What about the neighborhood around your home then arid now. Has it

retained the same atmosphere?


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 6

A. Well of course there's a change, but I think it has changed *om a

s t r i c t l y residential d i s t r i c t t o one into which businesses have infil-

trated extremely well. The non-residential buildings which have been

erected on South Sixth Street are, of course, the Cathedral, Franklin

Li fe , the EN Build-. &tween t k m are old houses which have retained

a great deal of their old atmosphere and have been well kept and taken

care of, such a s the Sankey ho~lle which I have mentioned, the old Kfmber

house across the s t ree t , the Wilson home, which i s now the f i l i n and

Egan Funeral Home.

Q. You mentioned the Ember home. Don't I remember B i l l Kimber as

being an early f'riend? Is this where he lived?

A. Yes, he lived on the corner of Sixth and Clay. One of my best

Diends was Noah Dixon, who lived in the home on the powads now occupied

by the Cathedral. The Lmphiers were just around the corner f'romthe

Wilson home on Seventh and Cass, so there was a goup of us i n very close

proximity. Most of us went t o the Stuart School. The Stuart School now

of course has been transferred h t o a series of doctors' offices arad a

couple of restaurants. Most of us graduated from Stuart School somewhat

a f t e r the tumz of the century. I remembe~ that we walked down t o the

high school which is not the central high school [springfield High School]

now, but the high school which was converted in a Federal Build-. [IRS].

It was quite a long walk but we made it four times a day. One thing that

I particularly remember was walking home *om high school. Some of us

stopped in the Arsenal where the Republican State Convention was being

held fo r the purpose of mmbathg the Governor. The cha:'lmoan who wielded

the gavel was the famous old chzacter , Unde Joe Cannon, and he presided


G. W. F u n , Jr. 7

over this convention which was deadlocked between Governor Yates and

M r . Frank 0. Lowden. The deadlock lasted fo r I don't know how many days,

but neither would yield until f ina l ly the deadlock was brok-en by the

nomination of M r . Charles Deneen from Chicago. The executive mansion was,

of course, the focal point of Springfield society in 1896. The daughter

sf m e y English, a prominent real es ta te man in Sprhgfield, m i e d

J l-p~ R. Tanner, who became Governox? in 1896. She was a most at t rac t ive 0, *

I woman ard a charming hostess at the Governor's mansion. Also, she had a

nwnber of nephews ard a nlece, Tiumey, CaCo, and Cricket Buck who were h <

our group. Durhg the fowl years, quite a number of part ies were given

for the y o w r people, the i r fkiends.

Q. What did you do on Smdays, as a boy?

A. Well, Sunday was not too exciting a d a ~ . It did b e g b with a break-

fast that was sorrlewhat later and a bit m e leisurely than on weekdays.

We hvariable went t o Sunday School. Our family attended the First

Presbyterian C I P I ~ I C ~ , and I remember a succession of Sunday Schoolteachers

there, Mrs. Stuart Brown, Miss Clementhe Stevay, Miss Lavinia ZmLth, and

peobably the most exciting one of all, an old g e n t l a m named Rollo Diller,

He was a mat fYiend of Lincoln's ard was the proprietor of the Cormeau

ard Diller Drmg Store two doors south of the Marine Bank. We soon learned

that when Sunday School class came, we could divert lk. Diller from Shad-

rack, Meshad Abednego and the f iery f'urnace by t e l l ing him t o t e l l us some-

thing about Mr. Lincoln, which he was only too willing t o do, or how he

cured himself of strong drink by wrestling with the devil which he was

onJy too glad t o do. He was a f ine old man, with just enough beard so he

didn't have t a wear a necktie. We noticed always that before he'd got too


G. W. Bum, Jr. 8

far, his voice took on so& of a liquid tone. Shortly after tha t , two

small t r i c H e s of brown saliva would appear at the comers of his mouth,

and he would have a g o d deal of d i f f icul ty with the l i t t l e quid which

he had taken with him up into the church where our Sunday school m e t .

On Sunday afternoons there was a quiet period when Mrs. Dixon read t o

a poup of eight or ten boys, the two Dixon boys, Noah and Norman, W i l l a r d

& myself, the two Joy boys, E k b g and Chwles, Goin Panphier, Euzz

Chatterton and probably one or two others. She would read ei ther an

Alger or an Oliver Optic book a f t e r an hour o r so of reading, there

was an intemlssion in which i ce cream was served. This certainly gave

Sunday afternoon a flavor and did mch t o relieve the tedium. W a y

night suppers w e r e very ingenious informal af fa im, because, at our house,

at ay rate, the Suwaday supper was generally prepared on the chafing

dish, which has smwhat gone out of fashion.

Q. Before we go on too much farther, what do you remember about the

area out near w h a t is now the present Art Association?

A. Well, I remember t&t quite vividly because the old Fwguson Home

which was adjacent t o the Edwards Home, which l a t e r becam the Art,

Association, was the residence of my great uncle, Ekqjamin Ferguson.

We used t o go out occasionally for Swnday supper and I r m b e r one

occasion particularly. When I was seven years old, 1 walked out *om my

aunt's house on South S M h Street t o the Ferguson house wtth my p a r d -

father, Nr. Jacob Bwu?. There we had Sunday night supper an3 af'terwards,

walking back t o my aunt's home, rry grandfather became ill; we sat down

and rested fo r fifteen or twenty minutes on the steps of the old Ide

Foundry on Fif'th and MadPson and then resumed the way t o my aunt's home.


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 9

Two or three days l a te r , still feeling a b i t uder the weather, he went

into a l i t t l e room adjoining his office, where there was a couch, and

lay down fo r a short nap. He never woke up.

Q. W i l l you mention who the Fergusons were, particularly IW. Ferguson?

A. Well, Pk. Ferguson was the brother of Mrs. Jacob Bunn. Pks. Ferguson

was Alice mwards, the daughter of old Mrs. Benjamin Edwards, who occupied

the Edwards home, l a t e r the A r t Association. Nr. F e r ~ s o n was, for many

years, the President of the Springfield Marine Bank and was the owner of

the building tha t is still hown as the Ferguson Building on the southwest

comer of SZxth and Momoe Streets. He was an extremely pleasant man

with a white moustache, a f ine record in the Civil W a r , the first

President of the Spr-ield Park Board, a fine, all-around ci t izen of

the tom. He my grandfather, Nr. Jacob Bunn, were, of course,

particularly good fiiends.

My grardfather, I remember well, was a small energetic man who walked

very rapidly, almost a t r o t . He wore a red wig and a high s i l k hat

everyday of the week. A r d I remember when he was in good s t r ide it was

pretty hard, even for a small boy, t o keep up with him. The old Ferguson

house was a typical example of the mid-Victorian era with over-stuffed

furniture, easels displaying pictures and open books, A wide stahway

led up t o the second floor, but before I t got that far, it sp l i t and

went through t o tk l e f t and straight ahead, over the porte cochere,

where a hut-in organ accupkd the room U t h e add le , Iwer the porte

cockre]. I don't know of my other house that had qufte as unique a

room as that one.


G. W. Wmn, Jr. 10

Q. Before we go too much farther, t e l l me mre about Jacob h, yaw

pandf ather.

A. He came t o Springfield M m New Jersey near Pennhgton, where he

lived on a farm near the Delaware River. He was one of a large family.

He came out west as so many Easterners did, t o seek the i r fortune i n the

new, growing land. He decided t o s e t t l e first i n one of the r iver towns,

because they were the prosperous towns--apparently the towns of the

f'uture. This was real ly before the da.y of the railroads, when the r iver

t m f f i c was the main method of long distance transportation. He set t led,

I'm sure, in Meredosia and while there, in the year 1837, learned that

the capital of I l l inois , due t o the maneuvering of Abraham Lincoln and

eight others who constLtukd the "long nine1' was t o be moved t o Springfield,

I l l inois . He decided that was the place fo r him. So he came t o Spring-

f ie ld , and i n 1840, established a grocery business on the southwest

corner of the public square, both retail a d wholesale, althorn the

wholesale elerrb?nt gradually became much the larger part of the business.

He succeeded extremely well in that, and by virtue of the fac t that he

owned one of the few safes in S p r w i e l d , &re be safeguarrded and kept

money i f any of his friends wanted him t o do so. He branched out h t o

the private banking business, es tabl ishhg the bar& of J. Bum. HIS

younger brother, John Bum, came out t o Springfield and in a short time

assumed n w x g m n t of the grocery store, so that Mr. Jacob Bunn devoted

all of his time t o the bank. The bank was successful. He was one of

the founders of the M i n e Bank and discovered tha t there was an incon-

sistency and sometimes a clash of interests t o be a p~ivate banker and a

director of a State bank. So he resigned *om the Marine Bank and devoted


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 11

all of his time and barkirg interests t o his own banking house. In

the panic of the l a t e 187ots, his bank failed, and while he was resolved

t o pay a l l of the depositors off Ln fill, he could not do so. I think it

is within the limits of this l i t t l e discourse t o s ta te that fi lf ty years

l a te r his children paZd a l l the surviving members of those who had been

depositors of his bank, either those who had themselves been depositors,

or thei r children, with five-percent interest for f i f t y years, which

mant that they paid two hundred f i f t y cents on the dollar t o the old

depositors. A small goup of his f'riends purchased the old, almost

defunct, Springfield Watch Company. They reorganized it as the I l l ino i s

Watch Company, and made Jacob Wuvl president. '12ae I l l ino i s Watch Company

specialized in the manufacture of railroad watches arxl was successfbl.

And on the death of Me. Jacob Bunnts son, Jacob Wuul, Jr., it was sold

in the year 1928, I think, t o the Hamilton Watch Company. One of the

vivid recollections I have of my grandfather and his younger brother John,

was the Sunday dinners that I sometimes used t o attend. An occasional

guest a t the Sunday dinner meethgs a t my aunt" house that I remember

we11 was M r . Shelby Cullom, who was a particularly good friend of my

Uncle John. He was a man of great influence i n the United States Senate

and was prominently mentioned a number of times for the Republican can-

didate for the President of the United States of Amerfca, a l t h o w he

never achieved that distinction.

Q. Wouldn't you l ike to , for a a l e , t a lk about school-school a f te r

high school in Springfield?

A. I went for two years t o the Springfkld High School, and t k n pqr

father and mother tookmy brother and myself on t o Lawrenceville School


G. W. B m , Jr.

in New Jersey, which nly father had attended i n 1876. There were only

one or two buildings s t i l l standing on the school grounds. l'Q father

had a great time roaming around and discovering the t ree under which

he smoked his first cigar. He intended t o take a small piece of bark

mrn that tree home with him, but it was one of those trees [f 'mm which]

you couldn't take a small piece. You grabbed it and a big piece cam

off. Nevertheless, he did take it home, somwhat t o the chagrin of rry

mther, and put it on the mantelpiece of the bedroom where h remined

for a nLwlber of yeam, unti l it suddenly disappeared.

BgT the way, my father was the first to go t o Iawrenceville. This l a s t

fall, our farfLly sent the fifteenth boy t o Lawrenceville. That repre-

sents the lwgest group a t Lawrenceville f'rorn any one family in its long

existence. Iawenceville was considered, by a p a t many people, t o be

a preparatory school For Princeton, which it was not, although a majority

of the class-something between fifty percent and sixty percent-did go

t o Princeton. That p~oportion, however, has been adjusted so that really

too few boys go f k o m Lamnceville t o Princeton today. Lawrenceville,

however, was a good school with a good staf'f', a good English depmxnent.

I had discovered that I did have an interest i n writing and in newspaper

work and was lucm enough t o become editor of the school newspaper and

of the annual publication.

Q. Did you have favorite subjects and favorite instructors when you

were away?

A. Well, I think at Lawenceville, unquestionably, rry favorite subject

was English and probably plane geometry. A t Princeton, I m j o ~ e d i n


G. W. Wmn, Jr. 13

English, and was fortunate enough t o have the same preceptor for three

and one half years, Dr. Charles Osgood. He encouraged my interest i n

wri thg.

Q. Dcuse me, Dad, but before we go on t o Princeton, I want t o know a

l i t t l e b i t more about your l i f e a t Lawrenceville.

A. Well, I was fortunate enough at I,a,wenceville t o play on the golf

team. A s a matter of fact, second year, I was captain of the team. My

brother, W i l l a z d , was a fine baseball player, and he was elected captain

of the Lawrenceville team a t the conclusion of his second year, but,

unfortunately, he did not retwn for the third year. He would have

been a good captain as he was a very good player. A t Princeton, I

continued playing golf and I was fortunate enough to make the Princeton

team. I was also editor of two of the publications, Tiger, an allegedly

hurmrous magazine, and the Bric-a-Brac, which, in the senior year, was

the annual. llcompendiumll of the class of 1912.

Q. Okay , now, see if you can think of some of the instances that happened

while you were at Princeton that would be of interest .

A. Well, I had four good years a t Princeth. In those days, you had t o

have both Greek and Lat in t o get an A.B. degree, so the degree that I

got was L i t t .B . , although the course I took was called the History:

Poli t ics and Economics. The most inspjsing teacher that I had was

D r . Charles G. Osgood, who taught English and was an authority on Spenser

and D r . Samuel Johnson. I didn't care much for Spenser, but I thought

that Johnson was an extremely interesting arid complex character.


G. W. Bwm, Jr. 1 4

A number of events happened during my course at Princeton. Before I

graduated i n 1912, Woodrow Wilson was nominated and elected Governor of

New Jersey Jn 1910. He continued giving one or, two courses and I took

a lecture course from him in senior year i n International Law. He

began t o be spoken of as the Democratic candidate for President. One

of the original Wilson men was a New York lawyer named W i l l i a m McComb,

who often came t o Princeton and, quite often, stayed at the undergraduate

club t o which I belonged, the Tiger Inn. There he would ta lk t o a group

of us on some of the problems arfl diff icul t ies in bringing a relatively

unknown man into the prominence required of Presidential candidates.

O f course the other man who was very influential in promoting, Woodrow

Wilson was George Harvey, editor of Harperst Weekly. I re~~l~rnber one day

during the EYesidential campaign of 1912, my senior year, Theodore

Roosevelt came t o Princeton and spoke t o a big crowd from the balcony of

the Nassau Inn. After his speech, the group moved on t o Wilson's home,

a few blocks away. They called for him t o come out. He was very reluc-

tant t o do so because this was Roosevelt's day in Princeton, an3 he

probably didn't want t o infringe upon it. But at last he did, and he

made a very short speech in marked contrast t o Roosevelt. Roosevelt was

flamboyant ard Wilson was very quiet and logical.

A s I say, D r . Osgood was a very inspiring teacher. He held his precep-

to r ia l s i n his l i b r a r y in his house on Stockton Street and they are

among the most vivid memories I have of my four years at Princeton.

I was able t o follow interest in writing. I was editor of the Tiger,

which was not as lumorous as it might have been, fo r a kaunarous magazine.

Wnt we introduced short s tories t o the columns and that gave it a rather


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 15

different character and trend. I also wrote two of the Triangle shows,

one of them in collaboration with Cy McComnick and the second one on my

own. That was called "Main Street," and received rather fB t t e r i ng reviews

from Donald Clive Stuart, the English professor who devoted a good deal of

his time t o the dramatic organization at Princeton. I w i l l have somethkig

t o say about "Main Street" l a t e r , when i n New York, I carnra t o work with

Sinclair Lewis.

Occasionally f r o m Princeton, we would go up t o New York, but our vis i t s

were rather more d i f f i cu l t then than they are now because you got off the

t r a i n a t Jersey City, took a ferny across the mdson River, ard reached

New York by land and by sea. Mostly, the weekends we spent in golfing

weather, playing golf; otherwise just loaf*. I think that Princeton

probably i n those days, despite the rigors of the cwriculum, was rather

easier than it is today. There was plenty of time fo r doing nothing

we enjoyed those hours as well as the more studious ones.

Q. I believe you said you paduated i n 1912. After tha t , what?

A. We11 a f t e r paduation, I c a m horn far a very short stay of a couple

of weeks and then returned t o New York a s a reporter on the [New York]

Morning Sun. I received this position largely through the ef for ts of

Roy IXlrstine, who had been an old T r i a g l e Club m, and then worked on

the - Sun and in 1912, had formed an advertising agency. There were so

m n y names i n the t i t l e that I don't venture t o give it, I think it was

Dursthe, Osborne, Borton and sombody else. . . I give up on that. O f

course the Sun was a morning paper and was a good paper t o work on because - they would accept and ratkr look fo r human Interest stories, which gave


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 16

an opportunity t o write sornethbg more than the factual accounts of

various happenings, some of which were most uninterest-.

After a few months on the -3 Sun I was given the job of night police editor,

or reporter, at police headquarters. Q second night there, an event of

p e a t Importance in New York l i fe occurred, when the gambler Rosenthal was

killed as he stood outside the k t ropole Hotel. It l a t e r developed that

the Chief of the Detective Bureau, or one of the important men in the

Detective Wnreau, CharZes E. Becker, had arranged his nude r t o keep hjm

f r o m talking about Becker, who later by the way, was imprisoned ard executed

for protecting gamblers. Those w e r e the days of Lefty Louie and B i g Jack

Zelig, Gyp the Blood tkir crowd. O f course I didn't write the impor-

tant and leading stories on this case, but I .@hered a g o d deal of the

information for those that did write it. The two leading reporters on the

Sun were a man namd Frank W d OtMalley and W i l l Lrwin, who were very - helpf"u1 t o young reporters when the occasion arose.

Q. I'm interested in what k h d of a salary you rrade at t h a t time, if you

were able t o l ive on it.

A. Well, it was a pretty tight squeeze. A s I recall, it was twenty dollars

a week and if it hadn't been for occasional generous checks from home, I

certainly wouldn't have been able t o belong t o the Princeton Club and take

some of my mals there. After somewhat more than a year on the Sun I had -3

the opportunity of workbg i n the Fditorial Department of a new venture,

which was t o furmish book review pages fo r such newspapers arowld the

country as the Indianapolis News -9 the St. Louis Post Dispatch, ~ e a p o l i s

JownaL, Clevelard P l a i n Dealer and so forth. The editor was a young man

named S lmla i r L e w i s .ad I was his assistant. In order t o give the irrrpres-


G. W. Wuul, Jr. 17

sion of a rather f lour ishhg edi tor ia l staff, we each wrote under a number

of pseudonyms. kwis, at tha t tim, had written one boy's book and was

working on a novel called Our M r . Rand, which he published during the year

and a half that we were together on the newspwer publisherst syndicate.

I took along t o New York the printed book of Main Street with the idea

that, possibly, it might be rewritten and find New York production. Lewis

read it amd encouraged me t o attempt t o place it someplace, but it just

wasn't good enough t o make the pade on Doadway. In passing, a l l of the

m s i c fo r the choruses was mitten by Paul Nevln, who was the son of the

famous Ethelbert Nevin, who wrote the ltRosaryll and other extremely popular

songs.

Q. Before we go too mch farther, would you describe Sinclair L e w i s , as

you remember him?

A. Sinclair kwis was a tall, lariky, red-haired, rather homely m, with

a severe case of acne which covered his face with red blotches. I liked

him immensely. He was very congenial and kind t o me. k t a l l of the

traits which l a t e r on, I'm sorry t o say, made him unpopular were p ~ s e n t

t o a degree which made them a m s i n g rather than imitating. For instance,

he was a great mimic and loved t o ape people, but there was no cruelty in

his mimicry. He also was convivially inclined arid imbibed possibly a l i t t l e

more than he should. He dominated the conversation wherein he found himself.

Wse traits l a t e r on, [along] with his ref'usal of the Pulitzer Prize and

some of the mmrks he made when he received the Nobel Prize fo r Literature,

made him rather unpopular t o those who mew him. 1 remember on one occasion,

after havhg written Elmer G a n t q , he made a talk at a church in--I think,


G. W. Eamn, Jr. 18

Kansas City-In which he defied God and dared Him t o str ike him down.

Sinclair Lewis wrote five or six fine books and thereafter, the books

deteriorated in quality unt i l a t the end of his l i f e , with the thkcteenth

or fourteenth novel, they were far, far below the quality of Main Street

aud Babbitt ard others. Lewis, I know f'rom remarks that he made, got the

t i t l e of Main Street from the l i t t l e play that I wrote, which was my one

knock on the door of fame In the l i t e ra ry world.

With the beginning of the w a r in 1914, so much news carne from the front

that papers began t o cancel thei r book review page which Lewis and I had

written; Lewis doing the main reviews, and I doing the lesser ones. Lewis

got a job with the George H. bran Publishing Corrrpany and two or three

weeks a f te r he attained it, got a job there f o r me as reader and writer

of the material that appeared on the jackets of the book. George H. Doran

was an Ehglishman arad soon combined with Doubleday i n the firm of Doubleday,

Doran and Company.

In the meantime, I was attempt* my hand at a novel and although I

staggered throu@;h five o r six of them, none of them seemed t o me t o be

worth presenting t o any publisher. They were f a i r l y good, some of them-

in chunks--but they just didn't hold together. hQ great fault was that

I just must have lacked the narrative g i f t . I could see no future a t a l l

at Doubleday-bran, and a f te r a few months of doing nothing but attempting

t o write a novel, I decided tha t the best thing f o r me t o do was to go

horn and get into something that was solid axd worth following--and tht

I did. I am eternally grateful t o my father and mther for giving me the

opportunity t o work, and certainly not waste, but employ two yeam of my

time do- wkt I rather desperately hoped would be my future vocation-


G. W. SEhuul, Jr. 19

that of a writer.

Q. Well this is about 1914, you're a t home and, at this point, wha t do

you reca l l happens next?

A. Well, I spent two yews in the Wholesale Grocery House--almost two

years-and then one of my classmates and a f r i e d of his who was of the

class of 1915 at Princeton, decided t o go abroad and join the Amrican

Ambulance. Tbis we did towards the l a t t e r part of 1916. We were quartered

at the American Hospital in Nevilly, just outside the gates of P a r i s ,

and un t i l the squadron, you might c a l l it was being assembled, we met

trains and took the wounded from the f'ront t o the hospitals in Par-ls.

This was a l l done at night, both because of the traffic, and t o keep the

pedestrians from seeing trainload a f t e r trainload of wounded men. Those

t h a t se-d t o be hurt most were the ones that had been burned by liquid

fire. At the s l ightest j o l t , they would c a l l "doucement ! doucemnt! I'

Although they were swathed in bandages fYom head t o foot, you could t e l l

by expressions ard the look in their eyes that they were suffering horribly.

After a month o r so, a group of six or eight ambulances le f t P a r i s ard

w e r e quartered in a town called Han, pronounced "on." This was in te r r i -

tory which just recently had been evacuated by the G e m s , who f e l l back

t o what was called the Hindenberg Line. A l l of the wells, or a e a t many

of them, anyway, were poisoned an3 great care had t o be taken fo r

bombs that might have been lef t unexploded. From Ham.= could look across

and see St. @entin M c h was occupied by t h e Germans:: .Here we would meet

the ambulances tha t brought the mwded back & take them t o the newest

railroad station. The F,nglish and French armies joined at this particular

place.


G. W. Wuu?, Jr. 20

In March, I t h b k it was, of 1917, the United States entered the war and

the three of us who had come over together decided that as soon as may be,

we would return t o the States and join the Army there. After we had sent

in our resignations and were waiting fo r our discharge and passage home,

a very interesting event happened. Tlne first American contingent had

arrived i n France and sent a battalion of Mantry up t o Paris t o m c h

through the s t reets and show the Frenchmen that a t l a s t we were there. C #

The CLdamps Elysees was l i t e r a l l y packed with French people who were in

a very high emotional s tate. Some of them were crying, a l l of them were

waving. In the distance you could see the troops approachin$, a battalion

of infantry with the band playing the Stars and Stripes Forwer. GFrls

would break through the line and nul out and put flowers the muzzles

of thei r r i f l es .

The a i r was fUl of excitement, so much so that the three of us decided,

I think very unfaFrly t o our families, that we would enlist there instead

of going back home ard coming back as soon as we possibly could. We went

down t o the cantonment near one of the gates of P a r i s where the battalion

of Americans were quartered for the time they were there. k t the officer

in charge said they had no way of enlisting us. TIE thing t o do, i f we

wanted t o enlist , was t o go down t o San Nazaire, where the troops were

disembarking. This we did. We l e f t our clothes arid belongings with the

American Express and took a night train, s i t t h g up the entire time, of

course, down t o San Nazafre. After a breakfast, we found out where the

Adjutant General's office was, went over there, and told hlm w h a t we

wanted. He said that they could enl is t us as we desired, but that he

particularly busy at that mment, so we stood in that room an3 waited

was


G. W. Wuzn, Jr.

While waiting, a tall, good looking colonel of Cavalry 2n the regular

Amy c a m into the room ar&l stood wait* also t o see the officer h

charge. He noticed us, as we had our uniforms on which m e l ike the

uniform of the R-Jglish officer, he looked at us rather curiously ad

I noticed tha t he was looking particularly at me. He cam over aml said,

"Is your name, by any chance, Bunn?" I said yes. He said, "From Spring-

field, Il l inois?" I said yes. Now, it happened that this man was the

nephew of George Gusth, who worked fo r my father. Af'ter having received

orders t o j o h the F i r s t Expeditionary Force, he stopped off i n Springfield

f?om the camp where he had been stationed t o see his uncle. My father had

them both down t o the Sangam Club fo r lunch and during the course of lunch,

Gustin said that one of I!@. Bunnls sons was over in France with the American

Ambulance attached t o the Wench Army. Well, this man, Colonel Gustin,

hav- come f'rom Pa r i s , cam over, as I say, with the F i r s t Contingent,

and got up that morning and had came over t o the Adjutant General's office

at practically the same that we had come. He asked us what we were

them for and we told him, "To en l i s t . '' And he said that was fine, but

"why don't you go back home and join the off icer 's t r a i n h g camp?"

Well, we'd never heard of it. He said, "We've got a frightf'ul job ahead

of us, t o ra ise a large Army in a very short time ." He also said, "We

can get all the privates we want. Our great problem i s going t o be t o

train the younger officers, the second lieutenants axd f i r s t lieutenants

and captains, t o command the men. " Well, we hadn't heard anything about

the training camps. He then said, "They're building them just as rapidly

as they can, a l l over the country. They're s tar t ing t o trab them a t

Plattsburg and a few other places. And i n a very few months, they'll be


G. W. Bunn, Jr.

ready t o receive a l l of the candidates." So we decided that the best

thing t o do would be t o go back and join one of these camps.

Another tremndous coincidence happened. We'd hardly got out of the

Adjutant General's office when we pan into A l f Lanphier, who had gone

t o Annapolis. He was six or seven years out of Annapolis, and was com-

manding one of the anti-submarine guns on one of the troop transports.

Well, our t ra in didn't leave Paris un t i l that night, so we had lunch and

dinner with him and re tuned t o Par i s .

In not too long a time we returned t o the States where we separated and

applied for entrance into the nearest Offfcerls Training Camp. Mine was

the one that was just out of Chicago, near the Great Lakes Naval Station--

Fort Sheridan. The course was tWee months a d af ter completing it, I

received a c o d s s i o n as f i r s t lieutenant and was sent t o the 333rd Machine

Gun Battalion at C~amp Grant, in Rockford, I l l inois . The machine gun batta-

lions were then equipped with rather large, Fhglish guns, which were trans-

ported by d e s . The captaln and f i r s t lieutenant were mounted on horses.

I 'd never ridden a horse, I don't tW, in my l i fe . It was a rea l expe-

rience t o learn t o ride adequately in the short time we had. I went down

t o the stables, the stable sergeant was an old regulm Army man, and I

told him my plight. Fortunately, he was a very humane individual. ljwne-

diately, he gave me a horse and showed me how to saddle it and so forth,

ard I went out and took a ride. If the horse hadn' t got hungry and didn't

know the way back t o tk stable, I think I'd have ended up sanewhere in

Wisconsh. W n t the horse did know, a d I did get back, and every oppor-

tunity tha t I had, I'd go out and ride anf f i m l l y , t o my p e a t re l i e f , did

learn. You couldn't post, that is, you had t o ride with the horse and that


G. W. m, Jr.

made it a t r i f l e more d i f f i cu l t at first , but a f t e r you got your seat,

it was easy and I enjoyed it very mch.

Before I had really becom a respectable r ider , the off icers of the

battalion were ordered out on a f i e l d exercise, where the British machine

gwz officer gave a lecture on selecting machine gun sights. Everything

was f ine as we went along the road, but when we started t o go across

country, I began t o get a l i t t l e timid. We gilloped along. Ahead of us,

a t the end of a f a i r l y steep slope, was a small creek-hardly more than a

ditch. But we speeded up a l i t t l e bit and my horse speeded up considerably.

I sabbed the mane and the p o m l of the saddle and prayed that I would

stay on through our f i r s t jwrrp-and I barely did. My horse took the b i t

in its teeth ard passed Company after Company, un t i l I was almost leading

the procession. The Comnander of our battalion was a polo player on t k

American Polo Team, and a great horseman, and he gave me a pretty vigorous

calling down. I seem t o reca l l his saying, "Bunn, are you riding that

horse o r i s he riding you?"

END OF TAPE

Q. Wetre back in t h e year 1917.

A. We spent almost a year training at Camp Grant. Fortunately, before

we l e f t , the Bro- machine gun was in production. It was considerably

l ighter than the w i s h gun that we had been us-, and could easLly be

car r ied by one man, so we abandoned the mules and the horses, t o everybody's

delight*

We received orders t o go abroad and left Camp G r a n t in, I think, early

September of 1918, having been there [Camp G r a n t ] for a year. The captain


of o w company, George Davis, a fine man and perfectly splendid soldier,

was the nephew of George Ade, the author of Fables and Story, America's

great hmorist. He was given a special a s s i p n m t leaving me i n c o d

of the company. We l e f t Camp Grmt arid went t o New York. After a few

days there we embarked on the old passenger ship Olympfc, one of the

largest ships in the f l ee t , holding five thousa,nd men. Men were stuffed

i n every available space, and were assiped quarters according t o the rank

of the commanding officer. The highest rank of any machine gun outf i t was

major, md we were superseded by amst every other Department of the

Army aboard. We were assigned miserable quarters in the hold of the ship

next t o the furnace rooms, with s tee l walls so hot that you could barely

touch them.

The Olynpic became known as the "Death Ship." It made the t r i p t o

Southampton i n something l ike five days, but before it arrived quite a

number of men had died f 'mm the f l u epidemic which was so severe in the

fall of 1918. Fortunately, most of the rnen sumrived un t i l we reached

Southampton, but a t o t a l of over 500 m n who were on the transport died

f'rom the f lu , which in mst cases very quickly turned into pneumonia. At

Southampton we waited wder a t r a in shed near the dock, and then masched

t o a camp some four o r five miles away. On the m c h out there, men

toppled over. We would put them on the sidewalk and leave one man t o look

a f te r them, but this happened so f'requently that we abandoned the Ldea of

leaving a m behjuld. Therefore we l e f t them [ ~ a n i n g the sick] on the

sidewalk, knowing t h a t they would be picked up as soon as possible.


G. W. m, Jr. 25

The sidewalks of Southampton, of course, were j m d with curious

~ l i s ~ n , who were delighted t o see the American troops w i v i n g . After

reaching the camp near the l i t t l e town of Whchester, I myself caught the

f l u and was sent t o a hospital near Winchester, which was operated by a

group of physicians from Indianapolis. I confess that for two or three

days or a week I can't Tarember what happened, i n a week or so I was

strong enough t o get out and w a l k around the growlds, and r ide one of the

transports that went back anl forth between the hospital and Winchester.

My only rea l glinrpse of &gland was here in Winchester, an extremely lovely

ard interest- place with the Itchen River where Isaac Walton fished,

flowing through it, with the old castle where the Knights of the Rourad

Table were supposed t o have met, with a beautiful cathedral, Jane Austenr s

house, the old hotel, wMch I think was the oldest one i n Ehglaml and the

G o d Begot House on the koad Street, and the famous boy's school, Winchester

School. I fe l t well enough by this time, instead of going t o a recuperation

center--many of which were stationed in old w i s h houses throughout that

part of the country--to go back and attempt t o find my company over i n

Wance .

Well, I wen t t o Southarrrpton, got clearance papers t o go t o France to join

the company and was put in charge of a group of privates who had been

similarly sick and were ready t o rejoin thei r company. We a l l went t o

Le Mans, where there was an exchange depot used by American troaps who were

wait*, a B we were, for additional assignment. I got orders t o join my

company in the 333rd Machine Gun Battalion, 86th Division. Because troops

were corrling over so fas t , ard there was so mch ced tape and office work


G. W. Bum, Jr. 2 6

needed t o keep track of everybody, there was a good deal of confusion,

and I had great difficulty i n finding the 86th Division. I went t o

P a r i s for a few days, and got orders there; was sent by mistake t o join

the 35th Division which was, I think, a Missouri outf i t . Then I came

back t o P a r i s , got more orders, and f i n a l l y caught up with the 86th

Division near Bordeaux. There we wafted for orders and finally received

them. Sometime before this, it was decided that our division, the 86th

Division, w a s t o be broken up and used as replacements f o r outf i ts which

had already been i n the war and needed t o be filled up and refurbished.

From Bordeaux a &iend of mine and myself were ordered t o return t o

Le Mans. My fYiend, B i l l Bickle, was f"rom Chicago. We received orders

to return t o Le Mans and await instructions there. Our two companions

i n the ambulance during the t r i p t o Le Mans were Frank Halsey, who was

a nephew of Admiral Halsey, and a young m named White. Eioth received

c o ~ s s i o n s . Halsey was a balloon observw of ar t i l lery , and M i t e was

a first lieutenant i n the infantry.

A t Le Mans there were rumors of an m s t i c e , which was premture and

not official ly announced unt i l November 11. I think th i s was probably

a leak of the fact that there was t o be a true armistice.

We w e r e i n Le Mans when President Wilson made his first t r i p abroad

a f te r the w a r . I don't believe there was ever a mn i n history, certainly

i n modem history, who received the adulation and the ovations, and. upon

whom such great hopes were placed, as i n the case of Woodrow Wilson. He

was the man who was going t o lead the world into peace, and who had been

the leader i n the war t o end a l l wars. This [enthusiasm] was p&iculmly


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 27

true of the more volatile and emotional Frenchmen, but Wilson received

a m s t as great a reception when he went t o London.

It has occurred t o me a great m n y times that i f we could only engender

the enthusiasm and patriotism which w a r seems t o bring out i n people,

if we could do that for peaceful purposes, it would be an entirely

different world, and a much better world than we now have.

I f i n a l l y received o ~ d e r s t o report t o the 26th Division, Company C ,

102nd Machine G u n Battalion, which I did. They were stationed f i r s t

a t Neuilly sur Seine and la te r were moved t o a l i t t l e French town. The

captain of the company which I joined had been given a different assign-

rnent and was no longer there, so I was i n c o m d of Company C . This

was rather embarrassing because the 26th Division, the New -land

Division, was one of the f i r s t t o go abroad, and I was vevy eharrassed

a t being placed i n cornnand of a company of those, most of whom had

served throughout the war. They were a fine group, and accepted me

graciously and i n a most friendly fashion.

When we finally returned t o America, we were mustered out at F'ramingham

i n Boston. One of the companies, by the way, was composed of men from

Cape Cod. In my battalion, they were mostly from the neigkborhood of

Boston and surrounding suburbs. I went t o the connrander of the battalion

and told him that i n as much as I had sewed for such a short time with

the company, I would appreciate it very much i f I could be excused early,

and perhaps one of the veteran officers could lead the company i n the

pmade, which they were preparing t o take place in Boston. He agreed,

and I l e f t the day before the welcoming services.


C. W. Bunn, Jr. 28

Getting home a f te r one night i n Boston, I remember the joy it was t o

spend the night at the Terrain Hotel, and t o go t o a musical comedy

at the 'I"remont Street Theatre; and then get on the t ra in the next day

for Chicago and then Springfield.

Q. What did you do when you returned t o Springfield at th i s particulavl

time?

A. Well, returning t o Springfield, I was employed again by the Bunn

and Company Wholesale Grocery. One of my act iv i t ies was the b u l l d i ~

of a candy factory on the pound of the grocery company. This was

where I spent a good deal of my time.

In the f a l l of 1920, two years a f te r I ~ t w n e d , a very happy and momen-

tous event occurred when I was mid t o Melinda Jones, a lovely young

worn who is s t i l l with me. A s a consequence of the m i a g e , a t the

proper intervals appemd a daughter, Sally; a son, George, and a

daughter, Linda.

In 1928 I l e f t the candy factory and became enployed by the Springfield

Marine Bank as assistant trust officer. That was i n the period before

the di f f icul t ies of the l93Ots, when everything looked very rosy and

M r . Hoover had put two cars i n every wage . Life was extremely pleasant;

however that didn't l a s t very long. The stock m k e t crash cam i n 1929,

and things began t o get bad and steadily worse.

1 was made executive vice president of the bank i n 1933, and remined

In that post unt i l my fathert s death i n 1938, when I becam president.

To go back for a moment, i n 1931 I was elected president of the Pmk


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 29

Board. A t that t h ~ , however, it was called the Springfield Pleasure

Driveway and Park District, and i n addition t o Washington Park, Lincoln

Pwk, B u m Park, I l es Park and possibly one or two other small parks,

it consisted of Williams Boulevard; South Grand Avenue; part of Sixth

Street, south on the way to Bunn Park; West Grand Avenue, the name of

which was soon changed t o MacArthur Boulevwd, and North G m d Avenue.

Due t o the depression which was now well upon us, tax collections were

very poor, and as a result it was very di f f icul t t o operate within the

money that we received. A s a matter of fact , we couldn't have done so

if it hadn't been for the formtion of a corporation called Taxes, Incor-

porated, which bought up the delinquent taxes. There was also another

action which we took a t that time which cur5tailed o w operations and

expenses. That was to pass a resolution whereby we abandoned juris-

diction of the streets , and changed the name of the Pleasure Driveway

and Park District t o the Springfield Park b a r d .

The ci ty had nothing else t o do but take the s t reets which real ly

belonged t o them, and not t o the park board, for thei r use as a place

on which t o drive horses and whatnot. The two m t o r policemen whom

we had always had t o look a f te r and police the streets , we got r i d of .

One of them got a job on the State Police as chauffeur for the Governor

and the other one w i t h the help of som of the board members got a job

as private nightwatchman for different families i n the southeast part

of t am. So by cutting those expenses and others too we did manage t o

get through the year on the money we received flmm the taxes and fYom

Taxes, Incorporated.


I

G. W. Bunn, Jr. 30

To return again t o the bank; those were hectic days. There had never

been a depression quite as bad as the one we were t o face i n 1933, 1934,

1935, 1936 and even 1937. What made matters worse and somewhat more

dramatic was that one of the four Springfield banks was i n bad sbpe ,

had t o close down, and could not pay i t s depositors. That p~ecipi ta ted

a m on a l l of the Springfield banks. We had anticipated this action

a week before the closing of the Farmers1 Bank, and had sold a l l of our

anticipatory tax w a ~ ~ a n t s and teacher's orders t o a srrall group of

depositors; with the proceeds had ordered cash of $250,000 fYom one of

the Chicago banks. The day the m started, a rainy day, the money had

not yet arrived, and the Chicago bank transferred a credit t o one of

the St . Louis banks, our correspondent, who i n turn sent up t o Spring-

f ie ld a B r i n k ' s Trust truck w i t h $250,000 i n pennies, dims, nickels,

five dollar b i l l s , twenty dollar b i l l s , etcetera, t o pay the depositors

who were coming into the bank t o get their money.

The run on the bank did not last very long. It looked worse than the

crowd t h a t thronged the lobby mde it appear, because i n om savings

account we had a school savings department with thousands and thousands

of school children as customers. They had deposited their savings with

thei r teachers, who brought it t o the bank for deposit. In order t o

withdraw it they [the children] had t o have one parent with them, so

the^ were a p e a t mny youngsters with thei r pwents who c a m t o the

bank, but the money they drew out was fractional and unimportant.

I remerrber one incident i n which Father Tarrant, a very popular monsignor

of the d i s t r i c t whose s i s te r was, by the way, a t e l l e r i n the Mwine Park,


G. W. B m , Jr. 31

came into the bank t o deposit money. He told the people that instead

of taking money out of the Marine Bank, he was putting money i n it.

That was done on purpose i n a loud voice so people i n the bank could

hear him. There were other people who did the same thing. You are

always grateful for the actions of a good friend-especially when you

need one.

The run did not l a s t long, but was followed, of course, by the bank

holiday which the President called. A t the time of calling, he gave

his famous Fireside Chat i n which he said that we had nothing t o fear

but fear i t s e l f . I think the speech had a good effect upon the people

who were af'raid because banks had been closing throughout the country.

I think Springfield's banks cane through in good shape, and were t o

be congratulated.

A s soon as the holiday was ended, two of the banks, our own and the

I l l inois National Bank, opened imediately. The third bank followed

not long af ter . The work in the bank, pay.ticularly the job that we did

i n closing the loopholes we hadn't closed, involved strengthening the

bank i n any way that we possibly could. The work was most interesting,

and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the satisfaction as we went serenely on

our way, with our deposits vowing and growing and growing.

The depression which came i n 1938 was a slight one, and caused no

trepidation nor any serious obstacle. For at least a dozen y e a s , pos-

sibly a few more, there were three banks in Springfield who conducted

all of the banking needs of the c o d t y . They were joined, I don't

remember the year, by the Capitol Bank; and since then everybody knows

banks have been opening here and there mtil there are presently nine.


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 32

But I l ike t o think of the three musketeers who, i n the beginning,

shouldered the burdens of the banking cormunity.

Q. Would you elaborate upon some of your other ac t iv i t ies during this

time?

A. Life i n the bank went &her smoothly. The things that I real ly

remember were act iv i t ies outside the work i n the bank. Most important

of these, I think, was the work on the Public Library Board, of which

I was president for a term, and trustee for twenty odd years. This

started about 1934 and continued un t i l around 1960.

The most interesting experience i n the Library was the instal lat ion

of an Adult Education Frogam. There was a good deal of discussion

between the Board and the librarian as t o whether o r not it was a

proper project for the library t o take up at, of course, a fa l r ly con-

siderable cost. I renaember that D r . Masters and I went to Chicago and

talked t o the library department at the University of Chicago. They

thought it was eminently fitting for a library t o engage i n that work.

Also, when I was i n New York, I went out t o see a m named Brison a t

Columbia University i n their l ibrary school, Lymn Brison, and he was

enthusiastically for a library engaging i n that sort of work.

Nevertheless, our l ibrmian was not enthused, and it finally resulted

in her resignation; but we continued on. The work as head of the

Adult Education School was managed by a man m d Leslie Bmwn. The

classes were held in the Springfield High School and the teachers were

engaged locally, some f ' rom the University of I l l inois , sore f'rom I l l ino i s

College i n Jacksonville, and some fYom MacMwray College, a l l a t very

reasonable prices. They were very anxious to see Adult Education getstaxted.


G. W. Bum, Jr. 3 3

Af'ter it did get a start, the Board of Education took up pa r t of the

work and the Springfield Junior College took a great, great share of

it; so the library ret ired from the job. But we had s t m e d it, and

we f e l t quite proud.

Another interesting experience was that of the Abraham Lincoln Associa-

tion. It was originally the Abraham Lincoln Centennial Association, and

was f o m d t o father a banquet on Lincoln's birthday in 1909, a t which

four very notable speakers, James Bryce, Ambassador t o the United States

ern England, Senator Dolliver of Iowa, Ambassador J, J. Josserand f'rom

France, and William Jennings Bryan attended. The Centennial Association

sponsored dinners every Lincoln's birSthday thereafter and continued

e n g a g a speakers t o come t o the banquet with, however, a continuing

fal l ing off i n the quality of those who spoke, Gradually the Centennial

Association declined, having served i t s purpose.

W. Logan Hay, whom most a l l people remember as one of the leading lawyers

i n Springfield, and a cousin, by the way, of John Hay, former Secretary of 1

State, of the United States, had the idea of t r a n s f o ~ g the Lincoln

Centennial Association into an historical society, with the thought of

gather- up whatever Lincoln material s t i l l existed i n the way of l e t t e r s ,

documents, and the reminiscences of a few citizens who could s t i l l a t th i s

l a te date look back and remnber something about Lincoln. To ass is t i n

this , &. Hhy engaged a young historian who had graduated from Wabash

College In Indiana and studied a t the University of Illinois-Paul Angle.

Paul was then selling school books for Ginn and Company, and he welcomd

the chance t o come and do some original historical work.

l ~ o h n Hay was also a private sec~e ta ry t o Abraham Lincoln. [Editor. 1


G. W. Bwm, Jr. 34

Angle received invaluable support f'rom M r . Hay. I have often thought

of the old saying that the ideal university would be for the young

student t o sit on one end of a log facing Mark Hopkins who sat on the

other, Hopkins being one of the early educators, a fine one, president

of ei ther Williams or Arrhwst, I have forgotten which. In thei r

places, i n my hmglnation, I would put M r . Hay on one end of the log

and Paul Angle on the other, each one making a Xncoln authority out

of the other.

The Lincoln Association really got underway i n about 1926. Nr. Hay,

with the help of sore others, assiduously acquired m e r s , who paid

ten dollars a year t o join the Association. A t i t s peak there were

just under a thousand members.

On Lincoln's birthday there would be a meeting i n the afternoon at the

old State House, a t which time some local rclan would speak on some local

topic: Hayry Converse on the old Court House, Ben Thorns on the monwnent,

and so foulth. Then at night there would be a scholar who would give

an address on Uncoln. No emphasis was put on reputation or poli t ics

or what not. The errphasis was put altogether on the speaker; such men

as Allan Nevins, C a r l Sandburg, and men of that type.

A s material came i n bulletins were issued, and a publication called

the Abraham Lincoln Association Papers was published every year, which

contained the addresses of the local speakers and the visi tors . There

were f i f teen of these i n all, through, of cowse, a period of f i f teen

years. Also, photostatic copies were being obtained fkom some of the

@eat collections of Lincoln papers i n prepmation for issuing a multi-


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 35

volwne edition of L;incolnls writings. Mr. Hay also raised a sum of

money totaling about some t h i r t y thousand odd dollars, the interest

f lmm which was used t o help support the association. The dues, as I

have said, were ten dollars. Interest fk.orn this flmd amounted t o about

f if teen hundred dollars, and out of this the salaries of Paul Angle and

the secretary were paid.

Paul Angle l a t e r l e f t the Association t o become State Historian, which

meant that he was head of the State Historical Library and secretary

of the I l l inois Historical Society. Paul's successors were Benjamin

'I!homs, ELwry PY'att and Roy Basler. All of them wrote and contPibuted

books which were given t o mrnbers of the Association. Paul's most

celebrated book was Here I Have Mved, which was a history of LLncohls

Springfield. Ben Thomas wrote a book called Portrait for Posterity,

which was an account of the various biographers of Lincoln. William

Barringer, who was for a short time secretary of the Association, wrote

A House Dividing, which was a story of the old days i n the State House

just b e f o ~ the Civil WD, and also a history of Vandalia, the capital

of I l l ino i s before Springf'ield w a s made such i n 1837.

The bulletins and panphlets which were issued gave place t o a quarterly.

Every year members of the Association received a book and four copies

of the q w t e r l y . Due t o financial pressures it was neces sw t o dis-

continue the dinner, and i n i ts stead the meetings were held i n the after-

noon at the State I-listorical Library offices i n the Centennial B u i l d i n g .

'This was a l i t t l e less f o m l , but a very pleasant m e r of meeting

and celebrating Lincoln's birthday.


Ivlr. Hay died i n 1942, and I had the honor of succeeding him as president.

During the years in which I served, we gathered a11 the m t e r i a l we had

received additional m t e r i a l from the Library of Congress with the

opening of the Robert T. Lincoln papers, and published the Collected

Works of Abraham Lincoln i n eight volmes under the editorship of our

last executive secretary, Roy P. Basler, and an index, published by the

Rutgers University bess. Previously, we mde the arrangements whereby

the press published our annual books and possessed distribution rimts.

We had had no help f r o m any publishing house heretofore t o make the books

moye readily available t o l ibraries and what not. There was scarcely

an a r t i c le on Lincoln, certainly never a book on Ldncoln, that didn't

cont&in footnote references t o the Abraham Lincoln Association as having

rwnished the m t e r i a l i n that particulau, page and parapaph.

Ten years a f te r 1942, w i t h the publication of the eight v o l m s accorn-

plished, with the increasing difficulty of getting rraterial for the

quarterlies as they came out, it was f inally decided that the Abraham

Lincoln Association should cease i t s work and go out of existence.

This was done with great deliberation, but i n the m a n t h - ~ , under such

E n as Paul Angle, Jay M o m , H h r r y Pratt and others, the State

Historical Soclety had developed an excellent Lincoln depwtment, ,and

we figured it could easily carry on the work of the Association.

In seekfng Paul Angle's opinion as t o whether or not the Association

should go out of business, Paul said, "Thank God, here i s one organization

that knows when t o quit." Well, quit we did un t i l ten years l a te r .

A t the request of Governor Kemer, we came alive again. During this

ten year period we f i l ed an annual statement, paid a very smll annual


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 37

dues, and had kept the rights t o the name of Abraham Lincoln Association.

We did this because we didn't want just any organization t o come i n and

use that name again.

The reason the Abraham Lincoln Association w a s revived a t the request

of Governor Kerner was because it was decided t o raise mney and remodel

or rebuild the old Court House as it had been when it was the State

Capitol. The Abraham Lincoln Association acted as a money-raising

organization, and helped i n any way it could t o accomplish t h i s job.

A s everybody knows the job was done. The Abraham Lincoln Association

raised close to $300,000 a l l of which was used t o fwnish the restored

building. The State of I l l ino i s supplied the reminder, some s ix or

seven million dollars. The offices of the State Historical Library

and Abraham Lincoln Association wevle moved f h m thei r quarters i n the

Centennial Build- t o the basement of the old Capitol Building.

The work there has been very ably c m i e d on by James Hickey, who i s

the Lincoln departmental head of the Association. A s I say, Jim

Hickey, Lowell Anderson and the architect, Wally Henderson, did a

magnificent job i n planning the whole project.

I think it is interesting to note that when the board of directors of

the Association met a f t e r a long absence of ten years, i n order t o

revive themselves, it was necessary t o have a legal f o m of four mem-

bers. There were some members a t distant points who were unable t o come,

and the task of getting four members was a difficult one. Paul Angle

was available, and of course, I was. To get two m r e we had t o have

a rn named Linstrom of Los Angeles come in. He came by plane t o

Chicago. Governor Kerner m e t the plane, and had his own plane i n George W. Bunn, Jr. Memoir #1 - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS

G. W. Bwm, Jr. 38

Chicago t o bring M r . Linstrom and Paul Angle down. The fourth member

was D r . Charles Patton of Springfield, who had been a director of the

Association since its inception.

D r . Patton was in bed, s ick fYom an incwable disease. We, however,

met a t his bedside. H i s brain was perfectly clear; he was excited and

delighted t o be one of the group which met. We had a very shorZ; , but

pleasant meeting, at which I adjourned the meeting until the following

morning i n the office of Clyde Walton, the State Historian.

Charlie Patton, a fine surgeon and a delightfilman, was extremely

interested i n this meeting. Exactly one week from the day of t h i s

meeting, D r . Patton died. I think that the last week of his l i f e was

brightened by the thoughts of this @thering. I hope so. I think so.

Q. Before moving on t o another topic, don't you w a n t t o mention the

p a n t fkom the Rockefeller Foundation?

A. Yes, I should have mentioned this. While we were wondering just

exactly where the funds would come fYom t o prepme the mlzuscript

[Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln] for publication, and by the way,

the cost of editing and collecting the m d s c a m t o over $90,000, we

were irrmeaswably helped by the Rockefeller Foundation. A man named

M r . Stevens called on me one afternoon at the bank. He had previously

seen Allan Nevins at Colwnbia University and Paul Angle at Chicago.

He came into the bank and wondered i f the Association, i n i t s job of

preparing the material for publication, could use $50,000. I kept mY

seat with difficulty, and said as gracefully as I could that we surely

could use it. They furmished $40,000, which was the m u n t that was


G. W. B u m , Jr. 39

needed t o get the manuscript prepared to travel t o such places as

Brown University whe~e the John Hay collection was housed, and t o make

a f inal t r i p t o the Huntington Library i n Pasadena, California, gathering

the material, most of which was photostatic. When we did disband, we

presented a l l of this material t o the I l l inois State Historical Library,

which has, I think, a perfectly m f i c e n t collection of miterial

pertaining t o Lincoln.

Q. Is there anything else that you can think of i n regard to the work

of the Abraham Lincoln Association that you should mention before we

close this topic?

A. I think I have been lax i n giving credit for the help tha t was

given Governor Kerner by Clyde Walton, who i s the State Historian. He

worked indefatigably and i n the backpound. His work was most valuable

in helping with the Installation of the offices of the State Historian

and I l l ino i s State Historical Society i n the court house. Wally Henderson,

the architect of the project, also deserves credit.

Q. Dad, another act ivi ty which I know you were very much involved in,

and which I have never understood well, i s that of the W a r Fund Council.

Woudl you explain exactly what it was and what it did?

A. The W a r Fund Council acted during the war years, 1941 t o 1945. It

performed the same job that the local community f'und organization had

performed, except it undertook t o raise a l l the money for the community

fund, for the Red Cross,and the various foreign organizations which looked

to the United States for help, such as Bundles for Britain, China Relief,

Friends of Friends, and so forth.


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 40

This was a big undertaking. One dilemna i n which we found ourselves

was that the foreign or&zations cam over long before the time for

the local drive, and attempted t o organize themselves and, of course,

raise as much money as they could. A national or@zation was formed,

and looked into the character of these various foreign organizations,

examined their budget, or how the money was t o be spent, and gave thei r

okay or not, as they saw f i t .

Thereupon they started out nationwide t o organize various poups which

would raise money for them. It soon became evident that such organiza-

tions as Bundles for Bylitain, China Relief, and miends of Friends, would

do well. It seemed that they would raise so much money that it might

be impossible t o raise the budgets of the Red Cross, the ordinary com-

d t y f'und groups, and such goups as the Boy Scouts, G i r l Scouts,

Family Welfare and so forth. So some method of 1Imitin.g the amount of

money they could take out -om different communities seemed essential.

Nobody seemed t o have thought of it.

A cormittee was formed. I think I have mntioned the fact that I was

president of the W a r Fund Council, and I appointed Fred Schrader,

Fred Schuster, and 0. L. Parr as a comnlttee t o devise some me%h~rl of

restpaining the eager and worthwhile foreign organizations that had

begun t o come in. A s a m t t e r of fact, the China Relief was the first

t o come in. They picked a very prorrAnent Springfield m, who was glad

t o serve, and started t o o r m i z e his group when we asked them t o pause

for a while.


G. W. B m , Jr. 4 1

The leader of the work which followed; that is, finding some way of

limiting the amount that these f o r e i g organizations could take, was

Fred Schrader, who I think did a perfectly magnificent job. The questions

were: What w a s the f a i r amount for Sangmon County t o give? Wt pm-

portion of the national budget should we undertake t o raise? Obviously,

it couldn't be based on the population, because the percentage of popu-

lation, or the quality of population, of Sangamn County was much

@eater than most of the poor southern counties; so some other method

had t o be found t o supplement the population yardstick.

Fred Schrader and other members of the corrnnittee commicated with

the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Dep&mnt of Comrce, the

Treasury DepaYstmnt, and so forth, t o discover w h a t Sangamon County's

share of income tax returns was. The g o v e m n t would not give the

dollar figure, but they did give the nwnber of incorn tax returns which

w e r e made i n Sangamon County as compared w i t h the income tax returns of the

whole United States. Also, the Chamber of Comrce and Cormnerce Depart-

ment f'urnished the spending power of Sangamon Comty as compared with

the spending power of the United States,and the per capita income of

Sangamon County as compared w i t h the income of the whole United States.

It developed that one-tenth of one percent represented the m u n t of

money that; %ngamon County should pay. That is, i f Bundles for Britain

had a budget of $50,000,000, which had been approved by the National

Committee in New York, Sangamon County's fair amount would be one-

tenth of one percent of that m m t .

That sounds l ike a small proportion, but it was not. The t o t a l arnount

which we gmmnteed t o ralse was far i n excess of anything that had been


raised before. I recal l that the four men who headed the drives of the

Sagamon County W a r Fund Council were first ikon Fisher, Cwl Carter,

Kurt Bretcher and Lamy Wollan, a l l of whom did a perfectly outstanding

job of organizing and money raising.

I should s ta te here that the method devised by our Sangmon County

Warr Fund Council, was adopted by the National Cormittee as a method

suggested t o every state i n the Union t o follow. We had l i t t l e or no

difficulty i n persuading the various groups that th i s nethod was fair.

From the point of view of the continuation of the Boy Scouts, the G i r l

Scouts, and the other organizations, it was absolutely necessary. We

had only one organization that refused t o abide by the decision that

we had made, and t h a t was the March of Dimes; which was rather poli t ical

and refised t o abide.

The action taken by the W w Fund Council was t o go t o each chairman

elected, t e l l them the whole story of what we were trying to do, and

what this particular organization refbsed t o do. This organization

had the weatest difficulty i n getting f o m d . Finally it did so on

a more or less poli t ical basis, and had a very, very diff icult time

i n getting the money they thought they needed.

Q. Let's, before we go on much f m h e r , say a l i t t l e something about

the AL't Association and IMwarrd1s Place.

A. Well, I remember the Art Association as the old Edward's home,

which, while I don't suppose was a gloomy place, was very dark inside

with lace curtains, hardly any room for the pictures that the Associa-

t ion gradually accwnulated.


G. W. B m , Jr. 4 3

When I went on the board of the AY% Club, they had ju s t burned the

mortgage which they had put on the house a f te r they got it for some

refurbishing and so forth. I remember the president of the Board then

was Mr. R. Allen Stephens, who was i n M r . Hay's law office.

There wasn't much activity as I remember the old A r t Club. They did

get pictures, but had very l i t t l e wall space t o hang them. It was

decided that they would build an annex joining the E d w d l s Place in

the form of an ax% gallery. They had some plans made, and the cost was

estimated as I recal l at $35,000, which for the Art Club then was a

pretty s t i f f price; u n t i l my Aunt Alice Bum said that she would pay

for half or it if they would raise the res t .

I got Mr. Fred Schrader t o take the chaimnanship of a smll w u p that

went out and raised the remaining arnount with very l i t t l e difficulty.

My recollections of the emly A r t Club are pretty dim. They had

classes for school children, and a few adults used the A r t Club for

sketches and so forth. They had a lithogaphic press and Frank Simnons

was the only one who ever used it, but he did make use of i t , and got

a good deal of enjoyment and good out of doing so.

I think a man named Johnson was probably the f i r s t director of the

act iv i t ies of the f i Club. He was a portrait painter who had come

here t o paint a portrait of Vachel Lindsay, posthumously, of course,

and also painted pictures, as I remember, of Mr. E- Scott and Mr. George

B. Stadden, who were ewly presidents of the Franklin Life Insurance

corfrpany.


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 4 4

The l i f e of the A r t Club really didn't start until Lil l ian Scalzo

became the director. Then the classes for the school children were

Increased. And a great many older people, women l ike Mrs. Lee Call

and Mrs. P. C. Yokum, and others who had a talent for painting,

painted and encowaed friends of theirs t o come out. I think that

one reason men dldnlt paint was that they were rather ashamed of it,

but when some went, that drew those who had been reluctant to come.

Some of them did excellent work. A few of them painted bowls of

apples, which took some scrutinizing t o distingUish that they were

bowls of apples. But nevertheless, it did flourish, and now has become

through other building additions, one of the real cultural centers of

Springfield, a busy place and a fine meeting pound.

I never did any work there but I found one occupation that was somewhat

al l ied t o the A r t Club, and gave me tremendous amount of pleasure. When

I was a small boy, I had a l i t t l e printing press, and did various jobs

with it. I think a drop of printer 's inlc must have gotten in my blood,

because just after the bank holiday of the 19301s, my wife and I went

t o New York for a much needed change of scene, and there I took some

lessons fYom Warren Chappel, one of the leading book designers i n the

country, who designs so many books for Alfred A. Knopf.

I took lessons fYom him i n wood engraving and wood cut. Wood cut was

a picture that was cut on a block of either pine or apple or cherry wood

with the p a i n of the wood. You had t o have a very sharp h i f e , and

be very caref'ul not t o make any false strokes or sp l i t s i n it.


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 4 5

A wood engraving, on the other hand, was a boxwood, the best was the

'llrkish box tree cut in swll squares, laminated and very highly

polished, and any way your engaverlx tool went, it went against the

g a i n . You could do much finer and more delicate work on the box

than you could on the plank.

Befo~e that, this drop of blood which I said I had of printer 's ink

had stirred, I suppose, and I used t o go out Sunday morning t o the

printing shop of Don Ebe. Don was one of the l a s t of the old wandering

country newspaper printers who went &om one place to another. He

operated old Washington hand presses upon which the country newspapers

were s t i l l printed.

I would go out Sunday mornings t o Don's shop and watch him get ready

for the next week's work and so forth, and out of those meetings, he

ordered me an old Washhgton hand press. There weren1 t very m m y left

because they had been out of use fo r a long, long time, but he f i n a l l y

found one at a place called Chandler and Price i n Cleveland. We

ordered it and it cam, weighing about two tons.

Don, his assistant and I got It down into the basement, and Don se t it

up. There we had an old hand press mch l ike the one that Emjamin

Franklin had used, except that it was iron instead of wood, and. instead

of a wooden screw t o get the hpression of the type on the paper, it

had an iron toggle joint, which brought the type and the wood cuts

against the paper.

I secured gradually fiom t h e to time quite a vwiety of type; so that

I did have twenty-one cases of types, with most of them Garam~nt types


G. W. Bum, Jr. 46

of different sizes. The f i r s t thing I printed was a l i t t l e magazine

for the children of the neighborhood called the Hobby Horse. They

wrote for it and I made . . .

END OF TAPE

Q. I remember the Hobby Horse press well because 1 think I was one

of the ear ly contributors. Would you mention the year and mntion as

many of those people that wrote for it that you can remember and what

they wrote?

A. Well, I think the year i n which it started was very, very l a t e

i n 1933 or m r e likely, emly of 1934. The ch i l een who cont~ibuted

t o it were my own Sally and George and Linda, Milly Bunn, Bobby Prather,

Pete eather, one or two of the Miller chil&ren and almost every

youngster i n the inmediate neighborhood. I can remmber a poem which

Linda wrote with a l i t t l e i l l u s t ~ a t i o n with a l i t t l e girl with a hoe

working in the gayden; the poem went, "The Doyle1 s garden next t o ours/

i s bright with many lovely flowers/ but every time I plant a seed/ up

pops a jimson weed." That was the type of poetry that f i l l ed the

Hobby Horse press. I remember a story that George wrote about a

Rght between our l i t t l e dog Bozo and a big rat i n the basement i n

which I think George used his imagination a g o d deal because the

fight was a fight t o the f inish in which Bozo had some trouble winning.

I think there were seven issues of the Hobby Horse printed and then

the i n t e ~ s t of the children must have waned and disappemed, but my

interest i n printing never lef't me.


G. W. Bum, Jr. 4 7

So a f te r the -Hobby Horse press issued i t 's last issue number, I s t i l l

continued t o print l i t t l e books. I would try t o have one ready every

Christms for each of the three children t o give away as Christmas

presents. The books were generally retell- of s tories f'rorn Grirrnn

and Andersen and Perraul t or mde up with the children as the principle

cmac te r s . One that 1 remember was "The Li t t le Green Apple," which

gave the adventures of George, Sally and Linda.

Printing was a slow process because I remember no matter how I t r ied

t o speed it up I could r a m l y produce more than one impression a minute.

You have t o r o l l the platen, ink the platen f i r s t using a very thick,

dry ink, r o l l it under the press, pull the tympan down, r o l l it back

out and take the paper off, hang i t up t o dry, and put a new sheet on.

The one book, a l i t t l e book which was printed, [was] written by one of

the Miller boys--I think Daniel Miller, a very bloody story about

pirates entitled, "The Deck Runs Red."

I rernm&er when Sally was away at Shipley School, she asked permission

of the F,nglish teacher for the g i r l s in her Finglish class each t o par-

t icipate i n a short story contest and I agreed that I would i l lus t ra te

and p r in t an edition of f i f t y copies of the prize w i n n i n g story and

send it on t o the girl who had won t o @ve away for Christmas presents.

The girl's name who won it was, I think, Lucy Galpin. It was a s tow

about a pony that had had a part i n one of the operas i n which a horse

could properly appear [named Fa-nny Finds the Opera].

I also printed some books which I had written; one of them was called

Goodbye t o G r i m , wuch was the account of the interest a father had


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 48

i n reading t o h is own children books which had been read to him as a

boy, and how much of the humor, for instance, of G r i m and Andersen he

had missed the first time, but had caught the second. This book was

honored by having been used with the permission which I was very glad

t o give by a publishing house called the Holiday Press which did almost

exclusively children's books, reproduced and d i s t~ ibu ted t o the annual

convention of the retail book sel lers . Another book was a History of

the Old Chatterton Opera House, which Paul Angle had used as the leading

a r t i c le i n an issue of the I l l inois State Hs tor ica l Review. Another

book was one which I distributed t o a f i f t y odd members of my class in

college, a book of four essays entitled, The Benches on Nassau Street.

The interest i n the Hobby Horse press started i n about 1933 and lasted

until about 1946. What t o do with a l l the equipment that I had accwnu-

lated was a cause of some concern and worry unt i l I finally decided or

finally discovered that the Sangxion State University would be delighted

t o have the press and som of the equipment and I was delighted t o have

the old press find that type of a home. It was quite a job t o bring

it out of the basement, around the comer, up the stairs to the truck

that was waiting for it, but they finally did, and now it is, as I say,

housed a t Sangamon State i n the art depaYltmnt and i s used largely for

the printing of pictures, wood cuts and linoleum cuts. The type i s

there and someday I imagine thak somebody w i l l find use for it.

Q. Before we leave the Hobby Horse, I want t o ask you, did you ever

have a drawing lesson i n your l i f e? Or why this talent , and it cej%ainly

i s a talent-you could wield the pencil l ike no one I ever hew.


G . W. B m , Jr. 49

A. I always liked t o d r a w l i t t l e sketches when 1 was a boy and had

sow small shill at it which I developed sonewhat a t Lamenceville and

pz t icu la r ly at Princeton in drawing sketches f o ~ the T i g e ~ and the

Bric-A-Elrac, and so forth. The sketches were necessarily rather simple

because the job of transfeming them t o the wood blocks was rendered

mch easier thereby.

Q. In reflecting and tm% back over the topics that we have dis-

cussed on this tape, Ts there anything i n p&icular that you think

you might have omitted?

A. Well, I 1 m sure that there m e things that I rilght have omitted,

although I have included much more than I ever expected. These tapes

starbed out t o be the recollection of a rn that ' s 82, of h is boyhood

i n Springffeld back i n the 189o1s, the early 1890ts at the turn of

the century. Due t o the energy of the questionner, who is rw daughter,

and the proclivity of old men who, when they reminisce, hardly know

when t o stop, we l e f t the Springfield of the 1890% far behind and

even went so far as two world wars and a world depression and advanced

beyond that.

I do want to mention a few of the things that I have omitted and probably

remedy one or two mistakes. I think there were four businesses, r e t a i l

businesses, still extant which were very much i n evidence when I was

a boy i n the l a te nineties and overlooked some very obvious ones:

Herndons was one, Coe Brothers Book Store, Days Paint Store. The paint

store, as a matter of fact, was first Willard and Z S n m e m - - h . Willard

was my great-grandfather. Coets was situated on the northwest comer

of Fifth and Momoe Street, where the Bootery now is, for years and


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 50

years before moving to i t s present location on the southwest comer of

of Sixth and Monroe.

Books that boys read when I was young were ms t ly by Horatio Alger,

the Ragged Dick and Tattered Tom books, Oliver Optic, Edward Stratemeyer

wrote The Blue and Gray series [about the] Civil War. The f i r s t adult

book that I remrnber reading was G~avstark [Lit t le Kingdom] and soon

a f te r that cam a series by a man who was fm and away the most popular

f ict ion writer of h is tim m d Winston Churchill. He was no relation

t o the l a te Churchill of l3glish fam, but he wrote sorne fine books

such as Richard Camel, The Crossing, The Crisis, for which he spent

some t u e i n Springfield getting material. The Crisis was the C i v i l

War and the events leading up t o it, and. I how that he interviewed

Uncle John for a good many hours on Lincoln--Lincoln, of course,

before the C i v i l W a r . Then Churchill switched to New E-gland and

worte M r . Carewsl Career and Coniston and a book about a minister

called The Inside of the Cup. He i s almost fopgotten now, but certainly

during a long period he was fa^ and away the mst popular Arnerican

novelist.

Q. Thb subject that interests rne i n particular that I don't know

many specifics about are sorne of relatives. W i l l you mention som

with a brief thumbnail sketch?

A. Well, one of the f i r s t to come t o mind is Uncle Benjamin Ferguson.

He was the husband of my aunt Alice Ferguson, who was really a great-

aunt and who was aunt by ViYstue of being married t o my uncle, M r . Fer-

guson, who i s my uncle by v i r t u e of being brother of the s i s t e r of the

wife of Jacob Bunn. That seems rather involved and probably was.


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 51

I t h w I'll put i n a very small vignette of old Mrs. Edwards who

lived i n the house next t o the Fergusons' house. Occasionally q y

bmther and I would go over and see her. Sne was a.lovely old lady

and looked, i n my memory, much as Whistler's mother looked with a cap

and a simple dress and seated i n the chair i n a simply rwnished so&

of room.

Uncle Ben Ferguson was a captain In the Civil W a r and af te r he was

mustered out he entered the Marine Eank as a clerk, and before long

became cashier and then president. During his long yews of presidency,

he acquired a quite numerous collection of s-s, and was the biggest

shareholder of the Marine Bank. He was also, by the way, first president

of the Springfield Park Board, and a very active and good citizen of

the town. He owned the Ferguson Building which, as I have mentioned,

Coels now occupy.

I said a good deal about grandfather, Mr. Jacob Bunn, his younger

bmthep-younger by 17 or 18 years--was John Bunn, who was born and

raised on the farm in New Jersey which thei r father, Henry Bunn, owned.

John B m came t o Springfield as a young man in the early 1940's and

was employed i n the J. Bunn Grocery Store. One thing that I rmmber

was his rurmhg for office, the only office i n his l i f e that he ever

ran for, which was Treasurer of the ci ty of Springfield. His opponent

was M r . Charles Ridgely with a very l u g e family and M r . B m wasn't

thought t o have much of a chance. On the s t reet one day he m e t Mr. Ijn-

coln. Mr. Lincoln said, "John, how is your presidency coming?" Uncle

John said, "I think it ' s coming along alright. " He said, " A r e you sure?"


He said, "You haven't asked me t o vote fo r you." Uncle John said,

"Well, I kind of counted on you because yout r e a Republican. " "Well,"

lk. Lincoln said, lldonlt count on anybody without asking. Ask as many

people as you can t o vote for you. Don't be afraid t o do that."

Uncle John was a bachelor and roomed i n what was known as the Vincent

Apartments back of the public l ibrary. A s he got rather old and feeble,

he asked me t o spend the nights over a t h i s ap&mnt, which I did fo r

about a year. Then he was taken sick and i n 1920, he died. He took

a l l of h is rneals with my aunt Alice. She was the only sumiving female

e e r of the family and as such was the aunt of all generation.

A s time goes on, I want t o speak about her because she was a very fine,

jovial, public-spirited woman.

The oldest uncle was Uncle W i l l , who decided there weu?e plenty of B m s

in Springfield and he would leave and get out on his own. He was in

government service a l l his life as customs agent or head of different

customs bureaus--Plattsbwg, Buffalo, San Francisco-all over the country.

He would quite often cone back fo r h e r d s of old fkiends. I remember

very dist inct ly that I would always sit by him because he would want t o

know, i n a rather louder whisper than people who are sl ightly deaf imagined,

"Who is that ovey there?" I would sw it was so and so. He would say,

"m heavens, I thought he had been dead fo r years ! I 1

Uncle Will was stocky, with a close-clipped mustache and I think was

the handsomst of a l l the brothers. Next t o him was Uncle Harry, who

was long and an&= and. a great horseman--he loved horses. He was,

I remrher, first lieutenant i n Conpamy C or D which embarked from

Springfield for the Spanish-American War. He was f o r years cashier of


G. W. Bum, Jr. 5 3

the Marine Bank, and then purchased a smll fm in Virginia where he

had some horses and raised a few crops, but spent mst of his time i n

New York. He lived at Nwnber One Fifth Avenue where wife and I

once or twice stayed when we made periodic visits to New Yo& while he

was i n Vbglnia. Ny father was next i n age.

Q. You might just briefly mention what Uncle Harry looked l ike and

what he wore.

A. Well, as I say, Uncle Harry was quite angular, a great horseman.

He w a s rather thin, he WOE very white, very high starched collms, took

very long strides, and wore a derby hat. Uncle Hamy returned home as

all of the brothers and s i s te r s except Uncle W i l l did for h is last

i l lness.

The how was bui l t i n the early 185oTs, and was on South Sixth Street,

just north of the [new] Marine Bank faci l i ty . After Aunt Alice's death,

it was t o m down [in 19531 because she did not want, nor did anybody

want the house t o go through the general disintegration that most

houses i n the downtown period do. It was really the center of the family

as we grew up. Aunt Alice was a very good hostess and a very generous

lady. I have told about her association with the Art Club. I doubt i f

I mentioned the fact that she gave half of the mney for the gallery.

She was forever suppo&ing this, that, and the other thing, and very

often i f the sum were large would give half with the idea that others

ought t o give the i r s h m , too. People used t o be quite ~ l u c t m t as

long as they found that somebody else would glve money i f they did not.

She didn't believe i n that--quite rightly. I think i f it had not been


for her, for Mrs. Jacob B m , Mrs. Robert Imphier, there would be no

Memorial Hospital because each made extremely generous contributions

and the hospital was, for a m t t e r of fact, the last building t o

receive a permit before World W m 11. The only hospitals bui l t then

were g o v e m n t hospitals. I think the mst assiduous money ra iser fo r

the Memorial Hospital and the mast assiduous planner for the hospital

was Herbert Bartholf.

Of my mother and father I cannot begin t o say too much. They were, I

think, the ideal parents, forebearing, s t r i c t when strictness was

necessary, very jovial. My father was particularly a congenital joker.

Along about 1908, 1909, 1910, they bought a cottage on Buzzards Bay,

just across the Ray from Cape Cod, where we a l l went t o spend our s m r s .

A s a matter of fact , it was f h m Salters Point, the name of the cormunity

which they joined, that we knew the Cape and knew Chatham. My wife and

I i n 1950 moved t o Chatham for the summer at a very comfortable, homely,

old inn where we stayed unt i l 1960, when we bought a cottage that we

enjoyed for twelve or thirteen years, the cottage overlooldng the ocean

on one side and Nantucket Sound on the other.

The youngest brother of w aunt and uncles w a s Uncle Jake, who succeeded

his father as president of the I l l inois Watch Company. I very well

remember that when I was in college, I would occasionally get a l ine

or a wire f'mm Uncle Jake saying that he would be i n New York at a

certain day and wondered i f I wouldn't come up and have dinner with him.

Naturally, I did. He always stayed a t the old Waldorf, which was, I

think, the f inest hotel that I ever hew about. It stood where the

m i r e State Building stands now and was f m u s for its fwd. The


G. W. Bunn, Jr. 55

proprietor of the Waldorf, a man named Oscar, Oscm of the Waldorf, would

always come into the d i n i n g room and he got in to the habit of asking old

patrons of the hotel how they were and i f they were enjoying thei r food.

On some of these t r ips with Uncle Jake was Bob Lanphier, who was asso-

ciated with hlm i n the founding of the Sangam0 Electric Company. Uncle

Jake had a s o d deal of diff iculty i n keeping Bob fYom talking shop.

I remember him saying, "Now, Bob, the Sangam Electric Company w i l l be

there when you get back, but i n the meantime, forget it and we w i l l have

a good dinner and a good time."

Uncle Jake and Aunt Alice were the two youngest children. My aunt never

rrarried and Uncle Jake was a bachelor for a great many years. They

were very, very close together. Aunt Alice was p a t t o entertain. Her

house wax the scene of a good mny part ies . She was very charitable,

and generous.

The house was bui l t along i n the middle 185o1s, I think. A l l of the

children were born there excepting Uncle W i l l . The house had gone

through sore remodeling--a veranda porch, which was used a great deal i n

swwtler, was added t o the south side. It was a square house, bui l t just

before the gingerbread era; therefore, it was square and solid and bland

i n m k contrast t o some of the neighboring houses, notably the Chatterton

house on the south which was Hudson River Gothic and the Gmendike house

across the street which was of the mansard roof type. The house was tom

down when my aunt died i n 1953, but the brick stable which was quite

comdious with a room on the second floor, a bedroom and bath for the

coachman, plenty of c m i a g e space and stalls fo r a team of horses, and

a bay horse which was A u n t Alice's, which she dmve herself, remained

until a few years before the fac i l i ty [Marine BanZc faci l i ty] was bui l t . George W. Bunn, Jr. Memoir #1 - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS

G. W. B m , Jr. 56

I can ~mernber the night that the stable was inaugurated with a p&y

and Mrs. House, who was a cousin of ours and lived with qy aunt, was

a famous punch mixer. She was kept pretty busy and it was a very ga3r

and pleasant occasion. The sort of toastmster was o w Uncle Frank

Jones, who w a s an uncle by marriage t o Missy Sally Bum, who died i n 1902.

He always kept his association with her fmlly and came down often f r o m

Chicago where he lived. He was Assistant Postmster General under

Gmver Cleveland, and Postmaster of Chicago. He mid Nellie Grant

Sz- to~is , who was the daughter of General G r a n t , whom he had m e t i n

Washington. They lived on South Sixth Street in the house that IQI father

and mothey lived i n which was i n i t s e l f subject t o a p a t deal of addi-

tions and still stands being the horn of the Sankey family, long tine

friends of ours.

Q. Now, I have one more question. In looking back, who do you think

some of your f a v o ~ i t e authors would be?

A. Well, i t ' s rather d i f f icul t t o say. Certainly I think the greatest

novel that I have read is W a r and Peace. The l a s t novel that I read

before eyes grew so bad I could read no more, was Thackeryls Vanity

I ? . I think some of the poems that I have enjoyed most mdly are

f?om rdnor poets and I ' m going t o close these &ling reminiscences of

an octogenarian with a poem which I have memorized by James Stevens.

"And now dear heart the night is closing i n

The lamps are not yet ready and the gloom is the sad winter evening

and the din the wind rmkes i n the s t reet fills a l l the moms--

you have listened t o stories.


G. W. Bunn, Jr.

Seamus Beg has told you the adventures of his youth

and has no mre hopes t o f lnd the buried kegs stuffed t o the l i d

with s i lver , he, alas, g r e w up

but he has found the path t o t rue mmance and with you may easi ly

seek wonders. We are bound out t o the storm of things where all.

i s new. Give ne your harid, so keeping close t o me,

shut t igh t your eyes and step forward. Where are we?"

E N D O F T A P E


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