The Poor Man Who Died Rich....

It was a Sunday morning in early April, 1954 when Grinnell police found James Totten (1860-1954) wandering half-dressed on Fourth Avenue. Wearing only a sweatshirt and suit coat, Totten kept asking passers-by how to find Bates Pharmacy, a store that had been closed for more than twenty years. Officers collected the ninety-four-year-old, helped clean him up, got him dressed, and then turned him over to county officials. Judged "insane," Totten was committed to the county home and Poweshiek County Attorney Norman McFarlin (1918-1990) was made his temporary guardian.

Postcard (ca. 1913) of 4th Avenue, Grinnell; 803 1/2 is upstairs of 2nd building from left (Digital Grinnell)

Totten, who had worked for years as a painter and wallpaper-hanger, was known to be "eccentric." He had few friends, and refused everyone entry to his apartment at 803 1/2 Fourth Avenue. Anyone who wished to contact him—to hire him to paint or hang wallpaper, for instance—had to slip a note under his door; those paying a bill would follow a similar procedure, but to see or speak with the man was almost impossible. Totten had no telephone or electricity—he preferred a kerosene lamp—and for decades he kept stubbornly to himself. But the man who denied himself every convenience, who lived in a stinking hovel and who appeared half-naked on the street that April Sunday had actually squirreled away thousands of dollars in his apartment. This Grinnell Story is devoted to James Totten, a poor man who died very rich.

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James Totten was born in 1860 somewhere in Ontario County, New York, not far from Rochester. Apparently no birth certificate survives, but his farming family was living in nearby Steuben County when the 1865 New York census was taken. The son of David and Elizabeth Totten, young James was the couple's first child; five sisters followed him into the family over the next decade. By the time the 1870 US census-takers arrived in Iowa, the David Totten family had moved to Poweshiek County, Iowa, boarding a Norwegian immigrant who helped out on the farm. The 1878 Grinnell city directory listed D. B. Totten as a farmer who resided on "Main, south end" (this before the introduction of house numbers).

David Totten family in 1880 US Census

Later censuses reveal that James went no further in school than the 8th grade, so by the 1870s he was probably working on his own. Indeed, when federal census officials passed through Grinnell in 1880, the listing for the Totten family included only James's five sisters living with their parents on Main Street. When the infamous Grinnell Cyclone whirled into town, June 17, 1882, Elizabeth Totten became one of its victims.

Original gravestone for Elizabeth Totten, Hazelwood Cemetery
"Elizabeth, wife of D. B. Totten, Killed by Cyclone, June 17, 1882, Aged 45 ys, 4 mos"

The 1895 Iowa census found James in Grinnell, boarding with the Nelson Burns family;  Lucy Burns was said to operate a restaurant and Nelson identified himself as a "dehorner." The record reports that James was already working as a painter, a profession he pursued his entire life. The 1900 federal census located James Totten living alongside several other boarders, without specifying an address. Still single, James gave his age this time as 35, an error that shows perhaps an unawareness of his exact birth date.

The 1905 Grinnell city directory for the first time placed James Totten at the address where the events of 1954 took place: the directory identified him as a painter who "rms over Ross shoe store, 4th Ave.," which the directory elsewhere identifies as 803 4th Avenue. Consequently, we know that from at least 1905 James Totten resided upstairs at 803 4th Avenue. Later censuses for the most part cite the same address. However, somehow Totten was overlooked in the 1920 census—was this a function of his growing isolation? had census workers not been able to get him to come to the door to answer their queries? Ten years later the 1930 census reported him to be rooming with the Frank Crane family at 913 West Street. What explains this change of residence I cannot imagine, because the 1940 census has him once again at 803 4th, and supposedly Totten resided at that same address in 1935 (since the census asked his whereabouts then). It may be, therefore, that James Totten lived in the three-room apartment on 4th Avenue for half a century or more, or at least the best part of that interval if, as the 1930 census maintains, he lived for a time a couple of blocks away.

As the censuses confirm, Totten rented the entire time he lived on his own. No data on his rent survive, but he did tell the 1915 Iowa census-taker that he had earned $520 the preceding year—not a huge sum, but sufficient to keep a single man with modest expenses reasonably satisfied. To judge from the monies found later, Totten spent very little. According to news reports, in his last years Totten was known to recover food from garbage cans rather than buy it at a grocery; he was also said to walk the railroad tracks in search of odd pieces of coal. Another report claimed that Totten "made frequent visits to the city dump, where he is said to have found some of his clothing. He also canvassed grocery stores for less salable foods" (Des Moines Register, September 23, 1954). Apparently he had no friends, and when a sister visited Grinnell once to contact him, he refused even to talk to her.

Norman McFarlin (1918-1990) (University of Iowa 1947 Hawkeye Yearbook [University of Iowa Digital Library])

Isolated and suffering some sort of mental illness, the "eccentric" Totten was living on the margins of Grinnell society, and his peculiarities were no doubt the meat of much gossip. So, when police took custody of the half-naked man on Fourth Avenue in April, 1954, no one could have been surprised. What did surprise, however, emerged during a series of searches of the old man's rooms.

The first such expedition followed hard on the heels of Totten being sent to Montezuma. In late April, 1954, county officials, including the County Attorney, Norman McFarlin, who had been appointed Totten's guardian, entered the Fourth Street three-room apartment that occupied the second story above Arnold's Shoe Store. What the newspaper called "indescribably filthy quarters" confronted them: "All the rooms were filthy beyond description and strewn with old clothes, discarded junk and scraps of food moldy with age" (Grinnell Herald-Register, April 22, 1954). The men who braved these conditions, however, were shocked to find a large pile of money, "tucked away amid rotting clothes and other debris." No official announcement provided a firm figure for the cash retrieved, but the Herald-Register put the sum at around $20,000, all of which was relayed to Totten's guardian.

Gravestone for James Totten, Hazelwood Cemetery (plot 352)

When Totten died in July of that year, the situation grew more complex. Instead of protecting his legal ward, McFarlin now had control of his former ward's estate. Accordingly, that September the Grinnell Chief of Police, Waldo Johnson (who had been part of the first foray into Totten's apartment), and one of his officers, Fred Roop, returned to Totten's former home on Fourth Avenue, to collect anything of value and clean out the rest. Perhaps made especially alert to the possibility of finding more cash because of the original search, the policemen were rewarded for their diligence with discovery of yet another collection of money. According to newspaper accounts,

Johnson discovered the false bottom in small bureau drawers...Reaching into the small opening, Chief Johnson felt the bottom of the compartment give slightly. Checking further by prying up the board, he discovered a packet of money totaling $5000. That was enough for Johnson to make a similar investigation of the second small drawer, where additional money bundles were uncovered (Grinnell Herald-Register, September 2, 1954).

With this discovery officials had gathered from Totten's apartment almost $38,000.

As the wheels of government inched forward, McFarlin turned his attention to settling Totten's estate. One large hurdle was overcome when he located Totten's two sisters and a nephew who were eligible to inherit the dead man's property. Mrs. Emma Totten Fellenen (b. 1875) lived in Los Angeles; Mrs. Lillian Totten Porter (1875-1958) in Jackson, Michigan; and a nephew, James Totten Jackman, resided in North Hollywood, California. According to published accounts, "The heirs apparently knew nothing of the accumulated money...Totten did not appear to have been very closely in touch with them, exchanging only a few letters and perhaps a Christmas card during the year" (Des Moines Register, September 23, 1954). Both sisters, however, were soon in Grinnell, where on July 10th James Totten was buried in Hazelwood Cemetery. An indication of how alone Totten had been comes from the spare obituary, which includes a revealing list of four pallbearers, all of whom seemed to be acting out of mercy rather than kinship or friendship: Norman McFarlin, the County Attorney who became his guardian (but who never knew the man before he was institutionalized); Waldo Johnson, the Grinnell Chief of Police who had searched Totten's apartment and discovered the money trove; Maurice Halterman, secretary of Poweshiek County's Soldiers' Relief, who, his own obituary reports, "was interested in serving others, taking special interest in children and the families of veterans who were in special need..."; and Sam Ragan, director of relief for Poweshiek County.

Grinnell Herald-Register, July 15, 1954

Since McFarlin was obliged to liquidate any remaining property so as to draw a final line under the value of the estate, in August, 1955 officials returned to Totten's apartment to inventory for auction anything of value, and empty the apartment of all the rest. Surprisingly, Chief Johnson, now on his third visit to the dead man's quarters, found another $50,000 "in a hidden compartment of a chest...in two open bundles and an oilcloth cover package" (Grinnell Herald-Register, August 15, 1955). Along with a pile of currency in denominations ranging from $10 to $500, investigators uncovered government bonds and other securities (including stock shares for General Motors and Chrysler). This latest find brought the total recovered from Totten's rooms to about $90,000 (equal to about $800,000 in today's dollars).

Grinnell Herald-Register, December 15, 1955

Eight truckloads of trash (the Des Moines Register says only three truckloads) had already been removed from Totten's apartment when Johnson uncovered the latest (and last) cache of money, an indication of how desperately littered the old man's home had become. Nevertheless, Johnson and fellow officers managed to isolate "about 80 lots of old furniture and boxes of miscellaneous articles" for auction, which was held in December, 1955. The entire collection brought in only $143.55, including the price paid by the Grinnell Museum Society for the oil lamp and some business cards that Totten had accumulated (Montezuma Republican, December 15, 1955). The chest of drawers in which Chief Johnson had found around $70,000 netted just $7. Other items brought little more, a sad coda to the unlikely story of a wealthy poor man.

Kerosene lamp acquired by Grinnell  Museum Society at the auction of the Totten estate, December, 1955
(Grinnell Historical Museum, Totten Estate)

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Cases of hoarding, elderly eccentrics are hardly unknown in America. Perhaps the most famous instance concerned the Collyer brothers who in 1947 were discovered entombed by the mountains of stuff that they had secreted away in their New York City brownstone. More recently, the New York Times told the sad story of George Bell, who, living alone in a New York apartment "groaning with possessions," had died without anyone having noticed. Like James Totten, Bell left behind a treasure trove—several hundred thousand dollars—although stored in a bank rather than false drawers of a bureau. These cases raise the question: why should we care about James Totten?

As the Times's N. R. Kleinfeld wrote, "George Bell died carrying some secrets. Secrets about how he lived and secrets about what mattered most to him. Those secrets would bring sorrow. At the same time, they would bring rewards" ("The Lonely Death of George Bell," New York Times, October 17, 2015). The same might be said about Grinnell's James Totten. Off the grid for most of his life, isolated and sinking deeper into delirium, James Totten earned no attention from those who wrote the happy pages of Grinnell's history. In contrast to the inventors, successful businessmen and politicians who commonly populate these histories, James Totten lived life in a minor key. His life gained public attention only because of the demeaning way it ended, and the surprising discovery of his fortune. He might easily have died unnoticed, his secret cache undiscovered, in which case we would never have had occasion to recall his name.

When I began this blog, I asked "whose stories deserve to be told?" I observed then that "the disadvantaged, the poor, people of color, and others at the margins of wealth and power" too often lose their place in stories of the past. James Totten is one of those Grinnellians whose life passed almost without notice. In a town where churches, clubs, and fraternal orders wove citizens into the social fabric, James Totten lived almost off the loom. Therefore, telling his story, sad as it is, reminds us that Grinnell's history is a complex narrative into which various threads—some bright and cheerful; others, dark and despondent—are woven, and we cheat ourselves by overlooking that broad array of color.

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