Grinnell's Black Bicycling Champion

While looking through some old newspaper stories, I was surprised to see that, when collegiate, competitive track was still in its infancy in the late nineteenth century, bicycling was among the events in which track men competed. It did not last long, but long enough for Iowa College, as it was then known, to attract to its campus a highly skilled young bicyclist who was also black—Leo Welker (1880-1937). Controversy surrounded Welker's collegiate athletic career, perhaps not coincidentally because he was black. At the time, bicycling was almost exclusively a white man's sport, so Welker stood out—he was a black cyclist, and he was also a very good cyclist.

But Welker soon left behind him his bicycling days, compiling at Grinnell an academic record so sterling that his next stop was Harvard University's Medical School. Today's story follows the career of Leo Welker, a Grinnell College alumnus of outstanding achievement who is little known in Grinnell today.

Leo Welker, 1903 Cyclone

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Freeman O. Welker was a black man who was born in Ohio in 1856, but by the 1870s was living in Oskaloosa, Iowa (Weekly Oskaloosa Herald, December 21, 1876). How or why Welker came to Oskaloosa, I could not learn. The record makes clear, however, that while there, he met Alice Pruet (1862-1937) whom he married in 1877. The 1880 US census found the Welkers living in Cambridge, Illinois where Freeman was earning a living as a barber. Alice, the census noted, was a "fancy hair worker," whatever that was.

The 1880 census was taken in June, by which time Alice must have been quite pregnant, because in late August she gave birth to the couple's first—and only—child, Leo. Soon thereafter Freeman, Alice and their baby headed off to North Dakota where Freeman had filed for a land grant from the Government Land Office in Devils Lake. The Welkers probably did not reach North Dakota before 1882, when the Devils Lake Land District opened to settlers (Devils Lake North Dakota Bicentennial History [Bismarck: North Dakota State Library, 1976], p. 1). But they did not arrive long after that, as we hear about Freeman providing testimony to other land claims as early as 1884. 

Apparently Freeman first opened a barber shop in Devils Lake, relying upon his previous experience. Records of the county commissioners indicate that he sometimes took on other jobs, like "washing and scrubbing jail furniture" (Devils Lake Inter-Ocean, April 11, 1885). At about the same time, Alice Welker took over operation of Lakeview Laundry (Devils Lake Inter-Ocean, February 21, 1885).

Extract from City Directory in Devils Lake Inter-Ocean, January 31, 1885)

Whether because of his work or from other factors, Freeman seems to have been afflicted with rheumatism, the newspaper reporting that the town barber had "to hobble on crutches" (Devils Lake Inter-Ocean, June 6, 1885). He seems to have recovered, at least briefly, because by the next spring Freeman was "putting up a barber shop and laundry on Fifth Street..." (Devils Lake Inter-Ocean, April 10, 1886).

No later than September 1887, however, Freeman Welker took possession of property in Steele County: the eastern half and the southeastern quarter in section 15, a total of 120 acres (Devils Lake Inter-Ocean, October 1, 1887). What, if anything, Freeman did with this land is unclear; after he acquired the property, his name disappears from public records. Alice, however, seems to have remained in town, operating her laundry, occasionally adding some special jobs—like washing blankets for the jail and doing the wash for prisoners (Devils Lake Inter-Ocean, January 14, 1888; ibid., January 12, 1889). Newspaper accounts of taxation identified her—and not Freeman—as paying the annual property taxes. As late as 1892 Alice was still in Devils Lake, where, the local newspaper reported, she "had her laundry repaired and painted" (Devils Lake Inter-Ocean, September 3, 1892). Freeman, however, left no further mark in the local press.

If Freeman Welker died in North Dakota, I could not prove it, but he certainly disappeared from all mentions of Alice and her son. In 1896, now back in Iowa, Alice remarried, taking as her second husband Walter B. Battles (1859- ), a 37-year-old black man said to have hailed from New Zealand. Walter, however, also left scant trace in the historical record. It may have been he to whom the Iowa State Bystander referred when an 1896 article mentioned that in Colfax "Mr. and Mrs. Battle [sources routinely mix "Battle" with "Battles"—dk] conducts [sic] the restaurant and English kitchen" (October 9, 1896), but, if so, it seems to have been the only allusion to Walter once Alice and Leo were back in Iowa. 

What came of Alice's second marriage is unclear, because, when in 1900 US census officials visited Colfax in Jasper County, they found Alice Battles, described as widowed and household head, and her son Leo. A boarder and a lodger were also part of the household, but there was no sign of Walter. The census reported that Alice was operating a "boarders' hotel" for which Leo served as porter. 

Extract from 1900 US Census for Colfax, Iowa

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By this time, however, Leo, whose earliest schooling had been in North Dakota, was studying at Iowa College, from which he graduated in 1903. He had begun in 1896 by attending the Iowa College Academy, according to the Iowa State Bystander (October 9, 1896). The college catalog of that year does not know Leo, but he certainly was enrolled by 1897, his name listed with other academy first-years in the catalog. For reasons I cannot explain, Leo's name does not appear in the 1899-1900 college catalog, but he must have begun college proper fall 1899, as the following year's catalog identifies him as a sophomore, majoring in biology and chemistry. Subsequent catalogs mark his orderly progress through the college, culminating in his 1903 graduation.

1901 Grinnell College Track Team (Leo Welker: 2nd row, 3rd from left)
1903 Grinnell College Cyclone

As various sources confirm, while at Grinnell Leo was the sole African American student (Iowa State Bystander, June 4, 1897; ibid., June 3, 1898)). What he thought about that experience no document survives to tell. What records do preserve is evidence of Leo's considerable athletic prowess, demonstrated most successfully in track in which Leo rode his bicycle in half-mile and one-mile races, routinely winning first place. Leo also played on the college football team, where his fleetness of foot made him a valuable half-back. But his athletic reputation depended mainly upon his bicycling skill.

Photograph of 1900 Grinnell College Football Team
(1903 Grinnell Cyclone)

Already in 1896 when Iowans first read about him, Leo Welker was known as a bicycle racing phenom. Reporting on a 13 3/4- mile race in Colfax that Welker won in late August of that year, the Iowa Capital described the winner as "a 16-year-old colored boy [who] is a whirlwind in a road race" (August 29, 1896). An 1897 article in the Iowa State Bystander reported on that year's Iowa College Field Day meet in which "only two colored students" were found among competitors; one was "Leo E. Welker of Grinnell" (June 4, 1897).

Welker was more than a competitor, however, "colored" or not; he was often victorious, as the Iowa State Bystander reported, noting in an early 1901 article that Welker had "won 1st place in both bicycle races on Field Day Meet [in 1900] and also won 1st place in the Inter State Field Meet in Chicago" (January 28, 1901). But opponents, nourished perhaps as much by racial bias as competitive envy, claimed that young Welker did not qualify for amateur competition because, it was alleged, he had previously raced for money, making him a professional. Grinnell's opponents wanted him disqualified.

Winners at 1901 Iowa State Field Meet (Hawkeye, v. 12[1903]:235)
When Welker was disqualified from his two wins, Drake was declared the winner

The controversy gained formal notice when in summer 1901 several men who represented Drake University filed affidavits with the Inter-Collegiate Games committee, alleging Welker's wrong-doing. Frank Bryant, for example, swore that 

In July 1899 I was in Ottumwa, Iowa and saw said Walker [sic] ride a professional bicycle race where money was up for the winners. I also saw said Welker ride in Colfax, Iowa in 1900 in a race where money was up as a prize. I also saw said Welker ride in Newton, Iowa in a bicycle race in 1899 where money was up as a prize (Des Moines Register, June 28, 1901).

Additional affidavits made similar accusations, larded with details omitted in Bryant's claim, but fundamentally confirming the allegation. Cornell College partisans claimed to have their own witness to "Welker's professionalism" (Cedar Rapids Republican, May 30, 1901).

But these were not the only affidavits submitted to the sporting committee. Three Colfax men swore that the Colfax bicycle races "in which Leo Welker, of this city rode, were amateur races, and we state further that no money prizes were given to Leo Welker or any other participant" (Des Moines Register, June 28, 1901). Two Newton men described as promoters of the September 1899 Newton race swore that "Leo Welker refused to ride in said race if winners were to receive money prizes...the winners received no money, but they received prizes. Leo Welker received a pair of bicycle tires for winning third place" (ibid.).

Welker himself swore under oath "that I...rode in no race in Colfax, Iowa during the year 1900, except the races held on July 4th, for which no money prize was given." Welker admitted to racing in Newton in 1899, and received "a pair of bicycle tires for winning third place," and had received no other prize whatever. In still another sworn statement, Welker reported that "I have never taken part in any bicycle race in Ottumwa, Iowa, in which any money prize was offered or given, and I further state that I have never ridden in Ottumwa except in the L. A. W. [League of American Wheelmen] amateur races held there in July 1899" (ibid.).

As John Zeller pointed out recently (Des Moines Register, February 28, 2021), the Drake complainants had evidently mistakenly substituted Welker for Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor (1878-1932), the so-called "Black barefoot rider" who was indeed a professional and who did in fact race in Ottumwa in 1899. Only two years older than Welker, also African American, and, like Welker, well-known in bicycling competitions, Taylor might easily have confused observers who knew neither man. The complainants, therefore, attempted to withdraw their charge, but the association disqualified Welker anyway, erasing his previous inter-collegiate victories and invalidating Grinnell's track-and-field wins.

Headline of article in Des Moines Daily News, May 5, 1902

Protesting Welker's innocence, Grinnell tried to continue his participation in official meets, but this plan generated controversy. In anticipation of a 1902 meet, for instance, an editorial in the Daily Iowan chastened Grinnell for intending to race Welker. Although Iowa evidently had voted against declaring Welker professional, the editorial pointed out that "Welker has been declared ineligible according to the rules and by that decision he is barred from all inter-collegiate contests. If these rules are not final and do not govern, then why have any rules at all?" (Daily Iowan, May 1, 1902).

Extract from the Scarlet and Black, May 9, 1903

Welker was reinstated shortly before his 1903 graduation from Grinnell, but the affair had cost him most of his collegiate eligibility. Moreover, while he was sidelined, bicycle races lost their place in track. How Welker felt about all this we can only guess; as the rare—often the only—black competitor at Iowa track meets, Welker must have suspected that at least some of the motivation behind the assault on his eligibility derived from his race. Indeed, by its 1897 Constitution the League of American Wheelmen, the official sponsor for much amateur bicycle racing in America, specifically excluded people of color from membership (Article III, Section 1). The public record, however, preserves no comment from Welker on that subject.

Masthead of the Scarlet and Black, October 4, 1902

What Welker certainly did was to maintain his academic program, successfully completing his studies at Grinnell where in his junior year he was initiated into the Grinnell Institute (Grinnell Herald, December 13, 1901). The following year he served as associate editor of the campus newspaper, proof that his collegiate experience depended upon more than athletics. After graduation Welker left Grinnell to enroll at the Harvard University Medical School in Boston where he received a Lewis and Harriet Hayden scholarship, a fund established late in the nineteenth century to assist African American students at the medical school.

Brief notes in the Bystander, the Colfax Clipper, and the Scarlet and Black occasionally relayed news of Welker's time at Harvard. It seems that Welker played football there, but I could not locate any records that confirmed his athletic endeavors. Much of his time must have been devoted to study; a paragraph in the Scarlet and Black maintained that Leo had "stood well up toward the head in all his classes" at Harvard (October 14, 1905). Having completed his medical education in 1907, Welker seems to have intended to settle in New York; at least that's what the Colfax Clipper thought when reporting on an October 1907 visit to Colfax. Of course, the Clipper also reported that Welker had graduated from Yale, so perhaps they were wrong about New York also (October 10, 1907). If so, then the Scarlet and Black was similarly deluded, because a brief filler published at about the same time maintained that Dr. Leo Welker was "located in New York City" (October 16, 1907).

If there was a New York City interlude, before long Welker changed his mind, deciding instead to settle in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he entered private practice with Dr. Herbert Simms. Although I found no news about his years in Chattanooga, it seems that private practice did not meet all Welker's hopes: within three years he abandoned private practice, in 1911 accepting the position of Director of Physical Culture at Fisk University in Nashville, where former Grinnell College president George Gates was then president (Grinnell Review, vol. 7, no. 3, p. 47). Among his duties at Fisk was coaching football (Nashville Globe, November 30, 1911), a task that he seems to have done very well. In 1916 Fisk won the National Black Football Championship, and between 1910 and 1929 won eight Southern Football championships (John Majors, "College Football," Tennessee Encyclopedia).

Extract from 1911-1912 Fisk University Catalog, p. 8

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The Harvard-educated, unmarried young doctor, who was also the university's football coach, attracted a lot of attention around Fisk. When the local X. Y. Z. group met to play cards, for example, Dr. L. E. Walker was among those attending, as was a university woman named Frankie (Frances) Caldwell (Nashville Globe, March 29, 1912). A few months later, when Maria Coombs entertained guests for dinner and dancing, Dr. Welker again was in attendance; so was Frankie Caldwell (ibid., July 26, 1912). It is small surprise, then, to learn that before long Leo Welker and Frances Caldwell (1889-1963), Fisk University class of 1911, married and set up house at 1710 Jefferson Street, Nashville (Fisk University News, vol. 4, no. 5, October 1912, p. 10). On September 8, 1915 Leo and Frankie welcomed to their family their first-born, Constance (1915-1941). A second daughter, Winifred (1917-2001), was born in 1917 (Nashville Globe, March 23, 1917).

Soon after Winifred's birth, the outside world interfered with the Welkers' domestic calm. In September 1917 Welker received appointment as lieutenant in the Medical Reserve Corps of the US Army. The new lieutenant traveled to Fort Des Moines, Iowa for training, while Frankie and the girls arrived at Colfax to stay temporarily with Alice Battles (Nashville Globe, September 14, 1917; Scarlet and Black, October 17, 1917). As the reality of American participation in the war sank in, Frankie returned to Nashville with the children in the summer 1918, sharing a roof with her sister at 923 17th Avenue (Nashville Globe, July 12, 1918).

Passenger List for S. S. Covington, June 15, 1918;
Detachment Medical Department, 1st Battalion, 366th Infantry

In December 1917 the Army transferred Lt. Leo Welker from Fort Des Moines to Camp Upton, New York, in preparation for being shipped to Europe (Grinnell Review, vol. 14, no. 3, December 1918). By summer 1918 Welker was aboard ship, the USS Covington, departing Hoboken, New Jersey, en route to France where he served with the 92nd Division of the US Army. In a letter written aboard ship, Welker pondered the possibility of being "submarined" by German hostiles, but he arrived in France safely. Those who boarded the ship in France for the return trip to the US were not so lucky, as a German submarine sank the Covington, July 1, 1918.

The Torpedoed USS Covington Sinking off Brest (July 2, 1918)
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Covington_(ID-1409)#/media/File:USS_Covington_(ID-1409)_sinking.jpg)

Welker escaped injury during his service, despite being involved in the deadly Meuse-Argonne Offensive late in the war. According to Dr. E. S. Evans, a Grinnell physician who met Welker in France in 1918, Welker "has been decorated with the croix de guerre by the French army," but I was not able to confirm this award. Welker had had to deal with enormous numbers of casualties during an assault upon German lines. When the Allied effort collapsed and the troops retreated, the doctor kept on "caring for the wounded as though they were far behind the lines instead of out in the middle of No Man's Land," which is where the French found him when they retook the territory a couple of days later (Grinnell Herald, March 18, 1919). 

After returning to the US in March 1919, Welker remained in the army until August, 1919 when he was honorably discharged (Harvard's Military Record in World War I, ed. Fred S. Meade [Boston, 1921], p. 999).

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Whether because of the war or something else, Welker decided to resume private practice, leaving both Fisk, from which he had enjoyed a leave "for the period of the war," and Nashville. He, Frankie and the girls settled in Detroit where Dr. Leo Welker opened a private practice. Fisk was sorry to see the Welkers go. The university published its regrets, commending Leo as a "splendid gentleman, who deserves to succeed." Moreover,

One cannot speak of our sense of loss at having him go permanently, without thinking of his winsome wife, our own Frances Caldwell, Fisk '11. She and her husband made a lovely family; and there will be a sense of community as well as University loss, for their leaving our section of the country (Fisk University News, vol. 10, no. 1, September 1919, p. 12).

The 1920 census found the Welker family living in what appears to have been a triplex at 324 Stanton Avenue, Detroit. Alice Battles, now in her 50s, settled with them for a time. Not much news from the Welker family made it into print in the 1920s. Probably the biggest news for the family was the arrival of Leo Edward, Jr. (1920-1985), born in Detroit in late June.

1932 Photograph of Intersection of E. Philadelphia and Westmoreland Avenues
(Detroit Historical Society, Bond Brothers Photography, Packard Motor Car Collection, 2009.021.024)

Sometime before 1930 the Welkers moved to 603 East Philadelphia Avenue, which is where the 1930 US Census found them. Both girls made their way through Detroit schools, Constance graduating from Northern High School in 1932. Connie then enrolled at Michigan State Normal (today's Eastern Michigan University), preparing for a career as a teacher (Tribune-Independent of Michigan, February 24, 1934). But when she married Ernest Sweeny in January 1937, she told officials that she was employed as an "assistant embalmer." Later, when delivering what was apparently her first child in May 1941, Connie died from hemorrhage, a function of a retained placenta (Michigan Department of Health, Certificate of Death, State File No. 278690).

1932 Yearbook of Northern High School, Detroit

Winifred Welker finished Northern High School in 1934. Like her mother, Winnie was a social bee, joining the Sub Debs and the Poli-Wogs clubs in school. "Her favorite pastimes," the newspaper said, "are dancing and swimming" (Detroit Tribune, October 28, 1933). While attending Wayne State University, Winnie was known as "one of the most popular students...[she has] a winning personality" (Detroit Tribune, December 26, 1936).  Like her mother, Winnie joined Alpha Kappa Alpha (Tribune-Independent of Michigan, August 3, 1935). Before she finished her degree, Winnie married Walter A. Cochran (1917-1964) in Detroit (June 11, 1937). The couple had just one child, Lynn (1943-1977).

Undated Photograph of Northern High School, Detroit (1917-2007)
(https://historicdetroit.org/buildings/northern-high-school)

Young Leo Welker left fewer records in his wake, but he must have finished high school in 1937 or 1938. When he registered for the draft in 1941, Leo was working as a foundry worker at Ford's giant River Rouge plant and was not yet married, telling draft officials that the person most likely to know his whereabouts was his sister, Winifred, who by that time was married but living without her husband at the family home at 503 Chandler. Soon after registering for the draft, Leo enlisted in the Army, serving into 1943 and rising to the rank of Sergeant in the 9th Cavalry. In 1949 Leo became office manager of the Detroit Tribune, then was quickly promoted to Secretary to the Board of Midwest Publishing Company, the newspaper's owner (Detroit Tribune, February 5, 1949; ibid., March 4, 1949). In 1943 Leo married a Chicago woman, Ernestine McGill, who in autumn 1944 gave birth to their first (and only?) child, Leo III.  Leo and Ernestine divorced in 1947, Leo later marrying Jewelle Delores Colley (1928-1994).  

Frances Caldwell Welker ("Frankie") remained active in the black sorority during her Detroit years. In 1936, for example, as the Depression pushed down harder upon America, Frankie directed an A. K. A.-sponsored play ("the New York Idea") at the local YWCA (Detroit Tribune, February 29, 1936). Eighteen months later both Frankie and Winnie took part in an A. K. A. production of "Medea" (Detroit Tribune, July 3, 1937). Meanwhile, the Welkers moved to a new Detroit address, 503 Chandler. Frankie's name appears often in the society pages of Detroit's black newspapers in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Leo, Sr. also seems to have been active in the Detroit African American community, if not so active as his wife and daughter. As a member of the Regis Club, for instance, he hosted a 1936 meeting of the club to discuss "the relative merits of the Democratic and Republican candidates" (Detroit Tribune, November 14, 1936). But Leo's health was declining. In late winter 1936 he was diagnosed with "dry gangrene" in his right foot, which was amputated in January 1937. An injury or war wound might cause dry gangrene, but I did not find evidence of a war wound or a subsequent injury. Gangrene might also accompany diseases that affect the circulatory system, but nothing in the record asserts that Welker suffered from diabetes or Raynaud's disease. The Colfax Clipper asserted that thrombosis in his foot had caused the problem, cutting off circulation and initiating gangrene (March 11, 1937). In the end, arteriosclerosis was diagnosed, and finally identified as the primary cause of death, which came to Leo Edward Welker on March 2, 1937. 

There is considerable irony in this fate of the one-time bicycling phenom whose youthful arteries had pumped blood vigorously through Leo Welker's body as his bicycle sped along Iowa's collegiate tracks. Welker was only 57 when he died; better health could have given him a couple more decades of life. Even at 57, however, Leo Welker had lived a remarkable life. With his mother's constant support, he had become not only an outstanding athlete, but also a highly-respected medical doctor, one of a small cadre of African American physicians trained at Harvard. Welker had also served his country when it was at war, and had created a family that was much admired. It was a successful life that had included stops at Cambridge, Massachusetts and World War I France, but it had begun with a bicycle moving swiftly across central Iowa.

PS. Special thanks to Harley McIlrath and John Kissane who first alerted me to Leo Welker when we were discussing track in 1900-Iowa.

When Doctors Made House Calls...With Radium!

If you're old enough, you may remember that sometimes a doctor visited your house to treat a patient; sadly, that practice has long disappeared in many places. In early twentieth-century Grinnell, however, physicians often made house calls, even though they also worked from an office downtown. To keep tabs on patients, treatments, and bills, these doctors—without the staff of receptionists, schedulers, billing specialists, and attendant nurses now peopling doctors' offices—kept "visiting lists." Just as their name implies, these booklets identified the dates of a doctor's visit, the patient, the charge, and sometimes a brief indication of treatment. 

An example of visiting list booklet provided free to physicians

Some companies printed these booklets to sell to physicians, and others produced them with advertisements included, donating the booklets to doctors with the hope that they might influence the doctor's choice of medicine or therapeutic apparatus. Most of these "visiting lists" have disappeared, but the visiting lists of Dr. John Love from Whiting, Kansas survive,  as do some 45 visiting lists of Dr. John Janvier Black in Delaware, and four volumes of visiting lists from Dr. J. H. Kelley of Parkersburg, West Virginia. No doubt there are others.

Title Page of Pearl Somers's 1927 Physician's Visiting List
(Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives, US USIaGG, MS/MS 01.131;
P. E. Somers Collection, 1914-1927)

In Grinnell, however, despite the fact that most physicians in early Grinnell almost certainly kept visiting lists, local archives preserve the visiting lists of only one Grinnell doctor—Pearl E. Somers—and for only a few years of his long practice (1914, 1923, 1925, and 1927). These limitations guarantee that we cannot know how all Grinnell physicians operated; we cannot even be sure how typical these years were for Dr. Somers, whose practice began in 1898 and lasted until a few years before his 1952 death. Nevertheless, the surviving physician's visiting lists offer considerable insight into medical practice in early Grinnell, including Dr. Somers's 1920s commitment to radium therapy. Today's post examines Dr. Somers's visiting lists and what they tell us about illness and medicine in 1920s Grinnell.

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Photograph  (ca. 1894) of Pearl E. Somers
(Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives,US-IaGG MS/MS 01.75, Dunham/Grinnell Photograph Collection, 1893-1894)

Pearl Ellsworth Somers was born in 1870 in Green Mountain, Iowa and graduated from Marshalltown High School in 1889. After a year at the Academy at Iowa (Grinnell) College, he enrolled at Iowa College, from which, after an exceptionally successful athletic and academic experience, he graduated in 1894. Three years later he completed Rush Medical college, and in 1898 began medical practice in Grinnell. Member of several local clubs, Somers also served Grinnell College as trustee, was vice-president of the Iowa State Medical Society and headed the Poweshiek County medical society. He established his first office above the old Grinnell Savings Bank on 4th Avenue; later he shared offices in the Grinnell Block with Doctors E. F. Talbott (1873-1943), E. S.Evans (1880-1930), and J. W. Cogswell (1883-1950). In the 1920s he had an office at 825 4th Avenue above Candyland, sharing space with Dr. Edwin E. Harris (1867-1938).

4th Avenue in Grinnell (ca. 1930), showing Candyland, above which Somers had his office
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A6216)

As local advertising confirms, some doctors opened their offices for limited hours, devoting the majority of their working days to home visits and other obligations. Pearl Somers, for instance, who at various times contracted with Grinnell College to serve the student athletes as well as the college's students, advertised in the student newspaper that his office was open only in the afternoons. The rest of the day, Dr. Somers invested in visiting his patients.

Scarlet and Black, November 12, 1904

In early Grinnell, hospital visits were rare. Lucille "Sid" Potts (1910-2007), when interviewed for the "Voices of the Past" project in 1992, told her interviewer that 

People didn't go to the hospital in those days. A lot of them had their babies at home, and people didn't go to the hospital...You didn't go to a doctor or to a hospital until practically you were ready to die....[Doctors] came to your home. You could call, and they would come to your home. My brother was born in our home on Broad Street.

Stub Preston (1903-1999) told interviewers that he had been "born at 823 East Street in Grinnell, May 30th, 1903. They tell me it was on the kitchen table...and my mother would be taken into a hot tub and then brought out on the kitchen table for the delivery...." John Parish (1904-1997), himself a doctor, recalled that when he began practice in Grinnell in 1933 "a large percentage [of deliveries] still took place in the home." Grinnell doctors also went calling on their patients for numerous illnesses and accidents. For instance, Laura Matlack Wieman (1913-1997) remembered her family's doctor having come to their Grinnell home to treat her visiting grandmother: "he treated her on the dining room table." When called down to Deep River or Brooklyn, Dr. O. F. Parish (1873-1947) would sometimes, as his son remembered,  

pack up his portable operating table, put it in the trunk, and take a nurse along and packs of sterilized instruments and gauze and so forth and go down and operate in the home...he would occasionally do an operation in the country.

In 1901 Pearl Somers organized the first Grinnell hospital at 1127 Park Street, making provision for up to 8 patients as well as space for surgery. Unable to keep up with both the hospital and his practice, Somers soon closed the Park Street facility, so for a time Grinnell had no hospital at all. But in 1908 Dr. Somers helped organize the Grinnell Community Hospital at 1030 Elm Street, adjacent to Sixth Avenue. The building could boast only a half-dozen rooms whose names reflected local donors' generosity—Knights of Pythias; PEO; Elks; McMurray, Norris, etc. No more than twelve patients at a time could be accommodated there (Polk's Medical Register and Directory of North America [Detroit: R. L. Polk Co., 1910], p. 658). Consequently, until the two new hospitals in Grinnell—St. Francis Hospital and Grinnell Community Hospital—opened their doors in 1919, medicine in Grinnell required house calls, and they remained common in Grinnell until the 1950s or 1960s.

1910 Photograph of Grinnell Community Hospital
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A14514)

The first few generations of Grinnell doctors, of course, made their house calls by horse and buggy. In the early days of his practice, O. F. Parish, for example, whose office was upstairs on the west side of Broad Street, would cross over to the livery on the east side of the street and rent a horse and buggy. Pearl Somers was the first physician in town to own an automobile. John Parish remembered it as "a little two cylinder car...[that would] putt-putt around town and scare all the horses...," but evidently Dr. Somers's first car, a 1902 Oldsmobile (Grinnell Herald, May 16, 1902), had only one cylinder! 

1902 Oldsmobile Runabout (Oldsmobile_Curved_Dash_Runabout_1902.jpg) 

As more powerful automobiles appeared, especially once enclosed sedans came on the market, local doctors found more reliable vehicles in which to do their rounds. Dr. John Padgham was driving a Chalmers coupe roadster in 1916 (Grinnell Register, 20 July 1916); in 1912 Dr. E. F. Talbott drove a 16-horsepower Maxwell (ibid., March 29, 1912); and Dr. O. F. Parish, whose first automobile had been a modest runabout, by 1914 was driving a Studebaker (ibid., 27 April 1914). Automobiles considerably lessened the strain on doctors' house calls, especially when doctors had to visit country farms and travel on muddy or gravel roads. 

Undated Photo of a Restored 1914 Studebaker Roadster
(https://www.texomaclassics.com/1914-studebaker)

To judge by Somers's visitation lists, Grinnell doctors might have made a house call any day of the week. We know from Somers's 1923 book that on Sunday, February 18, for example, he made two visits; the next day he met nine patients, and 8 more on Tuesday. Wednesday the 21st the doctor saw just five patients, but met 11 on Thursday, 12 on Friday, and 4 more on Saturday. The next day, another Sunday, Somers had seven patients to attend to. Although Mrs. James Tompkins (mother of Mrs. B. J. Ricker) may have constituted a special case, during 1923 as her health deteriorated, Somers visited Tompkins at the Ricker household almost every day from May through December.

Unfortunately, Somers did not note the time of each appointment, but it seems likely that he was called out at any time of day or night, especially when attending to the delivery of children. At the same time, many calls must have been routine, requiring relatively little time from the doctor, since Somers charged most patients just two or three dollars. These small bills could add up though, as Somers himself showed in his 1914 visit book, in which he kept a running total of his income. Over the course of 1914 he figured that he had billed patients for a total of $5833.50, about $160,000 in today's coin.

Overall, then, a physician in early Grinnell could expect to be busy most days of the week, day or night, except, perhaps, when on vacation. Somers's 1925 visitation list blocked out the six weeks between April 24 and June 11 for a "Florida trip." This, however, was the exception; Like other veteran Grinnell doctors of the time, P. E. Somers was busy with his practice almost every day of the year.

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All Grinnell doctors made house calls, but it appears that only one adopted radium therapy and "took it on the road" with him—P. E. Somers. When the then-new Grinnell Community Hospital acquired its first batch of radium in 1920, Somers and a colleague who soon left Grinnell (L. A. Hopkins) undertook the training necessary to dispense safely this new, powerful treatment.

Scarlet and Black, March 17, 1920

In March 1920 Somers left town for several weeks, training in Pittsburgh and New York (Marshalltown Evening Times-Republican, March 19, 1920). Exactly when Somers began to practice with radium is not known, but presumably he began to apply his newly-learned technique soon after returning from his training out East. In any case, by October 1923 radium therapy had found a warm reception in Grinnell, as the Grinnell Community Hospital bulletin of that date firmly embraced radium, calling it "the best single agent in the treatment of cancers and should be used in all inoperable cases and is the treatment of choice in cancers of the skin." It seems likely, therefore, that, shortly after his return from the East Coast, Somers began to apply radium in his medical practice, perhaps initially only in the hospital.

Somers's visitation books make clear that no later than 1923 he was taking radium with him on house calls. That year Somers recorded having used radium therapy (denoted by "Ra" in his visitation lists) 35 times—twelve times in October alone. His 1925 visitation list reports another 25 applications of radium before August, after which Somers seems to have abandoned radium therapy altogether: his 1927 visitation list does not mention radium therapy at all. It seems, therefore, that, although Somers originally adopted radium treatment with enthusiasm, by mid-1925 the gloss had worn off. That year for the first time an independent investigation had confirmed that the "Radium Girls," who painted watch and clock faces with a radium mixture, had been injured seriously (even fatally) by radium. Perhaps this news affected Somers's view of the one-time miracle therapy.

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Inasmuch as radium's radioactivity could be damaging to someone carrying it around all day every day, Somers had to have had a safe way of transporting the radium. His kit, whatever it was, does not survive, but it seems likely that he used a carrying case like the one advertised by the Radium Company of Colorado. The velvet-lined box provided a snug fit for a one-inch in diameter, nickel-plated, lead-lined container within which the physician might store the glass tube of radium solution, itself held in a silver container sheathed by a brass capsule (Technique of Radium Application, 2nd ed. [Denver: Radium Company of Colorado, 1921], p. 22).

Radium Carrying Case
(Technique of Radium Application, 2nd ed. [Denver: Radium Company of Colorado, 1921], p. 22)

According to the Radium Company of Colorado, radium bromide, radium chloride, radium carbonate, and radium sulphate all might serve the physician's needs, depending upon the intensity of radium thought desirable for treatment (Technique of Radium Application, p. 21). For various skin cancers and other cancers on the body's exterior, experts recommended applying the glass tube directly upon the cancerous tissue for a fixed period of time; to reduce the radiation's intensity, physicians might apply the silver tube within which the glass tube remained, thereby restraining somewhat the active radiation; still less intensive treatment might come by applying the glass tube surrounded by both the silver and brass capsules (ibid., p. 22). 

Tumors within the body called for a different device by which the physician could place the radium adjacent to the cancerous tissue. For uterine cancers, for example, experts recommended a uterine sound with a brass container of radium at the end.

In this way the radium can be shifted along the uterine canal, beginning by inserting the radium well up into the fundus and radiating in that location for a period of twelve to eighteen hours...The whole applicator is covered with a rubber dam [to protect adjacent, non-cancerous tissue] (ibid., p. 25).

For vaginal cancers a different applicator was imagined: dental wax moulded around a lead plate permitted the practitioner to insert the glass tubes within the wax but adjusted so that "the tubes are in apposition with the seat of pathology" (ibid., p. 26). A surprising variety of instruments might serve to apply radium to the larynx, pharynx, tonsils, and esophagus; gold and steel-alloy needles also made it possible for physicians to reach tumors below the skin.

Suggested Applicator for Vaginal Cancers
(Technique, p. 26).

It seems unlikely that Somers carried all this equipment, and therefore unlikely that on his house calls he applied radium therapy to all cancers. Inasmuch as Somers did not note the diagnoses that prompted him to apply radium, we cannot be sure exactly how extensive his radium therapy was. Moreover, he may well have treated some patients at the hospital instead of at their homes, a fact we cannot confirm until the Grinnell community hospital register for the 1920s surfaces. However, Somers did identify the patients, some of whom endured radium therapy numerous times. He also indicated the charges, which proved to be variable, an indication, perhaps, of how intensive was the therapy. 

A Page from February 1923 Visiting List of Dr. Pearl E. Somers 
(Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives, MS 01.131 P. E. Somers Collection 1914-1927)

Mrs. Henry Booknau (Somers used this variant of his patient's name, which in other documents appears as Buchenau), for instance, received two radium treatments in February 1923 at her home at 834 Summer Street, and three more in March that year. Her name disappears from the visitation lists until May 1925 when Somers returned, beginning an intensive course of radium treatment. May 14, 15, and 16, 1925 he applied radium to Mrs. Buchenau, then again on the 20th, 24th, and 29th. Two last treatments occurred on June 3rd and 8th. Since Somers's 1924 visitation list does not survive, we cannot know how often she saw Somers that year, but from the books that remain we know that altogether Mrs. Buchenau had perhaps a dozen close encounters with radium.

To judge by the charges Somers made, Mrs. Buchenau received the maximum dosage: initially he charged her $35 for each application (the most he ever charged for radium) and $25 the other times. All this medical attention makes one wonder what was Mrs. Buchenau's affliction and how the radium affected her. Unfortunately, I could find nothing to identify her illness, but the radium treatments apparently did her little harm, as she died of a stroke only in January 1956 when she was eighty years old. Just 51 when she received her first radium treatment from Dr. Somers, Rose Buchenau lived thirty years thereafter, despite—or perhaps because of—her intensive experience with radium.

No other Somers patient received so much radium. Mrs. Warren Kroh (1030 Pearl Street) and Mrs. Otto Broders (Malcom) both received a half-dozen serious treatments: $25 for each application. Both lived some years after having received the radium, although not so long a life as Mrs. Buchenau enjoyed. Carrie Kroh (1873-1943) died in 1943 of an unspecified "lingering illness," but Catherine Broders (1873-1932) perished in 1932 from "carcinoma of the ovary and small intestine." It seems unlikely that Carrie Kroh, who lived twenty years after her encounter with radium, suffered deadly injury from the treatment. Even Catherine Broders's death, nine years after Somers applied radium to some part of her body, seems difficult to blame on radium therapy. Indeed, it may be that the cancer that killed her was the very reason that Somers treated her with radium, and might thereby have helped extend her life and delay cancer's victory.

1930 Death Certificate for Joseph McConnell
("Iowa, County Death Records, 1880-1992," database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XV3N-NFQ : 9 September 2021)

Somers's visitation lists identify another sixteen patients whom he treated with radium. Joseph McConnell (1861-1930) had Dr. Somers bring the radium kit to his Brooklyn home a half-dozen times in April and May 1925. Each dose, billed at $25, was presumably maximum exposure, and may have been directed to carcinoma of the face, a condition noted on McConnell's death certificate as having been diagnosed in 1927. However, doctors attributed McConnell's death primarily to an "acute intestinal obstruction," a vague expression that might reference a tumor. When he died in April 1930, McConnell was still five years past his radium treatment documented in Somers's visitation lists.

Undated Photograph of Grinnell College President, J. H. T. Main (1859-1931)
(Scarlet and Black, April 8, 1931

Other Somers patients had less experience with radium. Perhaps the most well-known of his clients was Mrs. J. H. T. Main (wife of the Grinnell College President, J. H. T. Main), who in March 1923 endured two radium treatments, both of which were apparently less intense than McConnell's: Somers charged $20 for each visit rather than the $35 or $25 he charged Mrs. Buchenau. It is frustrating not to learn Mrs. Main's diagnosis, but the radium, whatever Somers intended it to treat, seems not to have much affected Mrs. Main who died in April 1938; the death certificate noted that since 1934 she had suffered from cardio-renal disease, judged to have been the primary cause of death. 

Similarly unaffected by the radium was Mrs. James Rule (1849-1932) who lived at 1410 4th Avenue. Dr. Somers applied radium treatment to her twice in April 1923; both applications were evidently less than maximum intensity, as Somers charged only $17.50 for each. In mid-October of that year Somers was back with his radium, this time charging $25 for what was evidently a maximum dosage. When Isabel Rule died in April 1932, nine years after her radium treatments, Dr. E. E. Harris, who signed her death certificate, gave as cause of death both "old age" (she was 82) and "cancer of the scalp." Certainly Somers could easily have attempted radium treatment for cancer of the scalp, but no extant record allows us to confirm this suspicion.

George Mason (1881-1967) also had three radium treatments in 1923, but he survived more than forty years afterward. His wife, Martha Ann Mason (1887-1939), submitted to an apparently mild ($15) radium treatment just once around the time her husband received his last dose. Dying in 1939, she did not live so long as George, but still lived sixteen years after having experience with radium.

Undated Photograph of Professor Roy H. Perring (1874-1943)
(Scarlet & Black, October 15, 1943)

At least five other Somers patients received two radium treatments. Roy H. Perring, for example, a Professor of German at Grinnell College who resided at 605 Tenth Avenue, received intense doses twice in May 1923. But when he died in 1943, twenty years after his encounter with radium, it was a heart attack, not cancer, that took him.

A few of Dr. Somers's patients died soon after treatment, but not necessarily from the illness for which Somers prescribed radium. John S. Miller (1857-1926), for instance, received two doses of radium in March 1925, and died at his West Street home in September 1926. But it was pneumonia that killed Miller, a disease for which radium was no help and an illness that cannot be blamed on radium. Many other Somers patients died long after their encounter with radium. Virgil Adams (d. 2006), for instance, who seems to have had a light dose of radium in July 1925, died more than eighty years later (Des Moines Register, November 12, 2006). William Dodge, who lived in the Brande Apartments in Grinnell, had Dr. Somers treat him in spring 1923, but he died an octogenarian in 1955, more than thirty years after Somers packed up his radium tube.

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The extant visitation lists of Dr. Pearl Somers, despite their limitations, describe the wide-ranging activity of a small-town doctor early in the twentieth century. It would be interesting to compile a list of all Somers's patients to see what part of the town the good doctor served. Even better would have been details about what illnesses or accidents convinced Grinnellians to summon the doctor; regrettably, Somers did not find it necessary to commit this information to his visitation lists. Consequently, we can only surmise that, as he jumped into his old Oldsmobile or whatever automobiles he later owned, he set out day or night, weekend or weekday to serve patients in the greater Grinnell area. We can only suppose that other Grinnell doctors of the time did the same.

What definitely distinguished Somers's practice from his medical colleagues, however, was his commitment to radium therapy. The lack of detail in the surviving records prevents us from establishing a clear picture of what illnesses Somers treated with radium and how broad a selection of applicators he used. All the same, the 1923 and 1925 visitation lists confirm that Somers embraced the new technology; not only did he agree to leave town to undertake the necessary training in Pittsburgh and New York, but we know from his visitation lists that he pursued radium therapy with some enthusiasm, at least until August 1925 when circumstances persuaded him to drop it abruptly.

The Cover of a Recent Study of Women Poisoned by Radium

Studies like that done on the Radium Girls make clear that radium, irresponsibly handled, could be destructive. As follow-up of Pearl Somers's patients makes clear, however, the Grinnell doctor exercised admirable care with this powerful element. No doubt he was anxious to cure the cancers he treated, but he seems not to have allowed that high-minded motive to overwhelm good judgment, as the later lives of his patients demonstrate. Most lived many years (in some cases, decades) after their encounter with radium. And none seem to have suffered serious injury as a result of the radium Somers applied. It seems unlikely that the men and women who entrusted their health to Dr. Somers fully understood the potency or appreciated the danger that radium constituted. But they trusted their doctor who recommended the therapy and the results—whether or not the therapy cured the original problem—seem to have vindicated their confidence in the Grinnell physician who journeyed to their homes to treat their illness.