A purported second wife tried to claim racetrack’s original namesake
Few people talk about A. Barret Dade these days, even though his name is plastered across the grandstand’s south wall of what is now Ellis Park.
The racetrack was renamed Ellis Park in 1954 to honor James C. Ellis, the man who bought it at bankruptcy auction and kept the horses running during its early decades.
But for 32 years it was known as Dade Park, because Dade was so highly regarded in the racing community during the approximately 25 years he started races throughout the United States and Canada. Starting races in today’s mechanized age is largely without controversy, but can you imagine trying to ensure a field of frisky thoroughbreds line up at a ribbon and start running at the same time?
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Dade was on the board of directors of the Green River Jockey Club – the developer and original owner of the racetrack in 1922 – and also waved the flag to begin the track’s first race. As well as races on the third day. But that was the last time he started races because of heart trouble.
He stayed through the end of the first meet here and then he and his wife went to New Orleans, thinking the warmer climate would improve his health. He died of pneumonia there Jan. 11, 1923, at age 57.
“He was the best-known starter in this country,” The Gleaner said Jan. 12 in announcing his death. “His fairness at the post and his unfailing courtesy and good humor at all times caused turfmen to never question his starts or setting down jockeys who were guilty of infraction of track rules. Jockeys knew when Mr. Dade was handling the flag they would all be treated alike, and they loved him with devotion.”
Dade was born in Virginia in 1865 and didn’t begin his starting career until the closing years of the 19th Century. He was racing a string of horses at the former fairgrounds track in St. Louis at that time and had been assisting the starter, who suddenly became ill. Track officials asked Dade to officiate.
“He got the field off in perfect order and he was retained for the remainder of the meeting.” Frank DuChamp of Henderson was there that day. “Duchamp probably is the last living man who saw him start his first and last races,” The Gleaner reported.
“Mr. Dade started more big races than any starter in the United States and Canada. Last May he sent away the Kentucky Derby field to a perfect start. The purse (for first place was $53,775) the largest ever hung up on this continent.”
A contingent of local people went to Princeton to meet the Illinois Central train that was bringing Dade’s body back home.
The funeral was conducted at the house of his brother, Albert Dade, and Alice P. Taylor of Christmas concert fame was part of a quartet that sang two songs, according to The Gleaner of Jan. 14. He was buried in the family plot at Fernwood Cemetery.
The Gleaner of Jan. 19 carried resolutions passed by the Kentucky Racing Commission, which praised his “character and sterling integrity, his rare skill as an official and his unvarying courtesy.”
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It appears that a great many other people across the United States – as well as in Canada, Cuba and Mexico – wanted to pay their respects. Horsemen organized a fund “to erect a suitable headstone” over his grave. Initially, they were asking people to donate no more than $10 each for the stone, according to the Jan. 17 Gleaner, and the initial goal was $1,000.
The Gleaner of Jan. 28 noted the fund had gone “over the top” -- $1,240 -- without hearing yet from Tijuana, Cuba, or other faraway places. It was just getting started, though. The Gleaner of Feb. 8 reported more than $2,000 had been collected – and that a larger grave plot had been bought to handle the monument. Many of the donations were accompanied by letters singing Dade’s praises.
The March 11 Gleaner reported the fund had collected $3,018 and no further money would be accepted. “So popular and so honored was Starter Dade that it needed but the mere suggestion of a memorial to bring a flood of subscriptions.”
The monument is an 11-foot-tall cross made of Barre granite from Vermont which says it was “erected by friends, horsemen and breeders of the United States and Canada.”
About the same time the monument subscription drive was ending a startling story appeared in The Gleaner of March 16, which said a Mrs. Wilbur Howard of New Orleans had come to Henderson to see whether Dade was the missing husband she had been seeking for years. She had seen Dade’s photo in a newspaper (the same one that accompanies this article) which also ran with The Gleaner’s article announcing his death.
Dade’s widow, the former Florence Swan of Brooklyn, received her cordially and spent two hours with her.
Mrs. Howard said she and her husband married in New Orleans in 1900, traveled to Central America for their honeymoon, and then lived in South America for seven months before returning to the United States.
Her husband had business interests in Latin America and in 1909 she got a letter from the American consul in Guatemala saying he had died there. But she later heard reports of him being in St. Louis. That prompted her long search.
Her trip to Henderson was in vain, though. After comparing photographs, and samples of their husbands’ handwriting, the two widows concluded they were separate men. Dr. W.A. Quinn also provided papers demonstrating Dade was in St. Louis the entire year of 1900.
Joseph A. Murphy was the man who began the tombstone fund and on two separate occasions he wrote to The Gleaner – on March 17 and April 1 -- saying it was “preposterous” for Howard to claim Dade was her husband. Murphy said both he and Dade were at the St. Louis fairgrounds for the entire 1900 meet.
“This woman is unquestionably of unsound mind and I am surprised that your correspondent should have taken her seriously.
“This is the fifth man she has ‘discovered’ was her husband. The records of the American consul at Guatemala show that Howard died there in 1909, but this woman had refused to accept this evidence.
“I was Barret Dade’s closest friend. I knew him intimately for 30 years and no man ever lived who knew and practiced the strict code of moral ethics more rigidly than he.”
75 YEARS AGO
Walter L. LeBas, a shift supervisor at the ammonia plant, was killed in a noon explosion and fire in the compression room, according to The Gleaner of Jan. 13, 1948.
It was the plant’s first – and possibly only – fatality.
“The resultant fire was brought under control in a few minutes by the plant fire department,” said Major Elmer Fizer, commanding officer at the Ohio River Ordnance Works, which produced anhydrous ammonia throughout the war effort.
Three days later – on Jan. 16 – The Gleaner reported that a Minneapolis newspaper’s account of LeBas’ death had come to the notice of a long-lost brother.
Edgar LeBas said he had read an account of his brother’s death, whom he had sought for 14 years, and noticed the similarity in names. He sent a telegram to the Salvation Army here and the relationship was confirmed.
50 YEARS AGO
What is now the Earle C. Clements Job Corps Center near Morganfield was back to normal after a series of disturbances over the previous weekend, The Gleaner reported Jan. 12, 1973.
Five corpsmen were charged with arson in U.S. District Court in Owensboro following the burning of an administrative office building and an automobile owned by a maintenance man at the center.
Eight other corpsmen were given administrative discipline in connection with the incident.
The trouble began about 7:30 p.m. Jan. 6 when a late-model Chevrolet owned by Larry Woods was overturned and both it and the orientation building were set ablaze. The orientation building housed new corpsmen.
25 YEARS AGO
A Jan. 11, 1998, article in The Gleaner noted five Henderson Police Department patrolmen had resigned during the final two weeks of 1997.
That left the department nine officers short of its full 55-member complement.
“There are very few officers who aren’t looking for jobs somewhere else,” said Mike Wells, one of those who had recently resigned.
The problems, in a nutshell, were relatively low pay and few opportunities for advancement. The previous April a proposal to recognize unions of fire and police personnel had failed before the Henderson City Commission on a 3-2 vote.
The Gleaner of Jan. 28 reported the city commission had passed first reading of an ordinance broadening the scope of a pay raise for police and fire personnel, which gave them part, but not all, of what they wanted.
Readers of The Gleaner can reach Frank Boyett at YesNews42@yahoo.com or on Twitter at @BoyettFrank.
This article originally appeared on Henderson Gleaner: A purported second wife tried to claim racetrack’s original namesake
