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Red Face, Blind or Squint-eyed in One Eye
By Jim Potter
My REWARD postcard sent from Ellsworth County, Kansas, to Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1904, identifies the fugitive as Rissley, but he was known as Charles J. Rissler. He’d been living in Ellsworth, Kansas, for at least eight months during 1904 before skipping town on December 10. On that Saturday, he made several purchases totaling $120, using his personal checks, after the bank had closed. ($120 in 1904 is equivalent to over $4,000 today.) It wasn’t until Monday morning that the merchants learned Rissler’s checks were worthless as he had withdrawn his money and left town.
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Ellsworth City Marshal “Marve” Merritt and Ellsworth County Sheriff “Jack” Hutchins would most likely have known Rissler (1,500 population in 1900) since he was described as a professional gambler.
After paying for items with worthless checks, Rissler reportedly took the midnight train for the West. Once out of town, he would have probably changed his name, but he would have grown weary of potentially being identified by law enforcement.
Rissler never knew when someone would recognize him from the detailed physical description printed and mailed on hundreds of postcards to sheriffs and chiefs of police. Each card offered a $25 reward for his arrest and detention. Rissler could hide but he couldn’t change his facial description, a “red face” with one “squint eye.”
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Marvin Merritt, born in Indiana in 1861, came west to Ellsworth, Kansas, where he resided in 1875. He had a long career as Ellsworth city marshal, being appointed in 1904 and continuing in that position until at least 1930 when he was 67 years old.
Besides Marve Merritt’s occupation as marshal, he ran a feed and breeding barn for horses and mules.
In 1921, the Ellsworth city council also appointed Merritt police court judge. I wonder if he ever arrested someone in the morning and found the same person guilty in the afternoon.
Marvin, or Marve, married Martha A. (maiden name unknown) in 1890 at VanBuren, Arkansas. She was born in Indiana in 1870. According to the 1900 and 1910 Census, she worked as a pattern cutter and seamstress in the dressmaking industry.
Marvin and Martha Merritt adopted a three-year-old girl in 1904. Cleora C. Heath joined the otherwise childless Merritt home after her mother, Minnie Heath, died of consumption. Cleora’s father Luther or Lou Heath (1859-1931), gave up his four children. Cleora and her sister were adopted within weeks of Minnie’s death, but the two boys were taken to the poor farm. (Don, the baby boy, died three months later: . . .”he has gone to meet his mother where cares and sorrows are unknown.” (Ellsworth Reporter, Jan. 12, 1905)
I found one newspaper article from 1912 that told of the Merritt family moving into their new home above the city jail. When a lawman and his family lived in the same building as the jail, that meant they cared for the prisoners. We may never know, but I’ll bet Martha held the duties of jail matron and cook.
Marvin and Martha Merritt’s daughter, Cleora C. Merritt, 18, married in 1918 at their Ellsworth home.
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John Henry “Jack” Hutchins was born in Ohio in 1863 during the Civil War. By 1880 he lived in Ellsworth County and in 1886 married Mary “Dessie” Desvinges McCumber. She was born in Ohio in 1864.
Jack was appointed Ellsworth city marshal in 1887 and served as Ellsworth County undersheriff 1890-1893. In 1893 he was elected sheriff, and re-elected in 1895. In that era, sheriffs could be elected to two consecutive two-year terms but were ineligible to seek a third consecutive term of office.
On a few occasions in 1895, Ellsworth businessmen enjoyed a holiday playing baseball. For one game they divided themselves into teams, the “Fats,” and the “Leans.” Hutchins, age 31, was the catcher on the Fats. On June 12, the Leans beat the Fats 37 to 28.
When Hutchins wasn’t working in law enforcement, he worked as a grain buyer, and at grain elevators.
Hutchins was elected sheriff again in 1904 and served one term 1905-1907. (He was defeated in a crowded Republican primary in 1906.) In 1905, (and probably his full term as sheriff) Jack, “Dessie,” and their four children, ages two to fourteen, lived in the sheriff’s residence on the second floor of the county jail.
In 1910, just three years after Hutchins left office, Ellsworth County finally built a jail to replace the 1873 building that had been condemned. In 1908, newspaper articles declared the crumbling jail in unsanitary condition and not strong enough for a prison. “The old jail is little more than a rat trap, and unless the sheriff watches carefully any prisoner could dig out in a few hours.” (The Wilson World, Jan. 16, 1908, p2)
The Ellsworth Cemetery is the resting place of both the longtime former city marshal and the sheriff. Each man is buried next to his spouse: Dessie Hutchins, 60, died in 1924, Jack Hutchins, 79, in 1942, Martha A. Merritt, about 67, died in 1937, and Marve Merritt, about 97, died in 1959.
Cleora Heath Merritt Saunders Eddy, died in 1980 at age 79 and is buried in Fort Riley Kansas.
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Charles J. Rissler, the fugitive who instigated my historical research, vanished into the West. I’ve been unable to locate Rissler before or after his short stay in Ellsworth. I’ve found no word of his apprehension, or located him in the US census, a newspaper article, or in a cemetery. What do you think Rissler did after he skipped town in 1904?
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Until next time, happy writing,
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I think he disappeared to Key West and lived out his life as Billy Bob Baker!
Was he good at playing cards?