By Diane Euston
In the last issue of the Telegraph, we explored Kentuckians James and Eleanor Fry McGee who were some of the first white settlers in the area. In 1828, the McGees, with seven children in tow, moved to land in the heart of today’s downtown Kansas City. They owned at one time over 1,000 acres of prime real estate.
McGee’s original farm extended roughly from 9th Street to the north to 23rd Street to the south, Troost Avenue to the east and west to Summit Street.
James (b. 1786), always the entrepreneur, quickly put a sawmill to work in building some of the area’s first structures. He didn’t slow down the older he got. James dabbled in multiple businesses, including a flour mill, sawmill and even a distillery fueled partially by a natural spring on his expansive acreage.
James passed away in 1840 when he was just 56 years old, and Eleanor continued to live on her extensive landholdings near her 10 children until her death in 1880.
Their oldest son, Allen Burr Harrison McGee, who signed his name as “A.B.H.,” was the one who spent a large amount of time apprenticing under his father.
All of James’ sons greatly influenced the history of Kansas City. Fry built a structure on the riverfront and later influenced the pro-slavery ticket at 110-Mile Creek; Mobillion built a town within the wilderness and structured Kansas City’s first large boulevard- Grand Avenue, and Milt ran away from home, came back rich from the California goldfields and became mayor of Kansas City (more on the rest of the McGees in the next issue!).
But Allen stayed level-headed, fair and enterprising within the confines of Westport and Kansas City. He was cautious yet adventurous. His legacy would show no bounds.
Allen Burr Harrison McGee’s Early Life
When James H. McGee uprooted his family from Kentucky, Allen (b. 1815) was only 12 years old. His early life was filled with neighbors close by, family around the corner and comfortable structures surrounding him.
This was quickly gone and replaced with an unknown frontier when the family moved to Missouri. It wasn’t long before Allen’s devotion to his father’s dealings had him learning how to manage a large estate and multiple business ventures.
Early in his teen years, Allen assisted his father in the mill operations, started by the Roy brothers on OK Creek. The sawmill would help produce lumber for businesses and buildings in newly founded Westport, Mo.
Not long after, the desirable distillery business was the next undertaking by both father and son. A distillery near Indian Territory and thirsty transplants was just what the doctor ordered. Allen claimed in an 1898 article in the Kansas City Journal, “I’ve made whisky there the best you ever drank. They don’t make it no more nowadays like it.”
According to historian R. Richard Wohl, “[Allen] profited by being a dutiful son, from the training he received in managing his father’s various enterprises.”
In 1837, 21-year-old Allen traveled back to Kentucky and married 23-year-old Malinda Fry – a young woman certainly known to the family. Malinda was a double cousin. Her mother was James McGee’s sister, and her father was Allen’s mother’s brother.
This puts another spin on “kissing cousins.”
Connection to National History
The future of the Westport businesses resided in outfitting those traveling on the trails to the west. In 1837, a small company arrived in Westport from New Mexico, and according to John C. McCoy, “Capt. John A. Sutter, a Swiss gentleman of prominence” was part of this group. He recalled, “Within a short time. . . he bought the storehouse of Lucas & Kavanaugh and also purchased a farm that would later become the home of Allen B.H. McGee.”
Within 18 months, Sutter was broke. He even threatened to take his own life. In order to give him hope, McCoy provided him with “a honey sorrel packhorse and other necessities for travel westward.” Allen B.H. McGee provided a horse for Sutter’s companion, Wetler (also noted as “Wetter”).
Without the help from his friends, Sutter may have never made it to California in 1848- an event that would change the course of western expansion when he struck gold in California.
The gold rush sure did help out John C. McCoy and Allen McGee in their business ventures in Westport, Mo.
Powerful people with a future in the history of the nation seemed to gravitate toward Allen. When John Fremont (1813-1890), a well-known explorer and future Republican candidate for president, opted to elope with powerful Senator Thomas Hart Benton’s beautiful Southern belle daughter, Jessie in 1841, the tides were quite dangerous.
Sen. Benton was beside himself, and John Fremont was unapologetic. It was in Allen McGee’s own home where the two men met to hash it out. It is reported that Allen locked them in a room together and the men emerged amicable.
In November 1839, Allen’s father, James H. McGee gifted $1200 toward the $2500 sum to purchase part of his land. In turn, Allen and his wife moved to 160 acres of land just north of Westport, Mo. His new farm would border current-day Armour Blvd. to the north, 38th Street to the south, Valentine/Holly Street to the west and Broadway to the east.
Making Money in the Outfitting Business
One business venture wasn’t enough for young Allen. He began to “dabble” in the Indian trade and developed a reputation. He even worked with John C. McCoy surveying Indian lands. His power and prestige were enough for a group of Osage Indians to capture Allen and hold him until the government agreed to their demands. With the help of the government, Allen was released without any harm coming to him – even though Allen had thrown a young Osage Indian to the ground when the man had jumped on his horse.
After the death of his father in 1840, Allen continued to showcase his own talents in business. In 1846, he built a Sac and Fox Indian Agency in Westport. This was not an easy task in the day and took many connections and proposals. After three years of successful trading, he sold his interest and moved onto his next business venture.
In that same year, his wife Malinda died, leaving him with three young girls to raise (Molly, b. 1839, Christiana b. 1841 and Melinda b. 1843). In 1847, he didn’t stray too far from his roots and married his wife’s older sister, Christiana – another double cousin!
During this same period, he bought a mercantile store from McCoy in Westport and enlarged it. He had observed how the first hotel in the town, called Yoacham’s Tavern, was often full. Allen used this building as a new hotel at the corner of Pennsylvania and Westport Road in the town square. He called it McGee’s Tavern.
It was unofficially known as the “Catfish House” due to the chef’s specialty of fried catfish caught fresh out of the Kaw River. After a year, he sold his interest to John “Jack” Harris for a handsome profit. This was later known as the Harris House Hotel until 1922 when the building was razed.
By 1848, McGee turned his interests to the outfitting business. He could keenly sense the increase of supply and demand of those heading west to California thanks to his old friend, John Sutter. One of Allen’s biggest boasts in his older age was that his firm outfitted two of John Fremont’s expeditions.
In 1850, Allen was 100% devoted to the business. The Mexican War helped stimulate his business as trade on the Santa Fe Trail boomed.
It also helped that he had a relationship with a well-known pioneer of St. Louis named Robert Campbell (1804-1879). As people seeking their millions to the west left St. Louis and headed toward Westport Landing, Campbell referred them to Allen McGee’s business.
Allen was just 35 years old by the time he had accomplished all of this!
The Border Wars and Civil War
Allen’s outfitting business flourished for over a decade until the outbreak of the Civil War. At the ripe “old” age of 45, he was retired and living off his “investments.” He was referred to by the honorary title, Colonel, showcasing his importance amongst the blossoming City of Kansas.
Although Kansas City was slowly growing before the Civil War, the area was quite isolated as compared to the northeastern cities. Spending Christmas with loved ones far away was usually not possible, so it was common for neighbors to gather together to celebrate the holiday. In these simpler times, pioneers looked forward with joy to the festivities of the Christmas season.
Nelly McCoy Harris, daughter of Kansas City and Westport founder John Calvin McCoy, wrote, “We went to frolics early and stayed late, especially if the entertainments were at the homes of the McGee families . . . where they were so hospitable.”
I have a personal fondness for the great-grandchildren of A.B.H. McGee. They are my friends that I have fortunately met through my research and writing. Nelly, over 100 years ago, gushed over her personal relationships with them, stating, “The hearts of these McGees seemed to be overflowing with good will to all.”
But the antebellum era on the border was less than peaceful as Kansas Territory opened to white settlement and anti-slavery settlers moved west for cheap lands.
Allen B. H. McGee sided with the South, as he enslaved at least five people.
On his property near the current-day Uptown Theater on Broadway, Col. McGee had constructed a stone barn decades earlier that was somewhat of a landmark. It was 80 feet long, 40 feet wide and had walls two feet thick. The door was even studded with spikes.
To a passerby, it looked more like a fortress than a country barn. It was said he built it this way because the barn prior had been burned to the ground by someone “with a grudge against the colonel.”
During the Border Wars and Civil War, silverware and valuables were buried inside the barn. When the barn was removed in 1898 and the stones were to be used as a foundation for his son, Allen B.H. McGee II’s house at 3726 Washington (the house still stands today), the contractors found dozens of bayonet points left from people who tried to penetrate the barn and rob the Colonel.
Although never used as a fort, Allen used to laugh that it was useful in “keeping out the Jayhawkers.”
A Third Marriage and Retirement
In 1867, his second wife died and their one child passed away. Two years later, his third and final marriage to Susan Bruton Gill (b.1847), daughter of Col. Marcus Gill (1814-1886), merged two prominent pioneer families. She was nineteen. He was two months’ shy of his 54th birthday and essentially the same age as her father.
Susan, known as “Sue” to friends and family, was born in Bath County, Ky. and came with her parents and siblings to Jackson County, Mo. in 1854, buying up acreage south of the town of New Santa Fe in current-day South Kansas City. Today this land makes up the majority of Verona Hills subdivision.
Two children, Nellie (b. 1871) and Allen B.H. McGee II (b. 1875) were born to the couple. In 1882, Col. McGee began to sell off pieces of his land to make room for the Kansas City Exposition Grounds. By 1884, he built a prestigious vault for his family at Union Cemetery and moved his immediate family from the McGee burial ground on 20th Street between Broadway and Wyandotte to this sacred space.
In 1886, Allen replaced his frame house with a fine, three-story brick mansion complete with a turret and large, stained-glass windows at 37th and Broadway.
This home would be where Allen would host friends, tell stories to family and live out the rest of his life. His third wife, Susan died in 1901, and Allen, ever the patriarch, continued to hold onto his land and at his palatial house even after her death. His land had been partially sold and divided into what would become the Roanoke and Valentine neighborhoods in Midtown Kansas City.
In his older age, he watched as his friends passed away, deeply connected to the progress and early birth of Kansas City and Westport. His longtime friend, John Calvin McCoy (b. 1811) was one of the last of the early settlers to pass away in 1889.
When Allen arranged to have a company take photos of his gorgeous Victorian mansion at 37th and Broadway around 1901, he sat at his writing desk in his bedroom for one photo.
His sentiment to his old friend, John McCoy is evident; framed above his writing desk is the only known portrait of John Calvin McCoy. They were pioneers together before both Westport and Kansas City boomed. When they arrived in the area, the population of all of Jackson County, Mo. was just under 3,000.
By 1880, the population of Kansas City, Mo. was about 55,000. When John C. McCoy died in 1889, the population had soared to 133,000, a huge influx due to the growth of the railroads and stockyards.
The two friends saw so much in their lifetime.
In 1903, Col. McGee was struck with heart failure. In his final hours at his daughter, Nellie’s house, he talked of the pioneer days and the friends he had met along the way. He was proud, it was reported, of his record as a pioneer and he never tired of telling of the early times before the city had sprouted around him.
“My race is about run,” the 88-year-old Col. McGee said, “and I do not fear the end. Death is a debt we all have to pay to nature and I realize that the time to meet it has arrived.”
On October 8th, 1903, Allen Burr Harrison McGee closed his eyes one final time, thus ending his 75 years as the truest pioneer of Kansas City. He had outlived all his siblings and what remained was a living legacy in both his name and his enterprises.
He was buried in his impressive vault next to his wives at Union Cemetery.
Recalling the Past for a Better Future
Allen B.H. McGee’s home at 37th and Broadway was out of the family’s hands after Col. McGee’s death and by 1917, it was home to the Rochambeau Hotel. A 75-room establishment remodeled for its purposes, the Rochembeau became a well-known residential hotel.
In 1932, the old McGee house fell on harder times and while under another remodel, it mysteriously caught fire.
Arson was suspected and the owners were charged with the crime.
The spot that once boasted his beautiful home was gone; the land later became a leased parking lot for use of the Uptown Theater.
Descendants of Allen Burr Harrison McGee and his third wife, Sue Gill McGee through his son, A.B.H. McGee II (1875-1934) took over ownership of Marcus Gill’s homestead in current-day Verona Hills subdivision near Minor Drive and State Line Road.
The house, built in the 1850s as a log cabin, stayed in the family for generations until it was torn down by JC Nichols to make room for more suburban homes in 1978.
After I wrote my blog on Marcus Gill’s home near New Santa Fe, I was delighted when a descendant who grew up on the very farm contacted me. And those descendants are none other than James H. McGee’s great-great grandsons, Allen Burr Harrison McGee IV, known to friends and family as Burr, and John. Along with their brothers, Sandy and Pat, these four are still a part of Kansas City to the core.
So often I contact people and find out they know very little about their pioneer descendants. They shrug their shoulders and refer me to some distant cousin whose phone number may not even be correct since they haven’t spoken in 20 years. I’m used to a disconnect because it happens so often in large families as they split in several directions.
But this branch of the tree is nothing like that. I am inspired by the McGee Boys- “my” McGee Boys that have sat down, laughed, and shared stories with me. They are aware of their history, embrace it and are genuinely connected to it. They have pieces of it displayed in their homes and albums packed full of photographs and mementos.
This legacy is undoubtedly going to last a very long time. A.B.H. McGee’s namesake lives on as every first-born male generation since has named a son after him. Today, Burr’s son, A.B.H. McGee V (called Quint) has a son, A.B.H. McGee VI (called Harrison).
As I read article after article, book after book outlining the characteristics of Allen B.H. McGee, it became all too clear that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The McGee Boys have a strong countenance that reminds me so much of what I read and saw in old sepia-toned photographs. They possess so many of the characteristics of their great-grandfather, born over 200 years ago.
Kansas City certainly wouldn’t look the same – or may not possibly even exist as it does- without the influence of James H. McGee and his children. It’s more than just a street being named after their family; it’s important to embrace what once was there before us and reflect on how far we have come from “the embryo city” that once emerged from a land sale on the bluffs of the Missouri River.
In the next issue, Diane will expand on A.B.H. McGee’s brothers and their contributions to the history of Kansas City.