Our Hero Was: The myth, the man, and the making of Kansas City’s Milt McGee

By Diane Euston

  In the last three issues of the Telegraph, we explored pioneers James McGee and his wife, Eleanor Fry. Then, we looked deeper into the lives of their sons, Allen, Fry and Mobillion.

  One son sets himself aside from the others, partially because he served as mayor of Kansas City. But his story is more than meets the eye.

  “Colorful” isn’t even a word that even begins to identify Elijah Milton “Milt” McGee, an incredible yet complicated man of early Kansas City. The son of some of the earliest white settlers in Jackson County, Mo., Milt’s life is surrounded by stories that catalog him as a trailblazer.

  It was in his genetic makeup to be as adventurous as he was, and he seamlessly over time – even in his advanced age – toed the line between a self-proclaimed valiant frontiersman and rich land speculator.

Early Life as an Explorer

  The fourth born son of James Hyatt McGee (1786-1840) and Eleanor McGee (1793-1880) arrived in 1819 and was named Elijah Milton McGee. He was commonly called “Milt” by friends and family.  Milt arrived in Missouri with his family from Shelby Co., Ky. and evidently received a very limited education. Reading his personal manuscript tells a story of a man of high opinion of himself, despite his multiple errors and erroneous writing style.

  In his own autobiography, written in third person and amusingly titled “Our Hero Was,” Milt described that in 1834 at 15 years old, he took an active part in the Mormon Wars. 

  There’s a bit of a problem with his timeline, and these discrepancies iy certainly raise questions about his credibility. The Mormon Wars didn’t occur until 1838 when Milt wasn’t even in Missouri. But there is evidence that shows his father and others were actively involved in the early expulsion of Mormons from Jackson County in 1833.

  Both Milt and his father were known to have explosive personalities that reared their ugly head from time to time.

  In about 1834, Milt had a large fight with his father which led him to leave home. He wrote that he “soon kicked up a [fuss] with his father [who] was of the same temperature [and so Milt] blacked the old gentlemen’s eye and left.”

  This action quickly led Milt to be disinherited from his father’s vast estate of 1,000 acres.

The Seminole War

  Milt was like so many teenagers who rebel against their parents- he was out of the home and actively looking for adventure. 

  In 1837, President Van Buren called upon Missourians familiar with the rough frontier to serve under Col. Richard Gentry (b. 1788). A Kentuckian by birth, Col. Gentry was one of the founders of Columbia, Mo. 

  The goal was to fight off the Seminole tribe who refused to leave current-day Florida.

  Gentry called for able-bodied volunteers, and a group of young men from Jackson County, Mo. formed their own regiment under the command of Col. James Chiles (1802-1883). 

  According to Milt’s autobiography, he enlisted and “much could be said here about his praise.” 

  There is one problem, though. The list of soldiers that appears in this regiment doesn’t include our valiant Milt McGee – but it does include his older brother, Mobillion. 

  It’s hard to imagine that Milt would have openly claimed he was a part of the Seminole Wars when his brother, Mobillion (1817-1888) was still around to confirm or deny this. Therefore, we are left to assume that his open declaration about his participation, reprinted in his lifetime in the local newspapers, is perhaps true.

  The Missouri troops gathered at Jefferson Barracks in October before boarding steamboats to New Orleans. They lost over half their horses in transport, causing about half of the volunteers to desert.

  Old Milt’s explanation of his involvement in the Seminole Wars doesn’t put him in a passive role. The then-18-year-old claimed that “he was ever present by his general’s side and was last to desert him in his hour of death.”

  Col. Gentry fell on Christmas Day 1837 “at the Battle of Ocachubby,” Milt wrote.

  In translation of Milt’s manuscript, he claimed he was at the Battle of Okeechobee where Col. Zachary Taylor, later president of the United States, failed to listen to Col. Gentry’s suggestion on how to best attack the Seminoles.

  Because Taylor outranked Gentry, his plan of attack was ignored. The result was catastrophic and cost him his life.

  Out of the 165 mounted volunteers from Missouri that served, 41 were killed – including Col. Gentry. The group traveled back to New Orleans and were mustered out of service at Jefferson Barracks in March 1838.

  Milt wrote, “The young hero returned to New Orleans on his way home when he heard of the wars of Texas.”

  He wasn’t quite ready to head home just yet.

Playing a Part in Texas History

  According to Milt, the possibility of fighting another battle lured him to Texas in lieu of returning to Missouri. 

  He claimed he talked to a few of his friends and opted to jump off the open boat at Matagorda Bay in southeastern Texas where he was “found in the ranks under the command of Gen. Sam Houston. He fought manfully at the battle of San Juanta and other scrmages.”

  What he claimed was he fought at San Jacinto, the decisive battle which ended the Texas Revolution. 

  He claimed that while serving, he “was generally [known] as the ‘beardless boy’ and a [great] favorite of the general.”

  But again, there was a serious flaw in his claim. San Jacinto was the last battle of the Texas Revolution and was fought two years prior to his alleged service in the Seminole Wars in April 1836!

  Regardless, young Milt McGee did, in fact, land in Texas before returning to Jackson County, Mo. There in Matagorda County in August 1838, The 19-year-old “hero” married 16-year-old Sarah Adaline DeMoss.

  Sarah’s pedigree included an impressive part in Texas history. Her father, Charles DeMoss (b. 1776) and her mother, Martha Bowles arrived in Texas with 33 families recruited by Stephen F. Austin. 

  Her father was one of Austin’s Old Three-Hundred colonists who were organized to receive land grants from the Mexican government. The DeMoss family was one of the families who left from Missouri in about 1821 to settle. 

  The Mexican government promised in these land grants that those who farmed would receive about 177 acres; those who would ranch would receive about 4,428 acres each.

  The prospect was too good to be true; Charles DeMoss along with his wife, Martha and oldest son, Peter (b. 1796) opted to uproot their families and relocate on Caney Creek in current-day Matagorda County.

  In about 1822, the couple welcomed Sarah Adeline DeMoss. 

  Tragedy soon struck, however. Charles and his wife, Martha were both allegedly murdered by a band of Native Americans in December 1826. Sarah was left in her oldest brother, Peter’s care.

  Although the time period doesn’t match up to good ole’ Milt McGee fighting in the Texas Revolution, he was part of other fighting that occurred during this tumultuous period.

  In 1840, tragic events unfolded. Known as the Great Comanche Raid of 1840, historian Donaly E. Brice describes it as “the boldest and most daring Indian depredation in the history of Texas.” 

  After peace negotiations failed with the Comanches in March 1840, a fight ensued that killed 35 of their warriors – including powerful chiefs. Due to this unfortunate event, the tribe was out for revenge.

  Starting August 5, the Comanches began their attack with approximately 500 warriors along for the ride. Through their attack that lasted several days, they killed at least 22 people. The towns were burned to the ground and looted. Several prisoners were taken as well. 

  In Milt’s harrowing autobiography, he claimed “he commanded a company against a large band of Indians that came into the settlements and destroyed the town of [Linnville] and other towns in the vicinity. There was great destruction towns burned and plundered women children and many slaves were murdered and carried off.”

  Milt claimed he fought at the helm against the Comanche, although he isn’t listed in the militia or in the Texas Rangers. He was clearly nearby when these events unfolded, as his wife’s family’s land was just about 30 miles from these unfortunate events.

From Missouri to California

  Shortly after the Raid of 1840, Milt McGee packed up his wife and relocated back to Jackson County, Mo., perhaps after receiving news that his father, James, had passed away. 

  In about 1842, Milt and his wife, Sarah, welcomed their one and only child that they named Gertrude (c. 1842-1899).

  Milt couldn’t seem to help himself. He’d only been back in Missouri for a few years when he got the fever to explore the west. In May 1843, a party of men led by Joseph B. Chiles (1810-1885) stopped at Fitzhugh (Watts) Mill at current-day 103rd Street and State Line to begin their journey to California.

  Joseph Chiles, also a veteran of the Seminole Wars, had explored California a few years prior as part of the Bidwell-Bartleson party.

   Along for the ride was Milt McGee and his two friends, Samuel J. Hensley and John J. Myers.  He claimed, “Three better soles never crossed the planes,” and he suggested never once was there a cross word between the men.

  The journey took eight months.

  Milt continued to travel west many times (some accounts state he went to California seven times), and it was suggested that he was on one of John Fremont’s early expeditions to the Rocky Mountains.  His own brother balked at claims that Milt was the actual author of Fremont’s “Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains.” 

  His oldest brother, Allen, told newspapers that Milt didn’t write the manuscript but said that Milt “rendered Fremont invaluable service in bringing him safely out of the wilderness.”

  That first expedition and subsequent trips to California without his wife and child may seem strange, but there may have been another reason instead of land speculation that caused him to feel it best he disappeared for a while.

   Allen McGee told the newspapers in 1890 that Milt “was obliged to leave Kansas City for selling liquor to the Indians. His father disinherited him, and he started for the west to make his fortune.”

  Records do indicate that Milt was charged by Indian Agent Richard Cummins with selling whiskey to the Native Americans. Although he was tried and owed the federal government money, Milt refused to pay and Cummins claimed in his records that “nobody knows where [Milt] has gone.”

  Instead of sticking around to face the consequences, Milt opted to join that expedition and spend several years traveling back and forth between Missouri and California.

  On that first trip to California, Milt claimed that he was wounded by the Indians and his hand was cupped permanently. But another story clarified that Milt wasn’t injured by the Indians; rather, he fell into a bear trap during a fight with the Indians, permanently handicapping his hand.

  When the company arrived in California in the fall 1843, he was “in the [greatest] deplorable condition imaginable.” The men had survived for seven weeks on “poor mule meat.”

  On one of his final trips to California in 1849, likely spirited by the gold rush, Milt McGee built the first log house in Shasta County, Calif. 

  His trips proved to be successful, as it is said that Milt McGee returned to Kansas City in the early 1850s with piles of money from successful gold mining. 

A Bit of a Border Ruffian

  With money burning a hole in his pocket and a sense of pride covering his face, Milt returned to the Kansas City area, buying 240 acres of prime land south of 12th St. bounded by Main to the west and Holmes to the east.

  This land would later be known as the business center of Kansas City.

  As he began his plans for cashing in on the growth of a city, he also began a notorious conquest as a border ruffian. One event in May 1855 made national papers. Charged with whiskey and a great hatred of the flood of eastern immigrants into Kansas Territory, Milt stormed the American Hotel in Kansas City. This hotel was owned by the Emigrant Aid Society, a group that helped pay up to 25% of the costs for these easterners to relocate into newly-opened Kansas Territory.

  They were largely abolitionists, and they were a threat to Milt’s plans to ensure Kansas was a slave state.

  After bouncing back and forth between two locations, Milt threatened that if the “damned abolitionists” who entered Kansas and came from “North of the Mason-Dixon line or belonged to the North” must leave the area at once or be thrown into the Missouri River.

  They swore to level the place and departed before going through with their threat. So was the life and of the early days of Kansas City during the Border Wars.

  For the record, Milt was Justice of the Peace at the time.

  Another incident in the early Border Wars tells of an interesting story where he and his allies secured a cannon “just in case” the strife continued to escalate. 

  The cannon, according to the Kansas City Journal, was “called ‘Uncle Milt’ after Mr. Milton McGee who used to furnish the powder when the city celebrated occasions before the war.”

Reimagining the Future of Kansas City

  Milt predicted that the fledgling settlement of the Town of Kansas would flower into one of the most enterprising settlements of the Midwest. In 1857, he platted a subdivision south of the city known today as “McGee’s Addition” to encourage people to travel south to his newly-built hotel at 16th and Grand Avenue.

  This hotel, commonly referred to as Planter’s, Farmer’s Exchange, and most commonly McGee’s Hotel, became a landmark during the Border Wars and the headquarters of many pro-slavery men who commonly stormed into Kansas Territory.

   To be clear, McGee’s Addition was way south at the time. Wagons had to drudge through practically impassable rocky roads perched on the bluffs to get to this new little settlement of the city.

  He platted a large thoroughfare through the center of his addition that he called Grand Avenue that was designed to combat the beautiful boulevards in the East. In the middle of McGee’s Addition, he built a park (aptly called McGee’s Park) and named the some of the streets after his family: Eleanor (Main St.), James (Walnut), Laurel (Oak) and Hackberry (Cherry) ran through the area, and later streets Mobillion, Milton, Gertrude, Catherine and Amelia were added. Holmes was named after early business partner, Nehemiah Holmes.

  Although many of these names disappeared as the city grew together, McGee, Grand Avenue and Holmes stand as a testament to Milt McGee’s Addition.

  As he carefully carved out roads and lots in the middle of a corn field, people laughed at his ambitions “way out in the country.” P.G. Brock, pioneer engineer, stated in 1887, “We all thought that Milt McGee a speculative idiot for hitching on his addition to the town.”

  Milt managed to encourage people to buy lots in his new Addition by selling them cheap and only requiring them to promise to build. 

  Grand Avenue became the widest street in town, and to solidify its prominence, Milt built a row of two-story brick buildings on the east side of Grand between 14th and 15th- right in the center of a corn field. This was the first brick block in all of the city.

  Today, it’s the site of the T-Mobile Center.

  He’d travel to the riverfront to meet incoming steamboats dropping emigrant passengers on their trek west. He’d hire a brass band to play and hold up signs announcing McGee’s Addition to entice the travelers to stay permanently. He ran a stage line between the levee and his Addition as well as to Westport in front of the Harris House Hotel.

  Milt’s Addition was a booming success. In “Annals of Kansas City” published in 1857, they wrote, “38 brick buildings and 79 frame buildings, all of good appearance, have been erected [in McGee’s Addition] this past season, and the population now amounts upward of 700. . . Grand Avenue is decidedly one of the handsomest and most attractive streets in the state, and it’s evidently destined to become one of the principal business streets of the city.”

  A July 4th celebration in 1858 saw 3,000 people gather in Milt McGee’s grove. For the exciting event, Milt bought a buffalo for the barbecue, but the animal got loose. 

  The crowd was left chasing the buffalo for over a mile before it was captured.

  By 1860, just three years after platting the “preposterous” McGee’s Addition, the area boasted a population of 2,319 and had 469 buildings.

  Milt was smart enough to put his pro-slavery tendencies aside in favor of making money. By the time the Civil War erupted in 1861, Milt was busy catering to anyone who could make him a profit. 

A Life in Politics 

  He had always dabbled in politics, assisting his brothers in electing pro-slavery candidates to the Kansas Bogus Legislature. He would offer free rides to the polls in Kansas City – but only if you voted for his friends.

  A staunch Democrat, he was elected as State Representative in 1862 and as State Senator in 1865. Pro-slavery before the war but a supporter of the Union at the outbreak, Milt’s home and hotel were oftentimes a stopover to many who fought as border ruffians. It was said that after the war broke out, Milt freed one of his enslaved men so he could be of use to the Union as a scout.

  He was close friends with Robert Van Horn, and when both served in the government offices, they worked to bring the first railroad to Kansas City. 

  In 1868, he upgraded his home. He built a two-story magnificent home surrounded by 13 acres at current-day 16th and Baltimore. The building and outbuildings – all made of brick – cost him $27,000. 

  The entrance to his home included a very unique gate made from the lower jawbones of a whale. Frankly, the gate matched the unique grounds. Milt had a private zoo complete with a brown bear, a dozen deer, two bald eagles and other wildlife roaming in a five-acre enclosure.

  The bear, it was said, was kept in a pit on his property, and old Milt McGee, well in his 50s, used to find enjoyment in going into the pit to “play” with the bear. As the bear grew older, his temper became worse, and one day, it tore at Milt’s skin. 

  The old frontiersman found himself in a pit with a furious bear. Luckily a pet mastiff that followed Milt around took the fight off his master’s hands. McGee escaped and the bear was shot.

  Regardless of the dangers of the menagerie on his property, Milt McGee’s home came to be known as a place open to everyone. 

  In April 1870, Milt McGee was elected mayor of Kansas City; he won by 241 votes. On the day of the election, Milt appealed to his key demographic and placed kegs of beer on street corners. At his home, a barrel of whiskey was available for people to openly dip their cups in for a taste.

  He only served one term (one year) and opted not to run for reelection. 

  Milt retired back to his home and continued to be active in city development. On February 11, 1873, just days after returning from a trip from New Orleans, Milt went to lay down and never woke up from his rest.  He was 54 years old.

  Upon his death, the Kansas City Journal wrote, “’Milt,’ as he was familiarly called, was a man of active, resolute temperament, rough and uncultured – but with many good qualities of head and heart.”

  He was buried first at the old McGee Cemetery at 20th and Broadway but was reinterred at Elmwood Cemetery.

The McGees Left their Permanent Mark on Kansas City

  Evidence of Milt McGee’s contribution to our beloved Kansas City can be seen in remnants today. 

  His hotel was swallowed up by the city and was torn down in 1889 to make way for a brick business block on Grand Ave. between 16th and 17th St. By the 1930s, only one building remained as real estate drove prices up and the buildings of McGee’s Addition fell into the ground. Today, none stand.

  His home was also victim to the bulldozers in the early 20th century when land prices in a predominately commercial area left the home unfashionable and unattended. 

  But so much of the vision of Kansas City came from business leaders who believed wholeheartedly in the future. These pioneers weren’t always the most educated or polished men in American history, but their persistence and passion paved the way for more than just our streets. 

  They spoke frankly, cussed freely, and commonly caused a few physical fights. They bought up cheap land before they could really see the future – and when the future looked bright for this blossoming town at the confluence of two rivers, they promoted the town and paved the way for us all.

  Thomas Crittenden, former governor of Missouri, remembered Milt as a plain-spoken man. “Whenever he wanted to say anything, he said it, whether you liked it or not.” Robert Van Horn called Milt “as fine a specimen of the frontiersmen as there was in this country.”

  Milt once said, ““If I’d a-had an education I’d’ve been president of these here United States.” 

  That was Milt, alright. He believed in himself and this beautiful city.