Daugherty continues E.B. Williamson biography with help from stamp collection
By MARK MILLER
The timing could not have been more providential.
Alan Daugherty has been working on a biography of noted Bluffton banker, entomologist and iris hybridizer E. B. “Bruce” Williamson since last December. He was beginning to think he had “tapped out” all his resources in documenting the life of a man who had put Bluffton, Indiana on the map, but died at the relatively young age of 56 of pneumonia after moving to Michigan.
“I got an email from Jason (Habegger) at the library,” Daugherty says. “He was forwarding an email he had received from someone trying to reach me.”
Tim Miller, a Bluffton native and now a Fort Wayne resident, had learned through an article in the “Outdoor Indiana” magazine of Daugherty’s efforts to write the biography. He did not know how to contact him so he tried the library.
“I have in my possession a shoe box full of E.B. Williamson’s attempt at a stamp collection — primarily, hundreds of envelopes with canceled stamps with dates from all over the world,” he had written.
Miller was one of several neighborhood boys that worked for Williamson’s daughter, Mary Williamson, who continued her father’s work at what was at one time a truly famous attraction on Bluffton’s west side — the Longfield Iris Farm. This would have been in the early-to-mid 1960s, he recalls, when he would have been about 12 or 13 years old.
“I really didn’t know a lot about Mary’s father, although she talked about him often,” Miller told the News-Banner. “I mowed her yard and helped her clean out what few remaining iris beds there were.”
One of his tasks was helping her to clean out a shed.
“Alan would have loved to have seen that because I remember it being full of documents and stuff,” he adds.
The contents of the shed included this rather large shoe box that was full of old envelopes and the beginning of a stamp collection. Miller remembers that Mary said something like “here, you can have this if you want it.”
“Somehow, that box managed to move around with me,” he continues. That journey took him to live in Nebraska for more than 20 years before returning to Fort Wayne where he retired from the Tuthill Corporation a few years ago. A long-time subscriber to the “Outdoor Indiana” magazine, he found the article about Daugherty’s historical work of the CCC of interest since his father worked at what was then “the game farm” in the late 1930s.
“It was just a small mention at the end of the article that he was working on this biography,” he says, “and I thought if these (envelopes)might be helpful, that’d be great. I thought he might be interested in seeing them”
“Well, that was putting it mildly,” Daugherty says. “Bruce was a world leader in two areas of science — dragonflies and irises. His contacts are valued information.”
That was in early August. The two made arrangements to meet and “Tim has generously allowed me all the time I needed to go through the envelopes,” Daugherty adds. He has averaged, he believes, about five or six hours a day examining, cataloging and taking careful notes and observations about what the envelopes revealed, most of which were empty but some include correspondence.
“I had not been aware that E.B. had any interest in stamp collecting,” Daugherty says, “But it appears most likely these had been saved for the stamps. At some point they became an interest of Mary’s.” The box has evidence that she began to organize the stamps at one point after her father’s death.
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The oldest envelope is dated 1880. The bulk of them are in the 1920s and 1930s but continue into the 1950s. Some appear to be simple requests for catalogs but others reveal much about E.B.’s standing in his fields of study.
“They really demonstrate how the Longfield Farm did business around the world,” Daugherty says. “There are letters and correspondence from every continent except Antartica.”
He has pulled out 10 or 12 envelopes or post cards that either demonstrate Williamson’s reach and prestige or have other unique qualities, all of which have added a number of pages to his book, now a work still in progress.
For example, one is a 1901 post card from Germany written entirely in German, postmarked as “AirMail” and stamped to have flown over on a zeppelin. There are several from another famous Bluffton scientist, Charles Deam, which demonstrate their friendly collaborative relationship. Others either confirm or inform Daugherty of other local businesses from Bluffton’s earlier days.
Perhaps the most unique is a wooden post card sent to E.B. in 1904 by his former school superintendent in Salem, Ohio. (Williamson had taught there one year after graduating from Ohio State University.) The post card encouraged Williamson to attend the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition and also served as “Legal Tender” worth $1 towards admission.
The envelopes tell other stories of how the postal system worked in the early 1900s. Few envelopes include a street address; most are simply addressed to “E.B. Williamson, Bluffton, Ind.” One was addressed to “E.B. Williamson, Knoxville, Tenn.”; however, Daugherty says, “he never lived there.”
Someone, apparently a postal worker in Knoxville, scratched that city’s name out and wrote ”Vanderbilt University, Nashville.”
“Bruce taught at Vanderbilt for a couple years before returning home to Bluffton to run the Wells County Bank and start his iris farm,” Daugherty relates. “But this postal worker had to have been aware of who E. B. Williamson was. He was that famous in his day.”
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A catalog of the correspondence will be placed in the Wells County Museum. The box of envelopes is on its way back to its Fort Wayne owner. Daugherty hopes to wrap up his biographical work in the next month or so. It is not his first effort in publishing local history. He has previously done work on the history of the Civilian Conservation Corps’ role in building what is now Ouabache State Park, which was the subject of the article in the magazine. Those histories were simply placed in loose-leaf notebooks and given to the park and the Wells County Public Library.
“I don’t write books that are for sale,” he explains. “That’s not what I want to do.”
This book, however, might be different, since many people in the scientific fields of iris hybrids and entomology — particularly Williamson’s “unparalleled” knowledge of dragonflies — might be interested. Hence, he’s not sure how he will handle the finished product.
“The more I learned over the years about E.B.,” he says, “the more I felt his story needed to be told. That’s really the only reason I’m doing this.”
miller@news-banner.com
