State v. Pearce 'What's the Use' Chiles, Part I

Ask anyone. I've spent thousands of hours -- poring over pages of microfiche; tracking down gravestones in unmapped graveyards; cold-calling innocents from the phone book; examining dusty, brittle books in dark, unloved corners of libraries from California to New York; and cajoling corporate PR flacks – all in the service of researching the biographical details of dead Americans about whom most living Americans could really care less.

I do have my standards. Usually my targets are pioneers of some kind, first-movers within a budding social, political or cultural institution who've been unjustly neglected by the keepers of the canon.

But not Pearce Chiles. Pearce Nuget Chiles was a ne'er-do-well, a scoundrel. A decent enough ballplayer, but a scoundrel. In two partial seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies (1899-1900), he was a late-inning pinch hitter whose lifetime at-bats to runs-batted-in ratio rivals that of Joe DiMaggio (22.04 to Joe’s 22.53) and a thoroughly disruptive baserunning coach, known for his devilishly ingenious system of stealing catcher's signals by employing an electric buzzer device hidden in a mud puddle in the third base coaching box. And as the late Lee Allen (organized baseball's Vasari in Florsheims) came to find before me, Pearce Chiles is one the most slippery, elusive historical characters major league baseball has ever produced.

First, there's the problem of nomenclature. Around the same time Pearce Chiles was knocking around from one minor league club to another, there was a flashy second baseman playing in Cleveland called Clarence Algernon Childs, better known as "Cupid." Cupid Childs should be better known today than he is – he retired with a higher on-base percentage than any second baseman in the Hall of Fame except Rogers Hornsby and Eddie Collins. However, Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson was guilty of careless conflation when, in his book Pitching in a Pinch (1912), he accuses the innocent Cupid Childs – not Pearce Chiles – of the sign-stealing scheme.

If that weren't bad enough, the year after Pearce Chiles "retired" from the Phillies, a utility player named Pete Childs made his debut in St. Louis, and quickly flamed out. Sportswriters of the period were understandably flummoxed, interchangeably referring to Pearce Chiles as "Pete Chiles," "Pete Childs" and, occasionally, "Pierce Chiles," "Pearce Childs," or "Pierce Childs."

Then there's his retirement. For a number of years, Lee Allen had the last word on Pearce Chiles. At the end of his research file on Pearce Chiles, there was a one-page form letter with typed interlineations from the Texas Department of Corrections, dated May 18, 1967. Regarding "CHILDS, Pierce, TDC #20498 (Active)," the Department informed Allen that "The subject was received in this Institution on June 22, 1901, from El Paso County . . . [and] was dXXXXXXd escaped from the Texas Department of Corrections on August 15, 1902." That was the last trace of him that Allen was able to find. The Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia, long the standard reference work on major league baseball, lists Pearce Nuget Chiles' status as "Deceased" in lieu of giving a definitive date and place of death – a good guess, but an unconfirmed fact.

All scoundrels have parents, the families who spawned them. Pearce Nuget Chiles was born on May 28, 1867 in Deepwater, Henry County, Missouri, the fourth child and only son of Alfred M. Chiles and his wife, Amanda Rutherford. There were Chileses all over Henry County, having decamped there from Virginia. Unfortunately, Pearce's father died when Pearce was 8 years old. Pearce received $325 in the will. By the looks of Pearce's later behavior, it appears that his poor mother Amanda and his older sisters Martha, Anna and Lilley were no match for Pearce's . . . exuberance.

Although the exact date has as of yet eluded me, Pearce Chiles entered organized baseball, probably in his late teens. Unlike some ballplayers of the 19th century who tended to ply their trade near home, Pearce seems to have thought nothing of traveling far and wide, playing for one minor league club after another. By 1895, a reporter in Phoenix was referring to Chiles as a "crack ballplayer." Unfortunately, however, the article was a crime report.

Chiles must have returned to Deepwater for his mother’s funeral (she passed away on July 10, 1895) and gotten into some mischief. Having arrived in Phoenix in the Fall for the Winter League, word reached him that the authorities were after him. According to the February 11, 1896 article in the Los Angeles Times, Chiles "was wanted in Missouri for illicit relations with a sixteen-year-old girl there. As the age of consent in that State is eighteen years," the article went on, "the charge against him is constructive rape." Chiles, however, got the jump on the local authorities, and lit out of Phoenix just ahead of the arrest papers.

In the Summer of 1896 he had been signed to play in Hartford, but I've never confirmed that he made it there. He seems to have played in Galveston in the Texas League during this period, by then having acquired an unusual nickname. His habit of taunting opposing batters when they hit their pop-ups to him by shouting "What's the Use?" before stylishly catching the ball encouraged sportswriters to call him "Pearce 'What's the Use' Chiles," or sometimes, "Pearce 'It's No Use' Chiles." He wasn’t shy about adding insult to injury, and reporters noted that he often found himself in trouble with local authorities, but managed to get out of trouble on the goodwill of his baseball compatriots.

See Part II.

State v. Pearce 'What's the Use' Chiles, Part II

See Part I.

Turn-of-the century baseball had plenty of room for guys like Pearce Chiles, though. Baseball of the gay nineties vintage was about as nasty as baseball could get, as the unfailing Bill James describes: "Players spiked one another. A first baseman would grab the belt of the baserunner to hold him back a half-second after the ball was hit. Players tripped one another as they rounded the bases. Fights broke out more days than not. Players shoved umpires, spat on them, and punched them. Fans hurled insults and beer bottles at the players of opposing teams." The most successful managers were the ones that could train their players in the cleverest, dirtiest and most brutal ways to win.

Although 7 out of 9 players on the diamond might have felt like calling him a jackass on a good day, Chiles’ lawlessness on the field was considered leadership in those days. Thus, Chiles served a stint as the player-manager of the Lancaster Maroons in the Atlantic League – a money-losing team, but a winner with a record of 82-50 – before going to New Orleans for the Winter.

So it was that the Philadelphia Phillies probably thought they had someone who was future coaching material coming when Pearce "What’s the Use" Chiles joined the Phillies’ camp in Charlotte, North Carolina as a 33-year old rookie during the Spring of 1899.

He played for the "Yannigans," the alternate squad that faced the Phillies' starting line-up in practice games, but batted well and meshed well with the regulars. At their North State Street lodgings, Chiles and starting first baseman Duff Cooley were acknowledged as the best billiards players in camp. Meanwhile, Cooley rounded up a singing "Quintette" consisting of himself, third baseman Billy Lauder, pitcher Red Donahue, and shortstops Monte Cross and Dave Fultz, performing old-time classics such as "The Bridge the Heart Burned Down" and "You’ll Get All That’s Coming to You." The Quintette began to steal so much attention among the local women that reserve catcher Morgan Murphy conspired to start his own musical group; and in typical wise-ass fashion Chiles joined, along with outfielders Delahanty and Flick, to form a quartet better focused on clowning than harmonizing. By the time the club returned to Philadelphia for the start of the season, they had stolen the hearts of their Charlotte hosts.

Chiles made his debut on April 18, 1899, pinch-hitting for pitcher Chick Fraser in the 9th; although he doubled and scored, the Phillies went down against the Senators, 6-4. The Philadelphia Inquirer referred to him as "the bright particular star of the matinee." But on a club that included future Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie at second base, future Hall of Famers Ed Delahanty and Elmer Flick in left and rightfield, and base-on-balls king Roy Thomas in center, there wasn't much playing time available for the new fellow. The papers would often refer to Chiles as a baserunning coach rather than as a player. Still, as a late-inning sub (often for Flick), Chiles managed to bat .320 and knocked in 76 RBIs in 354 plate appearances. That year, the Phillies finished 3rd behind Brooklyn and the Braves, but had a superlative record of 94-58, and Chiles' place on the club in 1900 (see photo above, with Chiles standing at the far left) seemed secure.

The authorities are silent as to Chiles' activities during the Winter, but one can assume that he was probably up to no good. The following Spring, Chiles was collecting splinters again until a team bust-up availed him of some starts. Nap Lajoie and Elmer Flick, it seems, were always in each other's way a bit – during the previous Spring, Flick had blown up at Lajoie over some on-field slight. On May 30, their tensions erupted when Flick picked up Lajoie's bat in the clubhouse and announced that he would be using it that day. Lajoie begged to differ, upon which Flick dared Lajoie to stop him. In the ensuing exchange of punches, Lajoie knocked Flick silly a few times, while Flick gave Lajoie a black eye and a cut on the face. The piece de resistance was when one of Lajoie's blows missed Flick and hit a locker behind him, resulting in Lajoie breaking his thumb. Flick threw a tantrum on the way out, vowing never to play with the Phillies again. With Flick out of the lineup for awhile, Chiles got the chance to fill in for him for a couple of days at rightfield. By June 4, however, Flick was back in the lineup, and Chiles was back on the bench.

Perhaps it was a combination of boredom and Chiles' natural instinct for larceny that sent Chiles out with Morgan Murphy to devise a crafty, totally illegal plan to steal the opposing catcher's signals, a technique that came to light one September afternoon against Cincinnati. It went as follows: Murphy, sitting behind the centerfield wall with a spyglass, would see the signals that the opposing catcher would make to the pitcher regarding whether the next pitch would be a fastball or a curve, and would relay the contents of the signal to Chiles via an electrical signal – over a wire that extended from Murphy's location to the third base coaching box, where, barely exposed, it would give Chiles a little shock. Chiles would then give a prearranged hand signal to the batter. Observers had remarked that Chiles had a strange leg twitch when he coached, so all was explained when Reds shortstop Tommy Corcoran stopped the game and found the buzzer device under Chiles' foot with the assistance of the umpire and the police.

On the following day, Chiles got his wise-ass revenge: he switched to first base and started his leg twitching again; but this time, when the Reds stopped the game and dug out the coach’s box, they found nothing. The incident, though, would be the beginning of the end of signal stealing for the present, as league officials went on a witch hunt for variations on Chiles’ theme perpetrated by other clubs.

That year, the Phillies finished in 3rd place again, but with the considerably less heroic record of 75-63. In October, Chiles' name appeared on the Phillies' official reserve list -- which suggests that, despite the fact that Chiles only hit .216 in 111 at-bats in 1900, the Phillies thought they had room for the 35-year old scoundrel on the 1901 squad.

See Part III.

State v. Pearce 'What's the Use' Chiles, Part III

See Part I.
See Part II.

El Paso's first ever Mid-Winter Carnival opened on January 16, 1901. Miss Claire Kelly presided as Carnival Queen, with a court of twelve Maids of Honor, while attractions at the Carnival included an electric fountain; Lunette, the Flying Lady; Bosco, the Snake Man; a simulated volcanic eruption; roping, tying and rough riding contests; confetti and serpentine battles; and bullfights daily, just across the border in Ciudad Juarez.

People came from miles around to attend the Carnival, which of course drew all manner of commercial exhibitors, jugglers, acrobats and street entertainers. Also on hand were the usual bunch of thieves, con-men and pickpockets who could always be counted on showing up wherever there were big crowds. Pearce Chiles was there, too. We will never know what mischief he got into at the Carnival (he seems to have paid a $101 fine for some infraction there), but we have some idea of what he hoped to accomplish after it was over. What we do know comes from the official court records of Chiles' case.

On an eastbound train, the G.H. Limited, rolling through southern Texas and heading for Hot Springs on the evening of February 15, 1901, Chiles and his faceless companion, a D.B. Sherwood, spotted a young, recently discharged soldier, a fellow named Benjamin F. Henry from Albany, Georgia, and thought they had found an easy mark. According to Henry's testimony, the affable Sherwood struck up a conversation with Henry, and was soon sitting next to him for the ride. A while later, Chiles came down the aisle, stopping at Sherwood's shoulder and asking him for a light for his pipe. Sherwood pulled out a matchbox and handed it to Chiles. Chiles feigned difficulty opening it and protested to Sherwood. "What are you trying to do?" he asked. "Poke fun at me?" Sherwood insisted that there were matches inside the box, but Chiles still couldn't open it, finally handing the box back to his accomplice, declaring, "I can't open it, and nobody else can, either. I will bet you $50 or any amount of money that he," referring to Henry, "can’t open it." Sherwood leaned over and whispered to Henry, "How much money do you have? Bet it and we will win." Henry demurred, but Chiles kept the con alive, betting Sherwood $5 and saying, "I'll pay this man a dollar for every dollar in his pocket if he can open the box."

Sherwood handed the box to Henry, who opened it without difficulty. Chiles said, "All right. I am an honest man. I pay every time I lose." "Pay him $5," Sherwood said, pointing to Henry. "No, I won't," said Chiles. "He hasn't got any money on his person." Henry then admitted that he had $95 in his pocket. As Henry got his money out to show Chiles, Chiles and Sherwood engaged in a little pretend argument over the bet, and in the ensuing confusion, Sherwood got a hold of Henry's money. The thieves disappeared out of the coach, but Henry managed to raise the conductor and the brakeman, and before long, Chiles and Sherwood were in the custody of a state ranger.

In jail awaiting trial in El Paso, Chiles reached out to the folks who had always been able to help him in the past – his baseball compatriots. According to George Girsch, writing in the August 1958 issue of Baseball Digest, Chiles wrote a letter to one of his friends in Philadelphia. How Girsch got his hands on this letter, and where it is today, I do not know, but it reads in part:

"Friend Billy,
i taught that i would right you in regards to what happened to me while on the train i left this town on my way to hot Springs last friday night and while on the train a man had a match box which is hard to open so i bet him he could not open it while i counted on my fingers so i won and he had me arrested . . . so i dont know any body hear and hafto stay in jail this man told all kinds of lies and did not tell the truth at all So i want you to goe and get some good men to right to this Prosecuting atorney and tell him that I aint no theift . . . Dont let them put it off for this is a Bad country to have trouble in . . ."
Neither his friends nor the Phillies came to his aid. For a time, Chiles banked on the idea that Benjamin Henry would not return to El Paso to appear as a witness against him. When he later heard that Henry had arrived and had already testified at Sherwood's trial, he thought people were kidding with him; but after the news of Sherwood's conviction, Chiles folded, and according to the El Paso papers, pleaded guilty. The report from the sports pages read:

"Pearce Chiles, the famous coach and buzzer manipulator of the Philadelphia club, is now lost in the sea of despair. He has signed a new contract, but not for any $2400, nor will any American League team try to steal him away from his new employers. Chiles is to do two years on the Huntsville convict farm, and his uniform will be back and white, with the number 24876 across his back. He will not stop at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, but will sleep in an abandoned hog pen, and his daily menu will include sour bacon, hominy, corn bread and pure water. Incidentally, Chiles will be allowed to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the work will be so different from that of last year that it will be an interesting novelty . . . Such is the fate of Pearce Chiles. How this man ever got on the Philadelphia team is a mystery. He was run out of Kansas and Texas years ago for serious crimes, and now gets the two-year trick for working a flimflam game."

My inquiry with the Texas Department of Corrections yielded no details of his escape from the Huntsville Prison on August 19, 1902, after serving less than sixteen months of his sentence. An administrative assistant wrote, "The above referenced individual was received from El Paso county, Texas for Theft of Person a 2 year sentence. Due to the age of this information that is all the information available to us. We are sorry but this is all the information we are allowed to give."
He apparently had the chutzpah to play a stint with the Natchez Indians in the Cotton States League at the end of the 1902 season. After that, it seems that the slippery con-man made his way to Portland, intending to play for the Portland Browns club in the Pacific Coast League, but he was quickly dismissed from the team in February 1903 after getting arrested for an alleged assault on a young woman named Roe. As Sporting Life reported the incident, "Chiles struck her in the face, blackening her and loosening her teeth." Today, Portland doesn't seem to have any record of the incident. The following month, Pacific Northwest League president W.H. Lucas strenuously denied that Chiles had been signed by the League’s San Francisco club, declaring that “Chiles will never be permitted to play in the Pacific Northwest League so long as I am president of it.”

Later in 1903, Chiles was playing for Fortuna, a semi-pro club in a one-horse northern California town. After that, he seems to have disappeared.

Leave it to the larcenous fellow to cover his tracks so well. Did he flee to Canada? Or Mexico? Did history intervene, leaving him an unidentified victim of the San Francisco earthquake or the sinking of an ocean liner? Or did he just fade away -- like thousands of roving oddjobbers, good and bad ones alike, without roots or loved ones? It's possible we won’t ever know the final chapter of this strange, sad little story.

[With helpful correspondence from Joe Dittmar.]

Into the Raging Waters

On Sunday evening, May 20, 1928, a small group of men and women had gathered near a band stand in Drake Park, Bend, Oregon, to listen to a boyish, 39-year old carpenter – a fellow who was just passing through Bend on his way home to Portland, and who had a few things on his mind that he wanted to share with the assembled crowd. The carpenter, one Frank T. Johns, was just warming to his subject when the cries of children across the river interrupted him.

At that moment, a 10-year old boy named Jack Rhodes was fishing with his young pals Johnnie Sullivan and Rex and Morris Bevens on the banks of the Deschutes River in Bend, Oregon. He had his sights set on a particularly large trout that he knew had been hiding in a deep pool near a footbridge.

It was getting late, closing in on 8 o'clock, but Jack was determined to catch that giant trout. In his haste to drop his hook one more time, Jack accidentally got his line stuck on the footbridge. The other boys concentrated on their own lines while Jack labored to free his hook from the bridge. Without a moment's warning, however, Jack lost his balance and tumbled into the Deschutes below the footbridge. While Jack clung to the footbridge, the boys reached down with a jointed fishing pole and tried to pull him out. Jack grabbed onto the pole, but then the jointed pole unexpectedly extended, sending Jack back into the cold water. The swift current quickly carried him downstream.

From where Frank T. Johns stood across the river, he instantly sized up what had happened. Without hesitating, Johns jumped from the band stand platform and threw off his jacket. Running to the river's edge, Johns dove in.

The waters of the Deschutes were an overpowering force. Johns struggled as he swam against the current toward the boy, shouting back over his shoulder once or twice for someone to bring out a boat. As Jack continued to try to swim to safety, Johns called ahead, telling the boy not to fight against the current and that help was on the way. The roar of the river was loud, though, and Jack couldn't hear him.

Johns reached the boy in good time, considering how strong the current was; but battling against the mighty Deschutes had taken quite a bit out of the carpenter, so that by the time he had reached Jack Rhodes, Johns was out of breath and cramping. As Johns caught hold of Jack, Jack went under, and Johns went under to secure him. Then Johns knew he didn't have enough strength to keep them both afloat. With all the muscle he could muster, Johns shoved Jack toward the opposite shore.

Jack vanished shortly thereafter. Johns went under after the mighty push, and struggled four or five times to keep his head above the rapids before disappearing. Neither of them made it. Jack's body was found scarcely two hours later by some men who had arrived with a canoe to help with the search; Frank T. Johns' body was found the next morning, near the spot where the rescuers had found Jack.

The incident was commonplace in many ways – there are thousands of them to read about if you spend enough time cranking through old newspapers. What made this small tragedy slightly unusual, however, was that the carpenter, Frank T. Johns, had just been nominated by his party to run for president of the United States.

His daughter Mildred was 86 years old when I spoke with her. “I think I probably blot out certain things,” she said, apologizing for the haziness of her memories. She did, however, remember her father practicing speeches in the front room of their little brown shingle house on E. 40th Street in Portland. “He was a dear, dear man,” she recalled warmly.

There's more to the story here:

• about the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), the nation's first Socialist political party, which had in 1892 nominated an innovative tintype portrait photographer as its first presidential candidate;

• about how, by 1928, the SLP was considered to be the fringe of the fringe, a motley collection of dogmatic eggheads operating within an atmosphere in which Socialism in general, even the relatively popular brand of Socialism espoused by Eugene Debs and his successors, was on the decline in the U.S. -- assaulted from the Right by Hoover's FBI, diverted by the work of moderate labor union leaders, and outflanked by the Far Left's growing fascination with the Soviet Union;

• about how the bright-eyed, articulate carpenter, Frank Johns, found himself involved in the quixotic cause of the SLP and eventually served as its presidential nominee in 1924 -- jumping into the raging waters of electoral politics against President Calvin Coolidge, who famously declared that "the business of America was business," while the Democrats would emerge from a smoke-filled room with a compromise candidate, Wall Street corporate lawyer John W. Davis, and the moderate Left broke for Senator "Fighting Bob" LaFollette running as the standard bearer of the Progressive Party;

• about how Johns accepted the 1928 presidential nomination of the SLP, facing Republican Herbert Hoover and Democrat Al Smith at the peak of the Roaring Twenties, on the verge of the stock market crash and the Depression;

• about how Portland's laborers mourned him, and how Frank Johns posthumously won the Carnegie Hero medal, providing a small honorarium for his wife and surviving daughters;

• and about how the level-headed citizens of Bend, Oregon continued to remember the "Red" who plunged into the raging waters of the Deschutes River to save a child -- a gesture and a sacrifice that both transcended the unforgiving American political climate of the time, and encapsulated Frank Johns' personal commitment to humanity in peril.

More, at some point, in some forum . . .

Pittsburgh's First Woman Lawyer

"Miss Agnes Fraser Watson's marriage Thursday evening to Herbert Lee Stitt of Pittsburgh, which took place at her mother's residence on Locust Street, Allegheny, was a pretty little ceremony, witnessed by about 50 guests and solemnized by Rev. Henry D. Lindsay, pastor of the North Presbyterian Church. There were but a two flower children in attendance, little Helen Barnes, a niece of the groom, and Harold Watson, a small nephew of the bride. The floral decorations were exceedingly handsome throughout the house. White azaleas, palms and maidenhair fern were used in the drawing room, white carnations in the dining room and all the other apartments were done in pink tulips and spring flowers. The bride wore a wedding gown of white pearl-tinted satin trimmed with duchess lace, in her hair she wore a white aigrette and plume, and she carried a bouquet of white carnations, her favorite flowers."

Sounds like it happened yesterday - but actually it was March 30, 1899, a very important event in the history of Pittsburgh lawyers. The groom was an inspector for the Schoen Pressed Steel Company in Blairsville and the bride . . . was the first woman to enter the bar in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

Agnes Fraser Watson, born in Pittsburgh in September 1866 to a Scottish immigrant and his second wife. Agnes lost her father when she was 10, whereupon she and her brother became wards of John Hood. When Agnes was still a toddler, the newspapers headlines were full of the trials and tribulations of pioneers like Myra Bradwell and Arabella Mansfield, the first woman lawyers in the U.S. In 1886, Carrie Kilgore of Philadelphia became the first woman lawyer in Pennsylvania, but only after the same kind of protracted litigation to secure the right of women to practice, that Myra Bradwell and Arabella Mansfield had gone through. Pittsburgh remained closed to all but white men, and there were still only handfuls of women lawyers throughout the U.S. around 1893 when Agnes entered the University of Michigan Law School, one of the earliest law schools in the nation to support the education of women as lawyers.

The buzz around Pittsburgh started slowly, but the press saw Agnes coming. She quietly applied to take the bar exam in the fall of 1895, and was accepted for the exam by N.W. Shafer of the examination board. He was a free thinker and a curmudgeon, and he knew the law was on women's side after the Kilgore case, even if the gentlemen of the Pittsburgh Bar weren't ready for Miss Watson.

The Pittsburgh Post headline on September 14, 1895 was simply "Miss Watson Passes." Out of 26 applicants, only 10 passed the Bar exam -- nine young men and 29-year old Agnes Fraser Watson. "The Plucky Western Girl," as the papers called her, showed them and passed the test.

Now what would happen at the swearing-in ceremony?

The Post reported: "Miss Agnes F. Watson, the first woman who has ever passed the final examination for admission to the Allegheny County bar, was admitted to practice in the various courts of the county yesterday … in Common Pleas No. 1, the nine young men were sworn in first, and then Miss Watson was called up. Mr. Shafer moved for her admission."

Judge Edwin Stowe leaned forward over the bench to study Miss Watson. "Mr. Shafer," he inquired, "has the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decided the right of women to be admitted to practice?"

"Why, yes Your Honor," said Mr. Shafer, "it had been decided in the case of Miss Kilgore of Philadelphia."

Judge Stowe sat back in his chair, his expression unchanged.

"I want to say if the Supreme Court had not decided the question, I would not consent to any women practicing law in this court. But if women want to practice law and ride bicycles, I suppose it is none of my business. Let her be sworn."

Women practicing law and riding bicycles. On the same day the Post announced Miss Watson's admission, in separate stories it reported that a woman postmistress was appointed at Kennon, Ohio, that it was decided that women would be allowed to attend the national conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, that women would now be admitted to the Catholic University of Washington, and among a few column inches of filler, the following statement: "A woman lawyer is a woman still, and when the right petitioner comes to court with a good case he will get a favorable decision." Something rather obvious that someone felt needed to be said.

Agnes Watson set up her office at 413 Fourth Avenue downtown, and as far as we know, she practiced by herself for a little over 3 years. Sadly, we know nothing of the details of her practice. All we know for sure is that a few weeks before her pretty wedding to Herbert Stitt on Locust Street in Allegheny, she closed the doors of her practice; and as the papers reported it, following the wedding, she spent weekdays in Blairsville and took carriage rides back to Allegheny on Saturdays to be with her mother, and "all her interests were devoted to homemaking." After 1899, Miss Watson, then Mrs. Stitt, disappears from the stage of history. Did she have children? Did she ever return to professional life? We just don't know, not yet. It appears that by 1930, though, she and her husband were living in the Edgewood, a suburb of Pittsburgh.

In a little over 3 years, her career as a Pittsburgh lawyer was over. By the time the next woman was admitted to the Bar in Allegheny County in 1900, Agnes Watson had already retired.

See The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making of Modern America.