Today’s Peaceful Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Reverend Thornton R. Sampson had served his church and his country well, traveling with his wife to Greece and Turkey as a Presbyterian missionary in 1878 and remaining there until 1892. When he finally returned to the United States, he became synodical secretary of the church’s home mission board in North Carolina, living in Greensboro and then Asheville with his family until he was elected president of General Assembly’s Home and School in Fredericksburg, Virginia. His upward trajectory did not stop there: He followed his time in Virginia by becoming head of a Presbyterian institution in Sherman, Texas, meanwhile founding a Presbyterian Theological Seminary for the Trans-Mississippi territory. He then made the last move of his career of service, leading the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin.
Throughout his later years, it was Sampson’s summer habit to visit the area that in 1915 had just become Rocky Mountain National Park, going off alone for “a tramp and fishing trip throughout Estes Park,” as the Asheville Gazette-News described it in September of that year. Sampson, who was 63 years old, kept in touch with his family during a sojourn in Denver while making preparations for his trip, writing to his wife on August 28 that he expected to be back in Denver on September 5.
Cliff Higby, a mountain guide astride a horse, passed Dr. Sampson on September 2 just two miles from Grand Lake on the west side of the park, “attired in heavy underwear, a light cotton suit, wool shirt and without an overcoat,” the Austin American reported. Dr. Sampson told him he intended to walk twenty-five miles across the park to reach Estes Park by September 5 to attend the dedication exercises for the newly named Rocky Mountain National Park. Higby provided directions to reach Fern Lake, where Dr. Sampson planned to spend the night, and told Sampson that he would tie a red bandana to a cairn—a stack of rocks used as a trail marker—to signal the place to turn. He also said he would leave Sampson a note there with further directions.
At about 2 p.m. on the same day, Sampson stopped to rest at a shelter and encountered three female travelers and their guide. They stopped briefly and then continued along the way from which Sampson had just come.
Shortly thereafter, the weather changed dramatically, with snow and gale-force winds making further hiking dangerous at best. “The mountain tops are completely enveloped when the clouds become thick and heavy, making it impossible for anyone to see the cairns marking the different routes of trails,” Vinson told the Austin paper. “That night it froze, and the next day there was a heavy snow and a high wind. The foresters say the snow forms on the mountain tops and with a high wind is swept into the canyons and gulches in terrific gales. The guides told me that the snow is now 40 and 50 feet deep in that region.”
He added, “It is believed that the lone traveler [Sampson] either sought safety in a cave, or slipped and fell, later to be covered by snow. Guide Higby’s directions were never reached.”
Sampon did not emerge from the park on September 5, and the whereabouts of a man known and respected throughout the Southern states quickly became a matter of nation concern. Search parties combed the area, but nothing was found of Sampson until July 1932—seventeen years after he had been given up for lost.
On or around July 13, someone exploring a rocky overhang that formed a cave-like shelter in the park’s Fern Valley made the find of a lifetime: the skeletal remains of a man long dead. With the bones were several personal effects that made identification a certainty: Dr. Sampson’s pipe, which he had made himself; his diary, “perfectly legible and in good preservation,” and his knap-sack. Frank Sampson flew from his home in Atlanta, Georgia, to Denver to examine the items and confirm that they did indeed belong to his father.
Frank postulated his own theory of what had happened to Dr. Sampson:
There is no doubt in my mind that [F]ather failed to survive his first night out of Grand Lake. He had been slightly indisposed for a week prior, as his diary records, and while he was a singularly vigorous man for his 63 years, his vitality no doubt was low on this particular day, after a hike of more than seventeen miles and a vertical climb of more than 4,000 feet, passing about midday a point high above the timberline.
My conclusions are these: The weather records show that there were many showers all through that day—evidence substantiated by others who were on the same trail, on horseback. My father’s experience led him to this sheltering rock under which nearly everything except his watch and a few coins were found. On the level beneath the jutting rock were found his knapsack, with toilet articles, a can of tobacco, matches, and his pipe. I am positive he built a fire, became warm and fell asleep—and that sleep in wet clothing, on a cold September night, at an extremely high altitude, must have proved fatal.
But for the anxiety of his disappearance caused his loved ones, I cannot imagine my father wishing for a more peaceful passing—high in the mountains, from which all his life he had drawn his inspiration.
Partial view of Bierstadt Lake (elevation 9416 feet), Larimer County, looking toward Hallett Peak (elevation 12,725 feet) and Flattop Mountain (elevation 12,324 feet); the Reverend Thornton R. Sampson, an experienced hiker, met his demise shortly after descending Flattop Mountain on the way to Estes Park in 1915.
Culled from: Death In Rocky Mountain National Park
Crime Photos Du Jour!
March 21/22: Ernest Long Chief Engineer on the Steamship Rose City Was Arrested for Impersonating a Woman,
page from the Jesse Brown Cook Scrapbook ca. 1910-35
Courtesy: The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Culled from: Police Pictures: The Photograph as Evidence
Of course, I had to go digging to see if I could find some newspaper articles about this particular affair, and I found that the photos are from 1922. Here’s the best article I found, from the March 21, 1922 issue of the San Francisco Bulletin. San Francisco, huh? Who woulda guessed? (I love you, San Francisco!):
ROUGED MAN IN FLAPPER GARB IS JAILED
After a night spent in the city prison, and with his face powdered and his lips rouged, Ernest Long, chief engineer on the steamer Rose City, appeared before Police Judge Daniel S. O’Brien today to answer to two charges, one of masquerading as a woman, the other of carrying concealed weapons.
At the urgent request of Assistant District Attorney Robert McMahon, bail on the two charges was fixed at $6000 bonds or $2500 cash, Long having refused to promise not to go out on the Rose City on her next trip.
Long was arrested last night by Detective Sergeant Robert Maberg while walking with his wife near their home, 647 Twenty-first avenue [It’s still there! – DeSpair]. He was attired in an expensive gown, openwork silk stockings, a veil, white kid gloves and a fur collar. He wore a wig with the hair piled high on his head and carried a handbag, in which were a powder puff and a revolver.
ADMIRES ELTINGE.
In court Detective Sergeant Malberg told his story of the arrest. Long also gave the judge an explanation of his action in arraying himself in women’s clothes. He said that some time ago he went to the theater with his wife and saw Julian Eltinge, the famous female impersonator. He thought Eltinge was good looking, “but so am I,” he told the judge. He decided that he would be another Julian Eltinge and go on the stage with his wife.
“This is a remarkable case,” said Judge O’Brien. “This man presents a social problem.”
The judge sent for Dr. A. A. O’Neill, city prison physician, and directed him to make a mental examination of Long and submit it tomorrow, the hearing being in the meantime continued to Friday morning.
Asked why he was carrying the revolver when he was arrested, Long said he bought it twelve years ago for the protection of his wife and put it in the handbag just because the idea occurred to him. He added that his wife assisted him in dressing for the part of a woman, applying the face powder and rough. [sic]
The Longs have three children, Ernest 5; Phyllis, 4; and Broderick, 2 years old.
WIFE RELIEVED.
Mrs. Long this morning sat with folded hands to hear what disposition was to be made of her husband’s case.
“I’m so glad it’s over,” she said. “It has been terrible. If something hadn’t happened I would have gone insane. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later,” she said. “I often warned my husband that he would be discovered in his foolish mania, but toward the end I could not even warn him. It seemed to make him angry when I spoke of it.”
“Always when he made me go out with him I felt that any minute someone would find out and I was constantly in fear of his arrest or a terrible scene on the street. Even after seven years the horror never lessened. When the detective came up to us last night I first thought I would faint, but then embarrassment overcame me and I walked away.”
CAN’T FORGIVE HIM.
“When they took him away I went home and took the children over to the home of a friend who will care for them until I can arrange my life. Of course everything is changed now. I can never forgive my husband for all I’ve suffered, and even if I could, it would not be right, for I have to think of the children. With all the horrors of this publicity I know now that it was the only way. Perhaps I wasn’t brave enough, but it takes a lot of courage to tear up a home and break a family.
“You see, Ernest really looed the children. He was kind to them and provided a good home and in his way he loved me, but whether he was a victim of mania or insane I don’t know. I am sorry for him, but I’m through. I will never take him back.”
Mrs. Long married when she was 16 years old. Both parents were dead and she was the only girl in a family of four brothers.
“It was simply a matter of plunging into marriage without knowing anything,” she said. “No one had ever told me anything. When I married Ernest I loved him and for a long time afterwards. I couldn’t understand when he first brought home women’s clothing and dressed up, but when he started going out in nearly killed me.
“One of the worst parts of it was that he always made me dress him and see that he looked all right. I had to see that he was properly dressed, for otherwise I knew he would be discovered and arrested. I thought it was just a temporary mania that would wear off, but as time went on he became worse and worse.”
Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!
This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).
Here’s today’s entry:
September 29th. I found a “History of the World” by Peter Parley, which has been a rare treat to me for the hour or more allowed me to keep it. Drew very small rations of meal, beans, and beef. Five more detachments prepared to leave, but the train did not come for them.
Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost