Tom Edison in Kingsport

 

Thomas Edison at the Kingsport Inn

When we studied Great Inventors in fifth grade at Johnson Elementary, Mrs. Stultz failed to mention that one of them, the great Thomas Alva Edison, once came to Kingsport, meeting with a local developer in hopes of finding a site for a new factory.

I had never heard the story at all until I stumbled across a picture of the Great Man, standing in the courtyard of the late, lamented Kingsport Inn with a pioneer Kingsport real estate developer, William Roller.

(William was not part of the Roller Woods’ Rollers. Roller Woods would eventually become the Ft. Henry Mall. His family farm, where he grew up, was directly across the Holston River from Old Kingsport. Right, he grew up on the tract of land that would one day become Ridgefields!)

In 1918 Roller was one of many local developers looking to score with the industrialists who were eyeing Kingsport as a future factory site. And the fact that he managed to land a lunch date with Thomas Edison is proof of his acumen.

But it happened and you can see the proof in the photo.

I ran across it while thumbing (electronically) through the Dec. 29, 1957 edition of the Kingsport Times-News, a special 40^th Anniversary Progress issue.

On page 89 a full-page ad for Dougherty-Roller Real Estate, Insurance and Mortgage Financing (101 Broad Street, Telephone CI 5-3167) features that photo of Edison and Roller, alongside a portrait of William Roller Sr. “The photo at left shows William Roller Sr. conferring with Thomas A. Edison in 1918 while they were trying to find a suitable plant site in Kingsport. The photo was taken in the court of the Kingsport Inn.”

Obviously their business dealings didn’t come to fruition. I don’t remember an Edison Phonograph Factory in Kingsport, do you?

Or maybe he wasn’t looking to build a phonograph factory in east Tennessee. Maybe it was, I don’t know, Portland Cement.

Edison did found the Edison Portland Cement Company in 1899 and his company supplied the concrete for the construction of Yankee Stadium in 1922. Maybe Roller had told him about Kingsport’s successful cement company, hoping to interest Edison in building a cement plant on the other side of the Holston on the Roller family farm.

We don’t know what Roller had up his sleeve when he met – and most likely dined – with Edison at the Kingsport Inn.

I searched the Edison Papers, digital edition, at Rutgers University and there is no mention of Kingsport or of William Roller.

But we know Edison was in the area in 1918. Again we have photographs and lots of newspaper articles from the Johnson City Staff, the Bristol Herald-Courier and the Knoxville Journal and Tribune. No 1918 issues of the Kingsport Times exist – if they did we might have the real answer to what transpired during the Edison-Roller meeting.

Why was Thomas Edison in the area (or “this section” as newspapers called it at the time)?

Camping!

What?

Camping!

Beginning in 1915 and continuing most every summer until 1924, Edison would go camping with a couple of his friends, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone.

Yes, that Henry Ford, of Ford Motors. And yes, that Harvey Firestone, of Firestone Tire & Rubber.

Tagging along was John Burroughs, the world-famous naturalist.

It were as if Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk took an annual camping vacation and dragged along Ken Burns to document the event. How long do you think those four would be camping before the first fist fight broke out?

But Edison, Ford, Firestone and Burroughs were companionable. And also quite old, especially Edison and Burroughs  – their fist fighting days were probably long in the past.

In 1918 Edison was 71, Ford, 55; Firestone; 49; and Burroughs the senior member at 82.  

They called themselves The Vagabonds.

And while they called it a camping trip, they were not roughing it.

They traveled in two Packards followed by a pair of Ford trucks with all their camping gear and other necessities. They also were trailed by staff that sometimes numbered as many as 50.

That 1918 trip began in Pittsburgh, meandered down through West Virginia, southwest Virginia, including an overnight stay in Tazewell, continuing through Abingdon, Bristol, Bluff City, Elizabethton and Johnson City, before pitching camp near Jonesboro.

In Johnson City a crowd estimated by the Johnson City Staff at between 500 and 1,000 turned out to see “four of America’s most illustrious citizens” pass through.

The Staff chronicled the brief stop this way:

“The party rolled in on time. John Burroughs was the first to arrive. Looking like Rip Van Winkle, with his gray whiskers and linen duster and carrying his slightly over eighty-two years remarkably well, he alighted from his car in front of the Majestic theatre and was strolling down Main street when Ed Brading and Munsey Slack recognized him and introduced many directors of the Chamber of Commerce to him. He was astonished that anyone here should recognize him.

“Thomas A. Edison, who was seated with the chauffeur in the car with Mr. Ford and Mr. Firestone, is one of the most modest men who has ever visited this section. He is a trifle hard of hearing and when one Johnson Citian went up to him and told him he wanted to shake hands with the greatest man in the world, he blushed and modestly denied the accusation.

“Abe Slack, a Staff carrier boy, was fortunate enough to sell Edison a paper. Mr. Edison's car had not more than stopped on Roan street than the big inventor waived to him, and he had not more than gotten his arm fully extended than Abe was on the machine. He gave the youngster a dime, and when he reached to get change, Mr. Edison grabbed another paper and passed it back to Ford, telling the boy to keep the change. Abe has refused $5 for that dime.”

The next day the Staff published an anecdote about the Jonesboro camp:

MR. EDISON GIVES ADVICE

TO JONESBORO BOY

“George, the nine-year-old son of Mrs. Addie Devault, when he caught sight of Mr. Edison, immediately greeted him as a well-known friend, In spite of his youth, George. has read widely and exhaustively, one story particularly had left an impression, that of a certain experiment tried by the great inventor to incubate eggs.

“’I've read about you.’

“’You have,’ smiled Mr. Edison, ‘and what was it you read?’

“’Why I read about you settin' on those eggs to hatch 'em.’

“Mr. Edison joined in the shout of laughter that followed.

Don't ever try it son,’ he advised soberly,’ it won't work.’”

 

The Vagabonds were off the next morning, heading for the Grove Park Inn in Asheville.

Sometime between Bristol and breaking camp Edison managed to work in that meeting with William Roller.

And perhaps someday we will know what they talked about.

 

 

 

Burroughs, Edison, Ford and Firestone

The Vagabonds camping trip was well-chronicled by the press along the route.

The Philadelphia Public Ledger reported on a “high kicking” contest involving Ford, Edison and Burroughs.

“Despite their advanced years, Thomas A. Edison, the inventor; Henry Ford and John Burroughs, the naturalist, today demonstrated to a large number of guests at the Summit hotel at Uniontown, Pa., that they were still full of ‘pep' when they gamboled about the hotel lobby and did high-kicking and stair-jumping ‘stunts.’

“While lounging about the hotel lobby Mr. Ford placed a cigar on the mantelpiece over an old-fashioned fireplace and, turning to Mr. Edison, said:

“’I'll bet you can't kick it off.’

“’I'll go you,’ replied the inventor.

“With comparatively little effort Mr. Edison kicked the cigar off the mantel three successive times. Mr. Ford then tried and succeeded in kicking off the cigar once. Mr. Burroughs, the oldest of the three, pleaded he was too tired to try, but did make one attempt.

“A few minutes later a stair-jumping contest was arranged by Mr. Edison. Mr. Ford came out the winner by making ten steps in two hops. Mr. Edison made the steps in three. Mr. Burroughs, in his attempt to defeat his adversaries, lost his balance and was rescued from a fall by onlookers.

“On the road from Connellsville to Uniontown this morning the party encountered engine trouble, and Mr. Ford demonstrated his mechanical genius by repairing the automobile.”

Alcatraz Prisoner Confesses to Florida Murder!

 

Raymond Remine admitting photo Alcatraz 1937

The letter arrived out of the blue and landed on the desk of the Attorney General of the state of Florida in 1947. A prisoner at Alcatraz was confessing to what the Tampa Times called, “Tampa's Most Mysterious Unsolved Slaying,” the murder 16 years earlier, on New Years Eve 1931, of City Detective John E. Jones.

The Times wrote, “Detective Jones was brutally slain as he sat in a parked automobile near the old Police Pistol Range near midnight. Seven shots from an automatic .38 caliber pistol struck him in the back. His companion in the car, Mrs. Hattie Steward, was shot once by the same gun but was able to walk to the highway and summon aid which launched an extensive investigation.”

Initially Mrs. Steward, a widow, was charged with Jones’ murder but that was later dismissed. Next in the lineup was Detective Jones' estranged wife, Mrs. Minnie Jones. She too was taken into custody and questioned at length but she was also released.

The Times added, “A full year later, on Jan. 17, 1932, bootlegger ‘Hard Sam’ Daughterty was arrested in Miami and charged with the murder but that charge, too, later collapsed and police were never able to solve the mystery.”

And now on November 5, 1947, Tampa police thought they had a break in the case.

A prisoner serving a long term in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary had confessed to the slaying.

At first authorities withheld the suspect’s name.

Then five days later came this story:

“Police Chief Eddings today received the complete confession of Ramon Remine, 53, long termer at Alcatraz Federal Prison, and a man of several aliases, who says he murdered John E. Jones, Tampa detective, on New Year’s night, 1931, and now asks to be returned to Florida where ‘he hopes’ he will be sentenced to the electric chair, Detective Inspector Stephens reported.”

Police had a confession of their own to make to  the newspaper: All the case files from the Jones murder case had been lost. All they had to rely on were newspaper clippings.

 

It’s a fascinating murder case that I will describe below.

But first that other detail, a reason for you to read on: Ramon Remine was my first cousin.

His grandfather was my great grandfather, making him my mother’s first cousin and my first cousin, once removed (I looked it up; he’s not my second cousin).

Ramon Remine was one of many aliases that Raymond Remine used, according to his FBI File, which I obtained in 1980 with a Freedom of Information Act request (a little over 500 pages at 10 cents a page). He was also known to authorities as John Traynor, Jack Hines, Hal Hanes, J.D. Boone, and my two favorites: Jack Daniels and Daniel Boone,

Raymond was well-known as a bank robber but even better known as an escape artist – he broke out of every jail he was ever in, except for Alcatraz.

Which brings us back to the Tampa murder.

 

Initially officials in Florida were skeptical of Raymond’s confession, according to the Tampa Times.

“Officials believe that Remine might be wanting to get off ‘the rock’ where he has been sentenced to remain until 1964, the earliest date upon which he could ask parole. They said he was sent to Alcatraz in 1937 for a bank robbery in his native Tenn., but was later transferred to Atlanta and in 1944 while being returned to Alcatraz, escaped from his guards. He was later captured and put back on the rock.”

So why was a Tennessee bank robber confessing to a Florida crime?

Again the Tampa Times:

“According to the Chief, Remine said that he had been a salesman at the time the crime was committed and that he had only been in Tampa a week or so before the slaying.”

Despite their initial skepticism, Tampa authorities began an in-depth investigation, or as in-depth as any investigation of a 16-year-old case with all the files missing could be.

The first step was reading the original newspaper story from January 2, 1931:

MYSTERY SURROUNDS MURDER OF DETECTIVE

SLAYER FIRED HIS GUN FROM REAR OF AUTO

Mrs. Steward's Wound Narrowly Missed Spinal Column.

The fact that City Detective John E. Jones, murdered last night in the outskirts of the city, and Mrs. Hattie Steward, his companion, both were shot from the rear, apparently by someone in the back seat of the automobile in which they were parked, added to the mystery of the case today.

Just how narrowly Mrs. Steward escaped death from the slayer's bullet was revealed shortly before noon when she was treated at the municipal hospital. The bullet had entered between her left shoulder and her left hip and barely missed her spinal column as it coursed downward to lodge just above her right hip.

Mrs. Hattie Steward

Woman's Story Questioned

Another complicating feature was the failure of officers to reconcile the story of Mrs. Steward with their reconstruction of the crime. For Jones to have been killed in the manner she described, they said, would have been impossible.

Mrs. Steward was examined at the municipal hospital this morning and later removed to the hospital ward of the county jail, where she is being held pending completion of the investigation.

Officers investigating Jones' murder are convinced that the detective's slayer was sitting on the rear seat of the automobile when he held his pistol close to Jones' back and emptied the magazine.

Parked in Lonely Spot

Jones was murdered shortly after 10 o'clock last night, while he and Mrs. Steward were seated in a car parked on the old police pistol range, about 100 yards north of Michigan avenue, and a half-mile west of Lincoln avenue.

They had been there but 20 minutes when the slaying took place, and Mrs. Steward, unable to summon help by firing the detective's own pistol, finally walked into Macfarlane park, several miles away, where she was picked up and carried to a West Tampa cafe.

The scene of the murder is a lonely rendezvous, miles away from the nearest house. The spot where the slaying took place is in a field clear of trees, and in plain view of Michigan avenue.

Jones and Mrs. Steward were preparing to drive back to town. Suddenly, she said, she heard someone say, "Now I've got you where I want you!” A fusillade of shots followed. As Jones slumped down into the seat under the steering wheel of the car, she grabbed his pistol-one that she had given to him for a birthday present-and emptied it into the air to attract help.

When the shots went unanswered, she walked to Macfarlane park, was picked up by a motorist, and carried to the Four Brothers cafe in West Tampa, from where she called officers.

  

That’s the gist of the murder tale.

From the get-go investigators were suspicious of Mrs. Steward’s story.

The shots that killed Jones came from the rear and from close range. Her wound was in her front.

She claimed they had stopped earlier at a roadhouse for a pint of liquor. The roadhouse owner said they were never there.

There had been a full moon that night and yet she claimed she didn’t see anyone approach the car or run away.

And when she led detectives back to the scene of the murder, she took them on a long circuitous route.

“When Mrs. Steward returned to the scene, Jones' body had been removed by the officers from the car and was lying in the grass nearby. Almost hysterical, she knelt by his side and begged him to speak to her. ‘Poor old daddy,’ she cried ‘they never gave you a chance. Oh! if you could only speak and tell them who did it.’”

He couldn’t so detectives booked Mrs. Steward on suspicion of murder. Without any evidence against her, she was released.

Next up was the estranged wife, Mrs. Minnie Jones, who was also arrested and questioned. Then released.

And a year later the arrest of local bootlegger “Hard Sam” Daughtery, who was also let go. "Hard Sam," who got his nickname from an Atlanta jailer, after a fellow inmate whacked him on his "hard head" with a lead pipe, had a connection to Jones. He and Jones' son Robert had once kidnapped a witness in Sam's bootlegging trial. But detectives couldn't make a case against him either. 

So there the matter sat for 16 years.

Till Cousin Raymond entered the picture.

 

Raymond Remine booking photo from Alcatraz in 1945

Raymond had a good story.

“Remine said he had been traveling through the Tampa territory as representative of a novelty company [he refilled vending machines] when he met a man named Ward [conveniently Raymond couldn’t recall Ward’s first name] and they decided to ‘have some fun by scaring’ occupants of the car they saw parked off the old road to Clearwater. He said Jones opened fire on him and he and Ward emptied their guns at Jones as they fled.”

The newspaper noted Remine was vague about other details-where he stayed in Tampa, his alleged accomplice (who might have fired the fatal shots) and other pertinent points. He remembered well, though, that Jones opened fire on him and his fun-seeking friend, Ward.

“In checking to establish that Remine might have been in Tampa, they learned that the man for whom Remine had worked knew Remine had been in Tampa at the time of the murder. This ex-employer, a Walter C. Gulick, related that Remine was here with a woman he believed to be Remine's wife. Remine was going by the name of John Traynor and Gulick related that a year later Remine had gotten him into a lot of trouble by opening fire on a Des Moines city detective who was only inquiring as to the identification of Remine's automobile. Remine, Gulick now believes, thought the detective wanted to quiz him about the Tampa murder.”

Gulick conveniently left out the fact that he and Raymond had robbed a bank in Ely, Iowa the next year and both had gone to prison.

As for “Traynor’s wife,” Minnie Stevens Traynor, detectives located her in Iowa and she told them that “Remine's behavior after the time of the shooting was suspicious and he had refused to let her see newspapers on their way back North.”

She conveniently neglected to mention that she had served a stint in prison for smuggling a pistol into the Minnesota prison where Raymond was being held in 1932 and the two of them threatened a deputy sheriff and then hijacked a taxi to Iowa. Instead of tipping the cabbie, they tied him to a tree and drove on with his hack.

It was a complicated case but in the end Tampa authorities concluded what I had concluded in 1980 when I first read Raymond’s confession letter in his FBI file: Raymond wanted to get extradited to Florida where he stood a much better chance of busting out of jail. He knew he would never escape from Alcatraz and extradition was his only hope.

“‘In weighing the probabilities of a death sentence,’ Farrior wrote into the record, ‘we must also remember that he was smart enough to soften the crucial point of his confession, to-wit, the actual shooting, by saying he and his companion saw the couple parked in the car in a compromising position and came up for the purpose of frightening them only when Detective Jones started firing.’ By closing the case against Remine, Florida also closes a door to the convict's last hope to get off ‘the rock.’”

And also the last hope to solve the murder.

The 1931 murder of Detective John E. Jones remains unsolved to this day.

Raymond Remine did eventually get off The Rock. As his health deteriorated, he was transferred to the United States Medical Center For Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri where he died in 1964.

 

Did Raymond Remine kill Detective John E. Jones?

Obviously Raymond was not averse to shooting at someone, witness his well-documented run-in with Des Moines detectives in 1932.

His record shows he pistol whipped numerous people who got in his way, from bank tellers to deputies. But there is nothing else about murder in his file – and I’ve read the entire FBI file along with newspaper accounts of a number – but probably not all – of his bank robberies. The Tampa Police cleared him. 

He lead an interesting life, working as a farm hand on his uncle’s Iowa farm as a teenager, trying his hand at prize fighting, robbing his first bank in 1920, at age 24, spending time in many of our country’s finest jails and prisons, including Leavenworth, Atlanta and Alcatraz, and along the way marrying at least five women, possibly more. Probably more.

During his first stint in Alcatraz in the late thirties,  a fellow prisoner was one Al Capone. And during his second stint in the late forties, he was imprisoned with the Birdman of Alcatraz. I don’t know if he was friends with either.

I never met Raymond, he was in Alcatraz when I was born and then moved to the Springfield, Missouri prison. I was 16 when he died.

In fact I had never heard about Raymond until the seventies when one of my uncles decided that my generation of cousins needed to know more about our family history.

But it was only recently that I researched that long ago murder confession and turned up the Unsolved Murder of Detective John E. Jones.

The Elvis Time Machine

Elvis Hasn't Left This Building

I was standing on the porch at 200 East Gholson in Holly Springs, Mississippi and I had just shouted back to the car, “Looks like we picked the wrong day.”

There was a note on the door from another tourist group reading, “Sorry we missed you.”

That’s when I heard a rumbling from inside the house. I turned and there in the translucent window of the door looked for all the world like the ghost of Jacob Marley.

It wasn’t. It was Paul MacLeod, owner-operator-curator-hunter-gatherer-tour guide of Graceland Too, the number one tourist attraction in Holly Springs and probably the number one tourist attraction in America that isn’t in any of the travel guides.

And we hadn’t picked the wrong day. Paul was home, ready, willing – more than willing – and able to give us a tour of his Elvis-obsessed home.

Actually obsessed isn’t the right term. “Obsessed” is much too mild. Consumed? Absorbed? Possessed? All of them and throw in “haunted.”

Paul is proud of his Elvis obsession. He showed us his little scrapbook from fifth grade. Like a mental patient with rounded scissors Paul would spend the day scouring newspapers and magazines looking for the words “Elvis Presley.” Then he would cut them out and paste them in his album.

There are six million cuttings in the book, he proclaimed. I think he said six million. He threw so many numbers at us during our tour, 160,000 of this, six million of that, 35,000 records, 25,000 CDs, that I can’t be sure of any numbers. I don’t think a courtroom stenographer could have kept up with Paul, much less a lowly journalist.

Paul has fashioned the exterior of his house to look like Graceland. If you squint and ignore the fact that it is painted in a garish blue – for Blue Hawaii or Blue Christmas or one of Elvis’s other blue periods - I can’t remember.

He said he used 58 gallons of blue paint, corresponding to the 58 years since Elvis began his career. Or at least that’s what I thought he said. My son-in-law Ben thought he said 80 gallons, corresponding to Elvis’ age. He might have said both. He probably said both. Or neither.

The tour – which is available day or night, seven days a week, just knock – costs $5 per person and is lead by Paul His Ownself. He leads you through the five downstairs rooms, all piled floor to ceiling – and in a couple of the rooms including the floor and ceiling – with Elvis stuff, memorabilia, paraphernalia, junk, even unrelated junk, like the photo of the 102-year-old female impersonator, who may have once attended an Elvis movie.

Where to begin? Elvis candy bars – “those are worth $100,00.” Elvis records – “that blue one is worth a million dollars.” Elvis photos and Elvis jump suits and Elvis TV Guides. No, Elvis isn’t on the cover of each one. Although Paul has six million or 135,000 or 60 of the “TV Guide” with Elvis on the cover. No, each has a listing for an Elvis movie or special or maybe just an Elvis mention in a letter to the editor.

In the Elvis Back Room there’s a mounted deer head in a bucket with a red bulb dangling from its nose – something about Rudolph and a bucket of deer, like Colonel Sanders’ bucket of chicken.

There are posters and pictures and “see that picture of little Elvis with his hat on. You’ve seen that one before haven’t you?”

Yes, we all answered dutifully.

“That’s not Elvis! That’s my son! People say he’s a dead ringer for Elvis.”

Well, he is, if you squint.

Paul named his son Elvis Aaron Presley MacLeod and the boy must be proud. Or angry.

Each room has a theme although I couldn’t tell you what the theme is. The entryway seemed to be Elvis Entryway with lots of stuffed animals. There was Elvis Front Room with lots of records and Elvis Other Front Room and Elvis Back Room and Elvis Other Back Room. And I guess there was Elvis Back Yard even though the only things in the back yard were a bunch of empty Coke cans. Paul said he drinks 24 Cokes a day and no one doubted him.

And everywhere tubs and tubs, each said to contain hundreds of thousands of pieces of Elvis stuff, all mint condition.

The tour lasted less than an hour. It only seemed longer.

The group was so exhausted from Paul’s non-stop patter that it was some time after that we could collect our thoughts and discuss our adventure.

My step-daughter said she kept hearing the Twilight Zone theme over and over in her head. My wife said she kept hearing the Addams Family theme: “Their house is a museum/where people come to see ‘em/They really are a scream/The Addams Family.”

Son-in-law Ben said he kept hearing, “Tonight on 48 Hours Mystery, two couples visit a Mississippi museum…and are never seen again.”

I didn’t hear anything. My senses were overwhelmed by the smell. What was it? Dust? Mold? Must? Must have been mold or dust.

I finally figured it out. It was the smell of Dead Elvis.

I took lots of pictures because if I hadn’t you wouldn’t believe this story, would you? It’s NOT an April Fool’s Day joke.

Paul MacLeod had a heart attack on the front porch of Graceland Too in 2014 and died the next day. The contents of the house were later auctioned off.