The
Man Who Slept in the Grand Piano
by
Bob Brail
“He's
a chip off the old block” is a longtime phrase still used to
describe a person who resembles one of his parents. This could refer
to physical appearance, but more likely it is used when a child's
values or actions resemble those of his mother or father. Many
people do resemble their parents in one way or another, but children,
of course, can turn out to be very different from their folks.
Hodgen Bates, a resident of Boone-Duden country in the first half of
the twentieth century, took a different route through life than that
of his parents, yet long after his death, he was remembered with
fondness.
Hodgen
Bates was born November 28, 1882, into a family of wealth and power.
Bates was the son of Dr. Julian Bates, a successful St. Louis
physician, who lived on Ridge Avenue, several blocks north of Forest
Park. Dr. Bates was son of Edward Bates, who had served as President
Abraham Lincoln's attorney-general from 1861 to 1864. Edward's
brother was Frederick, who was the second governor of Missouri, so
Hodgen Bates had both a grandfather and great uncle who were
influential politicians. His mother, Sarah F. Woodson, was the
daughter of two of Dardenne Prairie's earliest settlers, Charles F.
and Anne Woodson, who came to St. Charles County from Virginina early
in the nineteenth century and eventually built a stone house a few
hundred feet from what is now Highway N, about one mile southwest
from the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church. Charles Woodson, a War
of 1812 veteran, was one of the area's wealthiest men and the owner
of nearly thirty slaves. The Woodsons' home was called “Mount
Airy.” The ladies of “Mount Airy” had very formal daily
habits, such as formal dress at all meals, including breakfast. It
would be no exaggeration to state that Hodgen Bates came from two
illustrious, cultured families.
Yet,
Hodgen Bates chose a different path for himself. For example, Bates
never completed the ninth grade. Although everything else about his
schooling is unknown, it would probably be safe to say that this lack
of formal education was the cause of unhappiness in the Julian Bates
household. By the age of seventeen, Hodgen was working as a dry
goods clerk, still living at home. Within a few years, he was a
salesman for Carleton Dry Goods Company in St. Louis, located about
twelve blocks northwest of the Arch.
Sometime
around 1915 Bates, a lifelong bachelor, moved to the Wentzille area,
perhaps living at “Mount Airy” with an aunt or uncle. Bates had
started a railroad tie business in the Wentzville area at least by
1917, when ads began appearing in the newspaper for “Tiemakers and
Haulers, long job, good pay.” In 1918, Bates' widowed mother died,
and Bates inherited a portion of the rural Wentzville property. In
1918 he was still using a rural Wentzville address.
In
October, 1925, Bates bought two small parcels of land, totalling just
over thirty acres, a short distance south of Howell on Muschany
Hollow Road, and began farming. It was this period in Hodgen Bates'
life which Donald K. Mushany remembered in his 1978 book The
Rape of Howell and Hamburg: an American Tragedy.
Muschany, who was born in 1916, would have been between ten and
twenty years old when his impressions of Bates were formed. In fact,
Bates made quite an impression on Muschany, for he
wrote as much about Hodgen Bates than any other individual.
Muschany described Bates as a “genius,” and a “math scholar,”
a man who “played almost flawless chess.” He was also a
“voluminous reader,” a charter member in 1924 of the “Deserted
Village Library” of Howell. Bates loved the natural world,
planting several hundred irises and daffodils near his simple house.
He was a man who “knew just about everything worth knowing aout
nature,” able to identify different varieties of trees, birds,
rocks, and soils. Bates loved animals, refusing to kill any. An
independent sort, Bates built his own house and dug his own cistern.
He was also a craftsman, an “artisan,” fashioning a “fine
hexagonal tapered walnut cane” for one of Muschany's uncles.
Most
of all, Muschany remembered the fun times he and his friends had when
they visited Hodgen Bates. Bates would welcome them to his pond,
“The Sinkhole,” to play ice hockey, using a small Pet Milk can
for a puck and hickory saplings for hockey sticks. Afterwards Bates
would make a bonfire. Hot dogs and marshmallows were roasted, and
Bates would serve hot chocolate and tell the boys about a book he had
been reading.
Muschany
stated quite clearly that Bates “slept in the shell of a grand
piano,” so it is perhaps understandable that some folks thought him
unusual, although thirty years later one of Bates' neighbors, L. J.
Kessler, remembered Bates as a “kindly gentleman.” Muschany
admitted that Bates was considered an odd hermit by some people, but
“Hodgen Bates always stood tall in [his] mind” and was “a good
man.”
In
the fall of 1940 Hodgen Bates was one of about two hundred fifty
property owners in the Howell and Hamburg area whose land was
purchased by the U. S. government in order to construct a munitions
production complex. In early 1941 the government reneged on the
contracts of every property owner who had not yet been paid, deciding
that several dozen land owners had been offered too much monoey. A
short time later, the government condemned these properties and built
the munitions factory. Four years later the U. S. Supreme Court
ruled that the government had to honor its original contracts with
the landowners and pay the original contract price. By this time,
however, Hodgen Bates was dead, so his money went to his heirs: Frank
Bates, Samuel C. McCluer, and C. W. Wilson.
The
circumstances of Hodgen Bates' death on May 26, 1943, are somewhat
mysterious. Bates' death certificate states that he died shortly
after midnight. The doctor who completed the certificate wrote that
the cause of death was twelve hours of pneumonia which had followed
twenty-four hours of exposure. This means that Bates was found and
taken to the doctor around noon on May 25. According to the St.
Charles Cosmos-Monitor,
the temperature during the afternoon when Bates' exposure began was
over seventy degrees. The overnight low was in the mid-fifties when
Bates was exposed to the elements. Sometime during May 24, barely
over one-tenth of one inch of rain fall. It is difficult to
understand how such mild temperatures and minimal moisture could lead
to pneumonia and how pneumonia could so quickly result in death. It
seems possible that Hodgen Bates was already quite ill, perhaps of a
lung disease, and the exposure quickly worsened his health to the
onset of pneumonia and death. The cause of his exposure is not
known. Hodgen Bates was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St.
Louis in the Bates family plot, among his more illustrious relatives.
Today,
nearly seventy-five years after his death, one can still find
evidence of Hodgen Bates at his Muschany Hollow Road property. A
cycling trail now cuts through his old property, within a few feet of
a cellar depression. In the springtime, hundreds of gleaming
daffodils blanket the hillside. The old skating pond is still there.
The many irises Bates planted are now cascading down the ravine
which fronted his home. (For more information about this property
today, go to
thetntstory.blogspot.com/2010/12/c-188-and-c-329.html.)
Hodgen Bates was definitely a
unique individual. While Bates was not politically or culturally
influential as his ancestors had been, after his death he was
remembered as a kind, intelligent, hardworking gentleman. What
better legacy could a person want?
Sources:
1905
St. Charles County Plat Book;
“C-188” (thetntstory.blogspot.com); Cracker
Barrel Country, Volume 2,
Bill Schiermeier; Federal Censuses; Missouri
Death Certificates (s1.sos.mo.gov); The
Rape of Howell and Hamburg: an American Tragedy,
Donald K. Muschany; Recorder of Deeds Office (St. Charles County,
Missouri);
St.
Charles Cosmos-Monitor
(accessnewspaperarchive.com); St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
(ProQuest Historical Newspapers).