Diamond Dick” Mcclellan
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George B. “Diamond Dick” McClellan 2KANSAS HISTORY DOCTOR DIAMOND DICK Leavenworth’s Flamboyant Medicine Man by L. Boyd Finch ansas was the stage on which a remarkable Evidence of his expertise in self-promotion is found in Victorian-era character strutted for nearly a Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nebraska, as well as in Kansas. Mc- third of a century. George B. McClellan was Clellan enjoyed particular success in Leavenworth in equally at ease in small midwestern cities and 1887–1888. His promotional methods there were memo- K towns, and in the salons of St. Louis and Den- rable; in reporting his accidental death many years later, the ver. He knew the inside of a jail as well as the plush ac- Leavenworth Times did not mention McClellan’s medicines commodations of a private railroad car. One newspaper or his healing techniques; instead, it was his methods of at- writer labeled him “a long-haired quack,” another praised tracting patients that were recounted.2 him for “such wonderful cures in this city and surround- On December 14, 1911, the Kansas City Journal fairly ing country.” He was an itinerant peddler of questionable shouted: “DIAMOND DICK IS DEAD/Picturesque Kansas medical cures, one of hundreds of pitchmen (and a few Character Succumbs to Ry. Accident.” The paper reported: women) who crisscrossed America, usually living on the fringes of society, going wherever they could find cus- George B. McClellan, who advertised himself as “Doc- tomers. Most hawked nostrums with unique names: Indi- tor Diamond Dick” and who was known in every an Sagwa, Seminole Cough Balm, Hindoo Patalka, Ka- Kansas hamlet by his costume, which was copied from that worn by the hero of the old-time “dime Ton-Ka, Modoc Indian Oil. George B. McClellan sold 1 novel,” died yesterday at the Bell Memorial hospital himself. He became “Dr. Diamond Dick.” in Rosedale [Kansas City, Kansas]. He was injured in a railway accident at LaCygne, Kas., December 5 [sic], the injuries causing his death. The body . will be L. Boyd Finch has degrees from the University of Arizona (journalism) sent to Ogdensburg, N. Y., tonight for burial. The doc- and Stanford University (political science) but is an avocational "grassroots his- tor was 54 years old. His picturesque figure attracted torian." He is the author of two books and numerous magazine and journal arti- cles, most of them on southwestern history. His grandmother’s encounter with Dr. Diamond Dick diverted him into Kansas history. 2. Gene Fowler, ed., Mystic Healers and Medicine Shows: Blazing Trails 1. Wayne (Neb.) Herald, October 18, 1888; Leavenworth Times, Novem- to Wellness in the Old West and Beyond (Santa Fe: Ancient City Press, 1977), ber 8, 1887. 5–6; Leavenworth Times, December 15, 1911; N. T. “Nevada Ned” Oliver, “Med Show,” Saturday Evening Post 202 (September 14, 1929): 12–13, 173. Dr. Oliver actually was E. O. Tilburn, and his is the most detailed account Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 26 (Spring 2003): 2–13. of the American medicine show by a participant. DOCTOR DIAMOND DICK 3 attention in all the towns, which he visited at stated especially the Leavenworth Times and the Leavenworth 3 intervals. Standard.4 In 1882 a dime novel, Diamond Dick, the Dandy from The era from 1880 to 1910 included the peak years of Denver; A True Story of the Mines of New Mexico, introduced three then-ubiquitous elements of American popular cul- a handsome young hero named Diamond Dick. The au- ture—medicine shows, dime novels, and Wild West thor, Major Samuel Stone “Buckskin Sam” Hall, stated in a shows. McClellan is noteworthy because he was a part of footnote that his hero’s real name was George McClellan, all three. In his prime role as a medicine show principal, he “a living character of to-day.” The novel was in the format shared the name of the hero of several hundred dime novel common to dime novels: approximately forty-thousand Westerns and was himself the star of the first dime novel words in small type on twenty-four pages of cheap paper. that featured a hero named Diamond Dick. A friend of The cover illustration showed the dapper Diamond Dick William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, McClellan polished his own standing over the barroom bully he had just floored for Wild West image by exhibitions of his firearms skill, and he molesting an Indian.5 frequently copied Cody’s appearance: wavy hair flowing Although no record of McClellan attending medical to his shoulders, a slender mustache, and the broad- school has been found, Hall’s novel provides a clue about brimmed hat, boots, and buckskins of the frontier scout. McClellan’s knowledge of natural medications. In a brief flashback near the beginning of his novel, Hall demon- oday it is difficult to imagine how pervasive strates that he knew the real McClellan, imagining a scene medicine shows, Wild West shows, and dime in Ogdensburg with George’s mother and grandmother novels were at the time. In their bonanza years, discussing young George who was absent, hunting and medicine shows “numbered in the hundreds.” fishing in Maine. “I fear he will never again be contented at T Since then, as historian Arrell M. Gibson has home,” his fictional mother says. “On all these long expe- noted, they have become “an elusive subject.” The Wild West show remains well documented, thanks to the show- 4. Albert Johannsen, The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Dime and manship of Buffalo Bill who gave form to what popular Nickel Novels, vol. 1 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950), culture student Joseph Schwartz calls “the profound myth 124–27; Oliver, “Med Show,” 12; Arrell M. Gibson, “Medicine Show,” American West 4 (February 1967): 15, 35, 79; William P. Burt, “Back Stage of the West”—profound and persistent. Wallace Stegner with a Medicine Show Fifty Years Ago,” Colorado Magazine 19 (July 1942): observed that much of what passes for western history 127; Joseph Schwartz, “The Wild West Show: ‘Everything Genuine,’” Jour- nal of Popular Culture 3 (Spring 1970): 656–57, 664; James R. Hepworth, “isn’t history at all, but myth, the Diamond Dick kind of Stealing Glances: Three Interviews with Wallace Stegner (Albuquerque: Uni- stuff.” In a publication of Fort Worth’s Amon Carter Mu- versity of New Mexico Press, 1998), 39; Ronnie C. Tyler, ed., The Wild West or, a History of the Wild West Shows . Which Created an Unrealistic Image of seum, Ronnie C. Tyler drew attention to “the close associ- the American West (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, ation of dime novels with the Wild West show business.” 1970), 100; [William Helfand], The American Medicine Show (New Haven: In the words of veteran pitchman Dr. N. T. “Nevada Ned” Yale University School of Medicine, 1954); J. C. Dykes, “Buckskin Sam, Ranger and Writer; or, The Life and Sub-Literary Labors of Samuel Stone Oliver, “America’s contributions to the med show were Hall,” American Book Collector 10 (n.d.): 15; J. Edward Leithead, “The Der- two—the show and the Indian.” A Yale University School ring-Do of the Diamond Dicks,” Dime Novel Round-up 16 (April 1948): 25–30. In addition to the aforementioned citations, basic sources on the of Medicine exhibition linked the European and early three subjects include: N. T. “Nevada Ned” Oliver, “Alagazam: The Story American traveling purveyors of medicinal products with of Pitchmen High and Low,” Saturday Evening Post 202 (October 19, 1929): 26–27, 76, 79–80; Fowler, Mystic Healers and Medicine Shows; Gerald Car- the late-nineteenth-century flowering of the medicine son, One for a Man, Two for a Horse: A Pictorial History, Grave and Comic, of show that provided “free concerts, vaudeville and Wild Patent Medicine (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961); Ann Anderson, Snake Oil, Hustlers and Hambones: The American Medicine Show (Jefferson, N.C.: West shows as an inducement to buy . Kickapoo Indian McFarland and Co., 2000); James B. Trefethen, “They Were All Sure Shots,” Sagwa and a host of other curealls.” It is fascinating to dis- American Heritage 13 (April 1962); James Monaghan, “The Stage Career of cover George McClellan’s significance as a player at the in- Buffalo Bill,” Journal of the Illinois Historical Society 31 (December 1938): 411–23; J. Randolph Cox, Dime Novel Companion: A Source Book (Westport, tersection of the three elements of a simpler American past Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000); Dime Novel Round-up, published intermit- and to gain insight into the character of the man through tently for collectors since the late 1920s. Two unrelated tales with a Dia- mond Dick character appeared in 1875 in the New York Weekly, a “story his promotional methods as recorded in old newspapers, paper.” 5. Sam S. “Buckskin Sam” Hall, Diamond Dick, the Dandy from Denver; A True Story of the Mines of New Mexico (N.Y.: New York Dime Library, Au- 3. Kansas City Journal, December 14, 1911. gust 26, 1882), 2. 4KANSAS HISTORY Major Samuel S. “Buckskin Sam” Hall (right) introduced a hand- some young hero named Diamond Dick in his 1882 dime novel, Dia- mond Dick, the Dandy from Denver. Major Hall stated that his hero’s real name was George McClellan, “a living character to-day.” ditions . he has kept up his favorite study of botany, and I’m sure has gathered a great deal of information in regard to the medicinal uses of herbs.” No further mention of herbal medicine appears in the novel; it was not essential to the plot. The tale, set in the immediate past, told of the hero’s harrowing but ultimately satisfying chase for two villains who had murdered his fictional sister and her chil- dren in Ogdensburg.