Chapter Two
As Elias Disney began his second decade of life, he left his mother, father, brothers and sisters and decided to join the great march west by joining forces with the expanding railroad industry. He soon found employment in a machine shop for the Kansas Pacific Railroad, utilising the skills he had learned over the years working at Kepple’s gristmill and sawmill in Ontario, as well as fixing broken machinery and farming implements on the farm in Ellis.
The Kansas Pacific Railroad was a spur of the Union Pacific Railroad, whose inception began as early as 1838. It was during the early nineteenth century that America had begun its push west across the American plains through the ideology of Manifest Destiny, which stated it was God’s intention that the American people conquer the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In an effort to facilitate the easy transport of people and supplies west, suggestions were made to construct a transcontinental railroad across North America connecting the two coasts. Congress scoffed at this idea, arguing that building such a railroad would be as silly as constructing one from the Earth to the moon.
Prior to the construction of the major railways, travel through the wilderness was difficult, often conducted by wagon and draught animal. Journeys west usually took several days, weeks, or even months, as the clumsy creatures often found the hills, mountains, forests, and muddy paths difficult to navigate. After the rush of people to California seeking gold and other precious metals in the 1840s and 1850s, advocates for a rail line encouraged prospectors to petition Congress for a railroad that would link them to the east, making travel back and forth easier. A number of debates were held in the legislature over the idea of a transcontinental railroad, stalling after sectionally-motivated arguments occurred over whether the eastern terminus of the railroad would be in the American north or south.
Finally, in 1853, the Congress of the United States signed a bill allowing for geological surveys to begin for a transcontinental railroad stretching between St. Louis, Missouri and California. Two different railroad companies emerged to fulfil the mission of building the railroad: the Central Pacific Railroad, which began building east from Sacramento, California in January 1863, and the Union Pacific Railroad, which began building west from Omaha, Nebraska the following December. While the two railroad companies initially intended to build separate railroads across America, it was soon agreed that the two rail lines would meet and join together to create a single transcontinental line.
On 10 May 1869, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met at Promontory Summit in Utah. A ceremony commemorated the momentous accomplishment of America’s first transcontinental railroad: as a locomotive on each railroad was pulled towards the joining of the two lines, a ceremonial golden spike was driven to connect the rails together, signifying the completion of the project. The news was immediately telegraphed across the nation as American citizens celebrated the important occasion. Regular service across the Transcontinental Railroad began five days later.
This triumphant project inspired smaller railroad companies to expand and strive for success similar to that achieved by the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. It also soon became recognised that other areas of the country needed to connect with the transcontinental line, which only stretched from Sacramento to Omaha. As a result, new railroads began to connect to the long line, including the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe; the Denver & Rio Grande; and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroads.
Beginning construction in 1855, the Union Pacific Eastern Division officially became a southern railroad line running parallel to the Transcontinental Railroad in 1863. However, five years later, the Eastern Division changed its name to the Kansas Pacific Railroad, creating a major rail line from Kansas City, Kansas in the east to Denver, Colorado in the west. It was from this line that Kepple Disney purchased his land in Ellis.
When young Elias Disney heard the exciting stories of those building the rail line across the American frontier, he soon abandoned the Kansas Pacific machine shop. Instead, he decided to join the construction crews building the new line west from Ellis to its terminus in Denver, where it turned north to connect with the Union Pacific. It was along this route that Elias began to realize the corruption that big business exerted over the poor and marginalised, including immigrants. While he had gained American citizenship after Kepple and Mary had become naturalised the year before, he observed the poor treatment and conditions experienced by many of the labourers along the railroad. Constructing a new railroad through the plains and mountains could be extremely dangerous, so company leadership often resorted to using immigrants for labour, including the Irish and Germans on the eastern lines and the Chinese on the western lines.
Upon completing the line in Denver, many of the labourers found themselves no longer needed and out of work. Elias, reluctant to return to Kepple’s farm in Ellis, decided to purchase himself another fiddle and use his talent to entertain the citizens of Denver by performing outside saloons. Unfortunately, when this didn’t bring him success, he decided to return home to Kansas, feeling great discouragement about what his future would hold.
Luckily, fate was on Elias’s side. While he resumed working on Kepple’s farm, his younger sister Annie began teaching at the Beaver Bank School in Ellis in 1884, serving under the school’s headmaster, Charles Call. Call had left his childhood home in the mid-1800s, joining the rush to California to search for gold. However, when his search came up dry, he made his way back east, settling in Ellis in 1879 and opening Beaver Bank School for the growing town’s children.
Elias occasionally filled in to teach for his sister, allowing him to get to know Call and the students of the school. He soon became familiar with Call’s daughter Flora, an intelligent 16-year-old girl who often performed very well academically, including a score of 99 per cent in her end-of-year examination in her advanced class in 1881. Over the next few years, Elias began spending more time with Charles Call and his family and started to pursue a relationship with Flora.
Flora graduated from high school as Beaver Bank’s valedictorian. A few years later, at the school’s commencement (similar to a graduation), she gave a speech that was timely for a young girl growing up in an American frontier town: “Neglect not the Gift that is in Thee.” The young woman acknowledged that each person was endowed with some sort of gift and that it was their responsibility to foster that gift in order to fulfil their fate.
With his daughter graduated, Charles Call and his wife Henrietta sold their land in Ellis and moved to Akron, Florida. Kepple, who had got to know the Calls through his children’s relationship with the family, chose to go along to survey opportunities in the area. Elias, who was smitten with Flora, decided to accompany his father. When Kepple realised that Kansas held more opportunity for his family, his eldest son resolved to stay behind due to his budding romance with Flora Call. Purchasing 80 acres of farmland in nearby Kismet, Elias began to actively court Flora and the two married in the Call family home in Akron on 1 January 1888.
The newlyweds settled on Elias’s farmland in Kismet, purchasing an additional 150 acres and several head of cattle. Unfortunately, a disease swept through the herd, and when many of the cows died, Elias realised that raising cattle wasn’t for him. The new husband sold his land and the couple moved to Daytona Beach, where they managed the Halifax Hotel during the tourist season of 1888. When the autumn arrived and tourists left the area, the owner of the hotel had no more need for his manager and forced Elias and Flora to vacate their room. This was especially difficult for the couple: Flora was pregnant with her first child and was due in December.
Elias quickly realised that he needed to find work to provide for his growing family. After getting a part-time job as a postal carrier for the town of Kissimmee, he also purchased approximately 160 acres of land on which to attempt growing an orange grove. However, this still did not provide sufficient income.
Later that autumn, Elias Disney enlisted in the Florida militia: a wave of American patriotism had been rising over the previous few years as talk of war with Spain began to circulate around the country. While the Caribbean island of Cuba had been owned by Spain since the fifteenth century, Cubans finally began to agitate for independence in the late 1870s. Cuban exile José Martí began to gather Cubans living in west and south Florida to support his cause. While the United States saw the Spanish treatment of Cubans as abhorrent, the government also saw a potential Cuban revolution as an opportunity to annex the island as a part of the budding American empire in the Western hemisphere. To secure Cuban ‘victory’, paving the way for American acquisition, the idea of America as the liberator of the Spanish Empire began to circulate around the nation. This was a result of articles published by American newspaper magnates, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, during their fierce battle to sell papers, utilising tactics such as sensationalising news stories in an effort to increase subscriptions, becoming known as ‘yellow journalism’. Collectively, these ideas persuaded young and old alike to begin enlisting in the U.S. armed forces and local state militias in preparation for war, which would finally break out in 1898.
After spending several weeks training at the militia base, Elias realised that military life wasn’t for him: the strict discipline clashed with his personality, while the behaviour and language of his fellow soldiers didn’t align with his conservative Methodist morals. Written communication with Flora also revealed that the new mother was struggling to keep the orange grove afloat while also caring for a new-born: Flora had given birth to a son, Herbert Arthur, on 8 December. The young father decided to leave the camp and return home to Kissimmee.
A few days later, a number of U.S. Army policemen arrived at their front door, prepared to arrest the young man who had deserted. Elias, however, refused to go with the officers.
“I didn’t desert,” he explained. “I volunteered for this outfit, which means I can just as easily un-volunteer.”
This caught the U.S. Army policemen off guard. “We need your uniform then, sir,” they explained.
“You don’t get my uniform. I paid for it out of my own money, so it belongs to me,” Elias retorted. Not expecting resistance like this and realising the young man was absolutely right, the policemen left the Disney property, letting the deserter off without punishment.
A few weeks later, a record frost landed across central Florida, coating the orange trees on the Disney farm. Elias had hoped that some of the oranges would be spared, and he quickly set out to recover some of his trees. In the midst of his hard work, he began to feel ill, and he was diagnosed with malaria. Fed up with his run of bad luck in Florida, the new father began to look elsewhere for job opportunities.
In 1890, important political and cultural figures in the United States came up with the idea to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America. Inspired by the Paris Exposition Universelle held the year before, it was decided that the United States needed to have its own version of an exposition to celebrate the momentous occasion. While it was generally agreed that Washington, D.C. should host the fair, other large cities throughout America realised that hosting the event would bring prestige and increase their stature both in the nation and around the world. St. Louis, Missouri and New York City threw in their hats to host the fair. Cultural leaders in Chicago, who believed that the city best exemplified the American spirit due to their fast comeback after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, desired that their city play host to the fair. After the American Congress held a vote on 24 February 1890, it was decided that Chicago would be the location for what would become the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.
Jackson Park, southeast of downtown Chicago and along the shores of Lake Michigan, was the chosen spot where the fairgrounds would be built. Originally designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, who was famous for designing New York’s Central Park, Jackson Park was the city’s attempt at bringing beauty to the urban district. Unfortunately, the park’s location along Lake Michigan led to the growing issue of hills of sand that had blown in from the lake, as well as great whirling cesspools that were a result of the rising tides. The choice to bring Olmstead back to Chicago to serve as the designer of the fairground was an attempt to fix the problems of Jackson Park, as well as to bring in a globally-renowned landscape architect to draw visitors to the fair.
A well-known architectural firm, Burnham & Root, was employed to design the fair’s buildings. Classical in nature, the fairground was scattered with edifices sporting soaring columns, high domes, and vast arcades, while fountains, statuary, and small lakes made the industrial exhibition graceful. Soon dubbed ‘The White City’ due to the pure and classical colour of the buildings, Chicago and the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition served as a place where sophisticated and advanced culture could be put on display, demonstrating the ability of 1890s America to overcome the temptations and vice of the period.
As he recovered from his bout of malaria, Elias would read the newspaper to keep him busy. He often saw advertisements taken out by the Carpenters and Building Association listing jobs for constructing the temporary buildings in Jackson Park for the exposition. This opportunity created interest in the young man: Chicago would be a new start. He was tired of rural life and the lack of consistent work; he saw how difficult it was for his father to start the farm in Ellis, remembered how he’d been laid off upon reaching Denver while working on the Kansas Pacific, and was incredibly frustrated and slightly depressed over the fate of his orange grove in Kissimmee. A large city in the north offered new opportunities: steady work, a higher standard of living, good schools for Herbert, the chance of an easier life with access to existing infrastructure and new technologies. His younger brother Robert had already established himself in Chicago and was in the process of scoping out land on Chicago’s south side to build a hotel near Jackson Park. This meant that it would be slightly easier to become established, as he could draw upon Robert’s experience to help acclimatise himself.
Besides, he thought to himself, Chicago won’t be an entirely new experience. Chicago was far enough east that it had a history and had been exposed to American industrial development. It was the hub of the livestock slaughter and meatpacking industry in the United States, and as such, dozens of rail lines terminated in the city. However, Chicago was also far enough west that the city was newer than places like New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. As a result, there were a lot of opportunities for work and for making something of himself. From what he understood, there were still open areas of prairie land just north and west of the city, meaning that there was even the possibility for land ownership, as well as utilising some of the skills he had acquired working on his father’s land back west. And not only that, but as a growing city, it seemed to be a place that attracted many of the respectable immigrants, such as the German population he had got to know in Kansas.
An unexpected family tragedy was a factor in the couple’s decision. In 1890, Flora’s father, Charles Call, was severely injured in an accident while clearing his Florida land of pine trees, succumbing to his injury a few weeks later. His death made it that much easier for Elias and Flora to leave Florida.
So, in late spring 1890, along with their 18-month-old son, they packed up their things and moved to Chicago to find work at the fairgrounds at the World’s Columbian Exposition, which was due to open in three years’ time. Convinced that he would finally find a stable job, Elias didn’t realise that his chances of employment were slim: contrary to what The Rights of Labor had said in its advertisement, there was no abundance of jobs. Later statistics show that for every job opportunity open for construction at the fairgrounds, applicants would be competing with at least ten other men. It was these conditions that the Disneys found themselves walking into, along with more than 25,000 other families.