Author of ‘Hatch Act’ grew up in Kirwin, Kensington

Editor’s Note: In recognition of the sesquicentennial celebration — the big 150th Birthday Party — which will be held in Kirwin on Sat., Oct. 5, the Phillips County Review has been running original historical articles on the community.

By KIRBY ROSS
Phillips County Review

It’s difficult to read a newspaper these days or look at the news on television or online without there being a story coming out of Washington about some sort of allegation relating to a violation of the Hatch Act.

“Army Major Violates Hatch Act.”
“FBI Agent Lawsuit Highlights Gray Area in Hatch Act.”
“Conway Subpoenaed For Possible Violation of Hatch Act.”
“Six Officials Found In Violation of the Hatch Act.”
“Government Seeks Hatch Act Probe.”

The Hatch Act, which is legislation banning federal employees from engaging in some forms of political activity, is named after its author, Carl Atwood Hatch, U.S. senator for New Mexico from 1933 through 1949.

With his service spanning the darkest days of American history — the Great Depression, World War II and the beginning of the Cold War — Hatch became a powerful member of the Senate as well as close friend of President Harry S Truman.

The story regarding Hatch’s life in New Mexico and his time in public service is extremely well documented. What is not documented, and what is more than a little bit breathtaking, is the fact he was born in Kirwin and spent his boyhood years growing up there, and that fact has been largely missed by Phillips County and Kirwin histories.

If it were not for Hatch’s own congressional biography, which mentions in very brief passing that he was born in Kirwin, his formative years living in Phillips County might forever be unknown and unnoticed.

It is difficult to travel down any modern-day Kansas roadway without coming upon some sign saying “Birthplace of —–,” or “Childhood Home of —–.”

This includes everyone from athletes and BB gun sharpshooters to astronauts and governors — and even other U.S. senators.

But nary a marker of any sort for Sen. Carl Atwood Hatch, native son of Kirwin and Phillips County. In conjunction with its upcoming Oct. 5 Sesquicentennial, Kirwin community leaders are now hard at work correcting this oversight–we’ll keep our readers updated on their progress.

In support of that effort and as part of the Phillips County Review’s Kirwin Sesquicentennial historical series, for the first time ever the untold story of Sen. Carl Hatch’s local boyhood years is now being brought to the light of day, in considerable detail.

It can also be noted the specific home site of the Hatch family had been lost to history–that is until Sept. 6 when the research of the Phillips County Review uncovered it, which perhaps might result in a plaque being placed there too.

Since Hatch himself left no autobiographical trail of his early Kirwin years, the Review has culled through many hundreds of pages of Kirwin-related historical documents, as well as Kensington documents, and has been able to flesh out a pretty thorough picture of his boyhood and family life in the area.

Family Patriarch, Harry Hatch

This particular story begins with the Hatch family patriarch, Harley Atwood Hatch.

Commonly known as H.A. Hatch, or more familiarly as Harry Hatch, he hailed from Butler County, Ohio, and first came to the American frontier town of Kirwin in 1879 at the age of 22-years-old, two weeks prior to the railroad’s arrival (see the in-depth two-part story of the coming of robber baron Jay Gould’s railroad to Kirwin in the Aug. 21 and Aug. 28, 2019 issues of the Phillips County Review).

Now living in boom-town Kirwin, Harry Hatch entered the profession he would follow his entire life–dry goods and hardware sales.

His first documented appearance in the local press reported how days after his arrival he asked the Kirwin Chief editor to send a copy of that newspaper to friends back east, where “Kirwin will certainly be regarded as she should be–a rattling, lively city.”

Initially becoming employed at Weaver’s Dry Goods and then at Ingersoll’s Mercantile, and working at one or the other for most of the next two decades, by the end of the 1890s Harry would undergo a period of personal upheaval during which he was separated from home and hearth for months on end, suffering multiple job changes over the course of just a few years.

But that was years off. In 1883 his life was more sedate as a single man. Harry and his first boss, A. Weaver, began a horse and mule partnership together, part of which included running 100 head on a 1,280 acre ranch along Bow Creek. The following year this two sections of land was reported to be “well stocked with cattle.”

In May 1884 the Kirwin Independent observed, “Harry Hatch is building a neat residence on the corner of West Main and Third Street. We are glad to notice this indication of thrift on the part of one of Kirwin’s most estimable young gentlemen.”

The Phillips County Review, accessing documents at the Phillips County Clerk and Recorders office in Phillipsburg, and with the assistance of County Recorder Bob Keesee, has found the deed which identifies the Hatch home as being on the southwest corner of that intersection.

Based on the deed description and utilizing historical photographs, last Friday we identified the specific site of the one story frame home as facing east onto Third Street, just north of the alley about a half block south of West Main.

Marriage and Children

Harry Hatch’s construction of this house appears to have had a specific purpose in mind–five months later, on Oct. 30, 1884, he married Esther Ryan, originally of Sullivan, Ill., at the Central House in Phillipsburg. The daughter of William Ryan, Esther’s family had taken up residence north of Agra.

Observed the Kirwin Independent, “Mr. Hatch has been long and favorably known to the people of this town and vicinity, and everybody wishes him and his wife a pleasant journey through life’s pathway.”

Over the next decade four children were born in Kirwin to the couple–Bertha on November 16, 1885; Frank on December 28, 1887; Carl, the future United States Senator, on Wednesday evening, November 27, 1889; and Edith Hazel on May 28, 1894.

Serious health problems began hitting the family–first Harry, Esther and Bertha, then later on young Carl and little Edith.

In March 1885 the Kirwin Republican reported, “Harry Hatch is laid up for repairs. The doctors say lung fever is the cause of his indisposition.”

A week afterwards the Kirwin Independent provided an update–“Harry Hatch, who has been confined to his room for some days past, is again seen on the streets.”

Two years later in February 1887, the entire Hatch household–consisting of Harry, Esther and Bertha at the time–was hit by illness.

“Harry Hatch and family have been having a very serious time with sickness for the past few days. Malaria or chills and fever seems to have taken possession of their house,” said the Kirwin Independent.

All survived and a few years later, after the births of Frank and Carl, the family moved over to Washington Street in Kirwin.

In 1894, with baby Edith about to be born, the three oldest Hatch children–Bertha, Frank and Carl–were obtaining their educations and show up in one report with schoolmates having somewhat familiar modern-day local Kirwin names such as Wyrill, Perkins, Van Allen, Vogel, Baughman, Willis, Freeman, Gray, Hull, Ewing and Stuckman.

Tragedy Begins Hitting Hatch Family

The persistent illnesses which would plague the family throughout the 1880s and 90s hit with a vengeance in late winter 1895, when nine-month-old Edith Hazel Hatch became sick.

When she had been born less than a year earlier and the Kirwin Globe reported on her birth the story spoke of her proud father, saying, “Harry is wearing a 4×6 smile.” But now, mere months later–

“After a severe illness of about four weeks with lung fever, the patient little sufferer passes to the great beyond,” the Kirwin Independent wrote of her March 21 death.

The distraught family of the little one, in publishing a thank you to the public for the aid and comfort provided during the illness and its aftermath, ran the following poem in the newspaper in remembrance of Edith–

There is no death! The stars go down
To rise upon some fairer shore;
And bright in heaven’s jeweled crown
They shine forever more.
And ever near us though unseen
The dear immortal spirits tread;
For all the boundless universe is life–there are no dead.

The following year in 1896 Harry was an unsuccessful candidate for Kirwin City Council.

Running again two years later on the Businessmen’s Ticket, this time he won. With his physical ailments soon returning, in July 1898 Harry and two other men from Kirwin went out to Colorado “for their health.”

Early the next year the family’s hard times worsened when Harry began struggling for work. Kirwin was on the decline, and finding a new permanent position would prove to be a difficult task that would take Harry all of a half decade to accomplish.

Following his opportunities, Harry moved alone to Kensington where he took a job at Ketchum & Woods Dry Goods, periodically coming back to Kirwin on visits to his family.

Harry soon returned to live in Kirwin after he was unable to find a house to rent for his family in Kensington, and his wife began complaining about her own illnesses. Although she would live another 30 years, she appears to have had a persistent debilitating depression in the aftermath of the death of her infant child.

Back home in Kirwin Harry went to work again for Ingersoll’s, which was Phillips County’s largest mercantile store.

Soon striking out on his own, just months later Harry returned to Kensington where he bought out Ketchum & Woods. Being successful in finding a place there for his whole clan to live, the rest of the Hatch family made the move on July 17, 1900.

Renaming his new establishment Hatch & Co., Harry dealt in groceries, dry goods, sewing machines, notions, hats, caps, boots, shoes, crockery, glassware and queensware.

Four decades later in 1939 the national press would report on this exact moment in the life of Harry’s son, Carl, who, as a powerful United States Senator had just achieved the greatest legislative achievement of his career. In commenting on Carl and what it was in his background that helped him get to where he was at, the Associated Press wrote–

“Carl Hatch was born in Kirwin, Phillips County, Kas., and his first job was counting eggs and weighing butter in his father’s country store. From Kirwin the family moved to Kensington, Kas., and here Carl went on counting eggs, with the slight variation that he counted in German–‘ein, schwein, drei’–for the new territory’s German farm folk.”

Throughout 1901 the newspapers in Smith Center, Kirwin and Kensington published multiple stories on how poorly Esther Hatch’s health was, with the Kensington Mirror noting “she has been a sufferer for a number of years.”

Carl’s own health was mirroring that of his two parents. On Jan. 17, 1901, it was reported “the youngest son of H.A. Hatch has been on the sick list this week.”

Carl was next noted to be recovering from “a slight attack of appendicitis” on Jan. 23, 1902. The next summer, on Aug. 11, 1903, Carl was ill once again, causing a problem for his local sports team. Noted the Smith County Journal, “The Kensington kid base ball nine was to have played our boys last Tuesday but on account of one of their players being at work in the country and their catcher, Carl Hatch, being sick, they wrote over and canceled the date.”

Carl and Esther’s illnesses were all taking place in the midst of yet another family crisis. Harry Hatch’s foray into owning his own business was ill-fated, lasting just 16 months. In September 1901 he had taken his daughter, Bertha, to St. Joseph, Missouri, to attend boarding school. Two months later the Phillipsburg Herald was reporting T.L. Cook, the cashier of the Kensington Bank, had assumed Harry’s interest in Hatch & Co.

Also noting the change in ownership, “Mr. Hatch has not decided what he will do,” said the Kensington Mirror.

Harry ended up briefly moving to Agra that December 1901, going to work at Underwood’s Store with his family remaining behind in Kensington.

Agra didn’t work out either. Still trying to find a place for himself and his loved ones, less than three months later, on March 13, 1902, Harry was reported to have “returned from Oregon,” and was now on his way to a big new job in Oklahoma.

With the help of an old colleague from Kirwin, Harry Hatch was about to find that place for himself and his family he had been looking for–a place that in turn would set in motion the events that would provide his youngest son a seat in the chambers of one of the most powerful institutions in American politics–the United States Senate.

Oklahoma Territory

Herman C. Wey had been a highly-prominent Kirwin merchant for almost a quarter of a century in the late 1800s. Moving there in 1878, he built the Iron Clad Hardware and Farm Implement store on the northeast side of the square a few months before the arrival of the railroad, and was present just in time to ride the boom that immediately followed. In the process he went on to become one of Kirwin’s wealthiest citizens.

After the boom, however, Kirwin began undergoing a prolonged economic contraction, losing close to half its population between 1880 and 1900.

As Kirwin was in the midst of its decline Oklahoma Territory was beginning its land rush era, with a flood of settlers flooding in and towns springing up across the region overnight.

Noted the Kirwin Kansan newspaper in speaking of Wey in 1913, “In 1902 opportunities in a business way held forth a more inviting field in the new Oklahoma country.”

Following those opportunities, Wey sold his hardware store in Kirwin as he went about establishing a chain of them in the new territory.

Wey himself retired to Wichita, building a $75,000 mansion (worth $2,000,000 in 2019 dollars), and set up his sons to run stores along the line of the Oklahoma portion of the Frisco Railroad between Kansas City and Dallas.

To assist them in this ambitious undertaking, Wey tracked down another Kirwin pioneer, Harry Hatch, who had took his desperate job search and hunt for greener pastures to the Pacific Northwest while his family remained back in Kensington.

Receiving the offer from Wey and then heading directly to Mountain Park, Oklahoma Territory, Harry Hatch helped the Wey family set up a store there, after which the Weys quickly set him up with one of his own to run.

“Being a first-class hardware and implement man, Harry Hatch was selected by Mr. H.C. Wey to manage the Eldorado business, and, when the time for opening stock came, sold merchandise from a tent on west Main street, the building to be occupied by the company not having been completed,” reported the Kirwin Argus not long afterwards.

This phase of the continuing Hatch family separation lasted for a year and a half. Finally, toward the end of 1903, Harry sent for the others to come join him.

Leaving Kensington, their residence for three years, Harry’s family–wife Esther, daughter Bertha, son Frank, and son Carl, made a final visit to Kirwin in November 1903 before heading on “to Oklahoma to make their permanent home.”

Almost four decades later the El Paso Herald-Post wrote, “The family moved to the brand new town of Eldorado, Okla., then booming as the Frisco Railroad pushed a new line into Texas. Now it was a hardware store the family had, and young Carl Hatch was up a winter’s morning to ready the place for the trade of farmers driving across country, behind six-horse teams, to the railroad town.”

Carl Hatch–Publisher, Attorney, State Judge, U.S. Senator, Federal Judge

The Herald-Post story continued, “High school was over for young Hatch in 1907, and soon he was setting type and feeding the press on the town’s newspaper, the Eldorado Courier. When some time later, the publisher wished to sell, Carl and a friend bought.”

This development did not go unnoticed back home in Kansas, with the Kensington Mirror noting, “We received a copy of the Eldorado, Oklahoma Courier, this week, and in looking over the same we notice that a former Kensington young man, Carl Hatch, is one of the owners of the same. The paper is a good one, well filled with advertising and local reading and shows that Carl is enjoying prosperity.”

Selling the newspaper after two years, Carl used the profits to attend law school at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn.

Returning to Eldorado upon completing his legal studies and then being admitted to the Oklahoma bar in 1913, Carl married Ruth Winefred Cavniss.

During this period he made another visit back to Kansas in 1916–“Carl Hatch, a formerly young man of this city, but now of Eldorado, Oklahoma, where he is engaged in the law business, spent a few hours in this city last Saturday calling on Kensington friends. Carl moved from this city thirteen years ago and reports he notices many substantial improvements in the city during that time,” said the Kensington Mirror.

With the up and coming barrister moving further west to Clovis, N.M. weeks after this Kensington visit, fate now put him on the fast track to his greater destiny as he became a partner of Harry L. Patton.

Within months of hiring Hatch, Patton became New Mexico Attorney General, with 28-year-old Carl following as his assistant.

Kirwin also continued to lay claim to her native-born son, with the Kirwin Kansan reporting in 1918, “Mr. and Mrs. Harry Hatch and their son, Frank, still live in Eldorado. Bertha is living in Oregon, and Carl is a lawyer in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The old timers of Kirwin will remember this family.”

Appointed district court judge in 1923, notice of that achievement also made its way back home.

Said the Kirwin Kansan, “Carl A. Hatch is the new District Judge of the Ninth Judicial District of New Mexico. He was appointed Monday by Gov. Hinkle to fill out the unexpired term of Judge Sam Bratton. Judge Hatch was in Santa Fe when the appointment was made and returned to Clovis Wednesday morning and enters immediately into the duties of his new position. The Judge Hatch mentioned above was a boy raised here in Kirwin who later lived in Kensington. Old Kirwin settlers will remember the Hatch family well.”

Carl served as judge until 1930 when he resigned his position. Returning to private practice, he successfully managed the campaign of Arthur Seligman in being elected governor of New Mexico and Andrew Hockenhull, for lieutenant governor.

With Seligman dying in office in September 1933, one of the first official acts Hockenhull made was to appoint Carl Hatch to the United States Senate to fill a vacancy in that position.

Once appointed to the U.S. Senate, Hatch afterwards was reelected three times–once in a special election in 1934, and two more times in regular elections in 1936 and 1942. His final win was by a landslide.

The tenure of the new senator was proudly noted in the Kansas press, with the Emporia Gazette reporting in 1934 it had “discovered that Kansas actually has three senators in congress, although one of them is representing New Mexico. He is Carl Hatch, who was born at Kirwin, Kan., where he lived until 13 years of age.”

The Hatch Act

Taking on a major role as a Washington D.C. reformer, Senator Hatch began efforts to enact laws relating to the political activities of government employees. His first such piece of legislation would have prohibited federal workers from serving as delegates to national political conventions.

That effort hit a deadend.

His next try at reform was an attempt to restrict politics in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration program, following allegations employees were heavily involved in 1938 Congressional campaigns in the swing states of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee.

The Roosevelt Administration pushed back hard against Hatch, resulting in the failure of his second major effort at reform.

Shortly after this defeat, however, investigative reporting uncovered significant political scandals surrounding WPA employee politicking, with Congressional hearings following.

In the midst of a national uproar the time was now ripe for Carl Hatch’s signature piece of legislation. Moving his bill forward in early 1939, it would–

•Prohibit bribing or intimidating voters

•Restrict political campaign activities by federal employees

•Prohibit using public funds earmarked for public works projects from being used for electoral purposes

•Forbid officials paid with federal funds from using promises of jobs, promotion, financial assistance, contracts, or any other benefit to coerce campaign contributions or political support

•Prohibit federal employees from membership in any political organization advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government

This time the bill–now christened the Hatch Act after Kirwin’s most famous son–successfully made its way through the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

From there it was sent to the desk of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would decide whether it would live or die. While he hadn’t taken a public position, Roosevelt was strongly opposed to it.

With all eyes on him, the political realities of what the Hatch Act stood for finally prompted Roosevelt to sign it on the very last day he could.

In doing so he made a statement suggesting he had always been fully supportive of Hatch’s efforts, and that the legislation would provide the protections the American public and federal employees needed.

In the jubilant aftermath of the passage of the Hatch Act, the national spotlight turned directly on successful reformer Carl Hatch and the personal character he tapped into which resulted in the passage of the groundbreaking law.

In writing about Hatch, the El Paso Herald-Post harkened back to the Hatch family’s earliest days in Kirwin, noting, “The father of Carl Atwood Hatch, senior senator from New Mexico, rode westward from Ohio to Kansas when homesteaders were opening that country in the Seventies. When Kansas lost its newness for him he rolled on to Oklahoma. All his life he had a pioneer’s heart. The same pioneering spirit lives on in the son who became a Senator and helped him to drive the Hatch Act, a far-reaching political reform, through Congress.”

Final Years

Carl Hatch would remain in the Senate another 10 years, serving on committees with Sen. Harry S Truman of Missouri and becoming a close personal friend to him–a relationship which continued after Truman was elected vice president in 1944 and then became president upon the death of Roosevelt in 1945.

In his remaining years in the Senate, Hatch played major roles in formulating nuclear energy policy after the invention of the atomic bomb, and in enacting labor legislation and public land use regulations.

In 1949 President Truman appointed Hatch to a federal judgeship in New Mexico.
During the term of Dwight Eisenhower in 1954, Hatch rose to become Chief Judge in the federal District of New Mexico before taking on senior judge status on April 5, 1963.

Five months later, on Sept. 15, 1963, Hatch quietly passed away in Albuquerque at the age of 73. Virtually every newspaper obituary of him in the nation, and there were hundreds of them, included the following defining words–

“Born Nov. 27, 1889, he was the son of a Kirwin, Kan., grocer, Harley A. Hatch.”

From there the stories of his life went on to speak of his major accomplishments and the great men he interacted with.

And while he has risen to a respected and almost revered place in the annals of New Mexico and American history, the formative years he spent growing up in Kirwin are just one more chapter in the Forgotten History of Phillips County.