Who Invented The Hamburger?

Who gave the world the hamburger, arguably the most time-honored backyard cook-out and fast food chain tradition? Who should be credited as the creator and where was it introduced? One would think everything would be known and well-accepted for such a culinary icon. One would be wrong.

For many years, there have been numerous claims for the honor. Folks in New Haven, Connecticut are certain the first hamburger was served at Louis Lassen's cafe in 1900. Historians in Seymour, Wisconsin say the Connecticut claim is bogus because their man Charlie Hagreen was selling burgers to his cafe's customers in 1885. Akron, Ohio folks claim that was two years later than Frank and Charles Menches selling burgers at the Summit County Fair in in their town. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, they claim a local rancher named Oscar Weber Bilby cooked and served the first hamburgers for neighbors attending a Fourth of July shindig on his farm in 1882.

To settle the argument, one thing needs to be clarified - the definition of the All-American hamburger. All right-thinking people understand and agree it is a ground beef patty, mustard and/or mayonnaise, tomato, lettuce, pickles and onions served between two slices of a warm bun accompanied usually by an ample side of french fries and ketchup. Some may prefer onion rings as a side, but the main item in this discussion is the hamburger itself. History tells us that all of the claimants listed above simply served steak sandwiches - a piece of cooked meat held between a couple of slices of plain bread. That is most definitely NOT a hamburger.

Athens, Texas courthouse

So who actually was the first person to concoct the traditional All-American burger with the combination of ingredients we have all come to love? Fletcher Davis, a resident of little Athens, Texas (population 12,700 in 2010) about 75 miles southeast of Dallas, has the most credible claim. Not only did he use the above recipe, but his is the most well documented.

Fletcher was a potter by trade. Born in Webster Groves, Missouri, he got a job at the famous Miller Pottery Works in Athens and moved there in the mid-1880's. He was a natural and imaginative cook and it wasn't long before he was tasked with cooking at company picnics. At one of these picnics, he served the first authentic hamburger and the folks loved his new creation!  

Around 1890, the pottery business began to slow and folks in Athens turned to raising black-eyed peas. So much black-eyed pea business was conducted that today, Athens is known as the black-eyed pea capital of the world. To make ends meet, Fletcher opened a little cafe on the town square across from the county courthouse. Remembering how much the picnickers liked his sandwich, he made the hamburger, accompanied by a side of fried potato slices, the main offering in his new establishment. It wasn't long before people were coming from all around to "Old Dave's" little cafe on the town square.

In 1904, the World's Fair was to be held in St. Louis, Missouri. Fletcher decided he could make a nice profit by taking his hamburger there. The town's residents were so sure his food would be a hit they chipped in to pay his expenses. Fletcher got a vendor license, rented a house in St. Louis and traveled there with some family members. Descendants of those family members still have photo's taken during the two weeks they spent there and letters telling the folks back home about eating hamburgers at Uncle Fletch's (as he was called by his family) concession booth almost every day.

Along with the family documents, and maybe even more convincing, is the existing historical documentation. One of these documents is an official St. Louis World's Fair photo of the midway and in that photo, in the background across from an exhibit featuring Geronimo and other famous Indian warriors, is Fletcher Davis' booth where he sold his hamburgers and fried potato slices. There is also the news story filed by a reporter from the New York Tribune of the "newest gourmet discovery" at the fair, a sandwich called the hamburger. The reporter either didn't ask Fletcher for his name or forgot to write it down when he interviewed him because in the report he stated the meal was "the innovation of a food vendor on the pike" ("pike" was a term then referring to the midway at a fair or carnival). The reporter went on to describe the ingredients of the hamburger. When he interviewed Fletcher, he asked for details about the accompanying fried potato slices. Fletcher explained the hamburger was his invention, but he had borrowed the fried potato recipe from an old friend who lived in Paris. Of course, he meant Paris, Texas, but the reporter, being from New York and unfamiliar with Texas geography, assumed he meant Paris, France and so described them as "French fried potatoes."

Athens, Texas courthouse square where
Old Dave's Cafe was located

When Fletcher returned home to Athens, he found that several cafe's in town were now selling his creation. Although he kept up his little eatery for a while, he eventually closed it and returned to a pottery job with Miller Pottery and faded into happy obscurity. 

The scales are weighing heavily in favor of Athens, Texas as the place and Fletcher Davis as the right person. Adding even more weight is the company that "takes the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else," McDonald's. Their Hamburger University has declared "a food vendor at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair was the first to introduce the sandwich to the public." As we know, that vendor was Fletcher Davis.

If that's not official enough for you, know that in 2006, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution recognizing Davis as the originator of the hamburger. Case closed!

Thank you Fletcher Davis, Athens, Texas resident and former potter-turned-cook. To millions of people, and I'm one of them, your history-making-contribution to food has made the world a better place.

2nd Most Decorated Soldier of WWII

Audie Murphy is famous for being the most decorated soldier in World War II. Along with the Medal of Honor, Murphy won 18 other medals for a total of 19. Onclo Airheart was born in Trinidad, Texas and raised on a rural farm. As a young man, he, like Audie, grew up providing meat for his family by hunting deer, squirrel and rabbits. Onclo (pronounced “Onslow”) enlisted in the Army in 1940 at age 23. When he was discharged after the war in 1945, he had received 18 medals, one less than Murphy.  In one of those incredible coincidences of war, almost beyond belief, he was Murphy's "foxhole buddy.” This pair of Texans went through the war, fighting next to each other for days and weeks without break, many times in desperate life-and-death hand-to-hand combat, on the front lines of World War II's most ferocious battles - and they both survived what thousands of other men didn't.

Alongside Audie in B Company of the Third Division while fighting across Europe, Onclo destroyed truckloads of the enemy with a single shot of an anti-tank grenade, rescued a full division of French soldiers and wiped out an impenetrable pillbox full of German machine gunners. 

Once, while scouting ahead of the rest of their company, Airheart and Murphy ran smack into a large force of enemy soldiers. While under fire, they confused the Germans by dashing back and forth from tree to tree, making the enemy think there was a large force confronting them. Eventually, the German forces ceased fire and raised a white flag. It was quite a shock to the 180 enemy soldiers who surrendered to be taken prisoner by only two American soldiers!

Another time, Murphy had been wounded and was out of action so Airheart was left to continue fighting alone.  At a place called Christmas Hill, for three days and nights without food or water, he remained in position fighting until French soldiers informed him the hill had been seized. He had killed dozens of the enemy and was so exhausted he had to be helped to an aid station.

Toward the end of the war, Onclo received the last of his 18 medals, the Bronze Star. He earned it when he and Murphy (who had recovered from his wounds and returned) faced intense enemy sniper fire in Germany. Murphy began shooting at the crew of an ammo truck while Onclo used a rifle grenade to destroy the truck and then with a single shot, killed a German messenger who was running to alert reinforcements.

He was interviewed by a reporter in 1975 for the 30th anniversary of the end of the war. When asked what made him fight so hard, he said, “We had to fight to live, and we wanted to keep the fighting from reaching America’s shores. Those big, old guns the Germans had – they would have tore New York up. And I wanted to get the mess over and get back home. That’s the only way we were going to end it.”

For the rest of his life after the war, Onclor lived with many harsh memories. He was interviewed once more in 1995 by a reporter for the Athens Review who succinctly said, “Airheart tells of times when men lived stark, desperate lives that could end the next moment. Students of history read of names like Christmas Hill and the Battle of the Bulge, but Airheart sees them in living color.” He remembered the losses among the Americans at the Battle of the Bulge, “There were only six of us from our whole unit left when it was all over.” The interviewer reported that “amazement that he survived still clings to his voice, along with the sadness in his heart for his lost comrades.”

As most people know, once the war was over, Murphy headed to stardom in Hollywood. Onclo returned home to little Trinidad, Texas to work on the family farm. A few years later, Hollywood was making “To Hell and Back” a biographical movie about Murphy. Onclo was contacted by his old friend who asked him to play himself in the film. Onclo declined because it was planting time and he needed to work on his farm. As Onclo himself described it to that 1995 interviewer: “He said he wanted me to go into show business. They was gonna put me in it. But I told him I’ve got my mules and plow, and I’m fixin’ to go to the field.” 

And so Onclor Airheart remained obscure. Even after his death LIFE magazine declined to mention his name. In an issue that summarized the 20th century, the magazine ran a few lines about Audie Murphy as the most-decorated soldier ever. Then they added, “We understand one other soldier from Texas is still living and has only one medal less than Murphy.” No name, no recognition.  Even after the editors were informed of Onclo’s name and address, they replied they had “no interest in information of this kind now.”

Onclo went unrecognized for his war service, but maybe that lack of acknowledgment meant nothing to Airheart.  Like most military service members then and now, he’d done his duty and simply returned home to live out the rest of his life.

Audie Murphy died in a plane crash in 1971. Onclo Airheart, the second most decorated soldier in history, quietly passed away in Trinidad, Texas in 2001.

Crazy Water

Famous Mineral Water Company

City Engineers in Marlin, Texas were trying to find good drinking water for the growing town in 1892. They found a site where they were sure they would find water and began drilling into the black dirt. They hit water alright, but it was not the good drinking water they sought. What came gushing up was a hot, ugly yellow colored water that smelled bad and tasted worse. The disappointed engineers went looking for another site and the people of Marlin were still thirsty.

A couple of weeks later, a young man came into the office of the Marlin Democrat, the local newspaper. Looking "sick and despairing" and obviously suffering from "a loathsome disease," he called upon the sympathy of the paper and the people of the town for help as he had not a penny to his name. Several of the townspeople, not having the amount of sympathy the young man was hoping for, brought him a barrel of the foul smelling, hot water so he could take a bath. A few other townspeople, a bit more charitable, provided him with food so he decided to stay for a while, sleeping at night under a tree in a park and bathing in the barrel of water.

Much to everyone's surprise, five weeks later, he was proclaimed healed! The nasty water everyone hated turned out to be the town's ticket to fame and riches. Within a few weeks of word getting out about the miraculous healing waters, Marlin became one of the country's hottest health destinations. People came from all over the United States and even other countries to "take the waters" and the town benefited handsomely.

The town that benefited the most from discovering "healing waters" though was Mineral Wells, about 150 miles northwest of Marlin. A farmer named J. A. Lynch had drilled a well in 1880 which had come in with the same hot, foul-smelling water found later in Marlin. Mr. Lynch's wife didn't want the water to go to waste so she decided to bath in the hot water and drink what she could stand. In a few weeks, her rheumatism was healed! However, these waters were nothing more than a locally known phenomena until Billy Wiggins drilled on land he owned next to Lynch's.

Wiggins hit the same kind of water and began testing it. He discovered it contained significant amounts of lithium, the same chemical widely used today to treat bipolar disorders. Wiggins saw business opportunity in the water and began to advertise the healing properties of what he called "Crazy Water." He claimed his Crazy Water cured "constipation, high blood pressure, rheumatism, arthritis, kidney problems, liver problems, autointoxication, bad complexion, excess acidity and any other ailments of a more serious nature." With claims like that, people began flocking to Mineral Wells and Crazy Water became the most famous water since fire water. Often there were more than 3,000 people paying to camp on the Wiggins and Lynch property around the wells and paying 10 cents a glass for the water. Soon, Wiggins opened the Crazy Water hotel and quickly became rich. By the mid-1890's, Mineral Wells had 400 commercial wells all selling their own healing waters. By 1910, over 150,000 visitors a year came to Mineral Wells. The town's 46 hotels and boarding houses were constantly fully booked.

Site of the original Crazy Water Well

In 1904, one of the afflicted who came to take the waters was Ed Dismuke. He had been told there was no cure for his stomach ailments, but after a few weeks of drinking Crazy Water daily, his ailments vanished. Ed then established the Famous Mineral Water Company and purchased the Crazy Water wells from Wiggins. Ed built a pavilion next to the original Crazy Water and then built a luxury hotel which housed the thousands of people who came for the Crazy Water treatment.

At its height, the Famous Mineral Water Company was earning over $3,000,000 a year (more than $4,100,000 in 2017 dollars), but by the mid-1930's, the mineral water craze began to fade as the Depression severely reduced the number of visitors who had money to make the trip. To make up for the lost revenue, the company began to sell Crazy Water Crystals, the dehydrated minerals found in the water. The packaged crystals were sold in drugstores around the country - "With a teaspoon of crystals in a glass of tap water, you can enjoy the health benefits of Crazy Water in your own home!" The advertising was done on the "Crazy Water Crystals Radio Show" broadcast across the nation on the Mutual Network. Trouble was brewing though. Using the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the government began cracking down on the claims made by producers of mineral water. Fearing the Crazy Water Crystals Radio Show would be shut down, the company quickly moved to broadcast over an extremely powerful station in Mexico just south of the border.

World War II came along and with severe gas rationing and the government's attention to mineral water claims, over 90% of all mineral water companies went out of business by 1943. One company that managed to hold on though was Famous Mineral Water. Almost 60 years after being told he would soon die from his stomach problems, Ed Dismuke passed away on November 6, 1957 at age 97 after falling and breaking his hip. He continued to promote the mineral water's healing properties until the end, claiming he had never needed to see a doctor after beginning his daily routine of drinking the water.

Ed's widow sold The Famous Mineral Water Company shortly after his death. Over the years, the company went through a succession of owners until the current owners, Scott and Carol Elder purchased it in 2012. The only surviving mineral water company in Texas, it is now celebrating over 100 years in operation and bottles of Crazy Water are being sold in a number of select locations around the country. If you want to "take the waters" at the source in person, simply travel to the company's headquarters at 209 N.W. 6th Street in Mineral Wells and they'll be happy to sell you as much as you want.

Postcard from Lonely Fort Lancaster

In far west Texas just off State Highway 290 a few miles from the small town of Sheffield, which puts the site just about in the middle of nowhere, are the remains of Fort Lancaster, one of the forts that provided protection for westbound settlers in the mid-1850's. Constructed from 1855 - 1860 using stone and adobe bricks, it was garrisoned by 150 enlisted men and 3 officers from the 1st U.S. Infantry. It was very harsh duty, so harsh and distasteful that it was one of only 3 stations where the men were paid double salary for their service. There was basically nothing there in the way of resources and there were only two seasons of weather - unbearably hot and bone-chilling cold. For the most part, even the Indians avoided the area so skirmishes and military engagements were extremely rare. To fight the boredom, the men either worked on maintaining the buildings or spent tedious hour after hour in mindless drilling and marching.

In 1857, there came a welcome break in the routine when the Army's experimental Camel Corps came to the fort on their way west. The arrival of Captain Beale and his 40 men with 25 camels, 100 sheep and a large herd of horses and mules was certainly cause for excitement. The men of the fort and the caravan broke out what provisions they had and shared a better meal than any of them had enjoyed in a long time. Unfortunately, a pall was cast during the feast when word came that the infant son of Captain Arthur Lee, one of the caravan's married officers, had just died of an illness contracted while on the trail a few days before. Arthur Lee, Jr. was buried on the post the next day. The day after the burial, Captain Lee, his wife and the rest of the caravan had to leave to maintain their schedule. The infant's grave is still there, marked by a small headstone put in place by soldiers of the fort after his parents left.

When Texas seceded from the Union in February, 1881 and joined the Confederacy, a very civil change took place. The Federal troops peacefully left the fort and traveled back to their homes. After they left, a small contingent of Rebel forces came in to take charge.

Nine months later, the Confederate troops manning the fort had found Fort Lancaster duty to be the same as the Federal forces had, unspeakably boring, and they, again like the Federal troops, spent their time performing a little bit of maintenance on the buildings and a great deal of marching and drilling. In late November, General Henry Sibley and his 2,500 men came to the fort while on their way west to capture New Mexico for the Confederacy. To show proper respect for a visiting general (who, it was known, also happened to be good friends with Confederate President Jefferson Davis), the 100 men at Fort Lancaster presented themselves in precise rows outfitted in their never-before-worn dress uniforms. General Sibley felt obliged to respond to this welcome by personally taking charge of a marching drill routine. If there was anything the Fort Lancaster troops were good at by now, it was marching.

With Sibley sitting on his horse barking out orders, the men marched, wheeled and counter marched perfectly to each of the general's commands. Sibley called out an order to "File left" and that's when things took a nasty turn. Perhaps Sibley didn't call out loudly enough or the strong  wind blowing that day prevented the men from hearing his command, but they didn't turn left and kept marching to the right as they had been. Sibley watched in dismay as the men marched away from the parade grounds and, in perfect order,  smartly stepped through the fort's gate straight up and all the way over a nearby hill. The general didn't command them to halt or march to the rear and just sat there watching in bemusement. As the last of the men disappeared, he turned to his aid, muttered "Gone to hell they have" and rode out to continue leading his troops west. History does not record how far the poor Fort Lancaster soldiers had marched before someone rode out to stop them.

By April of 1862, the Confederate government decided the Fort Lancaster troops could be better used fighting the Yankees rather than continue marching in the isolation of west Texas. The fort was abandoned until a few months later when a small contingent of Texas Rangers occupied and used the fort's buildings as their headquarters. With the war going on, bandits, outlaws and even the Indians were not causing much trouble so it wasn't long before the Rangers also abandoned the fort. For the next five years, the fort was raided by nearby ranchers and homesteaders for building materials. A fire struck in early 1867 and destroyed several of the buildings that were still standing.

By the middle of 1867, with the war over, some of the battle-hardened veterans who had returned home to find no jobs and no prospects, had taken to a lawless life on the frontier. White settlement on formerly Indian land was pushing the Indians into desperation. To protect the settlers and travelers, the fort was once again occupied by Federal troops. Buffalo soldiers of Company K, 9th Cavalry were sent to rebuild and secure the fort. While this was proceeding, the fort came under a rare full-on attack by about 1,000 Apache and Kickapoo warriors led by a few renegade Mexican soldiers. On December 26, 1867, the fort was surrounded and the Indians attacked all sides at once. The battle lasted for 3 hours before the Indians retreated. The soldiers claimed that at least 20 of the attackers were killed while they had 3 causalities, unfortunate men who were captured and carried off.  The mutilated remains were found 3 months later and were brought back to the fort for burial. 

The next year the army abandoned the fort and once again, the buildings were raided for materials by the local ranchers. By 1912, only a few stones from building's walls remained in place when the state began preservation efforts for this historic facility. Today, the few visitors to Fort Lancaster can still feel the isolation and sense of desolation the fort's occupants experienced in the 1800's. Located a mile or so off of little traveled Highway 290 on what was known back then as Lower Road, no modern buildings can be seen in the area except for the well-equipped visitor center. The site gets few tourists. Nobody gets there unless they are intentionally going there.

On the day we stopped, we were the only visitors. Walking into the very clean visitor center, the single park ranger greeted us with a big smile on his face and a very warm greeting. He seemed overjoyed at having someone to talk to. He gave us the history of the fort, the sites to see on the property and the history of individual ruins. It was late afternoon on an overcast Saturday and when I asked him how many visitors he had that day, he replied we were the first. We left our car parked in front of the visitor center and walked around the site reading the tour brochure. It was interesting, mostly because it was so quiet I could hear the wings of a hawk as it flew high over us and I wondered if some lonely soldier all those years ago stood still like me for a few seconds to watch a bird flying in the sky. About half-way through the walking tour, the gray skies began to leak so we unfolded our little portable umbrella's and headed back to the car. We had just got in the car when there was a loud clap of thunder and it began to pour. Turning on the engine, I clicked on the windshield wipers and began to back out. As we pulled away, the park ranger came to the door and waved goodbye, the newest lonely occupant in this place of desolation.