LOTTA DIDN'T WANT
POLICEMAN IN FAMILY.
CAPTAIN BRANHAM NEPHEW
OF FAMOUS COMEDIENNE.
Retirement of "Long John" Recalls
Time He Had Meat Shop on
Main Street -- Former
Town Marshal.
When "Long John" Branham leaves the police department at the end of the present month Lieutenant Michael Halligan will be the oldest man in point of continuous service on the force. Captain Branham and Halligan joined the force the same day in 1881.
Captain Branham had been town marshal before that, but had resigned to be an officer at the workhouse. After getting through at the workhouse he decided to be a policeman again, and joined during a shake-up.
T. B. Bullene was mayor. John Dunlap and H. H. Craig, now living in Corpus Christi, Tex., were the police commissioners. Governor Marmaduke was shaking things up and eighteen vacancies were created.
Captain Branham, "Mike" Halligan and T. S. Boulware were picked out. Boulware is now with the gas company, and as late as last spring was mentioned for the post of chief of police.
LOTTA IS HIS AUNT.
Halligan is still young enough for his work. He is a giant in stature, broad of shoulder. Captain Branham stood six feet, six inches tall in his day, but now that he is 63 years of age he is not so tall and he is well enough off to care little for working longer.
Besides he has an aunt of whom he always was very fond and who cannot but like him. This is Lotta, the idol of the theater-goers a generation ago.
Lotta, or Lotta Crabtree in private life, is "Uncle John's" age almost to a day, and she is easily worth $500,000. She owns the pile of rock on Admiral boulevard facing the Midland office building. That is the last of her Kansas City holdings, though she made a fortune out of other lots she bought and sold here.
"Uncle John," as she tenderly called Captain Branham, had not a little to do with getting her to invest in real estate here. Lotta is rich, lives like a princess, has a town, a country and a seaside home, so Captain John need not worry, even if he lost the little fortune he has saved.
CAPTAIN JOHN'S MEAT SHOP.
What he saved did not come out of the meat shop he ran where a Main street tailor shop is now. That was when Kump's hall was on the location now occupied by a clothing store, and when they had no doors on most of the saloons.
Branham's meat store was the one price emporium of "Kansas, the Gate City of the West," and old-timers still remember it. Captain John says he never will forget it, for it broke him. He came to Kansas City with $10,000.
As a policeman he was always liked. At 63 he does not like so much strenuosity, and he is in a position where he does not have to like it. Lotta never wanted her nephew to be a policeman, anyway.
QUIT OF HIS OWN VOLITION.
Captain Branham confirmed the report as printed in Monday morning's Journal that he had tendered his resignation to the board of police commissioners to take effect October 1. He denied, however, that his resignation was asked by the commissioners.
"I have been on the department so many years that I want to take a rest," he said. "I have no one to support, and feel that I'm entitled to a respite. I quit of my own volition."
It is likely that no one will be appointed to take Captain Branham's place. Since Captain Patrick Clark's appointment last winter there has been an extra captain on the force. Lieutenant George Sherer will command No. 3 district, where he has been stationed for the last three months.
