Because of Beer’s History of Clark County, Kankey was already aware that the Center School had been a polling place and gathering place for township meetings.
In what Kankey refers to as an “unexpected windfall,” King presented him with a Poll Book and Tally Sheets for elections in 1912, 1925 – 1927 and 1929 which were held in Center School. This even included a detailed list of instructions and duties for poll managers.
“The judges for this precinct were J.R. Durst, E.H. Crumley, H.D. Long, and R.E. Kissell. The clerks were C.P. Johnston and Harry Beard. The clerks wrote the name of each of the 287 electors in the Poll Book,” said Kankey.
Many of the names of the 287 voters and the officials are quite familiar to township and Clark County residents today. Some might have even had the opportunity to meet some of the younger 1912 voters when they were much older.
Due to handwriting differences, and abbreviations, Kankey said that typing out the handwritten list was a bit of a challenge.
“The first to vote was G.W. Arthur and the last was Loyd Frock. Frequent last names included: Shellabarger (8), Young (6), Frock (4), Gruber (4), Layton (4), Printz (4), and Taylor (4).”
It is unknown how many registered voters this precinct had and how many did not vote because of illness or other reasons.
Kankey pointed out that all the voters were male since women were not allowed to vote until 1920. Women were in 1912 only allowed to vote for Board of Education members. (We’ve come a long way, ladies!)
As Kankey explains there were six political parties in the 1912 election.
Woodrow Wilson was the Democrat candidate for president. William Howard Taft was the Republican, Eugene V. Debs was the Socialist, Eugene W. Chafin was Prohibition, Arthur E. Reimer was Socialist Labor and Theodore Roosevelt (who had already been president as a Republican for more than seven years) was the Progressive candidate for president.
Out of these 287 local votes, Wilson won the contest in this precinct with 127 votes, Taft was second with 69 votes and Teddy Roosevelt was third with 52. Fourth was Debs with 20 and Chafin was fifth with only 10. Reimer from the Socialist Labor party got no votes locally.
For some reason 11 local voters did not cast a vote for a presidential candidate. They signed in but only voted in the other polls.
As it turned out, Kankey discovered that the local results were nearly the same as the national tally. Wilson won, followed by Roosevelt then Taft, Debs, Chafin and Reimer.
Also included in this book was the actual act of counting. The hash marks used to officially determine the results are preserved in the book.
There were separate Poll Books and Tally Sheets for elections in 1925 – 1926- 1927- and 1928.
Kankey’s work on the attic treasure from King has given us a peek at the election process 111 years ago. Today, electronics and computers have changed the methods but the fundamentals are the same. One person, one vote. We just cannot see those electronic “hash marks” inside the computers.
We don’t know how each of these citizens voted back in 1912, but we know they voted.
Some would have walked miles, most would have arrived by carriage or on horseback, and a few would have driven a motored vehicle. Voting wasn’t easy and took a chunk of their time and energy.
I would be thrilled to see the name of an ancestor who voted, and I would of course, wonder who they voted for and why. Such information is of course private, but I’d love to know.
Next time Election Day comes up think about this. What if 111 years from now your great grandchildren can see the list of who voted in our last election? Would they be proud of you doing your civic duty or will they wonder what was more important that day?
We owe much to determined researchers like Roland Kankey and those who preserve papers or artifacts like Neil King. It is important to learn about issues that our ancestors faced and how they handled it. Maybe we can learn something from them all.
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