The Mysterious Mr. Myers

From Time to Thyme

By Paula Dunn

I ran across another story in the old newspapers that was just too weird not to share.

The Feb. 22, 1881 Noblesville Ledger includes a rather lengthy article about the mysterious disappearance of a Kokomo tailor, John F. Myers.

Three weeks earlier Myers, a collector of rare zoological specimens and precious stones, had told his wife he intended to sell his collections in order to get money to buy them a home. He then left for Cincinnati and Washington (DC,) presumably to do just that.

Nothing had been heard from him since his departure and Mrs. Myers was understandably upset.

The situation made news in Noblesville because Myers was well known here. In 1878 he’d been hired by local businessman Ezra Swain to oversee a new tailoring department in Swain’s dry goods store.

By all accounts Myers was excellent at his job, being “possessed of sufficient judgment in the science of cutting to make exact ‘fits.’ ’”

However, the man was also, apparently, a world-class liar who thought nothing of spinning tales that often “needed verification at other hands.”

Among the examples the article provided . . . 

Myers loved to show off his “precious stones,” and frequently entertained people with colorful stories of the gems’ former owners and accounts of how he acquired each jewel. (The Ledger determined that the only real diamond he owned was in a pin purchased from a Noblesville jeweler.)

Although Myers professed to be fluent in six or seven languages, when he was addressed by a genuine Frenchman, the Ledger noted that he was “found wanting.”

At times Myers also claimed to be an English nobleman and a French count (“no account, probably,”) and said he owned a chateau near Paris, a farm in New York State, houses and lots in London and Edinburgh and a “magnificent” Pennsylvania farm. (That led the newspaper to question why he was working here as a tailor.)

In 1880, Myers left Noblesville for Wisconsin, taking with him one of Swain’s seamstresses and the two were married there. Presumably, she was the Mrs. Myers he left behind in Kokomo. (Why they went to Wisconsin, then moved to Kokomo is just one of the mysteries I couldn’t solve.)

Although Myers was said to be “sullen and morose” at times, he could also be a cheerful, fun-loving jokester. (Was he bipolar?)

His tendency for exaggeration aside, he did possess some good qualities, the most outstanding of which was his charity. Whenever he heard about someone undergoing hardship, he’d track them down and see to it that they had money or whatever they needed.

One deed, however, undermined that reputation.

Upon learning that a woman was struggling to care for her young daughter, Myers offered to adopt the child. He took good care of the girl and when he left for Wisconsin, she went with him.

He never got around to filing the adoption paperwork, however, and after a few months, he tired of the child and sent her back to her mother. The girl, whom I believe was less than 10 years-old, had to make the trip from Chicago alone!

I tried to find more information about Myers, but I have more questions now than I did before. About the only thing I learned was that he’d probably originally come from northern Germany. I have no idea how or where he became acquainted with Swain.

What happened to him after he left Kokomo is a mystery, but the Feb. 23, 1881 Noblesville Republican noted that one of Noblesville’s prominent citizens claimed to have spotted him a couple of weeks earlier in Vincennes on a train headed to St. Louis.

I tend to agree with the Ledger that it was “more than probable that Mrs. Myers will never behold her undoubted adventurer again.”

She may have been better off that way.

Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at [email protected]