09/03/2026
Mildred Palmer
Her Life and Times
- RICHES TO RAGS
Miss Mildred Palmer was the only daughter of Dr and Mrs. J. Allen Palmer of Erie, Kansas. She was born June 11,1889 around Green Bay, Wisconsin to Dr. Jeremiah Allen and Josephine Elsie (Resch) Palmer. She had 2 brothers who were younger than she, Caryl and Jeremiah Junior, who they called June. Dr. Palmer was a Canadian, but moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1887. He met and married the love of his life Josie Resch in Wisconsin. In later years, she was compared to the movie star Marlena Daune, in looks and demeanor. She must have been quite the looker in her day. They later moved to Illinois and then to Kansas. In 1900 Mildred was 10 years old and her family was living in Florence, Doyle Tshp, Marion Co. Kansas arriving from Illinois. They later moved to Erie because of her father’s medial practice. He was considered one of the most progressive of doctors of his time.
BbMildred was an outgoing normal teenager with many friends & boyfriends. She seemed to flirt and be very outgoing. One boy particularly made an impression on her. He was a couple of years older & he wrote her poetry. When he graduated, he went to Manhattan to the university and still wrote her poetry. She should have graduated about 1906, but we have no records of that class’ graduation. By that time a young man, who remained nameless on all correspondence, was courting her, writing her poetry and coming to the house. But when he went to University, things changed for them. There was a little correspondence after that, a love poem of sorts in 1922, but then NOTHING!!!
This occurrence possibly broke her heart so that may be why she never married. We’ll never know the real circumstances. How sad it was for a wonderful and carefree, probably a bit spoiled, young, beautiful woman ended up so lonely and forgotten.
In her sitting room was a portrait of her as a young woman, probably about eighteen years of age, she was quite lovely and dressed in a white old fashioned dress that looked as if she had stepped out of one of those old time postcards. She was so beautiful that I could not imagine why she hadn’t married, until one day when I ran across some material found at the MemErie Museum that may cast a light on the reason.
There were at least two poems written to Mildred (from an unknown author), when she was in high school, by one or more young, unnamed men, in December, 1910, but no postage so probably delivered in person, and another sent from Manhattan, Kansas in January of 1911. Neither of these love notes were signed, so the young man/men remain anonymous, only Mildred knowing the writer.
Who knows what may have happened, but those poems may have caused Mildred to remain waiting for her knight in shining armor to return, but alas, he never came.
The following is one of the poems that was a gift from a lovely young man and was donated to the Mem-Erie Museum. The other is a little ornery and more teasing - if you want to read it, come to the museum. The paper they were written on is such bad shape that where the paper was folded they are splitting and coming apart but there is a transcription of it available:
This 2nd poem written: Dec 14, 1910, Erie, KS, but mailed from Manhattan, Kansas January 19, 1911.
Together we sat in a lane salter
The prettiest girl and I, The light was out and the hour was late,
For time, you know, will fly, by Jove!
How rapidly time will fly.
Together we sat in the welcome home,
Though her mother was in the next room,
With a thin portiere between,
I know that the mother in Ambush schemes,
As mothers do, it seems,
To carry the prettiest girl away,
Away to the land of Dreams. By Jove!
To the wonderland land of dreams,
But the Cherry like lips of the pretty nymph,
Alas! were a tempting sight.
And I venture to beg for a tiny kiss,
Just ONE before “good night”
What a lovely yet teasing poem he wrote. We can only imagine what Mildred thought about this poem about their meeting in her home!!
We don’t know how she felt about his musings, but I hope she felt complimented by his poetry.
She was a very intelligent and thoughtful woman who did a really good job with making and accounting money with the property that her father accrued before his death. It was the crash of 1929 that made her financial life difficult and the loss of her young poet that made her miserable. She lived alone and did her best to keep up appearances. You never saw her uptown unless she was dressed to the teeth. She always wore a nice lady’s hat, too. As she aged, the apparel remained the same which gave the appearance of an “old lady”.
Many people remember her living in the big empty house with a forest around it on the corner of Grant between 1st and Canville Street. She planted many of those trees for wind and snow break according to her journal. Many people called her the “cat lady” because she had so many cats living in and around her house. In her later years after her mother passed away, she was a lonely woman.
But as a young woman, she and her mother were very social and belonged to most of the clubs in Erie and attended lots of gatherings and parties on a regular basis. Mildred hostessed many “FLINCH” parties. (A favorite game since 1905, for 1 to 8 players. Each player was to get rid of the cards in his/her Stockpile by playing them in numerical sequence, whenever possible, onto the Play Piles in the center of the table. The rules applied to five great Flinch variations, including Flinch 2000, Flinch For Kids and a solitaire version.) It was all the rage.
Hostesses served popcorn, apples and bonbons (Valentine box type candies). She dressed impeccably and wore fur coats, always a hat and gloves - the fashion of the day. She and her mother were among the most elite of the town and were invited to all the soirées.
As a youngster I lived two doors from her and walked by her place on the way to town. One day I developed the courage to knock on her door for several reasons.
One reason was that I felt a kinship with her because I, too, loved cats,(she had at least 12 cats most of the time); another reason is that a lot of kids in the area would say she was a witch and her house was haunted and things like that; which made me mad. I had seen her outside a couple of times as I was walking by her home and she didn’t look like a witch to me. She was too pretty, even in advanced age, with white skin, fluffy hair and she always was dressed as if she were going uptown. Her clothes, however, were a bit tattered and had very thin places in them that created splits. It looked as if she never bought anything new since her youth.
After meeting her, we had other things in common, she adored music and she enjoyed my company as I enjoyed hers. I was trying to learn to play the piano. She encouraged my piano playing, saying she would play for me some time. I knew she was lonely and I tried to visit her as often as I could. She was kind and sweet and loved to talk about her dad and the good work he had done. She even let me see his office that was still in the home in the late 1950s.
The office looked as if her father had just walked out to go to make a house call on a patient or maybe have dinner with his family because everything he would have used was just as he had left them; but covered in a thick layer of dust and there were some cob webs since I doubt she ever felt like cleaning in there since she idolized her dad. His glasses were still laying on the desk in the office next to his stethoscope, his doctor’s bag was open, which had all kinds of interesting things inside, was sitting with some other unnameable utensils on the counter of one of the medical cabinets. That medical cabinet and another were still stocked with bandages, medicines, and all other things that he would have used in his practice. The table, where a person would lie down when s/he were there for examination, was still there. But the most interesting item was the X-ray machine. It was huge and I even remember it being a sort of light green color. It looked horrible to a young girl, and I had visions of people being shocked like you now see on in cartoons on television with electricity running through their bodies and their arms and legs sticking out at odd angles, their hair standing on end, eyes wide open with horror and their tongues hanging out and lastly, their skeleton alit visible on the screen they stood behind. What an experience!! Of course, none of that had any truth to it!!
But, Mildred talked about her father with lots of love and admiration, and after discovering his doctor journals in the Mem-Erie Museum and reading through them, I feel the same. I found patients: old, young, babies, injured, important and poor that he helped, and even my own family members.
Dr. Palmer accepted payments in many ways; money or check, items in exchange for his work, and IOUs (which may or may not have ever been paid). It was then, so many years later, I realized that she was right about her father. His journals describe the work of a dedicated, hard-working country doctor that did the best for his patients, tried to keep up on the newest medicines and referred patients that he could not help them. What a shame that his home and his office were not kept for others to see.
On another occasion when I visited Mildred, she took me into another room which must have been the music room in the home because there was a piano in the room. It was to the right of the sitting room and it had deteriorated over time and by then was down to a very basic room which contained the baby grand piano and stool and a couple of decrepit looking parlor chairs. She sat down at the piano and played for me. There was a change in her visage which showed that she loved playing the piano, and she was a very good pianist. I enjoyed that visit immensely. The piano, however, was quite a bit out of tune. When she finished playing I told her I loved that song, I had never heard it, and she opened the lid on the piano bench and took out the sheet music. It had been written by a person I didn’t know, named Olson, (Editor’s note: The information about the author is in the MemErie Museum in the Gene Maher and Olson Mercantile Notebook in the 1st person stories).
The persons who were on the printed music were from Erie, Kansas. I was so surprised. I never thought there would be anyone from Erie who could write music.
I am sure Mildred could tell that I was surprised and impressed, so she told me that I could have her copy because she had it memorized and did not need the sheet music anymore. What a fantastic gift to a girl who loved music, and befriended a lonely old woman. I still have that sheet music and think of Mildred often because of that.
The Erie Museum has a copy of that sheet music also.
Mildred must have lived in a very small part of that huge house. The material on the furniture was quite shabby and worn looking. Her sitting room had a fireplace, but the original wood burning part had been replaced with a small gas heater fitted perfectly in the area where the logs had laid. The exchange was noted in her journal. There was also a radio in that room, but not just the usual one. It was unlike any I had ever seen and we had a radio/record player at our home that had 2 doors and was fairly large, but this radio was not nearly that large, but it had a great sound.
There was one other item that peaked my interest the most and that was her old phonograph. It was one of those with the huge megaphone style audio machines, but not the normal circular one, it had a special octagon shaped one that was still a silver color although it was a bit on the dull side. She played it for me several times when I went to see her and the sound was pretty spectacular, although a hint of static could be heard from time to time. It seemed that there was only one record that went with the phonograph, because that one song is the only one she ever played. That song was “Let Me Call You Sweetheart, I’m In Love With You.”
It seems romantic and also, after finding the poetry written to her, sad that that song is the only one she played.
That young man who wrote her the poetry played a big part in her sadness.
I never saw a television set in her home. The carpet on the floor in the living room was tattered and worn. The room was large and comfortable. I often wondered if Mildred slept on the fainting couch because I never saw a bedroom.
At the time I didn’t know the layout of the house, but after reading about it at the MemErie Museum I found: Originally the three bedrooms were on the 2nd floor, and so was the only bathroom, but with only one person in the house and having to heat both floors was probably too much for her pocketbook.
The first floor held the living room, dining room, music/game room. That floor also included the northeast corner that was Dr. Palmer’s office.
One time Miss Palmer invited me in the dining room. The table was set, as if guests were expected. There were what had been beautiful bone china dishes with a burgundy rose pattern around the edge, each plate also held a soup bowl and there was a coffee or tea cup in a saucer at each setting and a teapot on the table. There were napkin rings at each place setting that would have held cloth napkins. Water glasses (now I think they might have been w**e glasses) sat above the plates as if waiting to be filled. I had never seen anything like that table setting in my life. My family always had dishes, cups, and glasses, but nothing like what I saw on that table. We never used napkin rings or cloth napkins either.
Mildred went to the table and picked up one of the napkin rings. They were a silver color with a narrow etched design that encircled them on both ends. It wasn’t shiny, but it was elegant. She handed it to me and told me that she wanted me to have it. I told her I couldn’t possibly accept it, but she insisted. She said there wasn’t anyone for her to have a meal with anymore, besides she wanted me to have it. I thanked her profusely for the lovely gift.
I still have that napkin ring and recently saw one exactly like it at a flea market. The napkin rings were made out of aluminum, a very difficult metal to create and to find in the early 1900s when they were purchased.
Most of Erie did not know that Mildred was a very intelligent and smart business woman. She took care of her mother after her father past away in 1931 and ran the large business conglomerate that her father had set up with many land & oil company holdings which she rented or had men farm for her. She worked with a lawyer and also, was in touch with her brother Jeremiah Alan Palmer, Jr. who lived in Michigan and Caryl Robert Palmer, who lived in St. Louis, MO (he worked for the Jefferson Barracks Military Installation for over 30 years). He was found dead in 1965 and brought back to Erie and buried at East Hill Cemetery. Both her brothers served in WWI and were a great help to her in running the land holdings.
All these transactions were written in her journal. To give an example of this wealth, she made a list of the furs she owned in one of her small notebooks she kept, there were 10 different ones. I remember her wearing that fox stole which had two foxes’ heads and feet still attached. I loved animals so that was not a pleasant experience for me. I tried NOT to look at it as much as possible. She spent quite a bit of money on repairs on the house, until her brother died. She began to sell her properties due to the low amount of rental money she was receiving.
Toward the end of her businesses, I feel she had trouble making ends meet. All this was also in her journals.
She drove a manual transmission car (I didn’t know she even had a car - that is how often she drove it) and spent money on repairs for it also. She made lists of the names of her cats and she also had a couple of dogs. She made notes when the cats were hurt, died or were killed. She also made notes about the number of children who came to her house on Halloween. She wrote down what candies she gave out.
One of her recipients of that candy told me her marshmallows were hard - she probably bought them when they were on sale and kept them until Halloween. (Today I like letting my marshmallows get a little hard!! I think of her every time I eat them. They chew great!!)
So, she was not a poor woman as we all thought, she had a fortune of land that served her well. she basically lived on the income from the land and oil holdings. She just chose NOT to show her wealth, maybe for fear of intruders or because she just didn’t really care. She liked things the way they were when she was that young thing catching every young bucks’ eye.
Back then a woman never went out of the house without gloves or hat (alabaster skin was proof that a woman was of the upper crust and did not have to work outside). Some kids in town called her Snow White because of her white skin.
So, as you can see, Mildred Palmer was a beautiful, sought after young woman who may have waited in vane for that young poet to return.
Whatever the situation, Mildred became the sad, lovely “cat lady” that most of Erie remembers. Now, not only Mildred, her father’s office and fantastic equipment are gone, but so is the magnificent home that Dr. J. Allen Palmer purchased.
How sad that the past in this country is expendable. We’ll never know, she died March 5, 1976 at the age of 85.
Sources: Various Erie Record articles, mostly in the Social columns, Mildred’s personal diary (in possession of Anita (Harvey) McDaniel, Ancestry.com, censuses, and materials from the Mem-Erie Historical Museum - used in a Cemetery Tour and written (with personal knowledge) by Anita McDaniel)
Editor’s Note: Miss Mildred Palmer was a socialite in the early 1900/20s and she remained at home with her parents. She and her mother continued to go to clubs and dinners and have parties at their home also. Many years later, she was looked on as very weird by the people of Erie, but those who knew her found her sweet, charming, well read, articulate and very smart.
Editor’s Note: These are a few of the people on the Mem-Erie (You Know You’re From Erie, KS When. page) and what they had to say about Mildred Palmer:
***Charles McKinnie: I delivered groceries to Mildred Palmer in the late 50's. She was a very gracious woman and always was pleasant and a bit shy. She let me roam around her fathers office a few times and was proud of the X-Ray machine. As young boys, we thought the house was haunted.
***Sydney Shaw: I remember her well. My dad and I spent an evening with her every Christmas season, visiting and sipping a glass of port. She gave me several books, one about a young lady traveling in France. She kept her father's office just as he had left it, with instruments lined up neatly. She was elderly then, the palest person I'd ever seen, and I was fascinated by her!
***Ronda (Greve) Stevenson: After her passing, Flemming and Forsyth handled the affairs of the estate( may have been Alquist and Hines at the time not sure). My mom, Jean worked for the law firm and we took a little tour of the bottom level. It was just as it was when it was built , no evidence that I remember of any new updates or new furniture. I also know that Kerry Jordan , now Dr. Kerry Jordan was nice, helpful and compassionate towards Mildred.
***Anita (Harvey) McDaniel: I too visited her as a child. I visited her on my own. She gave me a piece of sheet music & a silver napkin ring ( later I found out it was aluminum - expensive in the early days). I loved visiting with her & seeing her dad's office. I was fascinated by it. The only thing her journal says about working on the house was fixing the roof & those type of things & replacing a wood burning stove with a gas one. I think she wanted to remember life the way it was when she was young & things were carefree.
***Loretta White: I was also one of those kids who knocked on her door on Halloween. There was something about a dare to trick or treat at the "haunted house". Her mother must have still been alive because there were two of them. They invited us in for something to eat and drink and were so sweet. I never looked at that house as haunted again.
***Kristin (Eichenseer) Waggoner: What an incredible story...who would have known. I can still remember going to her house on Halloween absolutely scared to death!
***Susan Fedie Lesh :This story brought such a wave of emotion over me. I used to stop by and knock on her door quite often. Just to chat. I felt so sorry for the frail, hunched woman that everyone made fun of. I would go to Swan's for her and I remember that she offer a nickel or dime for my trouble, but I just couldn't take her last dime. I enjoyed our little chats even though sometimes it was helping her pull weeds. I had always wanted to explore her house but she only allowed entry to that first room.
***Richard D Fedie: Loved reading this story,, as a "neighbor "Hood" kid, I grew up only a block away from the house,, yes we all thought it was "scary" "haunted" and yes we all called her "cat woman" all things were mean, we were kids. A good friend of mine lived next door, Macky, A ***Charles McBride, we "camped" on his front porch sometimes. I remember seeing spooky, things in the windows around midnight. I am sure, it was Kids’ imagination going wild. I remember peeking in the window one time, (on a Dare) and it was the Dr.s office, the exam table was still there. Again, the house scared the @ #$ out of us, so we just steered clear most of the time. Glad to read the truth and find out we were wrong all those years ago, and Yes, I feel a bit bad now.
***Cindi A. Leverenz Beautiful story! One summer day Laurie Larimore and I decided to visit Miss Palmer. We had heard all the rumors of Mildred being a witch etc. but somehow we knew in our hearts she was a kind lady. As we knocked on the door we did wonder if we were making a mistake, but when Mildred came to the door with a sweet smile and cocked head we felt safe to go inside. She asked us to be seated and we had a nice visit with her. Laurie and I both loved any kind of animal so the cats were a plus for us. Mildred had a very kind spirit.
***Glen Sexton: Thanks for sharing. I remember her coming to Showalter Grocery - Buellah would drive her back home with the groceries. I would carry them to the front door - that is where she wanted them left. One Christmas, I purchased some gloves for her (the ones she worn had fingers sticking out). The next time she came to the grocery - she was still wearing the old gloves. I asked if the new ones did not fit. She smiled and said "Oh no, they are lovely, I am saving them for a special occasion".
***Sandy Stroup Hart: I remember being afraid of her. I remember seeing her in the yard with the fox fur on. (this added to my fear of her). I called her the “cat lady” once in-front of my Dad and he "put me in my place" about what a beautiful lovely woman she was and made sure I showed her & her property respect. (I still walked on the other side of the street when passing by just in-case Dad didn't know what he was talking about).
***Pamela Veselinovic : I befriended her, too. I often knocked on her door. She would invite me in, offer me a snack, and show me pictures. I still have a doll that belonged to her. My dad bought it for me when the items from her house went up for auction.
***Joyce Fedie Kramer: Thank you so much for this story. I can remember going there to sell candy for campfire girls. She would always buy something. She was so sweet. I always thought of her a pretty little bird. Loved that big old house. It was always such a mystery.
***Charles McBride :I remember one night she came over to our house to talk to dad about being afraid because some kids were peeking in her windows. I wish I would have offered her some help with anything she needed. Unfortunately I was a selfish teenager. Great story.
***John Charles Peacock: Thanks for sharing that house use to fascinate almost every kid when I was growing up.
***Grandma Beard: Thank you for the story. My Great Grandmother Anna Gardner Wooster was her best friend. I had pictures of Anna and Mildred sitting in a hammock together.
Our church youth group would bake cookies and we always delivered some to Mildred.
Sources: Various Erie Record articles, mostly in the Social columns, Mildred’s personal diary (in possession of Anita (Harvey) McDaniel, Ancestry dot com, censuses, and materials from the Mem-Erie Historical Museum - used in a Cemetery Tour and written (with personal knowledge) by Anita McDaniel)
Thanks to Nancy Womeldorff Calkins for enhancing the photos of Mldred!!
