Personally sponsoring immigration of 100 families - 19th century Belgians --> Kansas City

CREDIT TO BELGIAN HERITAGE CENTER – GREEN BAY CHAPTER 1 BELGIAN DAIRY, DODSON, MISSOURI 1852 - 1921 What good was the American West if not measured and described. Engineers came to map and subdivide America’s territories. Some came directly from Europe while others were first recruited for similar service south of the United States.

A failed nineteenth century attempt by Belgian-born Joseph Guinotte to build a railroad for the Mexican government accounted for his Missouri arrival. Unfortunately for Guinotte, Mexican railway construction had stalled with the outbreak of the Mexican-American war. The railroad there would wait and he required a fresh project. Kansas City was Guinotte’s answer.

Possibly six thousand Belgians, primarily Brabantines and Hesbignons arrived in Missouri across 1852–56. While they might have appeared homogenous to earlier arriving settlers, these Belgians had originated in distinct cantons or states, arrivals from east of the Brabant joined those from Hesbaye’s Namur region.

Guinotte land-surveyed and further defined the town of Kanza. By 1861 he and his Brussels-born bride Aimée Brichaut had sponsored one hundred Belgian families. Guinotte sponsorship funded travel for three hundred Belgian immigrants, two hundred surviving cholera and the trip, spreading out across his 3rd and Troost properties, berthed in converted tool sheds or shacks.

When travelers were absent husband and wife spent evenings together, Joseph hinged at the waist above a plotting desk and Aimée penning letters. Joseph performed engineering and surveying tasks out in town but at home his skills were complemented by hers, ones more directed at features of hospitality, culture and spirituality.

Twenty miles south of the Guinotte manor, Charles Jeffreys, a second België noblesse and engineer created an even larger enclave. While Guinotte and Jeffreys had both endured the shaky aftermath of Belgian independence, neither expected to encounter civil war in pioneer America. Prior to his Missouri years Charles Jeffreys pioneered sugar cane cultivation in the West Indies but possibly became restless with the predictability of island life. Jeffreys’ Missouri holdings actually dwarfed Guinotte’s, including dual mansions set eight miles apart.

Multiple misunderstandings, some instigated by the U.S. Army, created financial losses for Jeffreys. When fighting displaced a dozen Belgian families, Jeffreys allowed his countrymen to stay near the larger of his two mansions. Jayhawkers curiously equated that as aiding and abetting the enemy. By war’s end both Guinotte and Jeffreys were out-of-favor but perhaps more critically, financially sacked.

If Guinotte hadn’t homesteaded at 3rd and Troost, a different and likely deficient Kansas City would have followed. On September 1st 1867 Guinotte’s lifeless corpse was recovered by his countrymen following the report of a Navy revolver, one fired in the deep woods near his home. What would become of their log-home mansion, a place that had brought Belgian hospitality to the New World, where many experienced gezellig, a wonderful feeling, although difficult to define.

During the years and decades following September 1st 1867 Aimée occupied herself with preparations for her children’s weddings and with care of her grandchildren. She awkwardly repurchased their Troost mansion after abandoning further plans for a Belgian repatriation.

Prior to Joseph’s death, she and Joseph had planned a church for the Preservation neighborhood, believing a parish would nurture not only nearby Belgians but others. While they could have picked Joseph, Belgian’s patron saint, or even Liège’s sponsor, Paul, instead settled on Italy’s Francis. The St. Francis - Seraph label possibly suggested they wished to provide high-order angelic companionship for Francis.

The original church structures floated away during the great Missouri river floods of 1903 and 1904. Following those events parishioners needed nearly twenty years to erect a larger, permanent brickwalled structure.

While the Guinotte and Jeffreys were Belgian noblemen, less landed België aspired to similar noblesse status. Charles Jeffreys originally sponsored Billy Dodson’s journey to Grandview, sparing Dodson further farm service at estates near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While occasionally irritated by Billy’s ramblings about their common België origins, Jeffreys found Dodson to be a hard, enterprising worker.

By 1863 the Dodson family shared a displaced-yet-rescued status with other Jeffreys’ grantees.

Remarkably, Billy Dodson survived America’s Civil War without controversy.

Post-war, Billy Dodson, his wife and his two young boys persevered by dairy farming and cultivating various row crops, corn and milo among them. His dilemma was not so much yields as the troubling reality the land he farmed didn’t actually belong to them. By 1885 Billy Dodson reasoned his sons would soon require more land to support expanding families. Few unclaimed properties remained, excepting damp river bottoms fronting the Little Blue River and one of many Missouri-based Indian Creeks.

Given the war and reconstruction had diminished his financial holdings, Jeffreys elected to repatriate, not to distant Belgium but to Philadelphia. From Pennsylvania Jeffreys eventually deeded two hundred flooded acres to his friend, Billy Dodson.

The idea of naming the nearby settlement Dodson didn’t originate with Billy but due to a surveyor’s lack of creativity. Having recently christened Archie, Butler and Drexel as Missouri railroad towns, he was happy to designate two hundred flooded acres near the Missouri-Pacific railroad siding and Indian Creek as Dodson, Missouri.

Billy Dodson fulfilled his noblesse aspirations by welcoming additional Belgians, those devoted to companion tasks of milking and cultivation. Dodson’s sons drove a buckboard team on alternate days, first to the Troost avenue icehouse and on to the city’s grocers. At the icehouse one of the Dodson’s would sub-divide perhaps six metal milk cans, selling milk by the bucket a well. With deliveries complete by noon, he then returned to the dairy, usually traveling Blue River road.

Billy Dodson died sometime during the 1911 winter, the farm passing to his older son, Robert.

Although not the principal heir, younger brother Charles remained, operating the dairy. In early March 1921 as he returned from a Saturday milk run, Charles Dodson noted a parked touring car dominating a narrow road separating their property from Troost Avenue.

He straightened his hat and trotted his team to a crisp stop beside the LaSalle, noting the automobile’s occupants sported business attire and boots far cleaner than those of dairymen. Concerned this visit might have origins in unpaid seed invoices, he waved for his brother Robert to join him.

Robert Dodson recognized the tallest of the four as Kansas City’s mayor, Sam Stroker. After welcoming the mayor to Dodson and an identically-named farm Robert inquired about the reason for the visit.

Kansas City’s mayor quickly offered introductions, presenting a trio of California racetrack promoters: Eric Price, an English bicycle racer, Clint Doty, the son of the National Motor Car Company founder, and William Danforth, a principal of the California - Rodeo Land and Water Company. Stroker shared that they wished to construct a large, elevated board track and had expressed an interest in the Dodson property.

Stroker mainly presented a noisy word picture of cheering race fans and family-friendly entertainment. Charles and Robert Dodson patiently waited on an explanation of the plan’s reimbursable features. Stroker then provided a robust paid-parking estimate, projecting nineteen thousand parked cars for a city garaging fewer than ten thousand, suggesting the Dodson’s would operate a profitable parking concession.

While Robert had both driven and ridden in an automobile, Charles Dodson had experienced only one ride and that was as a passenger. Discussion of nineteen thousand parked cars and race speeds exceeding 100-mph fell well beyond dairying’s day-to-day.

By then Danforth had unfurled an unedited set of Beverly Hills track plans as if they were applicable to Dodson. Danforth used the Dodson feed lot as a guide for placement of an enormous mile-and-an-1/8th track. Records are unclear whether he or Stroker first mouthed a name and a mission.

THE MILLION DOLLAR SPEEDWAY THE GREATEST DISPLAY OF SKILL, NERVE AND DARING

Blue River – near original Dodson farm (Mrs. Sam Ray postcards)