After the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad steamed its first passenger train into Emporia on Sept. 14, 1870, towns began to spring up along the railroad grade southwest of Emporia at Florence, Peabody and Walton.

But the proposed town of Newton held the most prominence because of its position on the Chisholm Trail.

The May 19, 1871, Emporia News recorded that two buildings had been completed and four were underway. The gentleman recording his impressions of the town declared, “In the two that are completed, whiskey is sold. Two of those that are underway are to be used for whiskey shops.

There are two tents in the town in which whiskey is sold. At Florence he met a man going out to put up a building in which he was going to start a saloon. From the indications so far, Newton will be a right lively little place. The sound of the saw and hammer could be heard at all hours of the day and night, including Sundays.”

The wife of an early attorney observed that “Newton sprung up like magic from the prairie sod to a village of 1,000 or more inhabitants.”

Into that atmosphere was drawn a young lady from St. Louis by the name of Annie Glinn.

Glinn’s path to Newton began approximately two years earlier when she left her parents’ St. Louis boardinghouse for Kansas City. She found work as a “waiter girl,” more familiarly known as a “beer jerker.”

Excitement over Newton brought Glinn to Harry Lovett’s Side Track Saloon. The Side Track was the first among dozens of saloons opened in Newton. The name was designed to attract the army of railroaders working for the Santa Fe Railroad.

According to Allegro, the correspondent to the Topeka Daily Commonwealth, the pretty waiter girl was popular with the railroad men, but one in particular captured her heart.

She was “ardently attached” to the young man, who remained unnamed.

Newton was a notoriously dangerous place.

Another correspondent for the Commonwealth lamented, “Here is a town of fifteen hundred inhabitants, among which are some of the most uncouth and reckless men in the world...”

Treachery flourished as a continual celebration of iniquity seethed from the business houses. Not surprisingly, rivalries developed between Texas men and railroaders.

Texas drover L. B.

Anderson arrived at Newton “… about the time the railroad reached there. Newton was one of the worst towns I ever saw. Every element of meanness on earth seemed to be there.

While in that burg I saw several men killed...”

Newton’s appeal to curiosity seekers filled passenger cars bound for the wild cattle town.

“Going to Newton” became a fad. Nine out of 10 passengers from Topeka were described as “sightseers bound for Newton.”

By mid-summer, 27 saloons were operating at full-bore, and that didn’t include Hide Park, the rougher district outside Newton’s city limits.

Hide Park “houses” operated between Newton’s city limits and the Santa Fe stockyards. Two dance houses and three barracks-like structures served as brothels in a morally corrupt district that exceeded even the vilest of Newton’s saloons.

Certainly, there were plenty of distractions for the largely masculine society that inhabited the fringes of the Kansas frontier. Unfortunately, Annie Glinn’s young lover fell victim to the distractions.

According to Allegro, despite Annie’s most endearing caresses, her beau showed no reciprocity of feeling. Being constantly rejected and in despair, Miss Glinn took up the life of “a professional courtesan” in one of Hide Park’s notorious dance halls on Wednesday, Aug. 30.

The following Sunday, Sept. 2, 1871, her young railroad man “did not hesitate to tell her of his indifference, and went so far even as to forbid her ‘troubling’ him, saying that there were “others for whom he cared more.”

Devastated by the “bitter reproaches ... of him whom she worshiped, she turned away with a face ghastly pale.” After failing to obtain poison to end her life, she took a pistol belonging to the proprietor of the house and crept up the stairs to her room.

A deafening report startled the crowd that always assembled on Sundays at the dance houses. A piercing shriek brought a rush to discover the unfortunate girl lying across the bed. Miss Glinn had placed the pistol against her stomach and pulled the trigger. Her clothes were blackened, “and smoking with the fire which the fatal powder had ignited.”

A bed was made on the floor and the dying girl placed upon it to ease the last moments of her life. She requested the presence of the one for whom she had given her life’s essence.

From the moment he entered the room, her eyes met his, never leaving his gaze “until the film of death shut out all sight of the outer world” for the unfortunate Annie Glinn.

Allegro concluded, “So mows the scythe of time,” for in Newton, the grim reaper did not hesitate to take his full measure on The Way West.

“The Cowboy” Jim Gray can be reached at 220 21st Rd., Geneseo, KS 67444, (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@ kans.com.