PERSONAL NOTE:  This is the longest and most detailed bio I have prepared for any person featured on the johnmartinfamily web site.  There are two main reasons for the degree of detail:  (1) Crary, aka Clarence, had an exceedingly complicated life, and (2) I have a much greater supply of information about his life than for any other person profiled here.  Specifically:

1. Whereas many of John Martin’s descendants had a single career (usually farming or homemaking), married once, and moved perhaps once or twice in their lives, Crary/Clarence worked in at least four distinct professions, married four times (divorced three times), and lived and/or worked in at least three dozen different communities.
    
2. All of his professional and avocational pursuits — evangelism, newspaper distribution, newspaper reporting, public relations, and poetry writing — were of the sort that earned him frequent mentions in many newspapers.  Hence, I have collected more than 400 clippings and/or citations that mention him.  In addition to this, the fact that he was my own grandfather (although I never met him personally) means that I have much additional information about him that came from my father and from other relatives who knew him.

—Pete Martin, February 2023

Crary apparently changed his name to Clarence when he was in his late 30s.  I have found no record of him using that name prior to 1908, and no record of him being called “Crary” anytime after 1909.  Accordingly, the following narrative refers to him as “Crary” in discussing his earlier years and switches to “Clarence” in describing the later part of his life.

Crary’s parents were divorced in 1878, when he was 7 years old.  The 1880 census shows 9-year-old Crary living with his father, his Martin grandparents, and his two brothers in Falls City.  (His sister Stella was not in the household but was instead living with his mother and her new husband in St. Louis.)  In November 1880, Crary’s father remarried, so he suddenly had a new stepmother and half-a-dozen step-siblings.

In 1885, two state census records, collected 5 months apart, show 14-year-old Crary and his siblings living with his father and stepmother in Cass County, Iowa, in January, and then in Seward County, Nebraska, the following June.  (Crary is shown as “Cary” in the Nebraska census.)

In 1890, Crary’s father and stepmother went to Blaine, Washington, to conduct a series of revival meetings, and his older brother Zenas soon followed them up there.  It is unclear whether Crary — by then 19 years old — accompanied them to Blaine, but the records of the Methodist Church in Falls City, Nebraska, show that Crary rejoined that congregation in 1892, at which time he was “received by letter from Washington.”  Crary was still in Falls City as of September 1893, when two local papers identified him as the secretary for the Richardson County Prohibition Convention.  By 1895, though, he had moved to Delta County, Colorado, where he filled in for his ailing father, serving as minister to the Methodist congregations in Hotchkiss and Paonia.

Soon after this, apparently, Crary took to the road to assist in evangelistic campaigns conducted by his father.  Newspaper reports from 1897 and 1898 mention him preaching at revival meetings in Missouri, Iowa, and Oklahoma.  Crary often sang at these events and accompanied himself on the guitar.  He developed a reputation as “the singing evangelist.”

It should be noted that Crary was never officially ordained and, in fact, had no formal religious training beyond what he learned in Sunday school and through his participation in his father’s campaigns.  Nevertheless, he is referred to as “Rev. Martin” in many news reports as early as 1895 and as late as 1917.

On 26 December 1899, Crary married (1) Mabel Rosetta Rhine under some peculiar circumstances:

• Although Crary and Mabel both lived in Paonia, Colorado, they traveled more than 700 miles to be married at Omaha, Nebraska, a place where neither of them had any close relatives.
• Scheduling the wedding at that remote location on 26 December meant that neither of them could have been home with their family for Christmas.
• Although both came from very religious families, they were married by a Justice of the Peace in a civil ceremony.
• Crary misstated his mother’s name on the marriage license, calling her “Maggie Williams.”
• Immediately following the wedding, Crary and Mabel traveled on to Sioux City, Iowa — a place where neither of them had any relatives — to begin their married life together.

One reason for the odd circumstances may be the fact that Crary and Mabel were cousins — in fact not just cousins but double cousins.  Mabel’s mother, Mary M. (Martin) Rhine, was a sister of Crary’s father.  Her father, Isaac G. Rhine, was a nephew of Crary’s mother.  Hence, they were full first cousins on the Martin side and first cousins once removed on the Rhine side.  Another reason for the wedding arrangements (and, indeed, the whole reason for this clearly inappropriate marriage) became apparent with the birth of Crary and Mabel’s daughter Orpha on 26 April 1900, exactly 4 months after their wedding.

Upon arriving in Sioux City, Crary commenced a series of revival meetings at the Rescue Mission, and he was soon hired to be superintendent of the Mission (a position most likely arranged by his father, who had conducted a campaign at that site 2 years earlier and probably still had friends in the area).  Six months later, Crary and Mabel were interviewed for the 1900 census, in which their listing was thoroughly screwed up.  They are listed as Martin and Mabel Crary, and their daughter Orpha was listed as a 1-month-old boy named Arthur.  The rest of the information there seems to be correct.  The occupation for “Martin Crary” is shown as “Supt. of Mission.”

Crary and Mabel had only two children during the course of their marriage, both born in Sioux City; they were:

• Orpha Mary Martin, 1900–1905.
• Richard Pierce Martin, 1901–1977 (married Belva Harriet Williams).

It’s not clear how long Crary continued to oversee the Rescue Mission, and even how long he and Mabel remained in Sioux City.  Their son Richard was born there on 21 July 1901, but a month after that, Crary was assisting his father in conducting a 10-day revival meeting at Strang, Nebraska.  Crary participated in several evangelistic campaigns over the next few years, resuming his role as “the singing evangelist.”  By 1903, newspapers were referring to him as “Rev. C. J. Martin of Winfield, Kansas.”  The exact timing of his move from Sioux City to the Winfield area is unclear.

Rather than living in Winfield itself, Crary and Mabel may actually have settled at the town of Burden, about 10 miles northeast of Winfield.  That’s where they were residing when their daughter Orpha died, on 3 February 1905.  According to a brief note in the Burden Eagle (9 Feb. 1905, p. 3), Orpha died of membranous croup and was only sick a few days.  She had not previously been sick and was naturally strong and healthy.  She was laid to rest in the Burden Cemetery.

Around the time of Orpha’s death, Crary’s marriage with Mabel was starting to break up.  Crary first tried to get Mabel to sue him for divorce, and she refused (according to what Mabel told The Wichita Eagle several years later, when Crary was involved in a legal battle with his second wife).  Crary eventually went to McCook, Nebraska, and sued Mabel for divorce there.  To do so, he had to swear that he had been a resident of Red Willow County, Nebraska, for more than a year (which seems questionable) and that Mabel had deserted him and had been willfully absent for more than two years (apparently untrue).  According to his suit, the supposed desertion happened “in or about the month of February 1905” — the same month that Orpha died.  The divorce was officially granted on 30 November 1908.

(Interestingly, Crary apparently began a separate action for divorce around the same time at Dodge City, Kansas, which was still on the docket there less than a week before Crary’s second marriage.  Presumably it was dropped when no one showed up for the hearing.)

Between Crary’s separation from Mabel and the eventual divorce, he continued his evangelistic work, at least intermittently, but he also began working as a general representative for the Wichita Beacon and for a regional publication known as Kansas Magazine.  His main job then was to visit small towns around Kansas and Oklahoma to set up carrier routes and distribution systems for the Beacon, but he also filed reports for the Beacon on items of interest that he observed in these various towns.  Around this time he also began dabbling in poetry.  In 1908 alone, he had at least 10 poems published in local newspapers, and more continued showing up through at least 1940.  So far, I have found 60 of his poems and collected them into a file, which is presented here.  He did not use the name “Crary” on any of these; they were all signed either “Clarence J. Martin” or just “C. J. Martin.”

Crary married (2) Mrs. Lillie Frances (Starr) Reed on 9 June 1909 at El Dorado, Kansas.  She had been born 24 April 1876 at Black Hawk, Gilpin County, Colorado, the daughter of William Henry Starr and Mary Frances (Shepherd) Starr.  When she was 5 years old, her family moved to Belmont, Kingman County, Kansas, where she grew to adulthood and married Lewis M. Reed on 15 April 1897.  She and Lewis had had two daughters together (Olive born 1898 and Hazel born 1902) before Lewis died in 1906 due to medical errors during surgery for appendicitis.

Crary met Lillie in Wichita.  She owned four houses there that had been left to her by her first husband, a successful builder.  She lived in one and rented out the other three for income.  I don’t know why they went out to El Dorado, 25 miles east of Wichita, for the wedding, except that Crary had been working there on behalf of the Beacon and apparently liked the town.  They were married by a judge at the county courthouse, in a ceremony attended only by Lillie’s two daughters.  The marriage certificate from this 1909 wedding is the last official record of any sort in which the name Crary Martin appears.

The 1910 census shows Clarence J. and “Lillian” F. Martin living at 446 Orchard St. in Wichita with Clarence’s stepdaughters Olive (11) and Hazel (7) Reed, and it confirms that Clarence was employed at the “Morning Beacon” newspaper.

Numerous newspaper items show that, over the next three years, Clarence continued pursuing his multiple interests:  preaching in occasional evangelistic campaigns while also setting up distribution systems for the Beacon, submitting occasional news items to the Beacon, and writing poetry.  Also, during this time, Lillie bore a son, the only child of Clarence’s second marriage:

• Eugene Stanley Martin, 1911–1997 (married Mrs. Gertrude Caroline (Buchanan) Montgomery).

In August 1913, Clarence quit his job with the Beacon and took on a new role as an advance man and assistant for the nationally known evangelist Oscar Lowry.  According to the Wichita Beacon (21 Aug. 1913, p. 3):  “Mr. Martin was at El Dorado looking after the work of city delivery of The Beacon there at the time [February 1913], and he reported on the Lowry meetings.  His work and his reports so pleased Rev. Lowry that he offered him a job, but at the time Mr. Martin declined to accept it.  The offer was repeated later, and a few days ago Mr. Martin accepted it.  It will be no new work for him, for he was connected with work of this kind for sixteen years at one time.”

Over the next two years, Clarence traveled wherever the Lowry evangelistic campaign was scheduled to go, usually a couple of weeks ahead of time.  He would coordinate with local pastors, civic leaders, and newspaper editors to promote the upcoming meetings and ensure that suitable facilities were prepared, and he would stay around to help with preaching, music, and other chores during the revival.  The work took him to a couple dozen towns in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota, while Lillie mostly stayed behind in Wichita, although she and little Eugene did follow him to Minnesota and stayed with him there from mid-July to late September of 1914.  Lillie’s daughters (16 and 12) went to stay with their grandparents in Belmont during this time.

In August 1915, Clarence parted company with the Lowry campaign and became a general missionary for the American Sunday School Union.  According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune of 28 August 1915 (p. 6), “Mr. Martin will make his home in Minneapolis and will spend much of his time on the missionaries’ fields throughout the state . . . .”  That plan, apparently, did not come to pass.  I don’t know whether Clarence made a serious effort to set up a residence in Minneapolis, but Lillie’s daughters Olive and Hazel had no recollection of the whole family ever having moved to Minneapolis.  By February 1916, notes in newspapers were showing that Clarence had resumed his previous position with the Wichita Beacon.

Upon resuming his newspaper work, one of the first towns he visited was Woodward, Oklahoma, where he had been several times before.  His contacts in Woodward proved to be helpful to him, in later years, both professionally and personally.

By the end of 1916, Clarence’s second marriage was falling apart and, apparently, so was his job at the Beacon.  He and Lillie separated on 9 December of that year (or, as Clarence later testified, she ordered him out of the house).  She suspected him of unfaithfulness and reportedly began writing letters denouncing him to employers and potential employers (which may explain how his employment at the Beacon came to an end).  In late December, Clarence conducted a brief revival meeting at Palisade, Nebraska, and then apparently found work as a representative and special correspondent for the Cheyenne Leader (of Wyoming) and the Denver Times (of Colorado).  He was working in that capacity in Thermopolis, Wyoming, in February 1917, when he was suddenly arrested.  Back in Wichita, Lillie had sworn out a complaint, charging him with wife desertion and child abandonment.

A deputy marshal came and fetched Clarence back to Wichita, where the City Court promptly dismissed the charge of wife desertion, once Lillie testified that she would refuse to live with Clarence, but it bound him over to the District Court for trial on the second charge of non-support of his son.

It would be a full year before that second charge was heard.  In the meantime, Clarence went back to Woodward, where his contacts helped get him appointed as Secretary of the Woodward Chamber of Commerce, starting in February 1917.  The following September, he was part of a group that helped businesses in Shattuck, Oklahoma, organize their own chamber of commerce, and he was promptly hired as the new group’s Secretary-Manager.

In February 1918, Clarence went back to Wichita for the child desertion trial, where Lillie and Mabel and his son Richard (by then 16 years old) all testified against him.  He was promptly convicted and ordered to pay $25 a month for child support.  Both of Wichita’s daily newspapers covered Clarence’s arrest and his first hearing in 1917 and his subsequent trial in 1918; their reports are reproduced here.  I find it interesting that none of the Beacon’s reports mentioned his previous association with that paper.  Also, although a couple of reports mentioned that Clarence had requested a new trial, and that he planned to appeal, I have found no record of any additional proceedings.

One of the issues brought up at the trial was Lillie’s allegation that Clarence had had an “alliance” with another woman, whereas Clarence insisted that he had merely had a “correspondence” with her.  We now know that one of Clarence’s contacts in Woodward, a photographer named Frank Saunders, had introduced Clarence to his sister-in-law, a young widow from Pueblo, Colorado, named Reba Haruff, and Clarence had, indeed, begun a correspondence with her.

I don’t know when and how Clarence left his role with the Shattuck Chamber of Commerce, but for several months in 1918, he was in Enid, Oklahoma, working as a field circulation manager for the Enid Daily News, then he filled a similar role for the Southwest American of Fort Smith, Arkansas, early in 1919.

In June 1920, Lillie finally filed officially for divorce, and that divorce was granted in September 1920.  Clarence, by then, at the invitation of Mrs. Haruff, had relocated to Pueblo, Colorado, where he managed to find employment as a correspondent for the Pueblo Star Journal.

On 29 June 1921, Clarence married (3) Reba Haruff at Denver, Colorado.  Her full name was  Mrs. Sarah Rebecca (Waggoner) Haruff, and she had been born 8 May 1883 at Carlinville, Macoupin County, Illinois, the daughter of Joseph and Sarah E. (Ayers) Waggoner.  She had come to Colorado with her family as a young girl.  She had married Dr. Oscar Haruff, of Pueblo, in 1907 and had had two sons with him (John born 1909 and George born 1911) before he died suddenly in an auto-train collision in 1911.

Clarence courted Reba in Pueblo but had reportedly gone to Denver for some sort of a job with an oil company, so Reba came up to Denver for the wedding, conducted before a Justice of the Peace.  The marriage license filed at this time stated that Clarence had not been married previously.

After marriage, Clarence and Reba lived for a while at Greeley, Colorado (where Reba had lived prior to her first marriage and where her father still lived).  Clarence may still have had some connection with the oil company when they moved there, but by July 1922, he was once again involved in newspaper distribution, working as the Greeley agent for the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Times.

The following October, Clarence and Reba traveled by automobile out to southern California (quite an undertaking in 1922!) where, presumably, they visited with Clarence’s brother Brunie, who by then had settled in Long Beach.  They must have liked the place, for they promptly packed up and moved there.  Clarence, Reba, and Reba’s sons settled in at 312 Quincy Avenue in Long Beach, early in 1923.  Clarence soon found work as a distribution manager for the Long Beach Press, and Reba was soon making a name for herself in Long Beach society, becoming active in groups called the Happy Hour Club and the Two O’Clock Club.

In the community of Wilmington, California, adjacent to Long Beach, Clarence joined a local civic organization called the Peptomist Club.  By the following December, he was serving as the club’s publicity agent.  That may have been one of the stepping stones that led to his being hired into a paid position as advertising manager of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce in July 1924.  A year later, Clarence stepped into the role of district organizer of the Exchange Clubs for the eight counties of Southern California.

It’s not clear how long Clarence kept the job with the Exchange Clubs.  An item from the Long Beach Press-Telegram of 9 June 1926 (p. 22) states that he was running a membership campaign for the Lynwood, California, Chamber of Commerce.  Then, three years later, his name is listed among the advertising staff of the Long Beach Sun (26 Mar. 1929, p. 11).  A letter written many years later by Reba’s son John states that it was around that time that Reba left Clarence and returned to Colorado.  Indeed, the 1930 census shows Clarence living by himself in a rented apartment on East Third St. in Long Beach.  His occupation is listed as “Newspaper advertising.”  Reba and her son John were then in Denver, and her son George was in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, serving with the Marine Corps.  The census shows a status of “Married” for both Clarence and Reba.

The following August, Clarence filed for divorce, alleging that “His wife’s jealousy prevented him from serving on civic boards and committees” (Long Beach Sun, 12 Aug. 1930, p. 1).  The divorce was granted in September 1930.

Once freed from Reba’s “jealousy,” Clarence soon took on roles on [1] a luncheon committee for the Pacific Advertising Clubs convention (Long Beach Sun, 4 Jan. 1931, p. 16), [2] an advisory board for the dedication of the Wilmington Salvation Citadel (Long Beach Sun, 5 June 1931, p. 16), and [3] the Advisory Board of the Wilmington Corporation (Wilmington Daily Press Journal, 30 Sep. 1931, p. 4).  Through his work with the Pacific Advertising Clubs convention, he surely came in contact with press agents from far and wide, quite possibly including Miss Myrta Loomis, who was the press chairman of the Pasadena Business and Professional Women’s Club.

On 14 November 1931, Clarence married (4) Myrta Ursula Loomis at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church (his first church wedding).  She had been born 6 July 1888 at Broadland, Beadle County, South Dakota, the daughter of Charles L. and Minnie Dell (Phillips) Loomis.  Her family later moved to Buffalo, New York, where her father died when she was 13 (hit by a train).  Myrta and her mother had moved to Pasadena together about 1914.

After the wedding, Clarence and Myrta took off for a honeymoon trip to the Grand Canyon.  Unfortunately, they were both badly injured when Clarence’s car skidded off an embankment.  Thereafter they were laid up in a Williams, Arizona, hospital for more than a month.  Around Christmastime, 1931, Myrta was able to return home, and Clarence was transferred to a hospital in Pasadena for additional recuperation.

Clarence wisely had purchased an accident insurance policy to cover such an eventuality, but unwisely he had lied on the application for it.  Thus he learned the hard way that an insurance company will eagerly seek out any technicality to avoid paying a claim (which is still true today).  In January 1935, Clarence’s second wife, Lillie, received a remarkable letter from attorney Hubert Starr, representing the Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corporation, inquiring what she knew about Clarence’s true date of birth, and also laying out everything Starr had already learned about the question, including the documents he had consulted and the witnesses he had interviewed (mostly various of Clarence’s relatives).  In his insurance application, Clarence had claimed that he was born in 1880, and Starr had gathered impressive evidence to prove that his true date of birth was 10 February 1871.

That letter eventually found its way into the hands of Lillie’s son Eugene (“Gene”) Martin, who was glad to have it, for it provided more background information about his father than Gene had ever known just from his personal recollections.  Therefore, I have reproduced it here, partly as a genealogical source document, and partly for the insight it provides into Clarence’s character.  (Interestingly, although there was no known family relationship between Attorney Starr and Lillie (Starr) Martin, we understand that Clarence found the similarity of names most unsettling.)

After recovering from their injuries, Clarence and Myrta settled in Pasadena, first at 273 South Hudson Ave. (shown in the 1933 Pasadena city directory), then at 1741 Morada Place (1934 directory), and later at 145 Oak Knoll (shown in the 1940 census as the place where they lived not just in 1940 but also in 1935).  Myrta’s mother lived with them.

While he resided in Pasadena, it appears that Clarence continued to work and participate actively in the Long Beach–Wilmington area, more than 25 miles away.  In 1933, he joined the Wilmington Presbyterian Church, and was also an active member of the Wilmington Masonic Lodge No. 198.  As of 1936, he was being identified as “C. J. Martin of the Wilmington Journal,” and, in later years, was said to be in the advertising department of the Wilmington Press.  I suspect, though, that both designations refer to the same newspaper, whose full name was the Wilmington Daily Press Journal.

On 4 March 1941, the Pasadena Post (p. 3) reported that police had to rescue Clarence and Myrna from their home when it flooded due to a heavy rainstorm.  Their address at that time was 240 North Allen Ave. in Pasadena.

Clarence continued working for the Wilmington Daily Press Journal until at least 1947, by which time he was 76 years old, although he may have been passing himself off as nine years younger — just as he had on the above-mentioned insurance policy!  Even in census records, Clarence gave ages that were too young (54 in 1930, 59 in 1940, 70 in 1950).

The 1950 census shows that he and Myrta had moved to 1771 Morada Street in Altadena, California (adjacent to Pasadena), which is where they both lived the rest of their lives.  Myrta then was working as a stenographer for the Nurses’ Association.  Clarence was not employed at that time, but additional information in the census stated that he had last worked in real estate sales.  Hence, that may be one additional profession that he dabbled in after leaving the newspaper advertising business.

After 1950, Clarence no longer had much connection with the Long Beach–Wilmington area, except for the Wilmington Masonic Lodge, where he remained a member for the rest of his days.  Clarence passed away in Altadena on 10 March 1956, at the age of 85, and he was buried at  Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California.  Two ironic elements are associated with his passing:

1. This man, whose activities as an evangelist, a newspaperman, a publicist, and a poet had engendered hundreds of newspaper mentions in the course of his life, was memorialized with only one short obituary — fewer than 100 words — in the Pasadena Independent.
    
2. After Clarence had put so much effort into persuading people that he was younger than his actual years, the date of birth on his tombstone (1870) is a year too old.  My guess is that Myrta didn’t know his actual age but had figured out that he was older than he claimed, so she just arbitrarily added 10 years.

All four of Clarence’s wives outlived him:

• His first wife, Mabel, married Charles Henry Eastman in Winfield, Kansas, in 1926, and soon moved with him to his home in McAllen, Texas.  He died there in 1935, but Mabel lived on in McAllen for another 28 years.  There she passed away on 20 April 1963, and her body was returned to Burden for burial near her daughter Orpha.
• His second wife, Lillie, died 26 May 1959 at Richardson, Texas, and was buried in Wichita next to her first husband, Lewis Reed.
• His third wife, Reba, died in Long Beach 27 March 1966 and was buried at Pueblo, Colorado, next to her first husband, Oscar Haruff.
• Myrta lived on in Altadena but was moved to a facility in Hollywood during the last months of her life.  There she passed away 11 October 1969, and she was buried near Clarence at Rose Hills Memorial Park, where she shares a tombstone with her mother, Minnie Dell Loomis.

Obituaries for all of Clarence’s wives are reproduced here.

If you can suggest any corrections to the information above or provide any further details about the lives of Crary/Clarence, his wives, and their descendants, please contact me at the address shown in the image below:

Thanks,      
     —Pete Martin

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