St. Clair County
Remnants Of The Past

Appleton City Journal
1 April 1909

Well Known Here
A Former Appleton City Boy At Kansas City.
Got in Trouble by Being in Bad Company.

Owing to the fact that all sorts of rumors are in circulation regarding the trouble in which Harold Brownlee, a boy well known at this place, is mixed up in at Kansas City, some to the effect that the circumstances and other things connected with the affair are a great deal worse for the boy than the facts warrants, the following is reprinted from the Kansas City Star of Sunday that the many friends in this locality of the family may know the truth and see for themselves to what extent it can be stretched by some people when they want to mutilate it.
Harold Brownlee, 19 years old, is according to his own statement, one of the robbers who held up J.E. Crane, a conductor on the Prospect avenue line the night of March 10. Crane was robbed of $28 and his watch by two men in the rear vestibue of his car at thirty-sixth and Prospect avenue. One of the men pointed a revolver at him.
“Jack” Monroe, an associate of Brownlee, was arrested yesterday afternoon. Mattie Willard who lived with Monroe at 712 Washington street, was arrested Thursday. Andy O’Hare, Samuel Lowe, John Farrell and Denver Mitchell, city detectives, arrested the three.
“I didn’t know what kind of a man Monroe was when I met him three months ago,” Brownlee said last night. “He told me he was the prizefighter who fought Jeffries in Butte, Mont., and I believed him. I had been a conductor on the Fifth street line three months and I quit soon after I met Monroe. One night we got on a Prospect car and he told me he was going to get something. I didn’t know what he meant. When the car come to Thirty-sixth street he pointed a revolver at the conductor and took his money charger. Then he told me to take his watch and I was so frightened that I did. He gave me $5 and kept the watch and the rest of the money.”
Brownlee had been employed in the office of the Swift Packing company the last two weeks. He was not employed when the robbery was committed.
The many friends of the family in Appleton City and surrounding country will appreciate getting the truth in the case, or at least that contained in the publication that caused so many reports to be in circulation. In the end it will doubtless be shown that Harold’s connection with the affair is due only to the fact that he got in bad company, and did not realize to what extreme he was being led or forced by his associates.