The Time Capsule | Roy Marshall

An article that appeared on page 10A of our Nov. 22 edition is one those who appreciate either dogs or local history must have enjoyed. The focus was on two canines that made the journey with Company M from Iowa to war in the Philippines.
The contributor of the article relied on a book written by Joseph Markey and published by the Thomas D. Murphy Company, which can be read at our county history center, library, or online.
Markey himself was quite a guy – a one-time Red Oak resident who deserves a biography.
The youngest of four children, Joseph Ignatius Markey (the middle name is often spelled “Ignacius”) was born April 15, 1868, in Chillicothe, Mo. As a teenager, he left home and moved to Red Oak. I don’t know why. We do know he was living here and, like pretty much everyone else in town, cheered the career of Red Oak’s nationally-known race horse.
Markey liked to write and began submitting unsolicited articles to The Express.
The Maine exploded in February 1898, killing 252 seamen, including one from Red Oak. During the patriotic fervor that ensued, Markey enlisted in the National Guard. War with Spain followed. That war ended about the time Markey, the dogs, and the rest of Company M arrived in the Philippines, but our government had expansionism in mind and decided to take the islands as our own. War with the Filipino resistance followed.
Markey, from the time Company M was activated until his participation in the war ended, sent weekly items to The Express. They were widely read here, as well as being clipped and sent all over the country to families who had boys fighting somewhere in the Philippines. Mr. McFarland at the Montgomery County History Center would know for sure, but I suspect Markey was The Express’s first war correspondent.
Pvt. Markey was wounded in May 1899. He was discharged the following August. Back in Red Oak, he edited his letters for the book. With that finished, he looked around for a job. He wanted to write and without question had talent. Opportunities in Red Oak, though, were limited. He moved to Chicago. The editor of a nationally-circulated sporting magazine, The Horse Review, was Palmer Clark. Clark had closely followed the career of Red Oak’s great trotter, Alix, and had been an investor in Pactolus Park racetrack (now the fairgrounds). He hired Markey.
Joseph Markey became a successful sportswriter. By 1910 he and his wife lived in a fine Victorian home on South Indiana, where they had a live-in servant named, according to the census, Miss Childs E. Childs.
Markey’s best-known achievement came in 1924. He’d long remembered the classic 1893 Chicago World’s Fair contest that pitted Alix against the best in the land. He advocated an annual race of that caliber – one with prestige and a $50,000 purse to assure the best of the best would compete. Markey wrote a series of editorials promoting the idea of a great race called the “Hambletonian.” His concept was endorsed by a Chicago promoter named Harry Reno, who assembled a managing committee of prominent horsemen. This committee, which came to be known as the Hambletonian Society, included Markey and W.M. Wright, owner of Calumet Farm.
Enthusiasm for the race was so extensive that, by 1926, the purse had grown to $73,000 – the equivalent of $1 million today. The Hambletonian, still run each year at The Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J., remains the most prestigious of all trotting horse races.
Markey and his wife moved to Evanston, Ill., where they were living at the time of his death in 1930.
He was, until the end, proud of his service with Company M. He attended reunions and kept in touch. His service qualified him for burial at Arlington National Cemetery, and that’s what he wanted. His wife, Bertha Sefton Markey, saw to the arrangements.
The former Red Oak soldier and war correspondent’s grave is in Section W ENL, 21676, Arlington National Cemetery.

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.