The governor & his brother, the killer (Part 2)

I set out some time ago to tell the story of two Kendall brothers, both native to Lucas County's Greenville neighborhood southeast of Russell, whose paths led in dramatically different directions. 

One was Abbott Alexander Kendall (aka Edward Black), who shot and killed his mistress during August of 1906 in Garrett, Indiana, and then bashed her head in with the butt of the murder weapon. The other was Nathan Edward Kendall, prominent attorney in Albia at the time of his brother's murderous rampage, who went on the serve as Iowa's 23rd governor.

You'll find an account of the murder here, in a post entitled "An Iowa governor & his brother, the killer."

Abbott Kendall was 10 years older than Nathan. They had different mothers and appear to have been raised under far different circumstances.

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The father of both Abbott and Nathan was Elijah L. Kendall, born July 8, 1828, in Shelby County, Indiana, and age 23 and single when he accompanied his parents, Abbott G. and Sarah Elizabeth (Lucas) Kendall, to Washington Township, Lucas County, Iowa, during the fall of 1851.

Three years later, on Dec. 28, 1854, Elijah married Miranda Black, daughter of Alexander and Ann Black, in Monroe County. The Blacks probably were living just east of the Lucas-Monroe county line in Jackson Township, Monroe County. Miranda was only 15 at the time.

Elijah and Miranda became the parents of five children during the next six years --- three of whom died young: Waitman E. (1855-1855), Florence S. (1856-1857) and Martha E. (1859-1861). The survivors were Abbott, born 1858; and Sarah Anna, born 1861.

While by no means affluent, the Kendalls were able to afford tombstones to place in the Greenville Cemetery for each of their three deceased children, tombstones that still stand.

Little Sarah Anna was less than a year old and Abbott not yet 3 when Elijah, age 34, enlisted as fifer in Company C, 18th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, on July 14, 1862. His younger brother, Nathan W., age 21, had enlisted in the same company three days earlier. The brothers served together for three years, until they were mustered out on July 20, 1865, at Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Something apparently had gone badly wrong with the Kendall marriage during those war years, or it may have been stressed before Elijah enlisted, leaving behind a young wife with two small children.

Whatever the case, the couple divorced soon after Elijah's return to Iowa and on Jan. 1, 1867, he married a Greenville neighbor, Lucinda (Stephens) Mahan, 39, whose husband, John B. Mahan, had died at the age of 38 during November of 1864. She brought with her into the marriage at least five of her surviving children ranging in age from 8 to 22.

Miranda apparently took Abbott and Anna Kendall with her when she departed Greenville and by 1870 had married as her second husband Benjamin Abijah Watkins and settled with him in Gentry County, Missouri. She would have five children, the eldest of whom died during 1870 in infancy, during a marriage that endured until her death on Aug. 27, 1892, at Pattonsburg in Daviess County, Missouri.

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Back at Greenville, Elijah and Lucinda produced one child of their own --- a son they named Nathan Edward in honor of his Uncle Nathan L., who had served with Elijah throughout the Civil War. Little Nathan was born on March 17, 1868, and so was 10 years younger than his brother, Abbott, although the two, if acquainted, knew each other barely at best.

Young Nathan apparently was a bright child who flourished while having the undivided attention of two parents. When he was 15 and neighborhood schools had taken him as far as they could, Elijah, Lucinda and Nathan moved to Chariton in 1883 where Nathan entered the Stuart Brothers' law firm as a stenographer and law student. After a year or two, he relocated to the Albia law office of T.B. Perry. Admitted to the bar in 1889, he flourished in Albia, was elected to terms in the Iowa Legislature and eventually, in 1921, was elected governor, serving two terms.

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We know very little about Abbott's whereabouts and life during the years between his departure from Lucas County as a child and his appearance during the late 1890s in Garrett, Indiana, as Edward Black.

At age 22, he was working as a day laborer in Gentry County, Missouri, when the 1880 federal census was taken. Three years later, on March 5, 1883, he was working as a coal miner at Brazil in Appanoose County, Iowa, when he married Sadie Head. And that's about it.

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Now --- a return to 1906 in DeKalb County, Indiana.

Abbott A. Kendall, aka Edward Black, murdered Mattie Cannon during the early morning hours of Thursday, Aug. 2, 1906, in Garrett, freely admitting his guilt when apprehended.

Two months later, on Oct. 4, 1906, he was brought before a DeKalb County grand jury in Auburn and indicted for first-degree murder. At the time, he pleaded guilty and Presiding Judge Bratton set aside a few days to consider the sentence.

Meanwhile, Abbott's attorneys prepared documents to withdraw the guilty plea and demand a jury trial on the charge, most likely deploying an insanity plea, if it appeared that Judge Bratton might impose the death penalty.

When court was called to order on Monday, Oct. 8, Bratton accepted Abbott's guilty plea without comment, however, and imposed a sentence of life in prison in part, it was thought, to spare the county the expense of a trial. 

Abbott was taken immediately to the Indiana State Penitentiary in Michigan City where he remained for the remainder of his life.

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The killer's initial plea, presented in court on Oct. 4, included for the first time information about his real name and family background.

"When questioned further regarding the crime he had committed and while in a repentant mood," The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette of Oct. 5 reported, "he stated that his real name was not Black, but was Abbott Alexander Kendall. His reasons for assuming the name of Black and going by that name for the past seven years are set forth in the following statement made by him:

"In view of the investigation and my coming trial for the murder for which I am guilty, I am ready to disclose to the world my true name, which I have not used for many years. I was born in Lucas county, Iowa. Soon after my father's return from the Civil War he and my mother were divorced, leaving her with two children --- myself and a sister by the name of Anna.

"Anna married a man by the name of Dowling, who lives in Beaver City, Neb. My father married again and had a son --- my half-brother --- who is a successful lawyer of Albia, Ia., whom I have not seen for 15 years.

"My mother married a man named Benjamin Watkin with whom she removed to Pattonsburg, Mo. To them were born four children, three boys and one girl. There my mother died some years ago. Leaving there and not wishing to be followed by or burdened with the care of my half-brothers and sisters, I came to Indiana, locating in Garrett. There I gave the name Edward Black and it is by that name I have been known ever since and it was in that name I held the property I owned in that city. I simply changed my name so that my relatives could not find me."

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Abbott also made a number of allegations about himself and his family during court appearances that were summarized in The Garrett Weekly Clipper of Oct. 11, 1906, including:

"That his habits of living the life of a hermit were hereditary, his father having driven his mother from home a few months before he was born. This time she spent away from civilization in a lone hut on the banks of a river.

"That his father and mother were degenerates of the most pronounced type. (When he confessed this voluntarily in court he first said he must hide his head and took off his coat and covered his features."

"That he has been married three times and never divorced.

"That in two of these marriages the woman was over 60 years of age, his reason for preferring elderly women being that he desired no children.

"That he committed an abortion on his first wife, causing consumption from which she died a short time later.

"That he served six months in the Fort Madison, Iowa, penitentiary for stealing a watch.

"That he served two years in the Jeffersonville, Missouri, penitentiary for stealing a pair of boots.

"that he has been arrested time and again for drunkenness and vagrancy."

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The editor of the Auburn, Indiana, newspaper did follow up on Abbott's identification of Nathan Kendall of Albia as his brother and wired the attorney, requesting a response. Kendall replied that he did indeed have a half brother named Abbott who hadn't been heard from in many years, but rather than commenting asked the editor to write to him instead.

The Chariton newspapers reported upon the case, so the family would have been aware of it, but by this time Abbott's father was dead. He died on May 5, 1900, age 71, after serving for many years as a justice of the peace in Chariton. Lucinda had died at the age of 65 on May 9, 1894. They are buried in the Chariton Cemetery.

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Abbott Kendall, aka Edward Black, did indeed spent the rest of his life in prison, passing on Jan. 20, 1920, age 61 at the Indiana Hospital for Insane Criminals in Michigan City as the result of senile dementia. In Iowa, his brother, Nathan, was elected governor during November of that year.

It's kind of fitting that Abbott's death certificate is messed up, too. It identifies the deceased as "Edwin" Black, rather than Edward. And identifies his parents as Abbott and Maranda Black rather than Abbott and Marinda Kendall.

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Nathan Kendall was 68 when he died on Nov. 4, 1936, after suffering a heart attack while listening to election results on the radio that morning at his home in Des Moines. His remains were cremated and interred under a bench on the front lawn of Kendall Place, his home in Albia.