About an interesting man in Marion's early history, "Stephen Marcou years ago
(Copied from 9-12-1938 issue)
(written by Mrs. Lucy Martin Burkholder)
Marion County history contains some most colorful characters. No book of fiction tells a story more absorbing than that of "Lank" Moore and his life in Mexico, at Cottonwood Crossing, in Marion Centre, his further adventures in early-day Wichita and his later years down in Arizona.
Jack London never created a character the equal of "Jack" Costello of Tipperary — adventurer on horseback along the Old Santa Fe Road or Patrick Doyle, son of Erin, emigrant, trader, pioneer-extraordinary whose mystery has not get been solved, a man with a story stranger than fiction.
We have heard a great deal about these three but there are some others whose stories are not so well know. Among them is an eccentric Frenchman named Stephen G. Marcou who practiced law and operated a land office in Marion Centre in 1872-73.
He must have emigrated with some of the French who made up the colony in Chase County and along Brunot Creek on the Marion County side. At any rate, he arrived in Marion Centre with something of a flourish. He was dressed in the height of fashion and was meticulous in the care of his person, especially his hair and mustachios. He drove what was described as "a spanking park" of horses to an "elegant" buggy. All in all he must have been at once a treat to the eyes and a source of amusement and ridicule to the settlers of 1872.
The advertisement of his land office splashed across the page of the Marion County Record, cheek by jowl with the column that had been headed "Case and Billings Land Agents" ever since the paper had been published. His business aims and offers were set forth both in English and in French and added that a German interpreter was in this employ.
Case and Billings, meaning Alex Case and Levi Billings, had been in the real estate business since 1868. This was their first competition.
Stephen G. Marcou was one of those French emigres who dreamed dreams of this country's becoming a New France. They foresaw the day when the bluffs along Middle Creek, Brunot and Martin's Creek would be clothed in the green of vineyards and orchards; when the gently rolling prairies would be divided into carefully gardened small farmsteads such as they had known in the sunny homeland. Marcou had a burning desire to help his people attain this New World dream.
Temporarily at least, he seems to have lived in a dugout up on Mud Creek. His home was a crude habitation made by digging into a hillside and roofing over a space before the entrance with brush and mud.
He drove over the country constantly and indefatigably to settle the newcomers on their land, to give legal advice and to advance the fortunes of the county, particularly the French portion, in every way he could.
His pet desire for Marion Centre was sidewalks. A very few enterprising business men had built sidewalks in front of their property but, naturally, there was no uniformity of material, width or worst of all, height. In order to secure a common type of walk it would be necessary to incorporate the town and pass an ordinance regulating sidewalks.
This it came that Mr. Marcou began a campaign to secure a demand for incorporating Marion Centre as a city of the third class. There was very little desire for this move. In fact there was a great deal of opposition. There were those who did not want incorporation because of taxes; some who anticipated undesired restrictions in business and many who opposed the sidewalks.
The Marion County Record carried communications pro and con in almost every issue. Marcou talked for incorporation everywhere he went. He made speeches, long and loud, for it; he wrote letters to the paper; he had posters and handbills made and distributed. And when it rained and the streets became literal "hogwallows" of mud, he climbed upon a pair of seven-foot stilts and went wading around the town promoting incorporation — "so we can get the Centre out of the mud."
No one will ever know how much influence his agitation had on the final result. The pity is that incorporation and the sidewalk ordinance did not come until after he had shaken the dust of the town off his feet (and the mud off his stilts), and gone his crusading way.
The stories told of his law suits are a joy to read. He himself was involved in most of them either as litigant or important witness. Nevertheless, he would act as council in the case.
There was this case involving the ownership of a small calf valued at seven dollars. Marcou was a party to the suit as well as attorney and he "lawed" the case until the costs amounted to almost a thousand dollars.
Another case, in magistrate's court, was over a couple of pigs. Marcou, as defense attorney and witness, examined himself.
"What is your name?" he asked himself.
"Stephen G. Marcou," he answered himself.
After conducting the examination in this way, he said to the opposing council, "Take the witness."
During the cross-examination he frequently admonished himself: "Don't answer that question, Mr. Marcou."
The visitors at court had a hilarious time that day! The opposing council was Alex E. Case. Mr. Case not only had a land office at this time, he was also a practicing attorney with Sam R. Peters, later to become Judge of the 9th Judicial District, as his partner. During the hearing, Mr. Case in his dryly humorous way, told the court that Stephen Marcou was a trouble maker. "Why," he said, "if Stephen G. Marcou should die and find himself in Hades, he'd get up such a row in a week that Old Nick would kick him out."
In his rebuttal, Marcou brought down the house by his retort that if Alex Case should die and go below, the Devil would do as Mr. Peters had done — go into partnership with him.
Mr. Case and Mr. Marco were really friends and everybody understood the give and take of a law suit, but it was a rich story and the settlement loved it. Marcou was considered a "brick and a card."
Long after Marcou had gone, E.W. Hoch published the story and jokingly suggested Mr. Case would prosecute him for it.
Marcou's vision seems to have faltered and his exuberant spirit to have been quenched as the lands filled up, a town began to form. Alex E. Case was a builder; he reveled in developing the new country but Stephen Marcou was an explorer. He desired no ties. He belonged to that group of humanity for whom the glory is ever in the quest rather than in the attainment.
Four years later "Lank" Moore wrote from Walnut Grove, Arizona, that he had "recently seen Stephen Marcou, ex-real estate man from your town. I saw him on the summit of the highest mountain on the Pacific slope, headed west, and looking hearty and fine."
"Headed west"
No further record of the man has ever been found, but what an exit line! "
