BURNS, Martin "Farmer" 1861-1937

BURNS, WALSH, BEAM, BEEM, HOFFMASTER, HAFEMEISTER, TAMIESIEA

Posted By: Sue (Byrnes) Broadbooks (email)
Date: 8/15/2002 at 19:06:02

1. The Council Bluffs Nonpareil, Council Bluffs, Iowa

Sunday, January 10, 1937

page 15, column 2

FARMER BURNS RITES ARE SET FOR MONDAY

Requiem mass for Martin "Farmer" Burns will be celebrated in Toronto, Ia., Catholic church Monday at 10 a.m., with burial in the family lot in the church cemetery. The body will lie in state at the Beem-Belford funeral home until Sunday night.

Burns, once world wrestling champion at three weights, died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Cecelia Beem, 710 South Ninth street, Friday night.

2. The Wheatland Gazette, Wheatland, Iowa

Wed. January 13, 1937

page 4, column 5

The remains of Martin “Farmer” Burns was brought here for burial in the family lot in St. James cemetery Monday. He died Friday in the home of his daughter in Council Bluffs. Mart had many friends here among the old timers back in 1895 to 1900 when he was in his prime as a wrestler, as well as a good man and citizen.

3. Grand Mound Messenger

January 13, 1937

“Farmer” Burns is Dead

Residents of this vicinity and Big Rock were grieved Saturday when a radio new broadcast flashed the word that Martin “Farmer” Burns, 76, had passed away Friday night, Jan. 8th, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Cecelia Beam, in Council Bluffs.

His body lay in state Saturday at a mortuary in that city, where hundreds of his old friends and wrestling fans gathered to pay final tribute to this man who has long been know as the dean of American wrestlers.

On an early morning train Monday his remains were brought to Wheatland, where lifelong friends and the few surviving companions of his boyhood days gathered at the Balster funeral home to follow the funeral cortege to Toronto, where funeral services were held at St. James Catholic church, conducted by Rev. Father M. J. Flood of Council Bluffs, assisted by Rev. Father Horan. Burial was mad in the Burns family lot in St. James Cemetery, Toronto.

Pall bearers were Francis Ryan, John L. O’Neill, Joe Flynn and Emil Doehrmann of Big Rock, Ed Siegmund of Wheatland and John Sievers of Toronto.

Accompanying the body were Mrs. Cecelia Beam and Father M.J. Flood of Council Bluffs; Raymond and Charles Burns of Chicago: and Thomas Burns of Sioux city.

Martin Burns, known over all America as “Farmer” Burns, was born February 15, 1861, in a small log cabin on the banks of Rock Creek, southwest of Wheatland in Springfield township, Cedar county, in what has been known for many years as the Limerick neighborhood. No trace of the old home remains on what is now part of the farm owned by Philip Koch, formerly known as the Jim LaGrange farm.

When Martin was but a lad of eleven years his father, Mike Burns, met with accidental death leaving the widowed mother, Mary, with a family of two sons and five daughters.

Educational facilities in those days were meager, and young Martin attended the Limerick school but gave scant heed to books, preferring outdoor sports, and principally wrestling. At the age of eight he wrestled a companion, James Magrin, three years his senior, for his first stake, fifteen cents – and won – and in him then was created a desire to excel in that clean athletic sport.

While he was a rough-and-ready lad and exceedingly muscular for his size, he never was a fighter nor a bully in any way, and could take grievious handling from larger boys or uneven numbers without trace of resentment. This admirable quality is attested by possibly the only two persons now living who were school mates of Martin Burns, and they are Wheatland residents today – Mr. Herman Drost and his sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Hillmann. They will tell you that Martin was a good boy, full of pranks but always good natured, and it is doubtful if anyone ever saw him really angry.

Forsaking school and to him what were hampering environments, he gave up all thoughts of an education at the age of twelve, and for the following seven years worked on farms, sawed wood and devoted his spare time to wrestling in the various neighborhoods. He was working at Denison, Iowa, when he first met a professional wrestler, David Grafft, and engaged him in a bout that lasted two hours and nineteen minutes, which was declared a draw.

He next worked in a grading camp and found himself thrown into contact with a different class of men – big, brawny men who, because of irregular habits, proved just easy practice for this young athlete, who early in life had adopted a system of living that he rigidly maintained throughout his life, and to which he always attributed his real success. The greater majority of word famed athletes have risen to the topmost pinnacle of success, only to hold those honors, but a short time because of their failure to regard the simpler rules that Burns laid out for himself. During his wrestling career he engaged in over 6,00 bouts and lost only seven.

He did not drink any liquor, smoke or chew tobacco, drink tea or coffee, and he didn’t swear, always claiming that the last was both a filthy and senseless habit and the beginning of all bad habits.

He was married in 1887 to Miss Amelia Hoffmaster of near Lowden, and after his marriage he worked for a time as shoveler for his cousin, P.T. Walsh, a Davenport contractor, then later returned to farm work near Big Rock.

At no time did he relinquish is steady training, meeting mat contenders at any and all times, and defeating them, until in the fall of 1886 he wrestled at Anamosa, Iowa, with Henry Clayton, a professional known as “Lewis the Strangler,” who won by the strangle hold later barred in wrestling circles. This signal defeat decided Burns to give special attention to the muscles of his neck and he developed those muscles to the extend that he never found a man who was powerful enough to choke him with his bare hands. In fact, he laid a wager that he could take a six-foot drop with a hangman’s noose about his neck. He wasn’t dropped the entire distance, but the photographer who took his picture at the time was plenty flustered when Burns kept up a steady conversation during the entire performance.

It was during those early days, too, when Burns was well known as the champion “stick puller.” He won $12,000 in matches of that kind. Dennis O’Connor, of DeWitt, an old friend of Burns, can relate at least one such experience, profitable to both Burns and himself.

Burns met his second defeat in 1887 at Davenport, when he met Tom Connors, English champion, but still later defeated both Lewis and Connors.

It was in 1889 at the Olympic theater in Chicago, when he defeated two professionals in his first public appearance in a big city, that he was given the title of “Farmer” Burns, by a vaudeville comedian, J.W. Kelly, who pulled a wise crack about “the farmer who hoes potatoes and squash and shucks corn,” as Burns came onto the stage clad in overalls. The name stuck and he was thereafter known the world over as plain “Farmer” Burns.

Then followed four years when he was engaged with various traveling shows and in different cities, defeating all comers, until he opened a gymnasium in Rock Island, training several hundred pupil.

In 1894, he again toured the country, sometimes playing the game alone, posing as a plain wood sawyer or laborer in order to meet the various touted “champions” of that particular district.

He won the championship title of America April 20, 1895 in a match with “Lewis the Strangler,” and two years later won famous matches with McLeod and Jenkins, and later in the same year, 1897, lost a math to each of them.

In 1898 he again regained his championship title by defeating Jack Rout, and in 1899 met and defeated Hala Adala, “The Terrible Turk” in a handicap match.

The following year, in an exhibition match at Ft. Dodge, Iowa, his search of the United Stated from coast to coast for a young man whom he could train for the world’s championship crown, ended. He met Frank Gotch, a farmer lad of Humboldt, Iowa, whom he introduced to his friends in his old home neighborhood as “a young man who will be the next world’s champion wrestler, if he will live as I ask him to – and no man will very throw him.” How well this writer had occasion to remember that introduction to Gotch, who fulfilled every expectation of the old “king of grapplers” and became champion of the word, holding the title undefeated.

From 1901 to 1904, “Farmer” Burns conducted a gymnasium in Omaha and traveled the country. The for the next few years he and his family lived on the farm at Big Rock, while he made special lecture tours and gave wrestling exhibitions over the country. His family then consisted of himself, wife, two sons and two daughters. The first-born son died in infancy. These children were given the best of schooling and were all talented musicians. Neighborhood parties were not complete without the “Farmer” who could get more music out of a jewsharp than one could imagine and his children who excelled at the piano and brass instruments. Both the “Farmer” and his estimable wife loved dancing, and base ball and was ideal game. He even “ducked” a swell banquet given by the Chicago Athletic club to celebrate Gotch’s defeat of Hackenschmidt, “The Russian Lion,” to come back to Wheatland to take in a little social dance. “Too many boiled shirts, champagne, dollar cigar smoke and rotten stories,” was the explanation the “Farmer” gave on that occasion, “beside, I didn’t want to miss this dance.”

“Farmer” Burns and family again took up their residence in Omaha in 1909, where he opened a school of wrestling, which he conducted for many years. His wife failed in health and was an invalid for several years before her death which occurred March 28, 1930. His life mate gone, he failed perceptibly, and when his elder daughter, Mrs. Mayme Tamiesiea passed away November 7, 1932, his visits back here became more infrequent, and the weight of his years of strenuous life told on him heavily, and last August was finally forced to retire to a home with his younger daughter, Mrs. Cecelie Beam in Council Bluffs. His two sons, Raymond and Charles of Chicago; four grandchildren; one brother, Tom of Sioux City; a niece, Mrs. Tom Walsh of Davenport; and other nieces and nephews also survive him.

Nearing 76 years of age, this world-famed athlete had been a prominent figure in the wrestling game for more than 50 years, and although he was only a man of medium build and never weighed over 170 pounds by his own personal training methods he made it a popular sport, elevating it to a degree of clean athletic prowess from which it has so definitely degenerated to its lowest possible level within the past few years, that it no longer can be termed wrestling.

“Farmer” Burns and his beloved sport are both gone, and we deeply regret their passing.

* from Sue (Byrnes) Broadbooks: These were transcribed as they were written. I should note that I have found a marriage record for Martin Burns and Amelia Hafemeister (note different spelling from that found in obituary), date issued: 11 April 1887, m. 12 April 1887, by Rev. A. Trevis, Rector, Witness: P.F. Walsh, Scott County, Iowa.