Rural dairyman ran away from home
What’s more wholesome than life on a farm? What’s more beautiful than parents, in love, on a farm?
But farm life’s demanding, the bills exhausting. And how much sleep do parents get? Add lack of sleep to hard labor and money worries … things could go sideways.
On Oct. 30, 1922, such a thing slid sideways and kept going until it hit the front page of the Arkansas Gazette.
Albert C. Jorns, a 31-year-old dairyman from Carlisle, vanished after delivering butter and milk to his customers in Little Rock. It was, the Gazette reported, as though the earth opened and swallowed him.
Jorns owned Buena Vista Dairy in Lonoke County. He made his deliveries, collected his earnings, stashed his truck in the Midway garage near Fourth and Louisiana streets and then visited the office of a doctor who had treated him before in Carlisle. The doctor diagnosed him as having a fever but was certain Jorns could drive home safely.
From the moment Albert stepped outside that office, no trace of him was found.
When he failed to return home that night, his wife, Leola, talked to her Methodist pastor, the Rev. A.B. Barry. The next day, the minister and his wife accompanied Leola to Little Rock to make inquiries. They enlisted police from Little Rock and North Little Rock.
Police Chief Burl Rotenberry issued this description: 5-foot-9, 140 pounds with dark hair and eyes; wearing a green suit.
After the story appeared in the Gazette, Jorns’ parents, residents of Helena, went to Little Rock to help Leola, arriving Nov. 4. They stayed several days until their other son, Archie, arrived from Texas. After the others returned home, Archie stayed behind, determined to find his brother.
A rumor that Albert was in Pine Bluff proved false, as did a letter that put him in rice fields at Almyra. A letter mailed in Carlisle bore a one-cent stamp; police decided it was the work of a crank or comedian.
Then the postmaster at Carlisle received a large envelope bearing a sealed letter from St. Louis signed by “Mrs. Clara LaSure.” The letter said that she had employed a man who told her he had been in the dairy business at Carlisle. She
asked that police reply to her through general delivery in St. Louis.
St. Louis detectives staked out that post office, but after several days the only person who showed up to ask for a letter addressed to Mrs. LaSure was Archie. Detectives detained him just long enough to establish that he had decided to talk to LaSure himself.
EXHAUSTED
The Gazette reported Nov. 5 that Leola had told her pastor that Albert, in a fit of despondency and in poor health, had recently threatened to end his life. He wanted to leave the farm and make a new home for them in a city somewhere; but the farm was a gift from her father, and she did not want to leave.
Leola also feared that he might have been waylaid by robbers, because he would have been carrying a good bit of money from selling the milk and butter.
Neighbors told the Gazette that Albert and Leola had lived on the farm five years. They had a 4- or 5-year-old adopted daughter. He had tried to grow crops; when that failed, he invested in cows and added a poultry farm. The dairy was doing well. He intended to open a cheese factory. He was working himself hard, rising at 3 a.m. every day and not going to sleep until 11 p.m. He got four hours of sleep a night.
Day after day he made deliveries to customers in Carlisle, Little Rock and towns in between. Often Leola went as well, but she’d stayed home Oct. 30.
He was “a nervous wreck,” friends said.
MURDERED?
On Nov. 15, the Gazette reported that Lonoke County’s Chief Deputy Johnson had arrested Allen Manson, 28, a timberjack at a sawmill. Picking him up before midnight, Johnson took him to Little Rock where he was suspected of the first degree murder of Albert Jorns.
Johnson told the Gazette he had reports that Manson, while drinking, told friends Jorns owed him $600. Johnson added that he had no direct evidence against Manson, but Deputy Prosecutor W.H. Donham had told him there was some.
Manson, the paper reported, appeared slightly nervous at the Little Rock jail but stoutly denied knowing Jorns’ whereabouts. Also, during their ride to Little Rock, Manson told the deputy that Albert Jorns never owed anyone so much as $600, in his life, and so why would he, Manson, have said that, drunk or sober?
Manson tried to bond out at the jail, but when jailers told him the charge did not allow bond, he said with a faint smile, “Well, I guess I’ll have to stay here tonight. I’m sure I’ll be out soon as I’m not guilty of anything wrong against Jorns.”
Donham admitted there was no evidence that Jorns was dead.
But two neighbors had said the timberjack was infatuated with Leola, and he wrote her letters. These friends also claimed to have heard Manson tell Leola that he “wanted” her. They said Albert had told Manson to stop hanging around the Jorns’ place.
And a handwriting expert had compared the letter from St. Louis to one Leola had from Manson. The expert said the handwriting was similar.
When Leola heard that Manson was arrested, she ran to a nearby church and was heard screaming, “Allen did not kill Albert!” Neighbors said they heard the screaming for 30 minutes.
THE LETTER
On Nov. 16, 1922, the Gazette divulged all this information in a sidebar to another Page 1 story — about a letter Leola had just received from her husband. He was in St. Louis. He wanted her to sell the farm, put the money in her name and go live with him there.
A Gazette reporter was with Leola when the letter arrived. It included a $500 check.
Albert wrote more letters. From St. Louis he went to Memphis. Leola found him there, and by Nov. 20 he was home in Carlisle.
AFTER THAT
One hundred years ago today, Albert disappeared again.
On June 17, 1923, the Gazette reported: “Albert Jorns, Dairyman, Vanishes Again, This Time From El Dorado.”
Jorns was an amnesia victim, prone to periodic attacks of amnesia, the report said. He had recently bought the Purity Dairy Farm in El Dorado.
This time, Leola found him in New Orleans. But as the Gazette reported July 2, while traveling home they stopped in Vicksburg, Miss., where Albert stepped away to send a telegram … and did not return.
Leola described him as “5 feet, 11 inches tall, broad shoulders, dark hair and brown eyes, florid complexion, three upper gold teeth, large mouth; wore gray-brown suit, gray hat, yellow and blue striped silk shirt and black kid shoes.”
The last story I see about the Jornses in the archives was published July 30, 1923. Leola had sold the El Dorado farm to dairyman Mike Emerick and was using the money in her search for Albert.
From family tree postings on Ancestry and a listing at findagrave.com (see arkansasonline.com/612leola), it appears Leola found Albert again. She held on to him. They moved to Texas, ending up in Kerrville in 1952. She died in 1962, age 73.
Albert eventually remarried, twice. He was a life member of the Lions Club, the Jaycees, the Kiwanis, Optimists … . He had sold hardware in Houston and been a police photographer. When he died in 1984 at age 93, he had five grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.
It is arrogant to imagine we know a life story when all we have is newspaper clips. Newspapers document real lives only when people are born, die, do something terrible or do something wonderful.
I choose to believe we know the name of Lena Leola Faulkner Jorns because she did something wonderful.