Before there was Aloha Wanderwell there was Nell: Auto Touring as Vaudeville

Before there was Aloha there was Nell: Auto Touring as Vaudeville -- Part I

 

John Heitmann, Professor Emeritus, University of Dayton

    Over the past decade there has been considerable interest in the career of Aloha Wanderwell Baker (1906-1996). In large part because of the efforts of her grandchild, and indeed before that of Aloha (a name meaning Love) before her death in 1996.  These attempts to place Aloha into the limelight have fallen short, and it is puzzling as to why. There are several clips of her around-the-world travels on Youtube; numerous posts on the internet; recognition of her filmmaking work by the American Film Academy in 2015. Her work and life are well chronicled in Christian Fink-Jensen and Randolph Eustace-Walden's Aloha Wanderwell: The Border-Smashing, Record-Setting Life of the World's Youngest Explorer (Frederickton, New Brunswick, 2016), and Aloha's own Call To Adventure (New York:  Dover, 2020), a reprint of a 1939 edition. 

    No story of Aloha is complete without examining the life of her husband, Walter Wanderwell, whose real name was Valerian Johann Pieczynski. Indeed, he is the central figure in he Aloha story, worts and all. And yet those who celebrate Aloha do not want to get too close to Walter, for his honesty, integrity, and marital fidelity only tarnish Aloha's memory. Before the two met, however, another woman was a part of the Wanderwell story, and she is largely forgotten -- Nell. And it is Nell I want to focus on in this essay. She was critical to the establishment of the Wanderwell organization between 1919 and 1922, and she also drove automobiles between 1919 and 1928, racking up many miles but not to the extent of Aloha in terms of visits to exotic locations or generating the kind of publicity and film footage that Aloha did. 

    As the authors of the monograph on Aloha discovered, this topic  has more pitfalls and traps that one can ever imagine.  It proves quite a test to me as a long-time professional historian, as dates, place, names and claimed achievements all need be checked and rechecked. That is what you get when you deal with the history surrounding Walter Wanderwell. Walter had to be an inveterate liar, an adulterer (most all who have studied anything about him know this as common knowledge), and a phenomenal self-promoter. His past is murky, made difficult to track down because of all the contradictory reports. 

Walter was born in Posen, Germany, and while at times he identified himself as Polish, he also stated at times he was German, having lived in the borderlands of Silesia before WWI. Later in the 1920s he would write a postcard to his mother in German. His father was said to be a veterinarian in the German army during WWI, and killed in 1915. As a young many he joined the Wandervogel, a German group of hikers that traveled around Europe on foot, and he is said to have started his around-the-world travels in 1912. At times he was a seaman, and we have several photographs of him while working in that occupation at are in the National History Automobile Collection in the Detroit Public Library.

The following are three photographs of Walter Wanderwell while he was working as a sailor on an American vessel engaged in the coastwise trade. The date is probably 1915.  He later stated that because he was taken off the vessels by English naval authorities after the vessel left the 3 mile limit, he subsequently decided to walk across America. He ended up on the west coast, and then by early 1917 in Miami, Florida.

View of Walter Wanderwell wearing swim trunks, arm muscles flexed, standing on the deck of the ship Rio Grande. "Rio Grande, N.Y." Handwritten on negative sleeve: "Cap's sailing days, 1912-1916. About 17. Pugilist & health fiend. Detroit Public Library.

View of Walter Wanderwell standing on the deck of the ship Rio Grande. Handwritten on negative sleeve: "Aboard the 'Rio Grande' en route to New Orleans. Ready to measure the world by foot."

View of Walter Wanderwell standing on the deck of the ship Rio Grande. Handwritten on negative sleeve: "At 17, on way up. 3rd mate of 'Rio Grande' & very proud of it." Detroit Public Library.

I have been looking at newspapers in the U.S., beginning with 1916. What astonishing is all the discrepancies concerning his travels to 1916, his experiences as a seaman, his being detained several times as a spy, and  his relationship with a German-American 16 year old girl from Salt Lake City that would later lead to a  change of violating the Mann Act. 

Below is  a photograph from the Richmond, Indiana Palladium-Item, dated 12 September 1916, p.10 (why this newspaper when the photo was taken in California?), headlined "They Wander Well." Note the marriage was said to have taken place in Chicago. However, the Nebraska newspaper articles cited below make no mention of a Mrs. Wanderwell!

Later, in March of 1917 during Walter's suspicion of spying, arrest and detention, the story of Mrs. Wanderwell started to become clearer. First, they did not meet and marry in Chicago before the walk to the west coast. Her name was reported as Anna Coltwanger. She was a German girl from Salt Lake City.  Walter somehow met Anna, and then ran away from Anna's home (she was living with her aunt), who had insisted that they marry if she was to travel with him. They did not marry, ran away, ended up in San Diego. He mistreated her greatly, and later (July 16, 1916) Anna would marry another world walker and acquaintance of Walter, Van Enden. Like Walter, the Dutchman was also for a short time also suspected of spying for the Germans in March 1917. The story gets more complex over time, as somehow, Anna reappears in Atlanta along with Walter Wanderwell and a third walker, Hugo Coutadin.

Anna claimed in 1917 that she was not Wanderwell's wife "as he represented." She went on to say that "We meet Germans who say they do not like Wanderwell...He tells so many different stories of who he is."

What we know of Walter's walk across America from newspapers:

1) He left New York on March 16, 1916.

2) He arrived in Bucyrus, Ohio on April 4. The Bucyrus Evening Telegraph, April 4, 1916, p.5. He identified himself as a 21 year old member of the "Wandervogel" Club of Posen, Germany and a German (Not Pole as he later does). He walked on the Lincoln Highway. His stories of marine travel tend to get confusing, but this interview stated he left Hamburg Germany in June 1914 on a British tramp ship, found himself in Valparaiso, Chile when the war broke out. He was interned, released, and then walked from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires in 3 months, then to New York City on an American Vessel. For a time the worked out of New York as a quartermaster for various coastwise vessels, but harassed by the British once outside the 3 mile limit even though he was posing as a Russian.

On his walk, he took along a German Haversack; English Trousers; American shirt; Spanish canteen. He averaged 40 miles per day. He described himself as a strict physical cultures, who eats soft foods, seldom meat, and did not smoke or drink.

3) On April 14 he arrived in Munster, Indiana. See The Times (Munster, Indiana), 14 April, 1916, p.1. He stated that his father was killed in WWI in 1915 and has a 16 year old brother fighting on the front. He walks because he does not feel safe sailing the Atlantic.

4) On 18 May Wanderwell landed in Fremont, Nebraska after 60 days of travel. See Fremont Tri-Weekly Tribune, 18 May, 1916, p.3.  He states that he tried to get back to Germany twice but was stopped by the British. He therefore concluded that "Footing is a good cheap method of transportation, when a fellow is broke."

5) On 20 May he arrived in Grand Island, Nebraska, where he stayed at the Liederkranz. He stated that his father was a veterinarian and that he was arrested in he West Indies as a German spy by the British while on a vessel posing as a Russian.

In January of 1917, Wanderwell appeared in Miami, needing a rest before completing his 23,000 mile walking trek (?)  to Key West. By March,1917 he was in Atlanta, where along with Hugo Coutandin he was arrested by Secret Service Agents for being under suspicion as being German spies. Carrying a book of famous signatures and a bank book from Miami listing $1,720.50, along with several large postal savings drafts, he certainly could have been part of a ring of spies. While in detention, former lover Anna appeared at the police station.

Anna had married another walking wanderer from Europe and Wanderwell acquaintance and rival, A.V.D. Enden, who was also arrested in Atlanta. Enden described himself as a Dutch citizen, and "champion wrestler of Java and Straits Settlement." Enden was accused of spying but subsequently released, and on July 19 Hugo Coutandin was also let go. Walter Wanderwell quickly followed in early August, with the provision of being on parole. 

Wanderwell then held several jobs, until October, 1917, when it was reported that he fractured his leg while working for Western Union as a messenger.

Note the photographs below. The date on the photo is 1917, but probably dated so by Aloha, who was not around at that time. I would guess it is actually 1918. It depicts Nell on the left, and Anna on the right. Note that Walter has a cane, probably recovering from his leg fracture. 

View of Walter Wanderwell posing with two young women on porch. Two girls and elderly man stand nearby; men sit on chairs in background. Handwritten on negative: "1917 [rest undecipherable]." Detroit Public Library

Blow up of above photo. Is this Nell, after Walter was injured while working as a messenger. 1917? See second scaled photo. I believe so.

While in recovery little is known of Wanderwell's activities. But somehow he transformed himself from being a suspected German spy to in September of 1918 holding patriotic rallies in Atalanta at Grant Park, as he held the position of "director of war service of the Volunteers of America." It was while at the VOA that he probably met Nell Clark, as other sources suggest that they were married in Birmingham, AL, that same year. 

    Apparently the couple continued working for the VOA in 1919, but Walter was far from an exemplary employee, as it was reported that he beat his wife in July of 1919. (The Atlanta Constitution, 22 July, 1919, p.2). A description of the scene stated that in"Neighborhood in the vicinity of the hall of the Volunteer of America...was startled by screams of a woman last night at midnight." Police responded, Walter was arrested with a charge of disorderly conduct, and later fined.  His wife was also charged, and in addition the prosecutor wanted to know what she was doing with VOA solicited funs. Her response was published in The Atlanta Constitution and is reproduced above. (The Atlanta Constitution, July 27, 1919, p.13

In response to a prosecutor's request for information on how solicited funds for the volunteers of America were spent, Nell Wanderwell prepared this financial report. The Atlanta Constitution, July 25, 1919, p. 13; July 27, 1919, p.13.

So what can I say about Nell at this stage of the story? She was born on May 29, 1896 in Whitlock , Washington -- perhaps! Office government documents provide us with two dates, 1892 and 1896. The 1900 Census lists Nell as 7 years old. In the late 1920s Nell has to go through a naturalization process as former U.S. citizen who gave up her citizenship when she married Walter. At first she lists her date of birth as 1892, then amends that document in 1930 to 1896. The 1930 Census lists her as age 38.  Her 1968 obituary -- death on May 9 -- lists her at age 71. That would place date of birth as 1896.  In the VOA document shown above she signs her name as Nell Clark, so we may assume that she was married previous to that of a marriage to Walter in 1918. 

I have only introduced Nell to you. More to come shortly. She is most mysterious, beginning with her birth date. But when you get wrapped up with Walter Wanderwell, mystery is the rule!