“On a bright moonlight night in spring time, just as he might have wished it, because Jim Callahan was a very sentimental man, his spirit took flight from the body which had been pain racked for many months.” Poet and newspaperman James T. Callahan Sr. died on April 7, 1925, of jaw cancer. He was born in Alton in 1856 and started writing for the Alton Evening Telegraph in 1891. He “loved mostly to write of the little things of life which usually escape the notice of other people.”
Callahan studied to be a lawyer and gained admittance to the bar to practice law. He also served later in life as Clerk of the City Court of Alton. But writing was his real love. He wrote Stray Scraps for 35 years and was one of the first people in the country with his own daily column. Callahan’s final Stray Scraps column ran in the Alton Evening Telegraph on February 21, 1925, and he expected it to be his last.
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For many years, Callahan’s friends encouraged him to publish a compilation of his poetry and prose, so in 1923, he published “Stray Scraps: Poetry and Prose Selections.” He had it printed in Alton by the National Printing Company. A May 14, 1923 article in the Alton Evening Telegraph described it as such: “There are poems in the little book Mr. Callahan has issued which have an especial appeal to hearts which have known sorrow…There are pretty tributes to friends and there are feeling tributes to some who have gone away…some [of the poems] in this little book are of such a quality that they will live, long after the identity of the writer perhaps has been forgotten.”
The book did not sell well. “He had an experience that is common to many who has real genius, their work is not fully appreciated nor rewarded during their lifetime.” He sold enough books to pay the printer, but “found that an admiring public was to wait until he was removed from the living, breathing, present-day world, before his book would be in demand.” The Hayner Genealogy & Local History Library has three copies of “Stray Scraps: Poetry and Prose Selections” on the shelves, and staff members have also digitized the book and made it available in our online collection, free to read for anyone (https://archive.org/details/stray-scraps-callahan) so that neither the book nor the writer will be forgotten.
James T. Callahan is buried next to his wife, Margaret H. McGinnis Callahan, beneath evergreen trees in the St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Godfrey.
Sources
Callahan, James T. 1923. Stray Scraps: Poetry and Prose Selections. Alton, Ill.: National Printing.https://archive.org/details/stray-scraps-callahan
“James T. Callahan, Author of ‘Stray Scraps’ Column Dies After Long Illness.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), April 7, 1925.
“J.T. Callahan Laid to Rest in Beautiful Spot.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), April 9, 1925.
Stetson, Charlotte. “Callahan one of Alton’s characters.” Alton Telegraph (Alton, IL), September 17, 2006.
“Stray Scraps.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), February 21, 1925.
“Stray Scraps is on Market in Book Form.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), May 14, 1923.
“What an Editor Thinks of ‘Scraps.’” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), May 29, 1923.
