Drive past the Carroll Museum and you will see a large dog statue in the front yard. Stop to visit the museum and the hostess might read to you the following: The Legend of the Black Dog.
In the year 1892, the Keller family left their small daughter in a buggy as they took groceries into the house. Suddenly spooked, the team of horses began pulling the buggy down the inclined roadway. The dog immediately threw himself in front of the team, stopping the runaway horses, and saved the child…at the cost of his own life.
The grateful Keller family honored the heroic dog by having a statue of himmade by an artisan in New York City: The statue now stands guard on the Carroll Mansion lawn.
The story perpetuates at K State where one of the aluminum statues stands in the Veterinary Medicine building. The plaque reads: “The Dog,” as he has been affectionately known to generations of Leavenworth, Kan., folks, came to town in the 1890s as a gift to the Keller girls from their father, Henry C. Keller, in memory of the family dog, which had saved the girls from a runaway team of horses.
The original dog was made of thin pot metal, and over the years, as the children road his back, he became cracked and broken. Carl F. Theel, of Leavenworth used the pieces to make a new mold and made the present dog of heavy cast aluminum. The original dog was cast in 1988 (sic) in Elmire, New York. Given to the College of Veterinary Medicine Kansas State University 1978 by William Laurie Jones, D.V.M. 1932 Sidney Robert Jones, D.V.M. 1961 and Ph.D
This story, being repeated so often, is believed to be true. I thought so too until I spoke with an area native and author Mary Ann Sachse Brown. Mary Ann revealed to me that it is a fictional story written by Donna List for a college assignment. A phone call to Mrs. List confirmed she wrote the story for an assignment in a children’s literature class at KCKCC. She is unclear how the story became accepted as truth because she never intended for it to be anything but fiction.
The truth is the dog statue stood on the corner of Marshall and Fifth Avenue. I walked past it on my way to Junior High School, which is now called Nettie Hartnett School, in the 1940s. In 1965, when Cushing Hospital expanded the building to the East, the home was torn down and the dog statue moved to the Carroll Museum directly to the South.
Over the years the statue’s tail was broken and in late January 1973 the statue was vandalized and the head broken off. Pieces of the statue were recovered and taken to the Carl Theel Manufacturing building on Spruce Street. After working for C.W Parker, Carl and Ruth Theel opened their own amusement ride manufacturing business and operated Kiddieland for approximately 40 years. The Theels sold amusement rides and cast various animals in aluminum. A dinosaur still stands at that location on Spruce Street.
Carl and his family produced a limited number of the aluminum dog statues and I have located six of them. Five of the statues are in Leavenworth at the following locations: 1200 3rd Street, 1800 Klemp Street (located west of Klemp), 16940 Dakota Drive, 2504 Grand Avenue (which stood in front of the Theel home at 915 Spruce for years), and in front of the Carroll Mansion. The sixth one is located in Manhattan Kan.
So how did the statue arrive in Leavenworth? We may never know for sure. Perhaps it was one of several made throughout the United States and the Keller family purchased it for their yard. Maybe the statue is simply ‘yard art’ but the story is much more fun when we believe Donna Lists’ version.
The author, Annie Walker Johnston (LHS Class of 1954) is a Leavenworth resident and wife of the late J.H. Johnston III, former Leavenworth Times publisher.
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