By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
One day, two ghost lawyers spirited me out of my office during lunchtime and dropped me off on Salt Lake City’s downtown streets so I might better understand and appreciate the unique history of Utah’s capital. (See here for parts one, two and three of this series.)
I saw bewildering but enlightening specters, such as ambushed police officers, anti-establishment bankers, and pony express riders. I even spoke with a renowned civic and business leader who died over a century ago.
Just when I thought I’d had enough paranormal surprises for one day, I ran into a pinstriped man searching an empty lot for a lost baseball. He introduced himself as Babe Ruth. The ghost standing before me—the best known baseball player in American history—had died 75 years ago this year.
Ruth was in Utah in 1927 on a promotional and good will tour. I reminded him about it, and asked, “You performed at the Utah Theatre, which used to stand right here, almost 100 years ago. What do you remember best about your Salt Lake City visit?”
He thought for a moment and then replied, “Well now, that was a big year for me. I made a movie in California. The season before I’d hit a record 59 home runs for the New York Yankees. Right after visiting here I broke that record and hit 60. My favorite memory related to Utah, however, was seeing the orphans.”
In between his Utah shows and many media interviews, Ruth visited the St. Ann’s orphanage, which was funded by Thomas Kearns and his wife Jennie. The Bambino talked and played ball with the boys and girls and posed for photos. It was a heartfelt tribute to Ruth’s similar formative years in a Catholic school for boys. (See Babe Ruth honored his Catholic roots in 1927 Utah orphanage visit.)
“That was a kind act indeed. You can do one more good deed, if you want,” I told him. “I am looking for Senator Kearns’ old business partner David Keith. Have you seen his spirit lurking anywhere around here?” Ruth smiled, conjured up a baseball bat from thin air and pointed south with it.
The move seemed eerily familiar. At first I thought he was predicting the trajectory of his next home run, but instead he just said, “Go that way.” I thanked him and headed across the street.
On the way, in front of the old Continental Bank building (now the Hotel Monaco), I ran into a ghostly figure named J.E. Cosgriff, founder of the bank and another Catholic philanthropist. He told me to keep heading in the same direction to find Keith.
After walking about a half block more, I stopped in front of a simple but elegant three story building—built in 1902—that occupied about a fourth of the block’s total frontage. I looked up at the top of the structure and saw the words “David Keith” carved into the facade. When I looked back down, the old man himself was standing right before me.
Keith was born in Nova Scotia in 1847. After working in mines in Canada and Nevada, he sailed the seven seas before coming to Park City in 1883 to work as a mine foreman and superintendent. Once there, he met Thomas Kearns. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
The two became business partners and together developed the lucrative Silver King mine, which made them both very wealthy. A Presbyterian, Keith also engaged in many charitable, civic, and other business activities, including part ownership of The Salt Lake Tribune.
When we met on Main Street, Keith looked me up and down intently, staring down over his bushy walrus-like mustache. “O’Brien is it?” Keith asked me. I nodded yes, and then he said, “Well, Rawlins, Dickson, Walker, and Kearns just contacted me. You are lighting up the ghost communications network today. What can I do for you?” I was hoping for that very question.
For many years, Keith’s Main Street building housed the Keith O’Brien department store. It sold clothes, shoes, carpet, millinery, and general dry goods using the slogan: “The store that forced prices down, yet the most beautiful store in all the West.” I’d read about Keith, but I wanted to know more about his business partner who shared my last name. “Will you tell me about O’Brien, please?” I asked.
Keith rubbed his chin and said, “Yes. His name was William Manning O’Brien, but everyone called him Billy. At the turn of the century, either late in the 1890s or early in the 1900s, a local newspaper said Billy was ‘a hale fellow well met’ and ‘one of the most popular business men in Zion.’ It was true.”
He paused, and then continued, “Billy and his brother Charles represented a large Chicago outfit and sold dry goods in Montana and here. They could sell anything to anyone. At the time, I was not in business just with Kearns, but also with John Judge and later his widow Mary. We all were friends. During Billy’s many visits to Utah, he wooed and married my friends’ beautiful daughter Elizabeth Judge. They had five children together.”
“I was impressed with the young man,” Keith explained. “I wanted to be in another business besides banking and mining, so Billy and I started the Keith O’Brien company, and put the flagship store right here into the Keith building. It worked well for a few years, but then things changed. Billy got out and moved away, and I sold my interests before I died in 1918. The new owner used the same name, however, for another half century.”
“What went wrong between you and Billy?” I asked. Keith looked at me sternly and said, “I am a gentleman, sir, so I will spare you the details, but I will say this…Billy and Elizabeth drifted apart. They divorced, not a common thing back then, and it was difficult for everyone.”
“By the time Billy died in 1918 in Seattle—ironically the same year that I died, although he was much younger than me—Billy had disinherited his wife and all their children. It was quite sad. Elizabeth died ten years later. The newspapers recognized her special nature and despite her wealth from the Judge inheritance, newspaper headlines said she was a ‘friend of the poor.’”
“It must have been hard when that conflict erupted. You knew everyone involved. Did you have to pick sides?” I asked. Keith said, “There was no choice to make. The members of the Judge family were my longtime friends, they were like family. Silver bonds are stronger than retail transactions.” I nodded in understanding.
Keith cleared his throat and changed the subject, saying, “Rawlins and Dickson tell me your noonday haunting is almost done,” Keith continued, “but let me tell you a little more about my neighborhood here. Further south on Main Street near the federal courthouse you can see the site of the old Newhouse Hotel, built by Jewish mining magnate Samuel Newhouse.”
Keith explained, “Newhouse arrived in Utah in 1896 and eventually developed the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine. His hotel was the ‘gentile alternative’ to the Hotel Utah up the street run by the Mormon Church. Newhouse built the two tall buildings across the street too. And just up Third South to the east is the old Brooks Arcade built in 1893 by Julius and Fanny Brooks, thought to be the first Jews to settle permanently in Salt Lake City.
“The Brooks family arrived in 1854, just after Brigham Young. Even you, although a good Catholic man, may not know an interesting fact about them.” said Keith. “The Brooks’ grandson—Herbert Auerbach—not only ran a department store in the arcade for several years, he also translated the journal that the Franciscan priest Silvestre Velez de Escalante kept during his 1776 visit to central Utah.”
Just as Keith finished his verbal tour of his neighborhood, a female voice called out from across the street, “David Keith! I hope you are telling that man about the women who helped build downtown Salt Lake City too?” Keith smiled, and said, “I was saving that job for you Mary Judge.”
Keith looked and me and said, “I think your next ghostly appointment is waiting for you, just across the street there.”
(Next week…Women make their mark downtown and the happy haunting ends.)
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
I love these articles!!! Just fascinating! My family came out in the third wagon train but was sent by Brigham Young to help settle Vernal!