A prominent North Dakota lawman first gained fame playing baseball

FARGO — Carey Ralph Wattles died too soon. He was just 51, and it happened 99 years ago July 5. The worldwide Spanish flu pandemic had been over for four years, even so, it’s what killed him.

While his years were short, Wattles packed a lot of living into his five decades – from baseball star to U.S. marshal.

Wattles was born June 16, 1873 in Elgin, Illinois, to Gilbert Wattles, a carpenter, and Eliza (Buck) Wattles, a housewife. By the time Carey was 7 years old, the family had moved north to Lake Wabasha, Minnesota.

He loved baseball and was good at it. When he was 22 years old and living in Montevideo, Minnesota, Wattles joined a semi-pro baseball team in Winona as a catcher and first baseman.

Small-town teams like Winona’s were becoming increasingly popular all over the Dakotas and Minnesota at the turn of the 20th century. Some games attracted more than 2,000 fans despite their very small ballfields.

Opponents were usually neighboring towns, and games were held as often as three or four times a week. But the season was short, usually not beginning until after farmers had planted their crops and ending prior to harvest.

By the 1890s, it became one of the most popular summer pastimes for people to watch and play all over the upper Midwest. Demand was high for players who could take time out of their lives to represent their town.

According to

a North Dakota Baseball blog,

“Having a winning team was seen as a source of community pride, and soon teams realized they needed to supplement their local players with outsiders to remain competitive with their rivals.”

So that meant local players like Wattles might be joined by young African American players coming in from all over the country. While many people associate integrated baseball with the Major League’s Jackie Robinson in 1947, Blacks and whites actually played together in amateur, minor league and semi-pro teams as early as the late 1800s.

In 1896, Wattles made news in Grand Forks for a salary dispute. At some point, he had been playing for a team in Crookston, Minnesota. According to the Grand Forks Herald, “the big first baseman” sued the ex-manager of the team for unpaid salary and expenses. The disputed amount? $25.95.

By 1900, Wattles was playing second base for a team in Waseca, Minnesota, where he was also given the title of “traveling manager,” perhaps fitting because of his “real” job as the travel passenger agent for Northern Pacific Railway.

Wattles was probably riding high around this time. His team had just won the championship of Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota, and he met the woman he would eventually marry, Anna Joice.

The couple married in 1910 and made their way west to North Dakota where they had won a land lottery. They set up a farm near Devils Lake where he and Anna lived until 1914, when his life would take a dramatic turn.

In April of 1914, Wattles was appointed deputy U.S. marshal for North Dakota. In 1919, he was promoted to chief deputy marshal. His name was mentioned in national newspapers because he arrested Kate O’Hare in Devils Lakes in the summer of 1917 for allegedly violating the Espionage Act for delivering an anti-war speech in Bowman, North Dakota.

Despite O’Hare being convicted and sentenced to federal prison, it appears she held no ill will toward the man who arrested her.

Jayne Joyce-Staley, the great-niece of Anna Wattles, found a letter that O’Hare sent to her husband in April 1919, where she states: “You might send a copy to Mr. Wattles and thank him for his kindness and courtesy to me.”

O’Hare was eventually pardoned in 1920 and released from prison.

Wattles worked for another five years following the O’Hare case. He was as busy as he had ever been with numerous newspaper reports of his arrests and court cases in the early 1920s.

But in late June of 1924, he began to feel sick. In just a week he died from influenza in the couple’s apartment above what is now Power Plate Meals in downtown Fargo.

He was buried in Minneapolis alongside his parents. Anna Wattles stayed in Fargo through the 1930s, working as a clerk and saleswoman for Kaybee Store. The couple did not have children. She never remarried and eventually moved to Minneapolis. She died in 1951 and is buried in Waseca, the place she first met her husband, the baseball player turned lawman.

A special thanks to Jayne Joyce-Staley for contacting me to tell this story from her family history.

Tracy Briggs is an Emmy-nominated News, Lifestyle and History reporter with Forum Communications with more than 35 years of experience, in broadcast, print and digital journalism.