The Rise and Lonely Fall of Spokane's Richest Man

New York, April 6.—Anthony M. Cannon, the ex-banker of Spokane, was found dead in his room at the Stuyvesant house today. Death came from heart disease, from which he had long been a sufferer. His remains will be sent to Spokane and buried in the family vault.

Death was undoubtedly caused by heart failure, as Mr. Cannon had for many years been noted as the man with the lowest pulsation on record. His average pulsation was only 38, except during the past few months, when it had risen to 44 per minute. No insurance company would accept Mr. Cannon as a risk. The coroner's physician, O'Shannon, after viewing the remains and hearing the history of Mr. Cannon's case, granted a certificate giving heart failure as the cause of death.

Anthony M. Cannon was born in Illinois in 1837 upon the then frontier of American civilization. His father, William Cannon, was an anti-slavery Whig. During Mr. Cannon's childhood and early manhood his parents and their neighbors were poor, and the struggle for existence was often sharp and exacting. Schools were scarce, and even when they were accessible the boys were needed at home to assist in the support of the family. A few terms at a country school gave him what education he obtained, and at the age of 19 he left his home and turned his face westward to solve for himself the problem of life.

In 1858, during the early Pike's Peak excitement, he drove an ox team across the plains to Denver, when that place was but a straggling hamlet upon the dividing line between a wilderness of plains and a wilderness of mountains. Failing to realize his dreams of wealth and prosperity there, he journeyed still westward until he reached the mecca of the gold hunter and emigrant, San Francisco. He remained in San Francisco but a short time before returning to Illinois.

For the next few years he engaged in business in Chicago, and was one of the men whose pluck and genius converted a struggling town into a magnificent city of more than 1,000,000 people. While in Chicago he was a prominent member of the Board of Trade, and made and lost fortune after fortune, until 1878, when he moved to Kansas City, where he engaged extensively in the grain and milling business. Once more the longing for the West seized him, and he was next found in Southern California, then in San Francisco, and finally in Portland.

The hardships of his youth, the restless energy and exhausting struggle of his manhood, began to tell upon his health. He was advised to try the climate east of the Cascade mountains, where the dry atmosphere and primitive conditions would furnish tonic for his lungs and quiet for his nerves. In the fall of 1878 he arrived at Spokane, a city which consisted of James N. Glover's cabin, a magnificent waterfall and a million acres of unplatted townsite. Here he opened a store, and for some years lived largely upon hope and an invigorating climate.

While the town was still in its infancy he opened a bank, the first bank started north of Snake river. The building of the Northern Pacific railroad gave him new energy and opportunity. In connection with other enterprising citizens of Spokane he assisted in starting the Review newspaper, business blocks and bridges, and finally he organized a company that built a railroad into the Palouse country, and another, the Spokane Falls & Idaho, into the Coeur d'Alene mining country, and still another into the Big Bend country, which gave Spokane great impetus. When, on August 4, Mr. Cannon saw the city he had so largely assisted in building swept away by fire, he went sturdily to work and built better structures.

For years Mr. Cannon was the foremost citizen of Spokane and was considered the richest man in Eastern Washington. He was one of the delegates to the national Republican convention of 1892. When the panic came it caught Mr. Cannon deep in debt. His bank suspended payment, and creditors took away his buildings and his newspaper. To add to his troubles, his wife died.

Early in 1894 the people of Spokane were astonished by the publication in the New York Recorder announcing the marriage of Mr. Cannon and a divorced young woman:

"Anthony M. Cannon is one of the wealthiest men in Spokane — a leading agency rated him at $1,000,000 two years ago — and a candidate for the United States senate. The bride is a granddaughter of the late William N. Davis of New York, who was senior partner in the firm of Davis, Brooks & Co., bankers, one of the strongest houses in the East Indian trade a generation ago. Mr. Cannon and Mrs. Ward first met in Spokane about two years ago. Mr. Cannon's first wife was then alive and Mrs. Ward had only recently secured a divorce from her first husband, Frederick E. Ward, who had dissipated the snug fortune of $50,000 bequeathed to her by her grandfather Davis. The courts had awarded her the custody of her children and the asphalt business in which Mr. Ward had been engaged, but which had been established with his wife's money. This business she carried on quite successfully in partnership with C. B. Garrett, now city treasurer of Helena, and that was what took her to Spokane."

The first Mrs. Cannon died about six months ago, mourned by all who knew her. On top of this affliction came the failure of the Spokane Falls bank, a private institution of which Mr. Cannon was proprietor, and for all the debts of which he was personally responsible.

The hard times made it very difficult for Mr. Cannon to put his affairs into proper shape, and his health finally succumbed to the strain. He began to feel that life would be a useless burden unless he could find somebody to sympathize with him sincerely. Mrs. Ward had meanwhile returned to Helena, but he thought of her more and more as the only person in the world who could cheer him in his tiresome tasks. So he went to Helena and asked Mrs. Ward to marry him. She demurred for a while, reflecting upon what people would say of a wedding between a man less than six months widowed and a woman recently divorced, but Mr. Cannon pleaded that he was weak and disheartened and that she was the only woman in the world who could help him continue his useful career. She therefore consented, and the marriage was solemnized in private.

Fearing that his creditors and other business associates might think him mentally deranged if they heard that he had married a woman much younger than himself so soon after the demise of his first wife, Mr. Cannon asked his bride to keep the match a secret for a while. In spite of these precautions, however, the Helena newspapers guessed at the truth in a wild, uncertain way, and communicated their guesses to their Spokane contemporaries. In a twinkling the people of both towns were treated to sensational stories of a multi-millionaire lured into matrimony by a wild adventuress.

In reply to criticisms made at Spokane, Mr. Cannon published a long and pathetic letter defending his course in business and matrimony. He had lately lived very quietly, most of the time in the East. At Spokane, which called him its father, he was universally beloved for his public spirit and generosity.