Medicine Man, Part Four: Doppelgangers and Rivals—Introducing Van Santen

What’s in a name?

Before Nanzeta’s court appearances in 1905, the aliases for the “prince” are many, but they don’t really get us any closer to his true identity. Remember that it’s only by searching the name Nanzeta, in all it’s variations, that we have arrived in California in 1902-1905 to begin with, and the similarities between Prince Nanzeta Montezuma and the Nanzetta of Danville aren’t in his name alone. The descriptions provided in the papers during this period identify the young Aztec Prince as being “a small, olive-skinned youth, with large, heavily fringed eyes, a full red mouth and long hair.” It’s difficult to imagine that this combination of qualities could apply to many.

Of the names used by the early Nanzetta, whomever he was, we have collected quite a list: Nanzeta Pahassnee Montezuma; Nanzeta Di Velasco Montezuma; Nantazeta Castro, Count of Gatamo; Nanzeta Di Velasco Kaschata. In late 1903, we begin to see Prince Diaz Nanzita sometimes an Aztec, sometimes a Tibetan prince. The spellings change, the combination of names changes, but always it is some unmistakable variation of these. In 1904, we first see Prince Hadji Nanzeta of India. But it’s not until January of 1905 when Presha Posey sues for divorce that we get any actually useful clues toward learning the true identity of Nanzeta.

A few months later, in March of 1905, the Los Angeles Herald of March 10 provides us with a few more alieases:

At the examination of witnesses yesterday Nanzetti confessed that he went under the names of Nanzetti, Dias, Van Sant and Hodji. He explained that his true name is Harry Nanzetti, and that he was born in India. He also explained that his mother’s maiden name was Dias Van Sant and that he belonged to the clan of Hodji in India, thus explaining his multitude of names.

Or it might, if any of it were true. None of these names, with the exception of Van Santen, produced any results in newspaper archive or genealogical searches.

In another article of the same date, this one published by the Los Angeles Times:

Nanzeta, etc., poses as a Hindoo prince when doing his stunt for the ‘Oriental Remedy Company,’ an aggregation of fakers…

Is the incredulity apparent in this reporting made in reference to his guise as a prince alone or to his being of East Indian descent? Perhaps its only in respect to his claims of nobility, after all. Additional reporting pertaining to his divorce proceedings, which transpired almost concurrently, described him as a “humorous Hindoo looking chap”.

But according to Violet McNeal, Nanzeta was half-Mexican. Admittedly, an examination of the line drawing above, or of any of the photographs we know to be the Nanzetta of Danville, offers no clear elucidation on this point (with the exception of the photo second from the right, taken from his letterhead, in which he is wearing a Mexican traje de charro-style jacket). He might be half-Mexican or Native American (it’s possible to be both), and he might be East Indian. On numerous occasions he was referred to as an Italian. He would later be identified as a Russian Jew. Certainly, his ethnic background is, at least observably, ambiguous.

A Victim of Youth

“[B]ecause a man wears a bunch of hair on his chin is no sign that he is a doctor,” Nanzeta is reported to have said in the 1905 trial for practicing medicine without a license. “A goat has a beard, but one never passed for a physician that I know of.” (A)

For the first several years of his career it seems his appearance of youth worked against him in many respects—at least as an authority on medicine.

In the earliest photos we have of the Nanzetta of Danville, it’s difficult to imagine him with facial hair, and, indeed, there are no images of him with any (excepting, of course, the 1903 photo which certainly was not the Danville prince, though it could have been the other). In this image of an uncertain date, but certainly not long after he arrived in Virginia, and despite the graininess and indistinctness of this image, he does look waif-like, young and, yes, even a little feminine.

A 1900 newspaper article in The Oregonian, almost the first clue we have of Van Santen’s identity as a patent medicine salesmen, describes him as a “youth about 20 years of age”… born in Portland but now living in San Francisco and, at the time of reporting, was working as a peddler of corn cures and making a tour of the Pacific Northwest, including Victoria, BC; Seattle: Tacoma: and Portland. “When asked why he did not engage in some legitimate business, he said he had a diploma as a corn doctor, but he was yet too young to practice successfully. … The public appear to have an idea that only age can bring wisdom in regard to corns, and they will not patronize him yet.” The article gives us little more information than that. The timing is right to be either of them, more particularly the Van Santen which we will be discussing further on, but as the article gives no first name or description apart from his apparent youth, there’s no real way of knowing. (B)

Like so many of those affiliated with the Oriental Remedy Company, the Van Santen name is neither an uncommon one nor is it spelled with any consistency. Sometimes it is Van, sometimes Von, at other times it’s spelled as one word “Vansanten”. In Billboard Magazine, almost every entry for Van Santen is made with a different spelling. I had initially thought it was merely editorial error, but some of the entries were made by Van Santen himself, and so it seems that at least some of those misspellings were intentional. In one case it is spelled VanZanten, which seems an intentional nod to the name “Nanzeta”, which, after, all, sounds very much like an anagram. There was also a habit among these medicine men, as we’ve seen with the Meyers brothers already, of melding names together. The name William Gray Davis would sometimes appear in reference to a principle in the Oriental Remedy Company cast. Whether that was actually Arizona Bill aka William “Billie” Gray or the company’s chief proprietor Will Davis, it’s not really possible to know, but undoubtedly the confusion was intentional, and so I believe is the use of the name Nanzeta Van Santen. His courtroom story, as well, seems to me an intentional melding of the two men’s identities (as was the obfuscation of facts at the time of the “prince’s” elopement).

Finding Van Santen

The Billboard during the 19-teens, twenties, and thirties featured a “call and answer” section called “Pipes for Pitchmen”, in which other street peddlers and entertainers communicate one with another, serving a function much like Facebook does today. Here, pitchmen often wrote in to share what they knew of their colleagues, but it’s hardly a reliable source. In one instance, in the April 15, 1933 issue, an article appears titled, “Med Show Memorabilia—Flashes of a Vet” by Ed Fink.

In 1922, there were two successive instances where F.N. Van Santen/Vansanten appeared in the Letterbox section, The Billboard’s in-house mail service, and this name has been verified as that used, at least for a period of time, by Fred Van Santen. (C)

The assertion that Van Santen was one of Will’s brothers continues to perplex me, and I’ve found no evidence to support this claim. I have never, however, apart from the instance above (the Fink piece), seen the N.F. used with the surname Davis. It’s possible, in this instance, that Fink is in fact speaking of one of the Myers brothers playing the role. In fact, a recently acquired image of Robert Meyers (the only other brother I have a picture of) makes me wonder if it isn’t he playing the Prince Nanzeta role in the dark and grainy 1916 image, perhaps filling in for the role during one of Van Santen’s absences. (D)

***Upon revisiting this idea, however, and remembering that there was, indeed, some context to the posting of this photo, I’m revising my supposition. I think, indeed, this is Van Santen, difficult though it is to be certain, older, possibly wiser (and perhaps not) and deeper into his addictions. The presence of the horseshoe pin makes me wonder why he’s wearing it and how he came to have it, a question (the latter one at least) which may be answered in the the section below titled “Divergence”. I’ve nevertheless posted the above referenced images together for comaprison in the section at the botom of htis post.

In 1919, we find the biggest clue to unraveling the identity of Van Santen, if not Nanzeta himself, and, again, it’s through The Billboard that this clue is provided.

Through, Princess Nanzetta’s real name of Florence Bay, I was able to find her as the wife of Charles Frederick Vansanten. Sources attached to the couple include Van Santen’s World War I draft registration.

We see from this document that Charles Frederick Van Santen was born on the 12 of August 1883 and he identifies Juniata, Nebraska as his permanent address, care of Edna Bay. He is white, not an immigrant, and his occupation is “Public” (something I cannot read) “and salesmen”, self-employed. His wife is Florence Van Santen of the same address. On the verso, we find that he is medium-tall, of medium build, with (at the age of 34) gray hair and gray eyes. This mostly checks out. He’s the right age, the right name, but where is the olive-toned skin? And the indication of his possession of gray eyes certainly explains the inconsistencies in certain of the newspaper descriptions.

According to census records, Fred and Florence were living in Los Angeles in 1930. Fred indicates that his age is 45, giving him an 1885 birth year. Florence was 32, making her year of birth 1898. Fred was 33 at the time of his marriage in 1918, while Florence was 20. He states that he was born in California and that his father was born in South Carolina, while his mother was Canadian. (4)

Next we have his World War II draft registration. The fact that he lived long enough to see the second world war is significant in and of itself since J.H. Nanzetta died in 1930. At the time this document was submitted, Fred was living in the Manhattan Hotel on 18th and Chestnut in St. Louis, Missouri. Again, he gives his date of birth as 12 August 1883 and his place of birth as San Francisco, so we know it’s the same guy. On this document, an actual height is given of 5′ 6 1/2″ and a weight of 130, which, as it happens, was the weight guessed by the reporter at the Metropole in San Francisco when Nanzeta, whichever it was, arrived from Denver with his new bride. Does this description, though, match with that of a “slight” and “feminine” build? I suppose that is up to the eye of the beholder. Fred’s hair, of course, is gray (as it was in 1917), his complexion, this time, is light brown. (5) Also of note, just because it’s interesting and not because it has any especial meaning, the registration card states “two fingers on right hand missing”. How I’d love to know how that happened! Possibly one of Bill’s snakes, or that Gila monster? We really can’t know, but he had all his fingers in 1917, so possibly some other reason. It doesn’t appear he was ever enlisted in the First World War.

One other document is attached to Fred Van Santen’s profile, and that is his 1939 Social Security application, in which he identifies his father as Charles F. Vansanten and his mother as Isabelle H. Deas. If you’ll remember back to the 1905 trial in Los Angeles, one of Nanzeta’s aliases then was Diaz, which he stated was his mother’s name. In this case, the Diaz is spelled Deas and is Scottish. It could be a twisting of the truth or it could be coincidence.

It’s here things get fuzzy with Fred. I’m not sure he was telling the truth about his parents. Remember what I said about their adopting names and identities already established? One of my working theories about Nanzetta is that the Oriental Remedy Company may have adopted their own version of “Prince Nanzeta” simply because of all the buzz created already around Nanzetta Montezuma, whose stories were reported widely across the nation in hundreds of newspapers. (6)

If I were going to write this story as Historical Fiction, however, (which I may well do), I would have these two young, brown-skinned men of a similar age and occupation, meet upon the streets of Los Angeles and decide, at least at first, to partner. Such would explain the confusion of stories, Henry Nanzetta with his romantic tales of exile from his Aztec homeland, and Fred, still trying to figure his own path but eventually styling himself after the pattern of the Oriental Remedy Company. Perhaps Henry was coerced into joining this company as well, or possibly he had his own reasons for playing along, and while the Tibetan prince made a mess of the Aztec story, Henry was unbelievable as an Oriental (apart perhaps from that of East Indian). The least credible character of that early period, at least as far as the papers record, was, after all, the orientalist with blue eyes and a wig. And yet it must have been the Danville Nanzetta, J.H., of whom Violet McNeal was speaking when she described him as the half-Mexican boy of 18 whom she had met in 1904. In her 1939 series in The Oregonian she says several things that are not included in the 1947 publication of the book, one of which being that Prince Nanzeta had taken his own life “a few years ago”. Something like eight years prior, actually, but Fred Van Santen died in the 1940s, and though it was by his own hand, it wasn’t intentional. Neither had it happened yet when Violet related the fact to The Oregonian in 1939.

Provenance

As it happens, there was a Charles F. Von Santen living in San Francisco in the 1880s through 1900 at least, and, coincidentally enough (or not) he, too, was a representative of patent medicine, specifically of St. Jacob’s Oil.

Charles Van Santen fits the bill as Fred’s father for the reason of 1) having the right name, 2) being in San Francisco, where Fred is said to have been born, and 3) being in a similar occupation. He also lived at the Lick hotel for a time, or worked out of it, the very hotel where Nanzeta had checked in with his supposed bride in November of 1903 … while simultaneously registering at the Metropole. Also, coincidentally or otherwise, this Charles Van Santen had connections to Leland Stanford, Sr. Is that where the Stanford story comes in?

Like the Effendi Meyers identity which preceded the arrival of Will Davis and his brothers (all of them Meyers by birth) in 1898, it’s possible Fred supplanted the identity of a previous Charles Frederick Van Santen. Or, possibly, Fred took over the patent medicine business for his father so that the latter gentleman could retire. The Charles Van Santen of St. Jacob’s Oil seems to disappear after 1900. Really, no matter how you try to put the pieces together, the puzzle doesn’t quite make a whole picture.

Fred also said that his father was born in South Carolina. There is a Charles Frederick Van Santen in Charleston, South Carolina who appears to have worked for an employment bureau, but he has a wife and daughter already, so if Fred is his son, he’s illegitimate, which, if I’m honest, feels like it’s a real possibility for both young men.

A Charles F. Von Santen, also of San Francisco, married Willian Van Maren in 1886. Their marriage is fraught with abuse and violence, and by 1892 they are divorced, but it’s impossible to tell if it’s the same Charles or not. A death certificate of 1916 is attached to multiple people, and there is not enough information on the marriage record of Charles and Willian, which took place three years after Fred’s birth, to tell if this is the same person who is supposed to be his father.

There is also the ubiquitous problem of the inconsistencies in spelling. Is it Van Santen or Von Santen? Is there a space or is it one word? In the publications of the day, whether in magazines or the papers, there are more spellings yet: Von Santer, Santing, Van Sout.

Divergence

Things are quiet in the months after the twin trials in Los Angeles.

Except for a series of advertisements (all identical) for Prince Nanzeta Montezuma which begin running with a surge in December of 1905 (perhaps funded by the influx of money supplied by Henry’s marriage to Dulcie in November) and continue through May of 1906, no mention of the Aztec Prince Nanzeta appears after the dual trials of 1905. He simply disappears. The advertisements, if you can call them that, are clearly intentional. Neither are they new, but reprints of something printed in prior years, but it’s an announcement, I think, of his preparation to move and to travel elsewhere. (6) Even if he no longer uses that name in its old form, there is enough here, in my opinion, to introduce him to the public and therefore provide himself with recognition (rather than incredulity or surprise at his unique appearance nor his outlandish stories) wherever he decides to land next. The article says nothing, after all, about where he is and where he is going, and I think that, too, is intentional. It also provides a description, and, again, it’s not one that could be applied to just anyone. Not only did the Nanzeta of Danville match the description of the “prince’s” physical appearance, but he wore similar clothes, including, always, a diamond horseshoe pin, which is all the more interesting a detail when, on the 14th of February 1906, this ad appears in The San Francisco Call.

Because of the signficance of this pin, I don’t think it can be anyone other than John H., and I would even hazard to guess that the Wanzeta with a “W” is intentional so that anyone answering can identify him seprerately from the other. But also, as they are to reply care of Tim McGrath and not “Wanzeta” himself, I think that implies that this Nanzeta is not in San Francisco to recieve the lost pin himself. That does not, of course, explain why the same pin appears in the dark and grainy image published in The Billboard in 1916 (see D below) unless it’s missing because Fred took it.

As early as the 1st of February 1906, Van Santen reappears, not as Prince Nanzeta, but as Dr. Nanzeta Hadju, who is “working” North Dakota and where he, together with his wife, fail to pay their bills. In October they are in Durango, Colorado, where they find the authorities unfriendly toward street peddlers and are forced to move on. They appear a few days later in Santa Fe, New Mexico and then in El Paso, Texas before returning to California. They continue to use the name, sometimes as Dr. N. Hadju, sometimes as Nanzeta Hadju, O.D., once as Manzala Hadju who claimed to be Turkish when he was arrested in February of 1908 for stealing a five karat diamond ring.

In the meantime, Dr. J.H. Nanzetta is establishing himself in Virginia. According to court documents, J.H. Nanzetta signed an agreement in May of 1905, as a partner, along with Elmer P. Thomas, to establish Piedmont Pharmacy in Danville, where Nanzetta could sell his medicines. The city directory we find him listed under the name of James H. Nanzeztta. I’m not sure the purpose for this first name, particularly since he doesn’t keep it. A description of him is provided in the April 1st, 1907 Ledger-Star of Norfolk, Virginia where he was granted a license to operate a hotel at Pine Beach and in which proceeding he claimed to be a member of the Choctaw tribe. “The applicant has long hair and wears a buckskin suit.”

From here on out, as long as they remain in separate parts of the country, it becomes much harder to confuse the two Nanzeta’s (though they still have their moments).

Charles Frederick Vansanten

“I can count on the fingers of one hand the pitchmen I have known who died wealthy,” Violet says in her book, Four White Horses and a Brass Band. Fred Van Santen was not among the numbered.

Not only was the life of a pitchman one of rags to riches to rags again at the best of times, but his circle of patent medicine sellers were conducting business at the tail end of the patent medicine boom, soon to be replaced by television and radio, which technologies would usurp their spaces in the entertainment world while at the same time taking over the real estate for advertising, supplanting the newspapers and thereby breaking the close tie maintained between newspaper and pitchman (that now occupied by pharmaceutical companies via commercials aimed at patients). The laws around medicine and who could distribute and manufacture it were changing fast, and enforcement on old laws began clamping down in larger cities, chasing the medicine pitchmen and their wares deeper and deeper into rural territory (Arizona Bill eventually left the United States altogether in favor of Australia).

As far as we know, Fed Van Santen was born on the 12th of August 1883 to Charles Frederick Van Santen and Isabella Deas, but there are no records to indicate two people by those names were ever married. I’ve found no birth records and no marriage records for either Fred or his father (not at least for his father and mother).

It may also be presumed that Fred and Florence married about 1918. We know more about Florence than we do Fred. She was born in 1897, fourteen years before Fred, in Denver Township, Nebraska, about 170 miles from Omaha (Will Davis’ birthplace) to John and Melcina “Edna” Bay. She had two brothers, one older, one younger, and two sisters, one of whom, Allite, appears in a mention of medicine show performers in a 1921 issue of The Billboard. (Arizona Bill had a partner in the 19-teens whom he called Altie Belle. I can’t prove a connection between the two women, however.)

Fred and Florence do not appear to have had any children, but there are precious few pitchmen who did. Children were hardly convenient to the traveling life. Many if not most of the pitchmen were addicted to opium and alcohol, the former of which was a powerful libido suppressant. In the case of Violet and Will, Violet actually became pregnant early on in their relationship. Will performed the abortion himself, and Violet was rendered unable to have children after that (it was not the first nor the last time he’d nearly killed her).

Anything more there is to know about Fred Van Santen, we find in the papers (and in The Billboard).

In 1909, “Van Santen” (no first name given) is arrested after getting into a street fight with his coleague a, Dr. Harris Hughes, both of the Oriental Remedy Company. In 1919, Prince and Princess Nanzetta (nee Florence Bay) are both working with the Oriental Remedy Company who has just closed its season in Mississippi and the couple are visiting Juniata, Nebraska (this is certainly them).

In January of 1910, Van Santen renewed his license to sell medicine in Fresno, but the police, subsequently, would not allow him to continue business. He demanded his money back and was told it would not be refunded, so he ended up taking the matter to the Mayor. The confusion stemmed from two separate and conflicting laws, the first being that “street fakirs shall be allowed to do business providing that they pay a license fee of $25 a day”, the second stating that “no one shall cause a crowd to gather that will blockade either half of the sidewalk or street”. Eventually he won his case and was allowed to resume work.

In 1911, the Merced County Sun announces that “Dr. and Mrs. C.F. Von Santen and Dr. and Mrs. William A. Gray of Los Angeles were passengers to Yosemite Valley this morning, having arrived from the southern metropolis last night.”

This is not the first hint I’ve seen that Van Santen was married before 1918, but I have yet to discover her identity if it isn’t Florence. By this time, William Gray (Arizona Bill) was with Altie Belle though I’ve not been successful in finding a marriage record. As Bill had been married several times before (twice to the same woman and once, it seems, while married to someone else) he may have foregone the formalities, but again, here I’m left wondering if Altie isn’t Florence Bay’s sister Alleta. If it is, it seems early to be her if Florence and Fred were not married until 1918. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, after all.

Shortly after this, with drug laws, particularly in California beginning to clamp down, Fred and Florence venture into the intermountain west. For a couple of years they are not mentioned at all. In 1913, mention is made of him in Miami, Arizona, and then in 1914 and 1915, they are in Montana.

In January of 1915, Marvelous (Henry) Meyers writes a “Pipe” in the “Pipes for Pitchmen” section of The Billboard and in it he says two puzzling things. In recounting the old Oriental Remedy group of six years previous, he lists, “Nanzeta, Von Sen Fan,” and others. I don’t know if the Von Sen Fan is supposed to be another pseudonym for Van Santen or if it’s someone else, though I’ve never heard of them and a search through digitized publications turns up no results. The second thing he says that is curious is a line which reads, “I would like to hear from Nanzeta, his mother is distracted because he don’t write her.”

I’m hesitant to take this literally, and yet, combined with previous claims that Prince Nanzeta is one of Will’s brothers, it’s also difficult to dismiss it entirely. It can’t be one of the known brothers, as Henry names all the others in the same article. On the other hand, if we recall Violet’s claims that those who worked under Will maintained a relationship with him which was “that of master and servant in the life-and-death oriental sense”, then perhaps the claim is merely symbolic. Will was close with his stepmother whom he maintained in Los Angeles from the time of the Oriental Remedy Company’s first being established there around 1899. Perhaps the others were close with her, too. Or, perhaps, there were other children involved who were previously undocumented, illegitimate or otherwise. I’ve played with the idea that Van Santen is somehow connected to the Davis/Meyers brothers and/or to William Gray. But again, it’s just as likely his parents were never married. They could be anyone. Just as likely the sentence is some sort of coded language. It was true, however, that by 1915, Van Santen had wandered from home, and by November, he would find himself in some hot water.

Opium

Will Davis is given the credit for the considerable education he provided those who worked with him, but part of that teaching included the fine art of smoking opium. It was the first thing he taught Violet, after all.

Sometime in November of 1915, a Dr. Shurtz of Boise, Idaho met with one of his patients who requested to be sent to the Blackfoot psychiatric hospital to be treated for opium addiction. He confessed to purchasing the drugs from an “oriental doctor” who sold pre-rolled pills which he had purchased in a tin of six for a dollar.

With this information, the doctor went to the police, and having obtained a warrant, they arrested Dr. Von Santen, “a white man” who “has been associated with several Chinese doctors in the city off and on for six years”. Upon arresting him, the police chief succeeded in finding “a small quantity of opium” which he had “upon his person”.

The doctor evidently had a sense of humor. Realizing that the next step would be to search his apartments, he said to the chief, when arrested: “You will find some opium in my room in the box by the window.” The chief and Dr. Shurtz went first to this box, only to find it filled with dormant rattlesnakes. “There may have been some opium in there,” said the chief, relating his experience, “but I didn’t care to look any farther. We found enough as it was, anyway.”

The opium was in a dozen different forms. There were more than a dozen tin boxes of tiny pills which are used in the opium pipes. There were many tiny green vials which held a liquid solution of the drug. Some were balls as large as marbles, covered with a white candy coating. Some was dissolved in port wine and some in picturesque little brown jugs of Chinese manufacture.

Those tin cans we found in Von Santen’s room contained probably three to five thousand of those pills, and as there are a dozen cans, you can readily estimate what they would bring if sold in that way. Sold in small quantities to drug fiends, that outfit would be worth about ten thousand dollars. “The doctor is an exceedingly bright man, said Dr. Shurtz, speaking of the case, and what he needs is a year of careful watching and treatment, absolutely away from any source of the drug. He can then be cured and may become a useful citizen, for he has keen wits. At present he is one of the greatest menaces a city could have.” (F)

Three days later, the article was followed up with news that Von Santen was charged with “being an habitual user of narcotic drugs, and in whose possession was found thousands of dollars worth of opium and cocaine”. He was sent to the Blackfoot asylum for six months, after which it was anticipated that the federal authorities would “step in and take charge of him.”

Indeed, Van Santen was absent from all mention in any publication until May of 1916, when he was back on the road touring Utah and Colorado and later, Texas, Arkansas, and Arizona in 1917.

It’s in 1918, Prince Nanzeta gains a princess by way of his marriage to Florence Bay. It’s also in this year we get the first indications of his activities in Virginia as he participates in the Roanoke fair. It’s not clear at what point the couple takes up residence in Roanoke, but his permanent address, as indicated by his WWI draft registration, is Juniata, Nebraska, the birthplace of his wife.

In 1919, Prince Nanzeta goes quiet, and it’s around this time that notices in The Billboard begin to appear in number regarding his conspicuous absence. His name even appears in the Letterbox listing for unclaimed mail.

In February of 1920, Prince Nanzeta aka Van Santen puts an ad in the paper looking for medicine show performers willing to travel north from Charleston, South Carolina (J.H. has established himself in Columbus, Georgia about this time). By June, Van Santen has a Roanoke address: 818 Sixth St., SE. Also in 1920, Dr. N. Van Santen (Prince Nanzeta) is heading up one of two “companies” for the Oriental Remedy Company “somewhere in the south” according to The Billboard. Florence is reading minds (a trick that started Violet in the business).

Van Santen, now established in Kansas City, Missouri disappears again in 1922. In July of 1923, Prince Nanzeta was in trouble again.

After spending eighteen days in a Kansas City jail (Kansas) for reasons as yet undiscovered, he returns to the Missouri side where he is posing as a Hindoo prince and performing as a ventriloquist with a Punch and Judy medicine show. After being tipped off by an addict and former observer of the performance who informed the police that “all was not right with the (ventriloquist) dummy”. The police found him in his rooms on Grand Avenue where he was manufacturing his “medicine” and where they found it hidden within a bamboo cane used to support the dummy which had been hollowed out and in which was hidden 120 grains of cocaine. “Cocaine was found also in the hair beneath the dummy’s cap.”

Fred Van Santen, 40 years old, a self-styled doctor and manufacturer of cure-all medicine … advertised his medicine as a sure cure for anything from dandruff to bunions. … About the room were various things to attract street crowds, including a small alligator, which Van Santen said subsisted on raw eggs. Van Santen admitted he manufactured the medicine, the agents said. An analysis showed it contained cocaine. With him was arrested William Davis, also self-styled doctor and partner in the manufacturing enterprises. (G)

It’s unclear what his sentencing was, but he disappears for some time and resurfaces in Lemoore, California as a visitor from Kansas City. He’s accompanied by a Dr. J.C. Ashby and wife. In May and then September of the following year, he is now Dr. Ashby and wife of Kansas City staying at the Vernon hotel in Roseville, CA.

In June of 1926, Florence plead guilty to vagrancy and was given a six months’ floater out of the city”. In August, she and her husband “Ashby” Van Santen are arrested in Stockton, California on charges of vagrancy. She pleads guilty and pays a fine of $50, he pleads not guilty and is held in default of $500 cash bail.

All that we know about the Fred hereafter is little more than we have discussed already. We have his 1930 Census, in which he and Florence were living in Long Beach, California and his WWII Registration card.

In 1935, Florence died at the age 37. In March of 1937 Charles F. Van Santen was arrested for sale of narcotics and sentenced to two years at Leavenworth. Fred died alone in his home on the 30th of August 1944 from carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of falling asleep while smoking in bed. A pretty sad end to a difficult life.

Next up, we’re going to go in a couple different directions at once. Firstly, I want to go back a little bit and give some context as to why these men’s fantastical stories of adventure and danger and life and death in the wild west and abroad might not have sounded so impossible to those who, a century or more ago, might have been tempted to believe them. Not all Tall Tales are Untrue, after all.

Secondly, now that we have the identity of Fred Van Santen established, I want to begin Profiling Nanzetta by dedicating some space to the setting down of what we know for certain about Henry Nanzeta, or John H. Nanzetta as he came to be called in Virginia, the case for why I believe he is the same as that early Nanzeta, prince of the Aztecs, and what more I need and want to learn about him before I’ll be quite satisfied with this history.

And, thirdly, I’d like to begin to compile a list of people and stories which might provide some Hints on Other Aliases. These might be clues and they might simply be coincidences tangential to identifying the real John H. Nanzetta. Compelling though they may be, I haven’t been able to make fit (yet) into our narrative.

Next month … I’ll see you in Virginia, for Part Five of Medicine Man!

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Notes:

A) The Los Angeles Evening Post-Record 8 March 1905. This is the Nanzeta of the Los Angeles trial for practicing medicine without a license, and I think, and am trying to prove, that this is the same as the Nanzetta of Danville. I do not yet know for certain. However, …

B) The Oregonian 28 August 1900. I believe this is Fred Van Santen, known to play the role of Prince Nanzeta and not he who moved to Danville, VA.

C) Subsequent to the death of Florence Bay Van Santen’s father, a probate hearing was held over an issue of property, during which, a series of notifications were placed in the Adams County Democrat (Hastings, Nebraska) including the may 27th issue. In that notification, Fred Van Santen was identified in the court documents as N.F. Van Santen. (Another similar notification in the same paper of July 28, 1920 identifies them as living in Roanoke, Virginia.)

D) In regards to the claim that one of the identities of “Prince Nanzeta” was a Meyers brother: Robert L. Meyers, born in 1872, was ten hears older than Fred Van Santen. The photo below on the left was published in The Billboard in 1916, but often their entries were in the spirit of reminiscence, so I have no idea when the photo was taken. Note the horseshoe pin on front, which was a trademark of J.H. Nanzetta. Robert was, indeed, a half brother of Will Davis, though they shared a father (Meyers) rather than a mother. Will’s use of Davis is probably as much for showmanship and privacy as it is for the fact that his father and stepmother had another son named Joseph G. Meyers, so Will, therefore, went by his middle name(s). Elder brother Henry might also have played the role, but he was four or five years older than Robert, and he was famous in his own right as “Marvelous Meyers”, so that seems unlikely. Also Henry wasn’t a half brother, but I’m not sure anyone outside of the close circle of the Oriental Remedy Company knew how the brothers were related. I think Will, of necessity in regards to his rather scandalous private life, presented himself as a half-brother to all his brothers. I’ve found no evidence that the younger Joseph was involved in the medicine business. He was married with a child and running a hat store in New Jersey in 1910 according to the census of that year, so if there was a Meyers playing “Prince Nanzeta”, then most likely it was Robert, unless, of course, it was someone else claiming to be a brother, which is also possible.

E) Also pertaining to the photo above, and perhaps more pertinently, a caption did accompany it in the December 16th 1916 issue of The Billboard:  “Prince Nanzetta Van Santen, one of the brilliant lights of the Oriental game. He ranks as one of the brainiest and cleverest men who has mounted a stand.”

F) The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho) 27 November 1915 and 30 November 1915

G) The Kansas City Star (Kansas City Missouri) 21 July 1923

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Addendum (numerical): More clues to Nanzeta’s aliases

1) An earlier account of a Fred Van Santen appears in The Tacoma Daily Ledger of 16 August 1899. If he was 16 in 1899, that would give him an 1883 birth date, which matches our Fred Van Santen or Prince Nanzeta (not the one who moved to Danville, VA)

2) In the May 10th, 1913 issue of The Billboard there is an announcement of Robert N. Davis’ marriage on the stage of the D.V. Nanzetta show in Warrentown, N.C. This sounds like a lot of the right names, Will Davis had a brother named Robert, after all, but this isn’t a Meyers. Instead it’s a minstrels in the show. Who D.V. Nanzetta is, I have no clue. I looked up the marriage certificate, but no Nanzetta of any make signed the license as a witness, so I’m at a loss with this one. Neither has “D.V.” appeared in any other instance in combination with Nanzetta. The only “D” I know of connected to Nanzetta was the wife of his 1905 marriage to Dulcie McLane whom he divorced in 1910. She, I believe, was also in the medicine show business, but would she have had a show of her own? Possibly. But I don’t know. This one is a puzzler.

3) In 1913, an unclaimed letter appeared in The Billboard, this time for Mrs. Lessie Nanzetta. John H. did marry in 1913, but, again, this could be one of Dulcie’s stage names. In October of 1913, Lessie is announced as a principal rider in a Wild West Show in West Virginia in which Montana Belle (a quite famous at the time trick rider) also features, and the article which announces the show is signed “By The Doctor”. This is undoubtedly J.H. as most future Billboard entries distinguish “Prince Nanzeta, aka Van Santen” from “Doc. Nanzetta”, though this isn’t always the case and sometimes their methods of distinguishing them add as much confusion as they attempt to avoid it, as was the case in 1933, when an entry is made asking for verification regarding the death of “Prince Nanzetta (Doc Harry Von Santer)”. This is undoubtedly in reference to the Nanzetta of Danville, here referred to as Harry, a nickname for Henry, who had indeed died fourteen months previous. Van Santen was alive if not quite well.

4) Fred Van Santen’s mother being identified as a Canadian strikes a bell, though I can’t quite land it as anything solid yet. William Gray married Richie Hannigan (apparently for the second time) in 1901. She was also a Canadian who wore a sombrero at her divorce from him in 1904. Will and Bill were the same age, both born in 1867, making them 16 years older than Fred Van Santen. Richie was of a similar age, born about 1868 (approximated by her age, 33, at her marriage to Bill). Bill’s first wife was a Davies who lived with him in Chicago (where the Meyers brothers were prior to CA). I have no idea if they are of any relation at all. Arizona Bill was an Englishman. Will was supposedly of German descent but was born in Nebraska. I also think it possible Bill played the Prince Nanzeta role. He portrayed a Turkish doctor for the Oriental Remedy Company as well. Also, according to an entry in The Billboard of 22 May 1915, a fellow pitchman related that Prince Nanzeta’s nickname was “Canada”, though they never explained why.

5) In January of 1924, The Los Angeles Times ran a four-part “expose” on patent medicine salesman called “Hokum: The Story of a Ballyhoo” written by W.F. Collins “as told” to him by an anonymous source who claims to have worked with many medicine pitchmen, including “Tiger Fat Janice”, clearly an intentional bastardization of Davis. In the piece, or series of pieces, the informant also refers to Arizona Bill as “Texas Tom” and Violet McNeal as “Buy McKeel”. There is also some discussion of “Prima Menseta” who was half black and half “Spanish”. This is the second time I’ve heard this description. It is said he spent a year in the penitentiary for “dope” and the informant repeats the story Violet told in her book about his always being accompanied by a black servant who was paid according to the obeisances he paid the “prince”. But the reason I mention this article here, is because in the January 24th issue, the informant talks about the “Kamama” doctors and how they achieved the dark skin of an east Indian by means of staining their hands and faces with coffee.

(6) In the post Not All Tall Tales are Untrue, I talk about Carlos Montezuma and the man who purchased him as a boy from the Pima Indians who had kidnapped him. That man was the Italian photographer and adventurer, Carlo Gentile. Among Gentile’s many interests was that of publishing and of informing others as to how to conduct a proper business, particularly in photography. He felt strongly that there was a particular way to advertise one’s services that was respectable, professional, and, at the same time, effective in informing the public of one’s experience and qualifications. One of the things he liked especially to do was to place an add in the paper announcing when he was relocating (which he did often). One such example reads thusly (from The Weekly Arizona Miner, November 14, 1868:

Mr. Gentile, a photographic artist, has arrived in Prescott, with the necessary apparatus for taking pictures, views, etc. and is having rooms fitted up in the old MINER office, on Montezuma street, where in a few days, he will be ready to transfer to cards the beautiful mugs of our male citizens as well as the delightful conuternances of maids and matrons. He purposes stopping in this burg about a month.

This add resembles in some ways the advertisements placed by Prince Nanzeta as he wandered “somewhere in the west” and by J.H. Nanzetta when he returned to Danville to do business or, similarly, when he relocated to Greensboro or Columbus, Georgia, etc.

(7) Van Santen may have split from the Oriental Remedy Company in 1910. The C.F. Mayer of this article, published Los Angeles Herald of 27 April 19110, is very likely Charles Frederick Van Santen, and may go a long way to explaining why some thought he was one of the brothers.