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Fourteenth annual Amrita Club Thanksgiving Ball
Special to the Daily Mail
Once upon a time -- say 119 years ago -- in our little country town of Nevada, there was a 14th annual Thanksgiving Ball at Moore's Opera House given by gentlemen of the Amrita Club for their friends.
The ball appeared to be the social event of the year, judging from the elaborate printed invitations on a folded card with embossed floral drawing on the front and inside message inviting "yourself and ladies to be present at their Opening Ball for the season of 1895 on Wednesday evening November 27, 1895."
Now the belle of this particular ball appears to have been Beulah Mason, whose dance card indicated she was sweet on Billy Ballagh, for his name was penciled in on her dance card for five of the 20 dances listed in the equally elaborate "Programme," from the opening "Grand March and Quadrille" through three waltzes to the "Home Sweet Home."
Beulah and Billy must have lost their hearts to each other while dancing with Nevada stars at the ball for she became his bride and the pair continued to be leading lights in Nevada throughout their lifetimes.
Beulah was known especially for her social activities and Billy for Ballagh's Drugstore on the Square, which sold colored postal cards of our town printed in Germany. The couple lived in their imposing columned manse at 810 W. Cherry St., next door to what is now the home of the Cottey College president.
Both the invitation and program for the ball surfaced recently in Barbara Ferry's attic via Dorothy Kraft, who had given the items to Barbara's mother Marguerite Fowler several years ago. But what was the Amrita Club? No present-day Nevada natives seem to recall anything about it and so it clearly required further research.
Calling on my second brain -- Google -- it appeared that the word "Amrita" is a Hindu name which means "nectar of immortality" in Sanskrit. Curiosity heightened, so I next turned to the Vernon County Historical Society's resident researcher Jean Banks McQueen at the Bushwhacker Museum, who never heard of Amrita either.
Jean Googled further into Wikipedia and Jackpot! She discovered that the first Amrita Club was founded in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 1873 as an exclusive organization for local businessmen and professionals, and "soon became synonymous with the city's elite."
In 1905, Poughkeepsie historian Edmond Platt described it as "the first club of any importance," according to Wikipedia. Further, according to Carolyn Burke in her biography of her father Lee Miller, whose father was a member during her childhood, "Much of Poughkeepsie's growth was decided at the Amrita Club's dinner table."
The club met either in rented rooms or refurbished older buildings until it decided to build its own clubhouse in 1912. That "clubhouse" is a three-story brick edifice now considered one of Poughkeepsie's most historic buildings, and was added to the National Register in 1982.
Nevada's Amrita Club did, indeed, boast a number of the town's movers and shakers among its 39 members listed in the invitation. At least one of them must have heard of the Poughkeepsie club and bestowed its name on the local gathering, possibly in 1881 if the 14th annual ball date is correct.
Some recognized names alongside Ballagh are O. H. Hoss and H. M. Duck of Farm & Home Savings and Loan; hotelier Harry Mitchell; bankers J. Hinton Jackson and John T. Harding; lumberman J. F. Barr, and attorney Charles Gilbert.
Perhaps they celebrated Thanksgiving at the Moore Opera House drinking Amrita -- the nectar of immortality.