Hon. Joel Hollerman Cutchin

   Cause of his death was Apoplexy.

  General Notes:

The 1850 Federal Census lists Joel (as named by Emily C. Daughtrey) as Jeremiah H. Cutchin.

The 1880 Federal Census, ED# 73, page 449B, records J. H. Cutchen and family living in Norfolk, Va. Joel is listed as a Commercial Merchant.

The 1898 Directory for the City of Roanoke lists Joel H. Cutchin, lawyer 110 1/2 Jefferson, r 346 Campbell av w.

The 1900 Federal Census for Roanoke City, Virginia, Ward 1, District 91, page 1B, records Joel H. (Feb 1847) and Mary F. (Nov 1846) Cutchen with daughter Lillie H. (May 1877). The family lives at 346 Campbell Ave. and Joel is employed as a Lawyer.

The 1910 Federal Census for Roanoke City, Virginia, ED# 108, page 7B, records Joel (62) and Mary (62) Cutchin living on 353 Church Street. His son-in-law, William E. Parsons (34-teacher) and daughter, Lillie H. (31), live with them. Joel is employed as an Attorney at Law and William is a school teacher. Joel and Mary have been married for 44 years and have had 4 children all of whom are still living. William and Lillie have been married for 0 years. The Cutchin name is indexed as Entchen, Catchin, as well as Catchen in this census record at ancestry.com.

The 1920 and 1930 census records indicates William and Lillie Parsons continued to live at 353 West Church Avenue, Lillie's parents' home, after the death of her parents. Lillie's sister and her husband live there as well.

Joel Cutchin was a three time Mayor of Roanoke, Va. serving 12 years in office. During his third term he was found guilty of neglect of duties and ordered removed from office. His appeal was granted, however, it possibly would not be heard before his term expired, August 31, 1912. The Virginia Supreme Court eventually sustained the Corporation Court of Roanoke "which removed Mayor Joel H. Cutchin for 'misfeasance, malfeasance, and gross neglect of duty' in failing to suppress gambling and disorderly houses in that city. The decision left Roanoke without a mayor." (March 29, 1912: The Atlanta Constitution) The Roanoke Newspapers of the time indicated that Mayor Cutchins was a progressive city leader who wanted a permanant fire department and to bring the gambling and houses of ill repute under control. These policies were not very popular with many of the boom town's elite. Not only did these reforms require additional taxes but they cut into many business practices of the time. This could have lead to manufactured charges that resulted in Mayor Cutchins eventual removal from office.

The Roanoke newspaper obituary noted that Mayor Cutchin was a Confederate Veteran. Mabel Rawls, daughter of Robert, noted on her 1914 application to the UDC that Joel served in Company E, 32nd Virgina Infantry. According to Confederate records, Joel actually enlisted on January 2, 1864 and was with his unit at the surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

American Civil War Soldiers <http://www.ancestry.com>
Name: Joel Cutchins
Enlistment Date: 2 Jan 1864
Enlistment Place: Petersburg, Virginia
Side Served: Confederacy
State Served: Virginia
Birth Date: 2 Feb 1846
Death Date: 20 Sep 1917
Service Record: Enlisted as a Corporal on 2 January 1864. Enlisted in Company E, 32nd Infantry Regiment Virginia on 2 Jan 1864. Surrendered Company E, 32nd Infantry Regiment Virginia on 9 Apr 1865 at Appomattox Court House, VA.
Sources: 21


The following was taken from the book Roanoke / Past and Present by Carolyn Hale Bruce published in 1982
Scanned and transcribed on Feb 20, 2007 by L. B. Hagen at the Virginia Room, Roanoke City Library.

In the book, the following account is credited to Courtesy of Roanoke Valley Chamber of Commerce (page 86/87 : Roanoke / Past and Present):

Joel H. Cutchins was elected to succeed Robert Buckner as mayor of Roanoke, VA. He came into office [on July 1, 1902] full of ideas and ideals which he used to govern the city of Roanoke. Already middle-aged when he came to town during a boom in 1889 to sell real estate, Cutchins decided to enter law, so he went to Richmond to study and within a short time passed the bar. He was progressive and far-sighted, and possibly his advanced thinking eventually led to his downfall, as he accumulated some powerful enemies over the years. He was forced from office on April 9, 1912, ostensibly because he hadn't eliminated the city's red light district. He died of apoplexy five years later after having almost defeated an incumbent mayor in a subsequent election.

Note by this researcher: Joel Cutchin became Mayor of Roanoke on July 1, 1902 [by a vote of 1,602 to 785] and served until April 9, 1912 at which time the political foes of Mayor Cutchin finally achieved their goal of having him removed from office. (page 106 : Roanoke / Past and Present)
It is interesting that Cutchin(s) is written both with and without an "s" in the book.

Additionally: The Virginia Room has a copy of a newspaper article about the "Greek Riot" of July 14, 1907. Mayor Cutchin intervened to calm the crowds and quiet the people of Roanoke. It happened at the corner of Salem Avenue and Commerce (2nd) Street.


From the book Roanoke, Virginia, 1882-1912 - Magic City of the New South By Rand Dotson, page 218:
... Most of the town's streets were either dirt or poorly macadamized, its 1892 sewer system was inadequate, and many of its wooden sidewalks were rotten or dilapidated. Concerned citizens, according to the Times, had even place a sign in front of the feted swamp on Campbell Avenue. in the heart of downtown that warned travelers to "Prepare to meet thy God". The paper demanded something be done to at least "screen it from the view of visitors".
In the summer of 1903, Mayor Joel Cutchin, facing a non-stop tide of complaints, called for the formation of a female-led "Civic Improvement League" to "tidy up" the city. "Nearly every progressive city", he told council, "has one or more civic improvement societies in which the ladies are interested. The object being to beautify their respective cities". Cutchin had high hopes that such a group would supervise a spectrum of reforms he characterized as important to municipal cleanliness, the creation of parks, and the planting of shade tress. Besides being "an agent of beautifying the city", he claimed that such an organization would also "be an important factor for the increase of healthfulness and decrease of sickness and death among the people."

Cutchin, Roanoke's mayor from 1902 until 1912, was an unlikely municipal reformer. Indeed, except for a brief stint in the Confederate Army, his only professional experience until he was in his mid thirties had been helping to manage his father's farm in rural Nansemond County, Virginia. With a wife and four daughters to support, Cutchin relocated to Norfolk in 1880 and opened a peanut business. By 1885 the company faltered, and by 1889, Cutchin had made his way to Roanoke where he worked as a land agent until the town's real estate boom collapsed. Then nearing fifty, he entered law school in Richmond. After completing his degree in 1894, Cutchin returned to Roanoke and opened a successful commercial law practice. Four years later he won a seat on city council, and in 1902, residents elected him mayor for the first of four consecutive terms. Once in office, Cutchin became a student of the national civic improvement movement as well as a tireless advocate for municipal reform. His initial call for female assistance in that campaign, however, went unanswered.

  Research Notes:

Scandal in the Star City
In 1911, Roanoke's forward-thinking mayor wound up in court for refusing to close the young city's bordellos.
By Kevin Kittredge 981-3323
[Photo in the article]
Joel Cutchin was mayor from 1902-12.

[Photo in the article]
Photo courtesy of Richard Hodges
Joel Cutchin and his family, around 1916. Back row, standing: Lillie H. Cutchin Parsons, Joseph W. Hodges Jr., J.J. Bradshaw, Joel Cutchin Hodges and Ellie Mary Cutchin. Seated: Rosa E. Cutchin Johnson, Joel H. Cutchin, Mary Frances Norfleet Cutchin and Clara Cutchin Bradshaw. Babies: Mary Frances Parsons and Clara Myrtle Bradshaw. Front: Ewin Cutchin Parsons, Claude Andrew Hodges and Herbert Lewis Hodges.

It was during the third day in the trial of Roanoke Mayor Joel Cutchin that the most notorious madame on High Street took the stand.

Lula Vici Isom owned a string of Roanoke bordellos. She traveled around town in a white carriage with her initials blazoned in silver on the sides, led by a bobtailed white horse. She once showed up for a 60-day jail term wearing silks and diamonds, and brought her luggage along.

Yes, testified the madame -- who the reporter noted seemed at ease while sparring with attorneys in the packed courtroom -- she had sometimes sent the courtly, white-bearded Cutchin gifts, including furniture and a diamond ring. But it was not true she had once called him a "dear old soul" when he helped her get out of jail.

The sexual misadventures of powerful men have been much in the news of late. From Arnold Schwarzenegger's and John Edwards' extramarital affairs to French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexual assaults, the intersection of politics and sex have made for scintillating copy and front-page news.

But for sheer, drawn-out spectacle, it would be hard to top the trial of Cutchin, right here in Roanoke 100 years ago in 1911, on charges he had refused to enforce the laws against prostitution in the city's red light district.

For two weeks in May, the trial played out on the front pages of three local newspapers. Prostitutes testified. A star witness for the prosecution was reduced to tears when forced to admit that she had a baby out of wedlock -- a scandal.

At the center of it all, protesting his innocence, was Cutchin -- the city's picturesque, white bearded, cane-carrying, 65-year-old mayor, a Confederate Army veteran who was married with four grown daughters.

An inevitable business

Joel Cutchin was born in Nansemond County, now part of Suffolk, in 1846. He came to Roanoke in 1889, and was involved in real estate before earning his law degree in middle life and entering politics. He was first elected mayor in 1902.

Roanoke historian Raymond Barnes, who as a child saw Cutchin, described the mayor this way in a newspaper column in 1968: "A man of splendid appearance, tall, straight, with hair and beard as white as snow, always carrying a cane, he had the bearing of a leader."


Historical Society of Western Virginia
The Capitol Saloon on Salem Avenue in 1906. The "Oysters upstairs" sign behind the bartenders designates an upper-floor brothel, according to "Roanoke, Virginia: 1882-1912: Magic City of the New South," by Rand Dotson. Click for larger image

In 1911, however, the mayor was in a lot of trouble. Cutchin stood accused of protecting the notorious brothels of the city's red light district. He was accused of dancing a two-step in a bordello after midnight, and worse.
The trial in the Roanoke corporation court, which no longer exists, was not a criminal trial, but was intended to determine whether the mayor should be removed from his job.

In retrospect, that long-ago trial said more about the emerging city than it did about Cutchin. It was a different Roanoke then, in a different world -- one without "escort" services and Internet porn. The stretch of houses to the west of Henry Street, across the railroad tracks from what is now the Virginia Museum of Transportation, was famous for its bordellos, which operated more or less openly.

In those days, by multiple accounts, most cities of Roanoke's size had red light districts, where prostitution flourished. Cutchin's notion was that prostitution was inevitable, but by confining it to one part of town, the city authorities could at least keep an eye on it.

The mayor's plan "was to set up a red light district and just sort of control it a little bit better," said Cutchin's great granddadughter, Margaret Furr of Greensboro, N.C.

His standing orders, according to Barnes, were not for police to ignore prostitution in the red light district, but for them to arrest women only when they had proof the women had done something wrong.

"Shall we drive our soiled doves to Lynchburg or Richmond?" Cutchin asked, in a speech to the Civic League in 1905. "Shall we jail all of the unchaste? Where is such an extensive building? Shall we scatter them into our residential sections? Shall we concentrate on hounding unfortunates usually reduced to such by the perfidy of man?"

Unfortunately for the mayor, he was bucking a trend toward cleaning up the rough-hewn city -- one he supported himself in many ways. Local ministers complained to him the same year about the red light district, only to receive the chilly reply from Cutchin that he could govern the city without their help.

The eventual result was his indictment on charges of failing to enforce city ordinances -- and a spectacle the likes of which the city had never seen.

Madame Isom

It was trial of twists and turns and outrageous testimony -- more than once the judge saw fit to clear the courtroom of all those underage.

The courtroom was packed and sweltering as prostitutes took the witness stand, including one serving an 8-year jail term, who insisted the mayor had given her permission to operate a brothel. Her testimony alleged personal relations with Cutchin "in terms no newspaper can print," one reporter wrote.

Midway through the trial, a surprise witness showed up to testify that the mayor had taken "liberties" with her in his own office -- only to retreat in tears the next day, after defense attorneys unearthed the fact that she had had a baby out of wedlock.

By the end of the trial, as the mayor's defense attorney sardonically said, prosecutors "have assigned to Mayor Cutchin a schedule which could not be fulfilled by a young and vigorous sultan of Turkey."

But the high point came when Isom, a sometime legal client of the mayor's and Roanoke's best-known and most flamboyant madame, took the stand.

The year before the trial, following her conviction on a liquor violation, Isom had shown up for her 60-day jail term "dressed in silks with satchels and other baggage, as if she was going on a tour, and not to prison," according to The Roanoke Times.

Isom was more appropriately attired for the mayor's trial, according to The Roanoke Times, in a striped blouse and black skirt. "She is a heavy woman," the reporter wrote, "evidently once an unusually good looking girl with clear features and dark blue eyes. Her features and figure, however, are disguised by over accumulation of flesh. ... She wore no jewelry but diamond ear drops."

Asked about her occupation, Isom replied, to titters, that she used to take in sewing work.

Besides admitting she had sent the mayor gifts, the madame testified the mayor had counseled her in the purchase of two houses, and had helped her place her two boys in a Catholic institution. But Isom insisted she had "never had any but business relations with the mayor," The Roanoke Times reporter wrote. "A question on this point was asked very bluntly ... and answered pleasantly without a show of resentment."

As Isom spoke, the reporter wrote, she casually picked up a legal document from a table and "fanned herself placidly and complacently." Isom denied once describing Cutchin as "a dear old soul," after the mayor had helped her post bail.

'Every word false'

The poor mayor took it on the chin in the trial, with one prosecutor accusing him of "trickery, evasion and moral cowardice," according to one newspaper account.

The mayor, dressed in his trademark white linen suit, defended himself as best he could. Speaking softly, his words sometimes "becoming tangled in his snow white beard and mustache," he denied taking liberties with the female visitor to his office. He insisted he had never once visited a house of ill repute in the city.

"My aim and object always has been to do everything possible to enforce the ordinances," he said. In the red light district, "I was doing it by degrees, eliminating the evils as years and months went by."

As for dancing at Isom's bordello at 1 a.m. -- "every word of it is false," Cutchin said.

The jury was not persuaded. They returned its verdict of "guilty" so quickly most of the spectators were still taking a break.

The mayor "uttered not a word," according to The Roanoke Times, but nonetheless "showed unmistakably that he was utterly crushed." After an unsuccessful appeal, the major left office in 1912.

Epilogue

History has been kind to Joel Cutchin. Those who have written about the mayor and his spectacular trial in later decades have usually cast him as a victim of his own progressive politics, which made him a target.

Indeed, one of the striking things about the scandal is how quickly it disappeared. Cutchin, who had been elected president of the League of Virginia Municipalities in 1906, ran for trial judge after his own trial -- and won. When he died abruptly in 1917, newspaper obituaries made no reference to the scandal, and a World-News editorial waxed nearly poetic: "Roanoke has had but one Joel Cutchin," it said, "a man who stamped his spirit and vigor upon the city," it said. Among other things, the mayor called for the formation of a female-led "Civic Improvement League" and lobbied for extensive improvements to sewers, street and sidewalks, according to Rand Dotson's 2007 book, "Roanoke, Virginia, 1882-1912: Magic City of the New South."

Barnes, writing about the Cutchin years in 1967, called him "a man whom history should recognize as the Mayor who did the most for Roanoke."

Dan Jones, a former Roanoke library worker and amateur historian who has done research on Roanoke's red light district. "I've always felt like he was ahead of his time," Jones said of Cutchin. "His attitudes were enlightened."

So was he guilty?

"That's a good question," said Dotson. "He was certainly accused of consorting with prostitutes."

But he also said such a thing was not unusual 100 years ago, when most cities had red light districts. "Husbands would go there. People did indulge in it, or it wouldn't have existed. I don't think it would have been that abnormal."

On the other hand, Dotson pointed out, Cutchin was never convicted of a crime.

"There's no proof Cutchin did anything wrong beyond refusing to enforce the law," he said. "He thought he was on the side of reform. It was a law that nobody in any major city in the United States would have been enforcing."

"I guess the truth in all that may lie in the dust of history," Furr, his great-granddaughter, said.

The mayor, crushed or not, moved on. After an unsuccessful appeal, and a failed attempt to win re-election to the mayor's office, he was elected trial justice in 1912, and served in that capacity until his death, from what may have been a brain hemorrhage, in 1917. He was 71.

"His funeral was attended by large numbers who loved and respected him," wrote Barnes in 1967. Newspaper obituaries made no mention of the trial.

And what changed as a result of the trial?

Apparently not much -- though some local chicken raisers did name their pet roosters, "Mayor," according to Barnes. The madames of the red light district were driven out for a time, but most returned, plying their trade up until the 1940s, according to Barnes.

As for Vici Isom, after leaving the city shortly after the trial, she returned to her house on High Street, later called Loudon Avenue, and died there on April 17, 1928, at age 58.

Her body was taken by train to Wytheville for burial, said a short obituary notice, which made no mention of her past.

Roanoke Times librarian Belinda Harris and Alicia Sell, archivist at the Virginia Room, Roanoke Public Libraries, did research for this article.

  Medical Notes:

Virginia, Death Records, 1912-2014
Name: Joel H Cutchin
Residence: 353 Church Avenue, Roanoke, VA
Occupation: Lawyer
Gender: Male
Race: White
Age at Death: 71
Birth Date: 2 Feb 1846 in Nansemond Co., VA
Death Date: 20 Sep 1917
Death Place: Roanoke, Roanoke, Virginia
Burial: Sept 22, 1917 at Evergreen Burial Park
Registration Date: 22 Sep 1917
Father: John A Cutchin
Mother: Trecy Holland
Informant: Mrs. J. H. Cutchin

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation: Attorney/ Mayor of Roanoke, Va.

Joel married Mary Francis Norfleet, daughter of John Norfleet Jr. and Margaret Ann Rebecca Lee, on 15 Feb 1866 in Nansemond Co, VA. (Mary Francis Norfleet was born on 4 Nov 1845 in Nansemond Co., VA, died on 5 Jul 1919 in Roanoke City, VA and was buried on 7 Jul 1919 in Evergreen Burial Park, Roanoke City, VA.) The cause of her death was Cerebral Hemorrhage.