Wednesday, November 6, 2019

The Mysterious Luella Mackenzie

     I wish I knew more about Mrs. Luella Mackenzie. She was born in Honey Well, Missouri...at least that’s according to a January, 1908 article in the American Chess Bulletin. 
     You will not find such a place on the map, but there is a Hunnewell located in NE Missouri. Today Hunnewell, which is named for Boston financier and railroad promoter H. H. Hunnewell, has an estimated population of 177. The American Chess Bulletin simply had the town’s name wrong. 
     Find A Grave says she was born Luella Wood on April 2, 1868 in Hunnewell, Missouri and passed away at the age of 76 on November 25, 1944 in Moulton, Iowa where she is buried in Oakland Cemetery. Note that the headstone spells her name “Mackinzie” while all other sources spell it “Mackenzie.” 
    

     In 1873, at the age of 5, she arrived in Moulton which is located in southern Iowa near the Missouri border and is much bigger than Hunnewell; it has an estimated population of 501. 
     As far as I could determine neither place was ever a hotbed of chess activity, so Mrs. Mackenzie played correspondence chess. 
     Few people are aware that Iowa has quite a chess history. Louis Paulsen was born in Nassengrund, Germany January 15, 1833 and died of diabetes on August 18, 1891. Paulsen lived on a farm and established a distillery and a tobacco business near Dubuque, Iowa along with his brother Ernest and sister Amalie from 1854 until 1861 when he migrated to England.
     One of the best problem magazines of the day was the Dubuque Chess Journal which was also known as Brownson's Chess Journal. It was published by an African-American named A. O. Brownson, Jr. from July 1869 until June 1892. You can download some of them at Chess Archaeology HERE
     Mrs. Mackenzie became interested in chess at the ripe old age of 32 in 1900 and joined the Iowa State Chess Association in 1905. She began taking part in correspondence tournaments and in the annual correspondence tournament she won the State championship without the loss of a single game. And that, along with a couple of games, is all that’s known about Mrs. Mackenzie. 
     Below is one of her games from the Iowa Correspondence Championship of 1906 that’s an exciting affair. Her opponent was H. Dickinson from Shellsburg which is located a short distance west of Cedar Rapids. 
     In October of 1910, a correspondence match of 25 boards, two games each, was played between Iowa and the Greater New York League. Iowa won by a score of 26-22, the two players on board six did not play their games for some reason. Dickinson played board 24 and lost both of his games to William P. Hickok. 
     Anybody familiar with the history of postal chess in the United States, especially the Correspondence Chess League of America, will be familiar with the name William P. Hickok of Mount Vernon, New York. He was secretary of the CCLA and of the older Greater New York League and it was he who was largely instrumental in amalgamating the CCLA with the National Association, the Correspondence Chess Bureau and the Canadian Branch of the Amateur League.
     Mrs. Mackenzie played board 25 and scored a win and a draw against her opponent, R. Bellville of Brooklyn. 

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