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ON and Off the road, 1899-1920

1899 Runs away from the Boroff farm and stays with Joseph Blosser, known as "Faith Healer"; remains with Blosser a few months, then drives a team, hauling stone from a quarry, for Frank Ralston

Returns to St. Mary’s in the fall; for 50 cents a month, a German merchant allows him to read paperback copies of books by Emile Zola, Jules Verne, Jonathan Swift, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.

1899-1900 Works throughout the winter in a chain factory as a link heater

Reading habit further developed by father’s collection of two-cent paperback novels; he discovers the works of Thomas Hardy, Gustave Flaubert, Alexandre Dumas, Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper and George Elliot.

1900 Returns to quarry in the summer and drives a team for Frank Ralston.

Goes to work in the winter for chainmaker Charlie Makley for $1.50 a week and board; Sister encourages him to become a writer.

Frequents some of the 27 saloons in St. Marys and hears stories told by hoboes, vagabonds and wanderers.

1901 Makes first tramping trip at 14; returns to St. Marys after about a month.

1901-1907 Travels the country as "a road kid" and a hobo, spending time as a carnival worker and learning the chainmaking trade; also becomes "a library bum;" at one point, tries to join the Navy, but recruiting officer in Chicago turns him down for being too short (4-foot-11); spends 38 days on vagrancy charge in Mississippi.

1901-1907 Works in the Seneca Chain Company in Mansfield, Ohio, near the Ohio State Reformatory.

1905 Lives for a brief time in New York City’s Newsboys Home, boxing and frequenting the library at Cooper Union during the winter months

Arrested for vagrancy in Syracuse, sentenced to 10 days

At St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago for 47 days; sent there in the summer from the Newsboys Home (on the South Side) with typhoid malaria and pneumonia; reads extensively.

Hops off a train in November in Adrian, Mississippi, where his brother, Hugh, is working

1907-1907 Works eight months in a chain foundry in Racine, Wisconsin

1907 Hops off a train in Kent, Ohio, early on a June morning

Settles in Kent, Ohio, going to work as a chainmaker, and frequents the Carnegie Library.

Begins professional boxing career as a featherweight in Akron-Kent area; first fight is a 10-round draw.

1907-1910 Makes unsuccessful attempt to become a reporter for the Akron Press; he is discharged after two weeks.

Makes unsuccessful attempt to become a reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal; he makes $12 a week and is discharged after five weeks.

Several boxing matches; Doc Kerr in Akron Beacon Journal column says he had 30 fights in three years (1906-09).

1910 Leg broken in saloon brawl.

Goes to work for Davey Tree Surgeon, which sends him to Pennsylvania, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Alabama; encouraged by company to write field reports for company publication.

Marries high school student Florence Bushnell in Kent, Ohio, on October 14

1910-1912 Publishes poetry in local newspapers

1911 Son, Thomas Alton, born on August 3

Returns to the ring

1912 Working for the Akron Press for a second time in January

Moves in spring to California with wife and young son, Alton; works across the country as a tree surgeon, takes boxing matches where he can find them.

Employed by the Park Department of Los Angeles at a rate of $4 a day, living in a camp for a few months in Griffith Park, where he first reads Marx and Engels

Starts work on book that would become Emmett Lawler

circa 1913-1915 Last boxing match in San Francisco against Eddie Doran, who knocks him out in the fourth round; he’s unconscious until the next afternoon.

1914 Employed as a "taxi starter" in front of a Los Angeles night spot

Takes job in Waukegan, Illinois, as a forester working on courthouse trees

1916 Tully family living in Waukegan, Illinois, in February

circa 1917-1918 Works for two years as a government chain inspector in Florida, Pittsburgh and, possibly, in Mansfield, Ohio.

1918 Daughter, Trilby Jean, born; Tully was away when she was born.

1920 Settles permanently in Los Angeles in January

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