07/30/2026
So many amazing stories behind the beautiful homes in North Manchester - all an easy walk from the B&B
Some houses in Wabash County have unique histories. This one is no exception. This is the FRAZIER HUNT house at 508 N. Mill St. in North Manchester. Cam Vanyo, present owner of the house provided this picture. About nineteen years ago Vanyo woke up one morning and there was a bus with 40 people standing in his yard. It was some literary group from Chicago taking pictures of the house. Imagine finding you house such a center of attraction. One would ask why? Frazier Hunt (1885-1967) was the film noir stereotype of the dashing, edgy, trench coat wearing, foreign correspondent. He grew up in this house. Born Dec. 1, 1885, in Rock Island, Illinois, the son of Jasper and Amanda (Frazier) Hunt. A.F. Hunt and brother Jasper lived in North Manchester at 508 N. Mill St. with an uncle Joseph S. Mathews and family from 1893-1903. He loved the Eel River and spent many hours exploring its banks and swimming in the “Devil’s Hole.” The Devil's Hole is a spot on the Eel River where it makes a sharp bend and the water can be quite turbulent. Indians were said to lose many a canoe there. People were said to have drown there. The Devil’s Hole became a swimming hole for local youth. Located about east of the old football field at Manchester U. Hunt graduated from North Manchester High School in 1903, spent a year at the Michigan Military Academy, later attending the University of Illinois. Following graduation, he went to Chicago where he got a job with the City Press. There followed journalistic and publishing adventures with no great success. Just before the outbreak of the World War he went to New York and obtained work on The Sun. He took with him a wife. On May 17, 1911, he married Emma Kern who “had come from a farm on my own beloved Eel River, not so far from North Manchester." To them a son, Bob, was born Nov 28, 1914. In February 1918, Hunt went to France as a war correspondent writing stories of the soldiers and camp life under the caption, "Private Danny" in France. He covered the failure of the 1918 Northern Expedition in Russia. Hunt was accused of spying by the Bolsheviks. For six months he had the Russian Revolution to himself, watching the civil war, the foreign intervention and interviewing Lenin, Gorky and other Bolshevik leaders. In 1919, Hunt smuggled a copy of the Treaty of Versailles and sent it to the Chicago Tribune a major scoop at the time. After World War 1 he helped Norman Hapgood and Ray Long on Hearst's International and on Cosmopolitan. He wrote, rewrote, ghost-wrote, and secured contributions from the leading writers of Europe and America. Hunt was European editor and writer for Hearst magazines: 1922-1925 in Europe; 1925-1928 in U.S.; 1928-1930 in Europe. During the 1930s, he commented regularly on world affairs over the radio broadcasting for the New York Life Insurance Co., doing "Great Personalities." He also divided his time between writing newspaper features, magazine articles, and books. His most popular book was “Blown In By the Draft” about World War I. He also made several around the world trips and always seemed to gravitate back to Russia which he visited many times in later years. During the 1940s he was on CBS broadcasting “Frazier Hunt and the News.” He became a war correspondent during World War II in the Pacific. He later wrote a book of the exploits of Gen. MacArthur. After the war he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hunt met with as many of the great ones of his day among them: H.R.H. the Duke of Windsor, lady Astor, Sinclair Lewis, Bernard Shaw, Kagawa, Sun yet Sen, Chiang Kai-Shek, Adolf Hi**er, Masaryk, Manuel Quezon, Emil Ludwig, Paul de Kruif, Calvin Coolidge, Poncho Villa, Dr. Dafoe, Justice Holmes, Joseph Stalin, Gandhi, Bill Haywood, William R. Hearst, Queen Marie of Romania, Maxim Litvinov, Helen Keller, Emperor Pu-yi, H.G. Wells, Franklin D. Roosevelt. He knew them all. He lived through great events, participated in the making of them, rubbed elbows with saints and sinners, generals and privates, Nobel Prize winners and illiterate peasants.” On one occasion Hunt had lunch with President Coolidge at the White House. They then went together to the opening game of the World Series. Hunt said of the occasion “I doubt if Coolidge said more than fifty words the entire time.
