Arthur Stilwell

Stilwell was born in Rochester, New York, in 1859. While working as a traveling salesman he courted and married Jennie A. Wood, and the couple moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and then Chicago, Illinois, where Arthur sold insurance for the Travelers Insurance Company, inventing a coupon annuity life-insurance policy which paid the policy holder an income after a certain age.

Stilwell published many books after his retirement in 1912. He wrote novels, poetry and plays. He also wrote political works on world affairs and the monetary system. His writing attracted attention because in them he maintained that he had based many of his life and business decisions on the whispers of what he called fairies or brownies. In his memoirs published in 1927, he reframed this as hunches.

In 1887 Stilwell started the Fairmount Cycling Club and built the amusement center Fairmount Park between Kansas City and Independence, Missouri, ostensibly to boost traffic for one of the trolley lines he owned. It became the Kansas City Athletic Club in 1893. The new club boasted a six-hole golf course, the second in the area after the Kansas City Country Club, based in what became Loose Park. The Fairmount Club eventually became the Evanston Club in 1901, and later moved to a new location at Swope Park in 1905. The quickly expanding sport of golf and the fast growth of the city necessitated another move to a rural 137 acres (0.55 km2) tract outside of the city limits in 1916, becoming the Hillcrest Country Club, now at 82nd and Hillcrest Road in Kansas City. Owing to the club's location outside of the city, it was a far more liberal, wild place than the rich clubs in town, allowing gambling and having the highest number of female and minority members.