January 1976: During an interview in The North Peoria Observer, Philip JoséFarmer mentions he’s starting a Peoria chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars. His goal will also get mentioned in the March issue of The Baker Street Journal.

Sometime in 1976: “The Hansoms of John Clayton” is first mentioned by name in print, in Phil Farmer’s introduction to Peter Todd’s The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes. The has been no society gathered under that name as yet, but Farmer’s intro talks of the great interest in one.

August 1977: John Bennett Shaw comes to town and has dinner with Phil Farmer and others. Had there been a scion society, this probably would have been an impromptu Hansom meeting. As there wasn’t, it wasn’t.

October 27, 1977: Bob Burr, having come to the limit of his patience after first expressing interest in the society a year and a half before, calls Phil Farmer, George Scheetz, and others to arrange a first meeting.

November 17, 1977: First meeting of the Hansoms of John Clayton at Bob Burr’s house on Devon Lane.

December 16, 1977: Hansoms provide programs for screening of Rathbone The Hound of the Baskervilles at Bradley University’s Cullom-Davis Library.

January 1978: First issue of Hansoms’ newsletter, simply titled Hansoms of John Clayton, produced by Bob Burr.

May 1978: First issue of Hansom’ triannual journal, Wheelwrightings, edited by George Scheetz.

June 1978: Fifth issue of Hansoms’ newsletter changes title to Notice.

July 1978: Sixth issue of Hansoms’ newsletter changes title to Hansom News.

September 1978: The Hansoms’ first annual 2704 banquet held at Shady Oaks restaurant. Phil Farmer delivers the evening’s presentation on a parallel world theory in which Holmes and Watson are criminals.

October 1978: Seventh issue of Hansoms’ newsletter changes title to HansoMemos.

January 1979: Twelve-year-old Sherlockian prodigy John Whitcomb attends his first Hansom meeting and wins his first quiz, on A Study in Scarlet, appropriately enough.

July 1979: The John Bennett Shaw workshop at Bradley University gets cancelled for lack of registrants. Nobody bothers to tell Jack Tracy, author of The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, who is slightly perturbed at having come to Peoria for no reason.

September 1979: At the second annual 2704 banquet, Suellen Carter unveils the first of her amazing Sherlockian banquet favors: needlepoint Holmes coasters.

February 1980: Sixteenth issue of Hansoms’ newsletter changes title to Plugs & Dottles. Format changes to legal-size on the goldenrod paper that will continue to be a tradition for Hansom newsletters to the modern day.

March 1980: The Hansoms meet at a former East Peoria brothel. A vote is taken on whether Watson was a drunkard, as Tom Simpson has held since the scion’s beginning, and the idea is defeated by a vote of fourteen to three. Ironically, the host served some serious gin punch and at least one Hansom had to be driven home.

May 1980: The Rascally Lascar leaves the May meeting at Alex Crossman’s home to go to his car. When the Lascar returns to the meeting, he finds he is not in Alex Crossman’s home any more. Also this month, Wheelwrightings editor George Scheetz declares in his opening editorial: “We are as good as The Baker Street Journal!” Neither of these events have anything to do with the gin punch of the previous meeting, though one has to wonder. Thirteen-year-old prodigy John Whitcomb redeems the Hansoms’ imageby winning John Bennett Shaw’s quiz at a workshop at Pennsylvania’s Duquesne University.

November 1980: The Hansoms meet at Pabst Brewery in Peoria Heights. Meetings at a brothel and a brewery in the same year — we were all class in those days.

March 1981: A dramatic production of “Speckled Band” is nearly broken up by the perfectly on-cue snoring of an audience member who has fallen asleep. George Scheetz includes non-Canonical questions on his quiz on “Copper Beeches.,” which sparks “a veritable brouhaha and near donnybrook” between members of the society.

April 1981: A meeting to discuss ways to improve meetings after the March quiz battle is misunderstood by some club members to be a coup attempt, when most of the meeting was actually spent creating and reciting bawdy limericks.

August 1981: An election of a “Big Wheel” is announced in the newsletter as the Hansoms attempt to make sure the club is seen as a democracy and not an autocracy. No candidates come forward, and Bob Burr continues as the club’s sole officer.

September 1981: Quiz mania at Hansom meetings reaches its highest level as three members, Ed Connor, Kathy Carter, and Brad Keefauver, not only achieve perfect scores on the quiz on “Priory School,” they continue to answer every tie-breaker question presented to them until all present give up and let the results just be declared a tie.

May 1982: The Hansoms’ official lecturn, first built by Dick Stroyeck for the previous banquet, is nicely finished with a Hansom logo painted on its front by Mike Cook.

Auguest 1982: First Hansoms to attend a John Bennett Shaw workshop, Bob Burr and John Whitcomb, travel to Kansas City for same. Young Whitcomb wins both Shaw quizzes presented, besting many an older and “wiser” Sherlockian.

September 1982: Mike Cook creates the first Hansom t-shirt and Brad Keefauver produces his first “Baker Street Digressions” monograph, Very Hansom of You, Mr. Holmes.

January 1983: The Hansoms’ first round robin pastiche, The Adventure of the Drowned Carp, is published.

June 1983: Bob Burr expands Plugs & Dottles to a new four-page format, including a centerspread column by Brad Keefauver and Kathy Carter. Hansoms Burr, Whitcomb, Carter, and Keefauver attend another Shaw workshop, and prodigy Whitcomb again wins both Shaw quizzes. Keefauver gets a second and a fourth, just to demonstrate that our youngest member isn’t a Hansom fluke.

September 1983: Bob Burr takes over the editorship of Wheelwrightings from George Scheetz. Annual banquet is followed by “Waterloo Station Brunch” held in a railroad car on Sunday morning, for the first and only time.

January 1984: Hansom Brad Keefauver wins Gaslight Publications’s Gaslight Award for Sherlockian scholarship. In the ensuing months, Bob Burr will once more encounter a temperamental Jack Tracy in attempting to get Keefauver the award’s prize money.

October 1984: The Hansoms receive their fourth letter from Sherlock Holmes in England for the year. Various members had received similar letters in 1978 and 1983, and Bob Burr’s interest in solving the mystery behind the letters seems to stimulate “Holmes” to write him even more.

August 1984: Hansoms Bob Burr, Kathy Carter, and Brad Keefauver attend a John Bennett Shaw workshop (in Dubuque, Iowa) without Hansom quiz prodigy John Whitcomb in tow. Their quiz showing isn’t as strong, but they make a lot of new friends anyway.

July 1985: Hansoms Bob Burr and Brad Keefauver try a non-John Bennett Shaw workshop without a Sherlockian prodigy in tow. Brad does win the quiz, but somehow, it’s just not the same.

January 1987: After earlier invitations to Phil Farmer, George Scheetz, and Bob Burr to the annual dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars go unfulfilled, Brad Keefauver is the first Hansom to attend the annual Sherlock Holmes birthday festivities in New York City. He is present to witness the in absentia induction of Bob Burr into the society, making Burr the first Hansom to become a member of the Baker Street Irregulars.

February 1987: Kathy Carter writes a column called “Misogyny’s Last Bow” for Plugs & Dottles, questioning the intelligence of the Baker Street Irregulars for not allowing women. The column prompts many letters to the editor in the next issue, as well as a column from Joe Eckrich on the issue two months later.

November 1987: Tenth anniversary meeting of the Hansoms and George Scheetz’s publication of the Hansoms’ A New Chronology of the Hansoms of John Clayton on the Occasion of its Decennial Year.

March 1988: Seven members of the Occupants of the Empty House invade the March meeting, their largest Hansom presence yet.

May 1988: The Hansoms announce a contest to name John Clayton’s horse, a detail that was, unfortunately, omitted from the Canon.

September 1988: Toby Perry wins the banquet door prize, a ride in a carriage (no hansom cabs in Peoria) dressed as Stapleton. John Clayton’s horse gets name “Claytie” as suggested by Jim Duval of Cox and Co.

January 1989: Brad Keefauver becomes the second Hansom inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars.

March 1989: Several members of the Baker Street Irregulars suggest Brad Keefauver resign from their organization.

March 1990: “Robbie Burr,” Bob’s two-dimensional twin who was never a member of the Hansoms, visits Peoria.

August 1990: The Hansoms send a team to theJohn Bennett Shaw Quiz Bowl at the “Holmes on the Range” International Sherlock Holmes Convention in Kansas City. The team suffers setbacks at first, as Kathy Carter is unable to attend, and Brad Keefauver flies in a day late, but Bob recruits 11-year-old Double-Barrelled Tiger Cub member Tommy Craggs, who proves to be a young prodigy in the John Whitcomb tradition. The Hansoms come in second among the many societies represented.

January 1991: Hansoms listen to a series of commercials for Petri wine from the Rathbone-Bruce radio shows, then sample the modern version of Petri, as brought back to Peoria from an Illustrious Clients event in Indianapolis. Even though our Indiana fellows found the wine repugnant, the Hansoms seemed quite taken with it.

January 1992: The last issue of Wheelwrightings, the Hansoms’ triannual journal.

January 1999: Two hundred and forty-fourth issue of Hansoms’ newsletter changes title to The Hansom Times.

December 1999: Two hundred and forty-ninth issue of Hansoms’ newsletter changes title to 2000 Hansoms.

January 2001: Two hundred and fifty-sixth issue of Hansoms’ newsletter changes title to The Hansom’s Nameless Newsletter.

March 2001: Two hundred and fifty-seventh issue of Hansoms’ newsletter changes title to Traces of the Two-Wheeler.

November 2002: Twenty-fifth anniversay of the Hansoms.

September 23, 2005: Twenty-eighth annual banquet of the Hansoms held at Chesapeake Seafood House in Springfield, Illinois. Meredith Granger of the Illustrious Clients is our special guest speaker. One Hansom in attendance.

September 20, 2006: Twenty-ninth annual 2704 banquet of the Hansoms of John Clayton held at "2 Chez" in Peoria, basic program following that of the 2000 banquet. Burr, Carter and Keefauver only ones in attendance as banquet only planned one day before and no reservations made.