USA > Iowa > Jackson County > Annals of Jackson county, Iowa, Vol 1-6 > Part 38
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The circumstances leading to the arrest of Watkins were stated in a concise manner, showing that evidence would be brought to show the whereabouts of both parties from the time the deceased left Andrew to serve subpoenas until his body was found; that Watkins had been without money ; that he supposed Cronk to have a considerable sum ; that he was the last person to be seen with him prior to the murder; that the weapons be- longed to the place where Watkins lived or made his home; that he told falsehoods when first arrested on suspicion in regard to amounts of money he had and where he obtained the sama; that he had plenty of money after the murder, and paid for a pair of boots with a certain ten-dollar bill re- sembling a ten-dollar bill with which Crouk was known to have had at the time of the murder; that when defendant was out on bail after the first arrest and in the office of the sheriff getting out papers for the arrest of Conklin and others, the word came that the horse of Cronk's had been found he, the defendant, stated. "I am sorry, I am sorry" acting at the same time uneasy, and looking all sorts of colors; that he was immediately re-ar rested and has since been held in custody ; that he is yet unable to account- for the discrepancy in time of going home, and the time of being seen after the hour that he states he arrived home.
The trial which was the greatest legal battle ever fought in the courts of Jackson county, lasted eleven days The jury after being out one day and one night returned the following verdict. We the jury find the defend- ant guilty of murder in the first degree, and we find him guilty on the first count.
Watkins was sentenced to be hanged Feb. 21st, 1868. an extension of time was granted to April 17th, 1868. In the meantime Bucklin and Nelson had taken a change of venue to Clinton county, and had been acquitted. mainly, it was claimed, because the prosecuting attorney was handicapped by the Board of Supervisors who discouraged making expense necessary to get an array of witnesses to go to Clinton county. After the acquittal of these men who had been arrested with Watkins on the theory of a conspiracy. Watkin's attorneys got busy and pressed their petition for a new trial for
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their client and their prayer was granted and Watkins had no trouble in getting a change of venue to Clinton county The prosecuting attorney was discouraged as he felt that it would be harder to convict Watkins after the charge of conspiracy had fallen through, and it was generally believed that he would be acquitted if tried again. The matter of expense of taking an army of witnesses to a great distance as it seemed to some of the people was discussed, and finally the prosecution was abandoned and the inhuman wretch was turned loose. After his release he went to Clinton and worked in a hardware store for a time I believe the last heard of him in Clinton for years was of his being out with a man one night drinking and carousing. The next morning the man was found with his head split open with an axe, but not quite dead, and I believe he eventually recovered, but Watkins had disappeared. His next exploit in killing that has come to light was in Mon- ona county. We have not been able to get access to the records of Monona county, but from the papers we learned that Watkins went to a widow lady in that county who had a nearly grown up boy and engaged the young man and a team with the mother's consent to pick corn for him on a farm that he claimed to own in a different part of the county, promising to pay $2 50 per day from the time they started until the corn was all picked. The mother never heard from her boy again in life. The next spring bis body was found lodged in some willow bushes on the bank of a small stream In the meantime Watkins had returned to the neighborhood, and reported that the boy had gone west. After the finding of the body of the boy Watkins was arrested and charged with his murder.
It was shown that Watkins had sold the team and outfit, and he admit- ted that he killed the boy, but claimed it was in self defense; said thatthey had quarrelled about building a fire to cook their meal by or something of that kind, and that the boy tried to hit him with a neckyoke, and that he had to shoot him. At the time of the murder, capital punishment had been abolished and the maximum penalty was life imprisonment, and Watkins was sentenced to hard labor in the penitentiary at Fort Madison for life, and thereafter many futile efforts for a pardon he grew old and broken in health and discouraged, and recently died leaving something like $2500 in money the earnings of many years, acquired by making and selling trinkets as souvenirs, to the son of the warden of the prison.
A. M. Phillips. postmaster of Maquoketa, who was Captain of the Com- pany (I 31st Iowa Infantry) in which both Cronk and Watkins served for three years. has several mementoes the handiwork of Watkins while in pris- on One is a beautiful inlaid box, and another a fancy bridle that would have commanded a fancy price but they were presented by Watkins as a tok- en of his affection for his old commander.
After he left Jackson county Watkins was married and his wife had one child, a daughter, after his condemnation to the penitentiary for life, his wife secured a divorce and later married again. At the time of Watkins death his daughter had grown up and married, and mother and daughter with their families were living in some of the western states, Idaho I think.
Hon Thomas Lambert, who was state senator at the time, hunted them up and notified them of Watkins death and of the fact that he had left con-
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siderable property. But the daughter felt that she would rather not have the property on account of the undesirable notoriety that a claim for it would attract to her.
The warden told Senator Lambert that he did not want his son to have the money willed him by Watkins, but there was no other claimant for . it, and it is not probable that the bequest was turned aside.
While Watkins, Bucklin and Nelson were confined in the old jail at An- drew awaiting trial, a mob of more than 200 men was organized to hang them. The mob or vigilance committee entered the town of Andrew one evening and took possession of the town giving out that they would hang the three men next morning at 9 o'clock. They had no thought that any esistance would be attempted, and neglected the important precaution of Securing the prisoners, knowing full well that the antiquated jail would offer but little resistance. But Sheriff Winfield Scott Belden who had learned discipline during three years of war had but little respect for a mob, and had no thought of surrendering his prisoners to them He had an in- terview with a boy during the evening. and arranged with him to take a message to Maquoketa for him the next morning. In accordance with pre- vious instructions the boy mounted a fleet horse very early in the morning and started for the open country. He was promptly stopped by a vigilant on guara. but the boy told the guard that he was going to the pasture for his mother's cows and was allowed to proceed, but when he had got out of sight he rode straight and swift to Maquoketa, and delivered a letter from the sheriff to the deputy, commanding him to get men. and transportation for them and hasten to Andrew. The sheriff selected five men in whom he could rely in an emergency armed them with revolvers and in the early morning took the prisoners from the jail and escorted them to the second floor of the court house, barricading the stairway by covering it over with lumber, and awaited the further action of the mob. Many of the mem- bers had gone home to do their chores and spend the night, and it was about nine o'clock before they had all returned and were ready for busi- ness. Under the leadership of Robert Black, a good man, too good to have been engaged in such work, the mob repaired to the court house and called upon the sheriff to deliver up the prisoners. The sheriff with scant courtesy refused to comply with their demands and assured them that the first man who showed his head in the stairway would have the same blowed off. After some quarreling among themselves the leader re- quested the sheriff to come down and talk the matter over pledging him he would be allowed to return after the conference. The sheriff went down to the men and after takling over the situation pledged his word of honor that he would take the prisoners to Dubuque that very day and place them in the then strongest jail in the state and would be personally responsible for their appearance when court convened. On this pledge from the sheriff the mob agreed to disband and leave the fate of the prisoners to the courts. Just as the matter was amicably settled a large body of mounted men rode into the little town from Maquoketa to assist the sheriff if needed A year
later members of that vigilance committee saw those same prisoners released without making a protest. The writer believes that had this mob had the same leader that led the mob of 1857 just 10 years earlier the sheriff could not have saved his prisoners and the hands of Watkins would not have been stained with the blood of the Monona county boy.
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Iswa Terri- Journal of, a Miss An Old Campaign Flag.
(Compiled for the Jackson County Historical Society by J. W. Ellis, Curator )
I. P. Hinman, an old and well known resident of Maquoketa, recently deposited with J. W. Ellis, an old flag which has quite an interesting his- tory. In 1840, Mr. Hinman was living in New York State, and it is a mat- ter of history that political excitement ran about as high that year as at any Presidential contest in the history of the Republic. The excitement reached the little town where Mr. Hinman lived, and it occurred to him and his partisan neighbors that they ought to, and must have a flag for use in the campaign. A meeting was called to take steps to secure a flag. Mr. Hinman and his father-in-law, Judge Wheeler, were made a Committee on Flag, the money to pay for which was to be raised by subscription. The committee sent a man 12 miles to the nearest town where the proper ma- terial for a flag could be had, Mr. Hinman furnishing a horse for the man to ride and $5.00 to buy material with. Judge Wheeler employed an artist to paint an eagle on the flag and some of the ladies sewed the red and white stripes together and the little village had as fine a campaign flag as any community in the state. Old Tippecanoe won out in the fight and there was no effort made to collect the money that was promised to pay for the flag, and Mr. Hinman and Judge Wheeler had a flag on their hands. Judge Wheeler kept the flag as long as he lived, and at his death it was turned over to Mr. Hinman. The old flag has figured in many political campaigns and Fourth of July celebrations, and is in fairly good condition now. Mr. Hinman thought that it had seen sufficient active service, and wanted it put in a glass case where the people could see without handling what he prized as a historic relic and souvenir.
Mr. Hinman also placed in the museum an old butter paddle which he said was more than 100 years old, and said he had known it himself for more than 80 years.
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Journal of a Missionary in Jackson County, Iowa Terri- tory, 1843-'6.
(By William Salter.)
Under a commission from the American Home MissionarySociety "to preach the Gospel in Io va Territory," I left my father's house in New York City, October 4 1813 and arrived at Maquoketa (then Springfield P. (.) on the 10th of November. In my journey I visited Niagara Falls; spent a Sunday in Buffalo at the home of the Rev. Asa T. Hopkins, pastor of the First Presbyterian church of that city. The next Sunday I was at Milwau- kee in the hospitable home of the Rev. Stephen Peet. agent of the A. H. M. S for Wisconsin Territory, who discouraged my going to Iowa, saying that Iowa would not an ount to much. as it had only a narrow strip of good land on the Mississippi river, and the Great American Desert was west of it, whereas Wisconsin had Lake Michigan on one side and the Mississippi on the other and would make a prosperous State. The next Sunday I was at Galesburg, Illinois. having rode over the prairies fron Chicago to that place in an open wagon. The following Monday, a sundown. I reached the Mississippi and felt the thrill and exhilaration the sight of the great river and of owa awakened in my mind. On landing in Bur- lington the next morning, James G Edwards, editor of the Burlington Hawk-Eye met me and took me to his home. The next Sunday I spent at Keosauqua, on the Des Moines river, and preached in a blacksmith shop, the Rev. L. G. Bell, a pioneer preacher of the "Old School, " preaching the same day in the same pace: thence I visited Agency, and wa ; kindly enter- tained by the widow of the Indian Agent of the Sacs and Foxes, General Joseph M. Street, and stood over his grave, and that of the Indian chief Wapello, which were side by side. The next Sunday, Nov. 5. I received or- dination at Denmark, a; the hands of Asa Turner ( Yale, 1827), Julius A. Reed ( Yale. 1829), Reuben Gaylord ( Yale. 1834), and Chas. Burnham (Dartmouth, 1836. )
I came up the Mississippi with Alden B. Robbins, who then began his life-long ministry at Bloomington (afterwards Muscatine), and with Edwin B. Turner, who was assigned to Jones county, and to Cascade, in Dubu- que county, then the farthest missionary post in the northwest. Proceed- ing from Davenport. Tirner and myself spent a night with Oliver Emer- son in his cabin near IveWitt. We found him shaking with he ague. He asked a neighbor who was going the next day with a grist to McCloy's mill, to take us along. The journey was slow, and we were chilled and weary with the raw winds of the prairie. Reaching the mill an hour af-
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ter dark, we left the grist, and went on to the log house of John Shaw, who made us welcome, and we soon lost our chill and weariness in the warm supper Mrs Shaw gave us. In a part of the house partitioned off by sheets, we found refreshing sleep.
The morning showed us that we were upon a gently rolling prairie, about a mile from the junction of the South and North Forks of the Ma- quoketa river, and from the long stretch of timber between them. Across the road from Mr. Shaw's was a small log house, banked with sod, the roof partly covered with sod. Built for a blacksmith shop, it was used for a chool and public meetings. North of it was the cabin of John E. Goode- now, postmaster. eminent for his public spirit and generous nature, a de- scendant on his mother's side ( Betsey White) from Peregrine White, who was born on the Mayflower in Cape Cod harbor in 1620. Next north was the claim of Zalmon Livermore.
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COPYRIGHTED.
Old sod-covered log house, built by J. E. Goodenow in 1838, for blacksmith shop, later used as school house, meeting house, polling place and town hall. From an ori- ginal drawing made under the direction of J. W. Ellis, Maquoketa, lowa.
Leaving Mr. Turner to preach in the schoolhouse. I went horseback to Andrew, where a Congregational church had been organized by Oliver Emerson, the pioneer missionary of the whole region, Dec. 26. 1841. The meeting was held in the upper story of the log court house. Deacon Sam- uel Cotton and family were there, and gave me a cordial greeting. He was a descendant of John Cotton, the first minister of Boston, Mass., and pos- sessed the sterling qualities of his Puritan ancestry. Mrs. Cotton gas of the Bemis family, from "Bemis Heights, " Saratoga, N. Y., where Bur-
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goyne's army was defeated in 1777. Their house was six miles north of An- drew, but the distance did not prevent their regular attendance upon pub- lic worship and I often shared the shelter and comfort of their home. In my first sermon in the county I showed that the early churches in the land of Israel were edified and multiplied by "walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort, of the Holy Spirit," and I urged the duty of building up Christianity in the same way in lowa. Pure and faithful churches, active in Christian service, are the saving salt of any community. A Metho- dist brother, a Justice of the Peace, greeted me, saying that he welcomed all preachers, "no matter what their tenements were."
I preached from the desk where sentence of death had been pronounced in the first judicial trial for murder in the Territory, the previous year. The case grew out of a dispute about a land claim. Before the execution of the sentence, John C Holbrook came from Dubuque, and preached. The prisoner was brought into the court house in chains. and cried out in his anguish, 'Oh what would I give to restore to life the man I killed, " and "many a manly cheek was wet with tears" said Mr. Holbrook in his report of the scene.
At Andrew I made the acquaintance of Ansel Briggs, mail contractor on the route from Dubuque to Davenport and Iowa City, afterwards the tirst Governor of the State (1846-50), a native of Vermont; of Phillip B. Bradley, a native of Connecticut, clerk of the county court, member of the Territorial legislature (1845-46), of the State legislature (1846-49, 1878), also prominent as an adviser of Governor Brings. Nathaniel Butterworth and his gracious wife made me welcome at their primitive hostelry. They were natives of Massachusetts.
Returning to Maquoketa, I took Brother Turner sixteen miles west on his ray to Jones county Much of the country was taken up by settlers, and their cabins and clearings showed industry and thrift. Reaching a cab- in towards dark. we asked if we could stay for the night but the house was full. It was some distance to the next house, growing darker, the road blind, and we felt in a quandary, when an old man. learning who we were, said that his minister at Crown Point, N. Y., (Stephen L. Herrick) told him of a band of missionaries going to Iowa, and that he must look out for them "You stop here, " he added, and we were relieved. After supper, and a feast of soul with thanksgiving and prayer to "Jehovah Jireh," we found sound sleep on the cabin floor.
The next morning the old gentleman's son, Lorenzo Spaulding, offered to take Brother Turner on his way, and I returned to Maquoketa, and be- gan a visitation of the people from cabin to cabin. I purchased a horse with saddle and bridle and saddle-bags, and, as winter came on, accoutered myself with gloves of deerskin, scarfs, leggins, and buffalo overshoes. In a circuit of six miles I found tifty families, some from New Hampshire, Mas- sachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, more from New York than any other one State, and some from Canada. They represented every variety of religious opinion. A Methodist preacher (John Walker) had an appointment in the settlement. Charles E. Brown had preached his first sermon in Iowa the previous year, in the house of John Shaw. He organ-
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ized a Baptist church, August 31, 1842, but left the field in November fol- lowing, finding the cabin he had put up on the prairie in the summer not suitable to winter in, and he moved to Davenport. A man of excellent spirit, he was welcomed back to Maquoketa in 1847. Subsequently. a pio- neer preacher in Howard county, he was a member of the House of Repre- sentatives from that county (1878). His son, William C. Brown, has gained eminence for efficiency in railroad management in Iowa, and is now vice- president of the New York Central.
In my circuit I found six Presbyterian and Congregational famliies, and called them together on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 30, for conference and prayer with reference to forming a church. They were divided on the quess tion of government. Accomodation was necessary. The election of two elders to serve for two years was finally agreed upon, and William H. Efner, M. D., and Thomas S. Flathers, were chosen. Both were of the "New School," which adhered to the Plan of Union of 1801. Mr. Flathers was born in Kentucky, but lived from childhood in Indiana. He had not learn- ed to read, he told me, until he was twenty years of age, when a passion for knowledge and a zeal for religion inflamed him, and he went to school and fitted for Wabash College, with the ministry in view, but chill penury had compelled him to leave his studies. On the Sabbath. Dec. 10th, the church was constituted. the elders were set apart with prayer, and the Lord's sup- per administered. During the previous week Brethren Emerson, Robbins and Turner, and Jared Hitchcock, delegate from Davenport, had come to Maquoketa and we organied the Northern Iowa Association to embrace churches north of Iowa river. I favored the Convention System (semi-Pres- byterian). which had been adopted in Wisconsin, but the other brethren preferred a distinctively Congregational organization. Provision, however, was made to include the Maquoketa church. For the support of the church a society was organized of which John Shaw was the most active and etfi- cient member. They invited me to preach at Maquoketa half my time. Mrs. Shaw was a native of Oxford, Mass., of the Fiske family, of nuge- not stock, she acted the part of a mother to me, and paid me the fine compliment that she knew I had had a good mother.
In the Wright settlement, three miles south of Maquoketa and at Bur- leson's, six miles west. I visited the schools and preached, as I did in every settlement in the county. Thomas Miles Wright was a native of Connecti- cut, had lived in Warren county, N. Y., near Lake George; Shadrach Bur- leson was a native of Vermont; Anson H. Wilson, of Canada: they all en- couraged my work. In the Wright family were several sons of like spirit with their father. A daughter was the wife of John E. Goodenow; she had all the fine qualities of the excellent woman in the last chapter of the book of Proverbs
In the neighborhood of Maquoketa were a number of persons who had taken part in the Mackenzie rebellion in Canada, 1837. Among them was William Current, a man of bright and active mind, a friend of temperance and education, but not of religion, because of alleged discrepancies. contra- dictions, and unseemly things in the Bible. I invited him to come to meet- ing ; he said, "No," but that he would give me some hard texts for a ser-
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mon. I told him to do so, and I would come to his house and preach, which I did. I explained that the objectionable things in the Bible are records from the ignorance and coarseness of former times, that the Bible does not endorse all its records, and that the New Testament expressly does away with much that is in the Old, and I quoted a number of the words of Christ in the Gospels, in proof that Christianity, according to the teachings of its author, is an absolutely pure and holy religion. Returning from that appointment with my trusty companion, Mr. Shaw, our horses lost the way, and we wandered round and round on the prairie until a glimmering light in a distant cabin window relieved our bewilderment.
Among other settlers from Canada was Samuel Chandler, but he came to Jackson county by a very circuitous route. He had been sentenced to be hung as an insurgent in the "Patriot" cause, but the sentence (upon the intercession of his daughters) was commuted to banishment for life in the penal colony of Van Dieman's land, whither he was transported, via Lon- don. He had managed to make his escape on a Yankee whaler, and now found some of his old friends and one of his daughters who had secured the commutation of his sentence, Sarah, the wife of Jesse Wilson. Mr. Chand- ler was a man of firm religious principles, a native of Massachusetts, a help- er in every effort to improve the country.
The name of our post-office was that of the postmaster's native town in Vermont, but, being that of many towns of the United States, letters were frequently missent, and I joined Mr. Goodenow and Mr. Shaw in a petition for a change of name to Maquoketa, which was made by the Post office De- partment, March 13, 1844. The word Maquo is Indian for bear, an animal that infested the whole region.
My cramped quarters in Mr. Shaw's house gave me scant opportunity for consulting my books or composing sermons, but I managed to write one sermon during the winter, sitting by the rotary cook stove, and preached it to a congregation of thirty who seemed to appreciate my effort. In my soli- tary missionary tours the illimitable stretches of land and sky often inspired thoughts of the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth and I heard the voices from above that speak "in reason's ear."
In the settlements about Andrew I found two interesting families, re- cently from Pennsylvania. They had been brought with their teams and belongings from Pittsburg to Bellevue by steamboat for twenty dollars a family. They were warm-hearted Christians, of Protestant Irish stock. David Young was of pronounced anti-slavery sentiments and had been a "New School" Presbyterian, but liked the Congregational way, and became an ac- tive member of the church at Andrew. He built a mill on Brush creek, which was swept away in the freshets of 1844, a year of high floods in the Mississippi valley. Sixty-one years later. I met his son, James, at Maquo- keta, and he recalled my visits in the old house and the family prayers and worship together, of which he said his mother spoke with fond recollection to the end of her days.
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