USA > Iowa > Scott County > Davenport > History of Davenport and Scott County Iowa, Volume I > Part 84
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When I came here J. W. Moak was roadmaster, later becoming superin- tendent, and A. Kimball was master mechanic, and they were both good ones. Moak came off the Rome & Watertown, and he was a fine man. Mr. Kimball later succeeded him and T. P. Twombley left an engine to take the place of master mechanic that Mr. Kimball thus vacated. Addison Day was superin- tendent in 1857, when I began with the company. He was a man of fine re- ligious scruples, and wanted no swearing among his men. When I got on the payroll there were about twenty engines, and we were running two passenger trains a day each way between here and Iowa City. Later, when the panic came on and times got hard, these trains were mixed, to carry both passengers and freight.
Those were not the palmy days of railroading, for company or employe. I was too poor to own a pair of overshoes in the winter, and went in the snow with my shoes muffled up in rags. I remember, just after I was married, when I had hardly a quarter in my pocket, trying to find a house to rent in Iowa City. C. W. Phillips, long with the company there as superintendent of the water service, told me he had one, a nice little one of three rooms, so I went and looked at it. There were four cords of good hard wood, all cut and dry in the shed, and the place was cosy and neat and attractive, but I could see that it was too rich for me, and I went back and told him so. But he would not let go. "You go back there and look it over again," he said, "and I guess we can fix the rent all right." I went. Somebody had been there in the mean- time. On the kitchen table was a sack of flour, with popatoes, a ham and all the other necessaries and a note that said, "Move in and make yourself at home, and pay when you get ready." It was worth being poor to meet such a man as that.
We used to have some fun with the snow in those days, too. I was stuck once within four miles of Grinnell with a passenger train, four engines and 100 men shoveling hard, and we stayed there three days.
I had the old Antoine LeClaire one time, out toward Wilton. A. Kimball dropped off No. 3, westbound, to take a hand. He found Jack Tarsney on the snowplow with an engine that wouldn't steam, so he cut him off and put Walt Hess on in his place. Walt had an engine that was no better, so Mr. Kimball
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came to me and asked me if I thought the 'Tony would handle the snowplow. She was pretty light, but I said I would do what I could with her, so we rigged her and started on. The snowplow was mounted on a frame, the rear of which was attached to the front of the engine, while the point of the plow was carried on wheels on a truck. This side of Bear creek we saw a cut ahead that was drifted level, and we raced at it. It turned dark when we got into the snow, there was so much of it in the air, and right in the thick of things I heard some- thing cracking. We didn't get far after that, and when we stopped we found that the snowplow had turned off to one side and was at right angles to us, and Mr. Kimball was nowhere in sight. I was scared and began to call, "Kimball! Kimball !" "All right!" he said, somewhere down in the snow to the rear, and pretty soon he climbed on. I told him I thought something had happened to him. "Oh, no," he said; "I got off when I heard that plow going." We had a siderod bent and the cylinder cocks knocked off, and other damage on that side, and we had a hard time getting out of there, but we did get out, and that night the engine was safe in the roundhouse at Brooklyn.
It was about II o'clock that night when I got there. Old man Skinner was in the office of the hotel. He would let me have a room, but he said I couldn't have any supper; girls were all in bed. "All right," I said, "I guess I won't go to the room just yet," so I sat there in the office and waited, and after awhile A. Kimball came in, following me on the train for which I had opened the way. "Had your supper, Charley?" he asked me, first thing after we met. "No," I said, "Mr. Skinner says I can't have any supper tonight, for the girls are all in bed." Mr. Kimball turned on Skinner with that look that we all knew would stand for no foolishness, and said, "You get this man some sup- per, and you get it damn quick." Pretty soon I had a hot beefsteak, hot bis- cuits, potatoes, honey, coffee, and anything else there was in the house. It happened that the house stood, by Mr. Kimball's permission, on the company's ground.
I may say here that I remember only two occasions on which Mr. Kimball could be said to have used a profane word, and on those occasions he was very much in earnest. The other time was down at the Davenport shops, when he fired Doc Gerbert for lying to him. Mr. Kimball was the finest man I ever knew in railroad service. He had been an engineer, and he knew what an engine man has to go through, and so he knew what to expect; what he ought to ask of the man, and what the man ought to ask of him. He was a good railroad man, and he was a good man with his men; fair and square, kind and consid- erate, and the soul of honor. A man could not lie to him and stay on the road five minutes. And there wasn't a man in the service that didn't think the world of him.
I have had some narrow escapes but have never been hurt in a wreck in all the forty-eight years I have been firing and running. At the foot of Summit between Muscatine and Wilton, I went with my engine into a slough once, and seven or eight cars followed. I stepped out of my cab window to the ground, which was level with it. Among those ditched cars was one that was loaded with castiron stoves. There wasn't a wheel left under that car and there wasn't a stove broken.
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Out at Ainsworth, one time, I was pulling a mixed train, and just about cross- ing the 100-foot Howe truss bridge over a good sized creek. The fireman was outside oiling the valves. I thought I saw the forward end of the engine drop- ping, as it would if the bridge was settling under it. I jerked her wide open and she gave such a jump that she broke the pin behind her and fairly leaped across to the other side. The bridge went down and there was a first class wreck in that creek. The baggage car turned sidewise and the first coach went endwise into the middle of it. Three men were killed.
In 1863 I was running the N. B. Judd, with George B. Swan, for years yard- master here and in Rock Island, now of Des Moines, for fireman. We had left Stockton-then Fulton-coming east. We were carrying a lot of green wood, cut about the day before in LeClaire's pasture, but on the back end of the tender we had some dry wood that we carried to use when we had hills ahead of us. George was back after some of that dry wood and down where he couldn't see me or the engine. I got down on the deck and stood, with one foot on the front end of the tender and the other on the sill of the engine deck, taking a look into the fire, when just at that instant the engine parted from the tender and shot away ahead. Of course I went down between engine and tender, clear to the ground, between the rails. I didn't think-I grabbed, and caught the safety chains at the front end of the tender. We were running about four or five miles an hour, but that was enough. I pulled myself up and climbed up into the tender, and just then George looked forward from the rear end over the pile of wood he had been heaving up. "What's the matter? Is she slipping?" he asked. "Yes, she's slipping," I said. "There she goes !" Her smoke was a mile ahead of us. She ran clear to "the Irishman's farm," a good seven miles, and there we found her, without fire, water or steam. After she was on the pit in the roundhouse here we put a plank across the pit in front of the tender and cut her loose from it, and there wasn't a man in the house that could start off that plank, holding to those chains, and climb up into the tender, and when I tried it myself, there in the house, I couldn't do it either. George Swan told that incident to a man the other day in Des Moines, and the man turned his back on him and walked away without a word; but George and I both know that the thing happened.
The most remarkable thing that ever happened to an engine in my hands was the throwing of all four of the drivers of the 188, on the night of February 10, 1883. It was about 9:45 in the evening, between Midway and Iowa City. I was pulling passenger No. I, and we were running up close to sixty miles an hour. Something smashed; I thought it was the siderod under me, and jumped down off the seat to the floor of the cab. The rear of the engine was sagging down till the ashpan was on the ground, its front end carried by the forward truck, and the train was crowding us along from the rear by its momentum, John Neis- wanger, the fireman, yelling like mad to me to stop her. It was 1,120 feet from the first mark on the ground to the point where the engine stopped. Jim Ray- ner was conductor. He came up to see what was the matter. I told him a driver was gone on my side, and supposed that was all there was to it. Later I found that, except the wheels of the forward truck, there wasn't a wheel under her. Both drivers were gone on both sides. It all happened so quickly that I don't know which one went first, or the order in which they went, or whether
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they all went at once. The train held the track and not a soul was hurt. We sent in a messenger to Iowa City, and the construction train came out, bringing with it a pair of pony trucks that they used about the roundhouse there. The rear end of the engine was jacked up and this pony put under it, and the wheels were gathered up and in this way the cripple was taken to the hospital. Drivers, ec- centrics, links, all went in the wreck; the right cylinder head was knocked in and the left main rod was broken in the center, but all these things were soon and easily mended, and the 188 had years of good service in her after that.
I had the first run of the famous Silver engine, the America, and Al Lund fired for me. Grant, her builder, rode with us, and the cab and tender were filled with other persons, both gentlemen and ladies. They were members of a big party of railroad people who came out here on that occasion. The America ran only to Council Bluffs, her first trip a sort of advertisement of the road, but later she was in the passenger service. Jack Williams, now of Stuart, ran her for years on the west end.
If there were room for it a good many old memories of the old engineers of those first days might be aroused. There was Johnny Buswell, whom I men- tioned; and Doc Weatherby, who came off the Little Miami and who started in by firing for A. Kimball's brother, Moody Kimball; and there was Moody Kim- ball, a natural clown for fun, always at some joke or prank, and as different from A. K. as one man could be from another ; and John Mousley, who died here in Rock Island last holidays, engineer of the 33, and the John A. Dix, and later foreman at Brooklyn for years following 1870; and there was J. E. Morrill, who ran the A. C. Flagg, the 80, and the McPherson, which the company got in the days of the war, and who succeeded Twombley as master mechanic at Daven- port when Twombley went to Chicago as general master mechanic; and there was Mose Hobbs, who ran the John A. Dix and the A. C. Flagg and the Iowa City-a generous man to anybody in need; and John H. Williams-Jack, we called him-who was running a stationary engine at Iowa City when I first knew him, and who went firing on the John A. Dix for Mose Hobbs, and later became her engineer-a fine man whom everybody on the road liked; and Tom Holmes, who fired and ran an engine here for years, now in partnership with Jack Wil- liams at Stuart in the implement business; and from these I might go on and take up others-Frank Bliss and George Weed and 'Dite Smith, yardmaster, and so on to the end of a long chapter, but it would take me more than one day to tell it. Very dear to me are the memories of some of those men, pioneers in the railroad history of the country west of the Mississippi, but I am not so sure that everybody else is as much interested in them as I am.
CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE & ST. PAUL RAILROAD.
The Davenport & St. Paul Railroad was organized in 1868 and the road was completed in 1870 from Davenport through the county. Meeting with financial difficulties in 1874, the road was placed in the hands of a receiver, at which time
Since writing this account Mr. Davis and G. B. Swan have been put on the pension list of the Rock Island system and have retired. Mr. Davis draws the road's largest pension with one exception, that awarded Ex-Supt. H. F. Royce.
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it was completed to Fayette, Iowa, and a branch from Eldridge to Maquoketa, about 160 miles of road. August 1, 1880, it passed under the control of and is now operated by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company. The Davenport & St. Paul road was organized by local capital. In 1894 Frank P. Blair secured control of a charter granted twenty-two years previously and four years later succeeded in financing and promoting the Davenport, Rock Island & Northwestern Railroad & Bridge Company. A road was constructed from Daven- port to Clinton, Iowa, and the bridge was built and thrown open for traffic Jan- uary I, 1900. In 1901 the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and the Chicago, Mil- waukee & St. Paul railways purchased this line, including the bridge, under a joint ninety-nine year lease. This gave the main line of the Burlington between St. Paul and St. Louis access to this city and also brought about the construction of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul cut-off, which brings through Davenport the main line of that road between Chicago and Kansas City.
THE CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & QUINCY RAILROAD.
In 1872 the Rockford, Rock Island & St. Louis Railroad was constructed into Rock Island and within a few years became the property of the Chicago, Burling- ton & Quincy. This road enters the city from the Illinois side of the river by the lower bridge, and entering the Y on this side, backs its passenger trains a mile east to the depot. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul road is compelled to go through the same performance with its west-bound trains to reach its depot in Davenport, which is located on Front street, at the foot of Perry, and is also shared by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy road.
THE IOWA & ILLINOIS INTERURBAN RAILWAY.
In 1904 the first interurban railway leading into Davenport was completed, connecting it with Clinton, and is now known as the Iowa, & Illinois Interurban Railway, its depot being located at 217 Brady street.
SOME PUBLIC SCHOOL BUILDINGS
.. J
CHAPTER XXXV.
EDUCATION.
THE FOUNDATION LAID BY EARLY STATESMEN-A LOOK AHEAD THE BEGINNINGS OF SCHOOLS IN IOWA-THOSE WHO TAUGHT SCHOOL IN DAVENPORT IN THE THIRTIES-MANY YEARS OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS-ARRIVAL OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL IN THE FIFTIES-LATTER DAY SCHOOLS-MAGNIFICENT HIGH SCHOOL-THE SPECIAL BRANCHES-SCHOOLS OF HIGHER EDUCATION-BIOGRAPHY OF J. B. YOUNG.
Nowhere in the United States were public educational foundations laid with more breadth and care than in Iowa. From the days of the first message of Governor Lucas, the first of the territorial governors, careful provision was made for the instruction of Iowa youth and their training for good citizenship. The foundations long preceded the superstructure. In an article upon the topic, "Institutional Beginnings," in the Annals of Iowa, July, 1898, Prof. Jesse Macy of the chair of history in Grinnell college, treats of this feature of Iowa educa- tional history :
"As an instance of discrepancy between statutes and history the early school laws may be given. If you ask an early settler in Iowa when this state intro- duced public schools, he will tell you that the public school system did not become thoroughly established till about 1854 or 1855. But were there not schools ear- lier than that? Yes, but they were private schools; or they were partly private and partly public. In each neighborhood, as soon as there were enough children of school age a meeting of the citizens was called, a place and plan for a school- house determined upon, a day set for building and at the appointed time they all came out and built. Then they hired a teacher and kept up the school as best they could. From the earliest territorial statutes one would infer that schools were then established in Iowa free to all white persons between the ages of four and twenty-one. Counties were organized into districts on petition of a majority in the proposed district. School districts were elaborately officered with seven officials for each district, and there were minute provisions for the management of schools. According to the statutes of Iowa, the territory and afterward the state was abundantly and thoroughly supplied with the privileges of free public
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schools for all white children. The statutes are abundant and, as they are closely examined, one is convinced that they are not merely formal acts which had made their way into the records and been forgotten. They are real, living laws, pre- pared with great care, and revised and made more elaborate at each session of the legislature. Yet, if you turn from those records and study the actual school system of the territory and the state, you will find that the free school was a plant of slow growth; that for years there were no free schools; and the great body of our citizens are under the impression that our public school system dates back only to about 1854.
WERE PLANNING AHEAD.
"Professor T. S. Parvin, who was the first man appointed to the superinten- dency of public instruction in Iowa, states that those early law-makers knew quite well, at the time they framed their laws, that there were no public schools, and could not be in the greater part of the state but they expected to have the schools sometime, and they believed that the passing of good school laws would have the effect of encouraging immigration. These statutes expressed a longing of the people for a time when there would be seven persons living near enough together on these prairies fitted to hold school offices and manage a public school in their various neighborhoods. In the meantime such statutes could be made immediately available for purposes of advertisement in the East, and thus assist in bringing about the state of society desired."
The earliest schools in Iowa were supported by the contributions and tuition of the pioneer settlers. The first school taught within the present limits of Iowa was presided over by Berryman Jennings, who opened a school in October, 1830, at what is now known as Nashville, Lee county. At this time Iowa was a por- tion of Michigan territory. Mr. Jennings' school lasted through November and December and was held in a building which he describes: "This schoolroom was like all other buildings in the new country, a log cabin built of round logs or poles notched close and mudded for comfort; logs cut out for doors and windows, also fireplaces. The jamb back of the fireplace was of packed dry dirt, the chimney topped out with sticks and mud."
It was strange that the second school opened in the state, was within a few miles of the Jennings school. It was taught by I. K. Robinson and dated from December 1, 1830, but two months after the pioneer pedagogue rang his bell at Nashville.
FIRST LADY TEACHER.
The honor of being the first lady teacher in Iowa is held by Mrs. Rebecca Palmer, who taught school near Fort Madison in the winter of 1834 and 1835. The first schoolhouse proper, also a log building, was erected in December, 1833, at Burlington, by W. R. Ross, the postmaster of the county. While Davenport has no place in these first paragraphs of the educational history of the state early provision was made for the instruction of the small citizens. The earliest school in all this section was the one maintained by the officers at Fort Armstrong, of which mention is made by Caleb Atwater in his work dated 1829.
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January, 1838, when Davenport was but two years old, the territorial legisla- ture passed an act to incorporate the Davenport Manual Labor college. "The object," the act says, "shall be the promotion of the general interests of education, and to qualify young men to engage in the several employments of society and to discharge honorably and usefully the various duties of life." Of this institution of high-sounding title and wide range of subjects the historian of "Davenport Past and Present," says: "This scheme was a fine one, but it never amounted to anything for two reasons-lack of students and want of money." But the effort was commendable and is worthy of renewal at the present time.
THE FIRST DAVENPORT TEACHER.
The honor of teaching the first private school has been accorded to many dif- ferent teachers by local historians and those who have written reminiscences. Elsewhere in this work it goes to Rev. Michael Hummer, and on good authority, but there are those who should be competent to settle the matter who say other- wise. In his address at the dedication of the Davenport Free Public library, May II, 1904, Judge John F. Dillon said: "The earliest school was kept in a small log cabin near the river below Western avenue by the aged father of Alexander W. McGregor." C. H. Eldridge, who was a schoolboy in Davenport in those days, gave an address before the historical section of the Davenport Academy of Sci- ences years ago, and his signed notes, still preserved, have these entries: "Miss Marianna Hall, a niece of Dr. Hall, opened a school, the first one in town, in the summer of 1838, in a little, about twelve by fourteen log house, originally built for a blacksmith shop, without any floor but mother earth, two windows, with one slab door and a wooden latch. This was maintained about one term; but few scholars,-I think Lafayette Franks, Sarah Franks, who afterward married Samuel Leonard, brother of our sheriff, Henry Colton, two daughters of Powers, up the river, a nephew of Walter Kelly, I forget his name, three children of Nel- son Powers, who kept the hotel, Patrick Fox, and one of Judge Cook's sons. This house was near where Davies & Sons' saw mill is now situated. Some of Dr. Hall's younger sons attended."
To continue Mr. Eldridge's notes: "The next school was opened by Rev. Michael Hummer, better known as Parson Hummer, in a frame building on the corner of the alley east side of Ripley street, between First and Second streets, in the fall of 1838 and ran through until the summer of 1839. There were J. M. Parker of our city, Bailey Davenport, ex-mayor of Rock Island, Frank Bennett, editor of Clinton, Henry Colton, Miss Frances Peck, Clarence Whiting, now of California, Samuel K. Barkley, his sister, two Zeigler boys, and one of the Mc- Gregor boys.
"The next school in order was opened by Moses Parmele, whose several sons are well known citizens. This school was opened up stairs in a front room of a two story house on Front street near Schricker & Mueller's mill, the family living down stairs and back. This was in the summer of 1839, I think. Here were Henry Colton and a younger brother, the Parmele boys, Sarah Franks, Frances Peck, a girl whose name was Fudge, her father being afterward killed by an explosion at Burrows' steam mill, Jack Dillon, since J. F. Dillon, his brother
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Timothy who was drowned, the Ziegler boys, Whiting's two boys, the Powers girls.
PERE PELAMOURGUES' SCHOOL.
"About this time Father Pelamourgues opened a school in the old brick church which took off about a dozen of the children. The next school, I think was by S. W. Cheever, a young man from the New England states. He came west for his health. Here was a good school of at least thirty by this time. He was one of the most efficient teachers in the city. After Cheever came John Tice, now Professor Tice of St. Louis, without exaggeration the laziest man that ever struck Davenport. These two schools were in the upper part of a frame building on the northeast corner of Perry and Front streets. Next came J. Atkinson, a splendid scholar, who had a school in a frame building about where the Kerker grocery is now. This was a very large school, having at least forty scholars.
"Next came Dr. Brown, in an old frame building on the west side of Main between Fourth and Fifth streets. And after him came C. G. Blood, present police justice, in the same building. These were fair schools, but the boys broke both up before the term ended.
"About this time a Miss Bergen opened a small school which after two or three years became a girls' school only, termed a young ladies' seminary. Next in order was the academy with James Thorington as principal and W. T. Campbell as assistant. This opened in a frame building yet standing on the northeast corner of Fourth and Harrison. This was kept up for several years and here Jack Dillon graduated, for I believe he did not go to school afterward. Among the scholars I can remember John VanPatten, of VanPatten & Marks, 'Pud,' (M. M.,) Price, United States consul at Marseilles, Ed. Coombs, an editor in Boston, Phil VanPatten, a member of the Arkansas legislature, an ardent abolitionist, but a bitter secessionist during the war, Will Coates, now editor at Freeport, Ills. The remainder of the schools can be found in the files of the old Gazette."
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