History of Jackson County, Iowa; Volume I, Part 18

Author: Ellis, James Whitcomb, 1848-; Clarke, S. J., publishing company
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 730

USA > Iowa > Jackson County > History of Jackson County, Iowa; Volume I > Part 18

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There is a road running north and south, crossing the road running east and west, making what is known as four corners. On the southwest corner stood the schoolhouse. The teacher, Miss Fanny Keen, noticed the storm coming and dismissed the school; she and the children reached places of safety before the storm in its onward march of death and destruction, struck the building, literally blowing it all to pieces, even a part of the stone foundation being blown away.

Just across to the north and east was located the beautiful cemetery, and be- fore the storm it was the pride of the people of Delmar. Many fine monuments had been erected to the memory of dear ones gone. This beautiful cemetery lay right in the track of the storm, and today hardly a gravestone is left standing. Some of the larger ones that would weigh from three to four tons are blown over and damaged and a number of smaller ones are blown off near the ground and litter of all kinds, mud and fence posts and wire and boards are scattered all over the once beautiful ground.

It seems miraculous that the town escaped destruction, for it lay in the track of the storm as it came from the southwest and moving in a northeasterly direction, but about one mile west of Delmar the storm struck into the wagon road, running east, and followed it for over a mile and just missed the town.

E. Crouch, who lives in the south edge of town, saw the storm approaching, and said he could see it coming for fully a half hour. It seemed to be moving quite slowly. His house escaped, but the home of his daughter, some few rods south, was blown away. Many narrow escapes are reported. At the home of Charles Goodall the family took refuge in the cellar. Just a moment before the storm struck the house carrying it away completely, Mr. Goodall got his family in between the wall and furnace and escaped without harm, but where he first took refuge, a big rock was blown right on the spot and upon the top of the rock a big hog was dropped by the wind. If they had not moved just when they did they.all would have been killed outright.

Beyond Delmar eastward and in the vicinity of Quigley and Charlotte there was more disaster.

Martin Hines, an old man who lived with his son, Michael, two and one-half miles northwest of Charlotte, was in the barn when the storm struck. He was found dead in the debris. Every building on the place was utterly demolished. Mr. Hines owned a fine herd of sheep and all were either killed or crippled.

John Clark lives three miles from Charlotte, and here Frances Solan, the eight year old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Solan, met her death. She had been at school, but the teacher saw the storm approaching and dismissed the pupils. The little Solan girl and her teacher had just reached the home of Mr. Clark when the storm struck them. With Mr. Clark's family they started for the creek near by, but before they reached a place of safety, the wind caught up the little girl and threw her violently to the ground. The others could do nothing to save her and barely escaped with their lives. The house and other buildings were utterly torn to pieces and five horses were blown into the cellar.

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Jay Breen, aged eight years, and Maggie Malony, aged twenty-six, were killed at the residence of Mike Malony, grandfather of Breen and father of the lat- ter. Their bodies were found in the field after the storm. Nothing whatever remains of the Malony home.

The destruction was terrible at the home of H. C. Hansen, one of the wealthi- est men in the county. His two barns, one fifty-two by one hundred and twelve, and another fifty-six by eighty were utterly demolished with their contents, among which was one hundred and eighty tons of hay. His house containing seventeen rooms was badly wrecked and is almost a total loss. He had lots of stock nearly all of which was killed or badly injured. Out of three hundred and seventy head of hogs and pigs, only a few remain. His loss is estimated at ten thousand dollars, with two thousand five hundred dollars insurance.

The loss of Michael Hines and John Clark will amount to over five thousand dollars each.

In the vicinity of Browns and Preston the storm was furious; stock, dead and dying, are scattered through the fields and all along the path of the storm and the amount of primary loss in this vicinity is believed to reach fully forty thou- sand dollars.

The following is a list of farmers, all stock, fences and crops: M. Ditterman, buildings ; J. Harty, large barn ; J. Burgan, all buildings ; J. Borman, barn ; Thos. McDonald, all buildings; Nwen, Vurwin, all buildings; Ed Cain, barn; Wm. Brown, H. D. Bascom, C. Yadoff, H. Bush, L. Schrader, all buildings; F. Hun- ter, barn; F. T. Elliott, barn; Wm. Dalton, barn gone and house badly damaged : Charles Flory, wife and three children, who lived on the Bush place, were killed outright and the bodies were brought into town for burial. Mrs. Kerwin re- ceived injuries from flying debris, but is not dangerous. The two men injured at H. L. Bascom's are in a serious condition. All of the above places are from one to five miles from Preston. South of Browns about three miles distant, M. Hines was killed, all his buildings being destroyed. Mayor Bartholomew of Preston has organized for relief work. Immense trees were torn out by the roots and others completely stripped of bark. Little or no rain fell along the wind's path.

South of Miles some fine farm properties escaped destruction by the cyclone bounding over them. The fine farm buildings of Lew Shader were completely wrecked and his tenant, Mark Wilkins, met with a loss of about all he had. J. Taplin, also had sheds, windmill and trees blown down. The A. G. Bertelsen's homestead was jumped, only the larger trees being taken, but the tenant house on the east farm was moved on its foundation and the windmill taken. Rev. N. A. Kimball's barn was blown down. The storm cloud had now reached the Jackson county line for the first time in its course. Robt. Walker lost a barn and windmill and sustained other slight damages. John Kunau lost a windmill and a shed or two. Andrew Cook had two windmills ruined and some of his buildings slightly damaged. S. N. Howard's outbuildings were damaged but not carried away. Wilson Brothers' farm was visited long enough to sweep away a windmill, unroof a barn and slightly damage other buildings. A few boards were ripped off some of the buildings on the Jerry Kuhl farm, but no serious damage done. At the Thos. Petersen place all of the buildings on both sides of the road, except the house, were badly wrecked, some of them being tipped over, others turned around and still others rent asunder. The barns and sheds on the John Rhoe farm, adjoining Robt. Walker's place, were all blown down and the chimney torn off his house.

Back of the bluff the home of Dan Callaghan presents a sad sight, but one that soon becomes familiar if one follows the wake of the storm. His house was a complete wreck-crushed as if it were an eggshell, his furniture and other con- tents of the building either carried away or ruined and his fences and outbuild- ings destroyed. The family sought refuge in the cellar and none of them were

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injured. A. Richardson had just erected a windmill tower, which went with the buildings, and he was compelled to fly to the cellar to save his life.

On Robt. McLaughlin's farm, now occupied by John Kramer, the sheds and outbuildings were wrecked and most of the shingles torn off the house. Hughy Doyle lost his windmill, sheds, and the roof from his hog pen. The old Doyle homestead at the turn of the road is a complete wreck, the house, barns and fences being crushed flat. The fine buildings on the Mathias Gohlman's farm are completely ruined, with the exception of the stone residence, the stripping of the shingles being about the only damage done to that. The large barns, sheds, corn cribs, etc., were torn asunder and scattered about the premises. Mr. Mat- thews, who has the farm rented, had a lot of hogs and calves killed and sustained other losses.

The residence and other buildings on John B. Doyle's farm (formerly the old Henningsen place) were reduced to kindling wood and the contents of the house either carried away or completely ruined. Here and at the old Doyle home- stead massive oak trees were torn and twisted off as if they had been but twigs, and the bedding, clothing and carpets, torn to shreds, can be seen hanging to the trees and brush. Across the road from Mr. Doyle's Jerry Petersen's large barn was completely unroofed and a portion of it sent crashing through the roof of the house. A large barn on Mrs. Charles Dohlman's farm was scattered about the premises and considerable damage done to the other buildings and sheds. She also had a good horse killed. This was the first place in this corner of Jackson county struck by the storm. The storm cloud crossed the Mississippi and drew the water up like spouting geysers and a steamer near it, the "Saturn," was almost capsized. In Illinois it cut the same swathe as in Iowa, but killed many more people.

WINDLETS.

The photograph of Edward Griggs and wife was picked up ten miles east of the Mississippi in Illinois. It is supposed to have blown from some house south of Preston.

Marve Finton received a three thousand dollar land deed Monday that had been picked up in Illinois. It was among the papers in his house when struck by the storm.

A one thousand five hundred dollar stallion belonging to M. Gohlman of Ber- lin township, was killed by the storm on the Filter farm where the groom sought refuge. Had the man remained in the road where he was when the cloud was coming, he would have received no injury.

Since so many farmers lost valuable papers in the storm, and some too that should have been recorded, it behooves others to take heed and see that valuable papers are on record.

The aged Mrs. Joseph Benjamin was visiting L. H. Shrigley and Charles Leach's people in Maquoketa when her farmhouse near Delmar was destroyed. She lost all her personal effects, even to forty-one dollars in cash she left in the house. It is said that many farmers lost money, of which they can find no trace.

The property loss in Clinton county is placed at three hundred thousand dol- lars to four hundred thousand dollars and so very little tornado insurance was carried that the loss in most cases is total.

It is said that cattle and horses in some places fell dead from fright.

An eyewitness near Delmar says, that while he was driving rapidly he noticed in one place a windmill and nearby a drove of cattle. The cattle became terrified by the roar of the elements and proceeded to bellow wildly and run in a circle. It was an awful sight. In the twinkling of an eye the tornado struck that very spot and in another twinkling of the eye the place was barren, the windmill and the cattle had been blown away or blown to pieces. In one place in the track of the storm nearly a hundred head of dead cattle were found. Horses, cattle and hogs had their legs broken and were shot to place them out of suffering.

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Charles Leach's farm buildings, near Delmar, were destroyed so far as the barns were concerned, but the house was spared.

The relief work for Clinton county's cyclone sufferers is being earnestly car- ried on. Clinton, Lyons, Sabula, Miles, Preston, Delmar, Maquoketa, De Witt, and many farmers are making generous contributions to those known to need help and it now amounts to a good many hundred dollars and a goodly quantity of other supplies. The loss has been enormous and can never be made up, but every little given will help alleviate suffering and want.

THE DEAD-ALL CLINTON COUNTY PEOPLE.

Near Delmar :- William Grieme, Adam Hildebrandt, Soren Clemmensen, Obadiah Allison. Between Delmar and Preston: Maggie Maloney, Jay Breen, Martin Hynes, Frances Solan. Near Preston : Charles Flory, wife and children.

THE MILITARY HISTORY OF JACKSON COUNTY. BY HARVEY REID.

(Author of "The Early Military History of Iowa"-State Soldiers' Roster Series. )

The military history of Jackson county may be said to have begun with its earliest settlement. Its first pioneers mostly came from or through the Galena lead mining region, and a large proportion of them had had the military expe- rience afforded by the Black Hawk war, whose successful close had led to the treaty by which the lands west of the Mississippi were opened for occupation. Through the rosters published by the State of Illinois,* we are able to identify nearly if not quite all of those enrolled in Illinois regiments who were among the early settlers of Jackson county.

A few companies were enrolled under Colonel Henry Dodge in the lead mines of what was then Michigan territory, now Wisconsin, whose rosters have not been preserved. Among them was William A. Warren, one of the most prominent of the pioneers of Bellevue, who became a member of Captain John Jameson's company, called out in the preliminary outbreak in 1831.

Other Jackson county men whose names appear on the Illinois rosters are the following :

"Captain Milton M. Maughs, of Colonel James M. Strode's Twenty-seventh Regiment of Illinois Militia, and John D. Bell, James Beatty and John Stukey, of Captain Maughs' company, settled in Bellevue. (Maughs was the first physician in Bellevue. Bell gave that town its original name, Bellview.)

"Enoch Nevill, of Captain Nicholas Dowling's company of artillery, was an early settler of Fairfield township. He was badly wounded at the battle of Bad Axe.

"Charles Bilto and William Dyas, of Bellevue, were members of Captain Benj. J. Aldenrath's company of the Twenty-seventh Militia. Mr. Bilto was dis- charged from the company and afterwards enrolled in Captain Jonathan Craig's company of the same regiment.

"Captain H. Hezekiah Gear, who commanded a company in the Twenty-seventh Militia, became a resident of Tete des Morts township.

"Thomas Graham, of Bellevue, and James McCabe, of Sabula, were in Cap- tain Jonathan Craig's company.

"Samuel Huling, of Maquoketa township, was a member of Captain L. P. Bausburgh's company of the Twenty-seventh Militia.

"John G. Nichols, of Andrew, was in Captain David W. Barnes' company of Major Isaiah Stillman's Battalion. Mr. Nichols was sheriff of Jackson county in 1846, removed to California in 1849, and was the second mayor of the city of Los Angeles under state government in 1851.

* Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War. By Adjutant-General Isaac H. Elliott, Springfield, 1882.

THOMAS COX 1787 -1844 PIONEER LAW MAKER

PIONEER MONUMENT ERECTED TO HONOR COLONEL THOMAS COX

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"Colonel Thomas Cox, of Maquoketa township, member of five sessions of the Territorial assembly, who had served in the War of 1812, and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Illinois militia, served in the Black Hawk war as an en- listed man in Major W. L. D. Ewing's Spy Battalion in General J. D. Henry's command.

"William Y. Forster, of Maquoketa township, was a private in Captain Alex- ander Bailey's company of Colonel Isaac R. Moore's regiment of Mounted Gunmen. "Rev. J. Scott Kirkpatrick, of Bellevue, member of the Iowa Constitutional Convention of 1844, and a member of the Third and Fourth Territorial Councils, 1840 and 1841, was in Captain James Craig's company, Colonel Dodge's command.

"James L. Kirkpatrick, of Bellevue, was First Lieutenant in Captain Enoch Duncan's company of Dodge's command. He had also served in a company of Galena rangers, called out in 1827, and placed under General Dodge to quell a threatened uprising by the Winnebago Indians on the Wisconsin River. Other members of Duncan's company who settled in Jackson county, were Sergeant John Foley (member of Wisconsin Territorial Council, 1836, 1837, and Iowa Territorial House, 1840), William Jonas, Thomas Sublett and William Vance, of Bellevue, and Vincent K. Smith, of Smith's Ferry, Tete des Morts township.

"Hastings Sandridge and Joshua Seamands, of Fairfield township, served in Captain Bennett Nowlin's Sangamon county company of Mounted Volunteers, in Colonel James Collins'* Fourth Regiment of General James D. Henry's brigade.

"Sergeant Nathan Said and Corporal Jesse Said, of Farmers Creek township, were in Captain Reuben Brown's Sangamon county company of Colonel Collins' regiment. Jesse Said also had earlier service in Captain L. W. Goodan's company under General Whitesides."*

Soldiers of the War of 1812 had advanced too greatly in age to form a large element among the settlers, but representatives of that war were not lacking among those who came to Jackson county. Besides Colonel Thomas Cox, already mentioned, who had served in a company of scouts against the Indians on Peoria Lake in October, 1812, we can name the following :

William D. Stevens, of La Motte, who was badly wounded at the battle of Lundy's Lane, Canada, under Winfield Scott.

William Ellis,t a native of Virginia, where he was born in 1794, but whose parents moved to Kentucky in 1800. He enlisted in a company of Kentucky Rifles which formed part of General Jackson's force at the battle of New Orleans. He became a citizen of Iowa territory in 1846, settling as a farmer in Farmers Creek township, but afterwards moved to Sigourney, Iowa, and died there in 1863.

Enoch Long, of Sabula, well known as a lumber manufacturer there, a native of New Hampshire, served on the Niagara frontier in the fall of 1813 in a regi- ment of New York militia. He was a pioneer of Alton, Illinois, in 1820, where in the riots of 1837 he was captain of the little force of citizens who defended E. P. Lovejoy when that antislavery martyr was killed. He was one of the earliest ad- venturers in the Galena lead mines in 1826, and lived in the city of Galena a good many years. He died at Sabula in 1881, at the age of ninety-one. He was a brother of the distinguished army engineer and explorer, Colonel Stephen H. Long, who discovered Long's Peak, in the Rocky Mountains.}

* Colonel Collins, then a resident of White Oak Springs, Wisconsin, near Galena, who was visiting his brother-in-law, Col. Thomas Cox at the time of the Bellevue War, April I, 1840, joined the sheriff's posse, and was wounded in the affray at Brown's hotel.

* Reid's Early Military History of Iowa (in manuscript).

t Uncle of Hon. James W. Ellis, editor of this volume.

¿ Reid's Sketch of Enoch Long. Chicago Hist. Soc. 1882.

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William Reed, born in 1792 of Scotch parents within four miles of the Natural Bridge in Virginia, was taken to Mercer county, Pennsylvania, while a child, and enlisted there for the War of 1812. Was in the battle of Chippeway and other operations about Lake Erie, and was discharged in the fall of 1813. He removed from Pennsylvania to Jackson county, Iowa, in the summer of 1842, and settled in Fairfield township, at the mouth of Rock Creek. He returned to Pennsylvania in 1857 and died there in 1864. His sons, Rev. William E. Reed and Hugh M. Reed, were long time residents of Fairfield township.

Moses Clary, a Vermont soldier in the War of 1812, is buried in Mt. Hope cemetery at Maquoketa.

Anthony Simmons and Burrill Viall, former residents of Union township, veterans of the same conflict are buried in Evergreen cemetery, but we have no knowledge of the details of their service.

A notable colony of early pioneers of Jackson county were refugees of what became known on the American side of the border as the Canadian Patriot War. Among those who found their way to Maquoketa and vicinity in 1839 or a few years later, were William Current and Mahlon Brookfield, who assisted William Lyon Mackenzie to escape across the Niagara River after his fiasco at Toronto in December, 1837.

Anson H. Wilson, Jesse Wilson and Ira Stimson, who gave assistance to an ill-advised raid under Colonel Morreau in June, 1838.

Ebenezer Wilcox, who was confined in a jail for several months after hav- ing been taken prisoner by the British ; Thomas Darling, who was named by Mac- kenzie as a member of his provisional government; and they were joined in 1843, by General Samuel Chandler, who had been one of the officers in Morreau's raid in 1838. He was captured by the British, tried, and sentenced to be hung. At the last moment came a reprieve and a commutation of sentence to banishment for life to Van Dieman's Land. After four years' captivity he made his escape on an American whaler, rejoined his family in western New York, and brought them to Iowa Territory, to form part of the Jackson county colony most of whom were relatives or old neighbors.

Other sympathizers who formed part of the same colony (all being from the Niagara peninsula, Upper Canada), were Bartholomew .Corwin, Ephraim Ells- worth, Samuel Durant, Dorson Baldwin, Samuel Darling, James Murphy and James Canfield, who settled in Van Buren, Iowa, and Union townships, and Joseph Current and Mark Current of Maquoketa. Hon. William Morden of Ful- ton, another Canadian radical, left that country a few years before the outbreak and settled in Sandusky, Ohio, from whence he came to Jackson county in 1836. *

THE TERRITORIAL MILITIA.

At the first session of the Territorial Assembly of Iowa which met at Bur- lington in December, 1838, an act was passed providing for the organization of a territorial militia, consisting of all able bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. The territory was divided into three military divisions over each of which was placed an officer with the rank of major general. Each division should consist of two brigades ; a brigade of not less than two nor more than five regiments ; a regiment might be of five companies only, or it might be as many as eight, and two additional companies of light infantry or riflemen. A company should have at least thirty men exclusive of commissioned officers, or might have not over one hundred.

The Third, or northern division included the counties of Clinton, Jackson, Jones, Dubuque, Delaware, Clayton and Fayette, and as major general of that division, Governor Lucas appointed Warner Lewis of Dubuque.

* Adapted from Reid's Early Military History of Iowa (in manuscript).

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HISTORY OF JACKSON COUNTY

To the First Brigade was assigned the counties of Jackson, Clinton and Jones. The First Regiment of that brigade organized five companies from Jackson county and two from Clinton. Clinton county being mostly covered with prairies was regarded in 1839 as practically a desert, and contained few inhabitants as com- pared with the well timbered county of Jackson.

The second regiment of the First Brigade, Third Division, succeeded in or- ganizing three companies only in Jones county. The first appointee as brigadier general of the First Brigade, Third Division, was George Cubbage, whose nomi- nal residence was at Bellview (as it was then spelled), Jackson county.

He was a native of Dover, State of Delaware, who had come to the Galena lead mines about 1827. He was clerk for Henry Gratiot, Indian agent, at the be- ginning of the Black Hawk war, and was in extreme peril for several days as a prisoner in the hands of Black Hawk. He was one of those who attempted to occupy the Dubuque lead mines in 1832 but were driven out by the United States troops. He taught the first school in northern Iowa at Dubuque in 1834.

The nomination of General Cubbage as brigadier general was rejected by the territorial council on the ground that he had no actual residence within the brigade district. As his successor, Governor Lucas appointed John G. McDonald, also a Jackson county man. General McDonald was a surveyor who, as chief assistant to Colonel Thomas Cox, had laid out the south tier of townships in the county and lived upon a claim in Maquoketa township adjoining that of Colonel Cox. He was a Scotchman, born in 1798, who had come to Indiana with his parents when quite young, and had been appointed from that state third lieutenant in Captain Jesse B. Browne's Company of Major Henry Dodge's Battalion, United States Rangers, July, 1832. He held in Jackson county the offices of surveyor, clerk of court and recorder. Was doorkeeper of the lower house, Iowa territorial assembly when commissioned brigadier general. He was one of the sheriff's posse in the "Belle- vue War," and was twice wounded. He died in California in 1851, a few months after his arrival there.

Major John How received the appointment of brigade inspector in October, 1840. We have been unable to trace any of his personal history except that he was trustee in the town of Bellview in 1843.

The first colonel of the First, or Jackson county, Regiment was John H. Rose, of Bellview, who was clerk of the District Court, 1838 to 1840. In the latter year he removed to Galena, Illinois, and thus vacated his military office.

The successor of Colonel Rose was Anson Harrington, also a prominent citi- zen of Bellview, who held the office of probate judge of the county 1840-42. How long he retained his colonel's commission the records do not disclose. Indeed there are no military records in the state archives, from early in the administration of Territorial Governor John Chambers until sometime after the state was admitted. The very efficient Adjutant General Verplanck Van Antwerp, was succeeded in 1841 by General O. H. W. Stull, who must have taken pains to destroy all the records and papers pertaining to the territorial militia that came into his hands.

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History of Jackson County, Iowa; Volume I, Part 18

Author: Ellis, James Whitcomb, 1848-; Clarke, S. J., publishing company Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Chicago, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 730

Author: Ellis, James Whitcomb, 1848-; Clarke, S. J., publishing company
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 730