USA > Iowa > Pottawattamie County > History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa. Containing a history from the earliest settlement to the present time biographical sketches; portraits of some of the early settlers, prominent men, etc. > Part 22
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It is here stated upon the authority of Mr. Bloomer, whose personal knowledge of the affairs of the county is second to no citizen. either old or young, that of the 60,000 aeres of swamp lands allotted to Pottawattamie County, but a small portion went to the uses for which it was originally set apart by the United States, but that the railroad company in all received from the same source the ag- gregate of about $41.406.
The annual city election of 1860 was held on Monday, March 12. Col. Babbitt was chosen Mayor; T. P. Treynor succeeded him- self as City Recorder, and Perry Smithi was eleeted Marshal. The Aldermen were J. B. Lewis, John Jones, Milton Rogers, W. L. Biggs, Addison Cochran and D. W. Carpen- ter. Judge Douglass was chosen President of the School Board at the annual school elec- tion that year. John B. Beers, an old and respected citizen of Council Bluff's, died on the 3d of March, leaving a widow, one daugh- ter and a step-son. The widow subsequently became Mrs. D. W. Crawford; the daughter married a popular young business man, M. F. Rohrer: and the step-son is Phil Armour, the Postmaster, appointed in 1SS2.
An industry that has since expanded into . mammoth proportions was begun here in the winter of 1859, and carried on through the available season of the carly part of 1860. It was that of packing pork. No regular es- tablishment was begun until the fall of 1860. when John W. Ross, who afterward kept the Ogden House, and died at Marshall. Texas. erected his brick pork house on the north of Buckingham street, and west of Indian Creek, and which forms a part of the present Stewart Packing House.
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IHISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
CHAPTER XXVIII .*
COUNCIL BLUFFS-KIDNAPING OF NEGROES-ESCAPE OF PRISONERS - IIANGING OF MCGUIRE- MILLER THE HORSE-THIEF LYNCHED-STATE BANK ORGANIZED-IRON FOUNDRY ES- TABLISHED - LITTLE GIANT AND WIDE-AWAKE CLUBS - BOARDS OF SUPERVISORS-TURNER'S DEFALCATION-LATTER-DAY SAINTS -M. E. CONFERENCE-MILITARY MATTERS.
THREE negroes, one of them John William- son and another a woman, were kidnaped south of this city, on the 29th of September, 1860, and hurriedly carried off into Missouri for the purpose of being sold into slavery. The occurrence being in the midst of an active and excited political campaign, in which the slavery question itself figured, occasioned an intense feeling of indignation, even among those who were not in sympathy with the party then strenuously opposing slavery extension. Dr. Craig, who was then Sheriff, and City Mar- shal Perry Smith, started after the kidnapers, and succeeded in getting Williamson back, but the others did not regain their liberty until some time afterward, when Mr. Blanchard and Mr. Gaston, well-known anti-slavery men of Tabor, succeeded in tracing them and find- ing and liberating them in Missouri. There were three of the gang of kidnapers, noted and desperate characters, and all were arrested. Two of them escaped. One by the name of Hurd was surrendered to the Governor of Iowa, on a requisition and, brought to Council Bluffs, and having had his case continued, made his es- cape during the delay, and none of the parties were ever brought to justice for the offense.
The disposition to inflict summary punish- ment, according to the code of Judge Lynch, had not yet finally disappeared at this date. A notorious character, by the name of Philip McGuire, at this time infested the city. His body was found hanging from the limb of a
tree on the hill near Fairview Cemetery, on the morning of the 16th of October. He was labeled " Hung for all kinds of all rascality." He was confined in the cottonwood jail for stealing, when taken out by the vigilantes and hung as just stated. No clew seemed ever to have been gained of the perpetrators of this hanging. A man by the name of Miller, brought from Har- rison County, on the charge of horse-stealing, was taken about the same time from the same jail, and hung to a tree on the bluff's in the east- ern part of town. The summer of 1860 was noted for being exceedingly warm and dry, and vegetation of all kinds suffered greatly, and the prosperity of the place was materially affected in consequence. By this time, the character of the Colorado mining country, had been pretty well determined, and emigration in that direction was in a steady stream. This greatly aided the prosperity of the city, and added to its traffic. The banking facilities of this place were increased by the addition of a branch of the State Bank. It did not, how- ever, commence operations until in January. 1861, at which time James A. Jackson was made President, and John D. Lockwood, Cashier; S. S. Bayliss, Samuel Knepper and J. P. Casady were Directors of the institution. It was afterward merged in the First National Bank, when the law creating such institutions went into effect. William S. Burke, who is now at the head of an influential daily news- paper, at Albuquerque, New Mexico, took an interest in the Nonpareil, on the 17th of No-
*By Col. John HI. Keatley.
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HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
vember, 1860, and was an important editorial auxiliary during the six or seven years he was attached to the paper.
The time had come when people began to take an interest in the encouragement of manu- factures. To that date the industry of the city was purely commercial, but in the fall it took a new departure. Charles Hendrie, an experi- enced foundry man and manufacturer of machin- ery, came from Burlington, and, organizing the corporation known as the Council Bluff's Iron Works, established a foundry and machine shop on the west side of Main street. This es- tablishment has been undeviating in its pros- perity ever since, and has demonstrated the parcticability of manufactures even at a great distance from the source of the necessary raw material.
As already stated, the political activity that characterized other parts of the country extend- ed to Council Bluffs. The Democrats were main- ly admirers of Stephen A. Douglas, and called their club " The Little Giant." The friends of Lincoln and Hamlin had their " Wide-Awake" organization, and torch-light processions were frequent during the canvass. Toward the close, nightly meetings were held and speeches made, and songs and music enlivened the assemblies and increased the enthusiasm. Frank Street, C. E. Stone, Col. Kinsman and D. C. Bloomer, local speakers, kept up the fire, with speeches, on the Republican side ; and W. G. Crawford, Capt. Price, Col. Babbitt and John C. Turk held forth eloquently on behalf of the Democracy. Judge Cole was the Democratic candidate, and Gen. Curtis, the successful candidate for Con- gress on the part of the Republicans. Those who adhered to the Bell and Everett Constitu- tional Union party, Old Line Whigs, were few in number, as were the out-and-out Breckinridge Democrats. Col. J. D. Test was the principal one among the latter. Cole had a majority over Curtis in the county, and Douglas a plu- rality. The Bell-Everett ticket had twenty-
eight votes, and the Breckinridge-Lane ticket one more than the Bell-Everett. The final re- sult over the country was celebrated by the Republicans with demonstrations of a joyous character, although the mutterings and rum- blings of civil war were already heard. Men of all parties here, as well as elsewhere, were skeptical as to the possibility of the American people ever plunging into such a conflict, and treated the threats then made, by those of cer- tain the Southern States, as the final vapor- ings of disappointed politicians, and the last echoes, merely, of an intensely heated partisan campaign that would soon die away.
The second session of the county teachers' institute, lasting about a week, commeneed on the day before Christmas, 1860. About a score of teachers from different parts of the county were present and took part. W. E. Harvey, State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Nebraska Gen. Thomas H. Benton, Jr., who had held that office in Iowa, and a Mr. Bloomer delivered lectures during the session, and which were attended by the people of the city in large numbers as well as by the teachers immediate- ly interested. Judge Casady was elected to the office of County Judge, to which he had previously been appointed. Experience had demonstrated, however, that the system of man- aging county affairs through the instrumentality of County Judges was so liable to abuse, and had been so abused, that a change was made by the Legislature, and in 1861 the system of Boards of Supervisors for counties went into effect. The first board met in this county on the 7th day of January, 1861. It may not be out of place here to state the names of those who constituted the board, though not strictly a matter of Council Bluffs. Judge Douglass represented Kane Township in the board ; C. Voorhis represented Macedonia ; William Els- wick. Grove ; Josiah True, Knox ; J. B. Lay- ton. Center ; L. J. Childs, York ; Robert Kent, Boomer ; Abram Jackson. Rockford; David
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HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
Dunkle, Crescent ; William Lyman, James ; and John Bratten, Silver Creek. As townships were added in subsequent years, this system of township representation became eumbrous and unwieldy, and the number of members was re- duced, eleeted by the whole county, and not by townships. Years were required, however, to demonstrate the necessity for this change. William D. Turner, was then Treasurer of the county, and having filed an unsatisfactory re- port, he was required by the board to supple- ment it and also increase his sureties in the amount of $17,000. He filed what he consid- ered a report in response to the order of the board, but instead of complying with that in relation to additional sureties, resigned, and Thomas Tostevin, now City Engineer in 1882, was appointed to the vacancy, and through sub- sequent elections, held the position for six years.
Early in 1861, President Buchanan issued a proclamation calling upon the people to observe a day with prayer and fasting in token of the impending calamity of a civil war, and in re- sponse to it all classes of citizens, profoundly feeling the impending danger, strictly and re- ligiously observed the day. Up to this date, a sehism had been widening in the church of the Latter-Day Saints. The non-polygamists in the city felt the necessity of organizing under the direction of Joseph Smith, Jr., the son of the prophet who had been murdered in the Car- thage Jail, and on the 4th of January, 1861, the first meeting was held to constitute the neces- sary society here, and a series of meetings were held, at which many baptisms occurred. The ad- herents wholly repudiated Brigham Young and the Utah hierarchy. They also built a neat frame church edifice in after years, and have ever since been considered one of the most im- portant religious societies in the city. It may be interesting to those of the present to eom- pare the prices then received for agricultural produce in this market, and now, when we are blessed with all the advantages of apparent com-
petition of railroads and our homes nearer mar- ket, where it took days and even weeks to de- liver our produce. Wheat then, in the month of January, 1861, sold for 65 cents; corn, 30 cents, and oats 35 cents per bushel. Butter was 25 cents per pound, and slaughtered hogs were quoted by dealers at from $4 to $4.50 per 100 pounds. The intercourse between Council Bluffs and Omaha that winter was of an un- usually cordial nature. The river was frozen over, and mammoth sleighing parties crossed between the two towns, making perfect holi- days of theoccasions. Once or twice since that, the people of both cities have thus turned out en masse, with sleighs and sleds and in holiday dress, when the ground and snow were favor- able, and interchanged their happy good feel- ings.
Upon the advent of Mr. Lincoln's administra- tion and the supremacy of the Republican party in national affairs, a change was made in the two most important Federal offices in the city. Frank Street, on the 20th of May, 1861, was appointed Register of the Land Office, and D. C. Bloomer, Receiver. Judge Street held the appointment until the incoming of President Grant's administration, when he was succeeded by Sylvanus Dodge, the father of Gen. G. M. Dodge, who discharged its duties until his death, and in turn was succeeded by Nehemiah Baldwin, who was the ineumbent when the land office was closed. Mr. Bloomer was Receiver from May, 1861, until the office was finally closed. The annual meeting of the stockhold- ers of the Council Bluffs & St. Joseph Rail- road Company took place here on the 13th of July, and James A. Jackson, Jolin T. Baldwin, Horace Everett, Jefferson P. Casady, Samuel Knepper, Edward Gilliland, W. C. Sipple and S. T. Nuekolls were elected Direetors. The grad- ing of the road down the river through Potta- wattamie and Mills Connties was then finished, and that through Fremont County all under contraet, and 25,000 ties were on the ground
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HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
ready for use. While the eivil war was then in activity, the prospect of completing the road was still encouraging, and lively hopes were aronsed by the official report then made. The condition of affairs in Northern Missouri was not, however, very encouraging to those who looked beyond that report. Money was needed for national uses, and after that date little was done toward completing the road until the sta- bility of our Union was assured by the victory of its arms. The first time a Methodist Epis- copal Conference was ever held in the city was in September of that year, in the annual meet- ing of the Western Iowa Conference of that church, with Bishop Scott presiding. The at- tendanee was large, and the people. without re- gard to seet or belief, gave the ministers and visitors a cordial reception, and hospitably en- tertained them.
The Bugle, published by Col. Babbitt at that time, expressed the belief " that the com. pact which holds these States together was irre- mediably broken," and following the sugges- tion of the celebrated letter of Gen. Seott before Fort Sumter was fired on, held that the Union would be " divided into four Republics." It was not surprising that men should take this view of the result. Public opinion was in chaos, and we, as a people, were going through an experiment that had never been more than foreshadowed in words of significant warning, but never defined. When the die was onee cast; when compromise and conciliation were exhausted; though adhering to its Democracy, with an unflagging spirit, that paper never ceased in ardent desires for the total and final suceess of the Union arms. The troops of the United States, two companies, referred to by Gen. Dodge, in his letter to John A. Kasson, and already quoted, eventually passed this point. The citizens tendered them a loyal and earnest ovation, and gave them a complementary din- ner.
When preparations were being made to cele-
brate the national anniversary on the 4th of July that year, a spirited controversy sprang up among some of the citizens. A public meeting was held to make the necessary ar- rangements, and a resolution was offered invit- ing the people of the county to join in it as a "Union celebration " of the day. So much feeling had been aroused by discussions and events, that had preceded the meeting, that the word " Union " was regarded by some as having been appropriated by those most free in the use of it, as a mere partisan and party designation, and Col. J. D. Test, who was at the meeting, moved to amend the resolution by omitting the word " Union." The amendment did not pass. Col. Babbitt was Mayor, and invited to participate in the celebration, but declined to take part on the ground that lie regarded its character as purely partisan. This difficulty was removed finally by the invi- tation to attend being so shaped as to include all who desired to see the restoration of the Union, no matter by what means, and thus har- mony among the citizens was restored, and the celebration took place, with the best of feeling, J. D. Lockwood and William G. Crawford, afterward Clerk of the District Court, making the principal speeches. The latter gentleman at that date was one of the best known and highly respected persons in the city. He was a lawyer of excellent attainments, and a speaker of no ordinary talent. He was elected Clerk of the District Court in the fall of 1866, but already consumption had made a fearful inroad upon his system, and before the completion of his second term of two years, the disease carried him off. He was also an Odd Fellow of high degree, and his obsequies took place at Fair- view Cemetery, under the auspiees and under · the solemnities of that noble order, thousands of other eitizens attending the funeral of one who had just closed a highly honorable career.
The first response made to the spirit of re- sistanee to the breaking-up of the Union by
174
HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
violence was the raising of a military company on the 11th of April, 1861, the day before the firing on Fort Sumter began, and before it was known what would be the result of the be- leagnering of that fortress in the Charleston Harbor by the troops concentrated there under Gen. Beauregard. G. M. Dodge was chosen Captain of the new military organization, John F. Hopper, long since a newspaper man, and now a resident of Leavenworth, Kan., the First Lieutenant, and C. C. Rice, Second Lieutenant. On the day that Fort Sumter fell, April 14, and before intelligence of the disaster reached Conu- cil Bluff's, the organization of the Union Cav- alry was completed by the choice of Dr. Seth Craig as Captain, and John T. Oliver and P. A. Wheeler as Lieutenants. In a very short time afterward, one artillery company was raised, and Samuel Clinton made its Captain. These organizations went toward the Missouri State line to meet an apprehended invasion of Iowa from that quarter, and, during the brief and bloodless campaign, occupied a position on the verge of Page County. The service de- manded of these embryo soldiers was cheer- fully performed, but their ideas of the art and necessities of war were of the crudest charac- ter. The rustle of a leaf, the crackling of a twig, a little cloud of dust off in the prairie track were conjured into and magnified to the
proportions of a bloodthirsty enemy, and gave rise to some of the most ludicrous exhibitions of soldiering. Many still survive to tell of the feats of the campaign. It is a tradition among them that Capt. Clinton had one excellent qual- ity as an officer, and that was to give personal attention to the subsistence of his men and ex- ercise a personal supervision over the quality of the rations issued them. On one occasion, while they were in the field, almost in the pres- ence of the Missouri " hostiles," he passed up and down the company street when the camp kettles were seething and boiling with the cus- tomary allowance of beans. Observing small, white, quivering particles floating through the mass of cooking food and in the boiling water, he at once became intensely indignant at the frauds perpetrated upon the poor private sol- dier, and vented his wrath by ordering the whole mess to be emptied on the ground as un- fit for human food. It was not until the suppers of the men had thus been destroyed, and they compelled to go to their couches supperless on the hard ground, did he discern that what he sup- posed were maggots in the beans were simply the germ of that famous article of soldiers' food expelled by the heat in cooking. The tradition is still cherished as an illustration of how much the most intelligent officer can find to learn in assuming new and untried duties.
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HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
CHAPTER
XXIX .*
COUNCIL BLUFFS - FOURTH IOWA INFANTRY -ROLL OF HONOR -SECOND IOWA BATTERY-VIC KELLER'S GUM-WOOD MORTARS-COL. W. H. KINSMAN'S DEATH-DEATH OF ADJUTANT TUTTLE - FISCHER THE FIFER-BOY - TWENTY-NINTH IOWA -MAJOR LYMAN AND COMRADES-THE DRAFT-SIXTH IOWA CAVALRY - AN OVATION.
TI THE part which Council Bluff's otherwise took in the war for the Union will always be of intense interest to those who are proud of her history. The fact has already been stated, in the sketch given of the career of Gen. Dodge, that Camp Kirkwood was established near the southern limits of the city, on the high ground north of the Mosquito Creek and east of the road leading to the Deaf and Dumb Institute. Com- pany B, of the Fourth Iowa Infantry, was al- most wholly raised in the city of Council Bluff's. Its officers were elected on the 3d day of July, 1861. During its honorable career of service in the field, it had, successively, for its Cap- tains, Dr. Seth Craig, W .. H. Kinsman and George E. Ford. When its first term of enlistment ex- pired, it was renewed as a veteran organization. The veterans who thus re-enlisted, and who oecu- py a bright place in the roll of honor, were George E. Ford, George W. Lloyd, Christian Weirich, Henry Bradshaw, C. A. D. Clark, Lawrence Doran, Levi Jones, Henry C. Layton, James S. Lewis, John W. Nesbitt, Curtis O'Neill, George W. Tucker, Jonathan West and Isaac V. May- nard. Two of this company were killed in bat- tle, twenty-one were wounded and four died in Andersonville Prison-Ennes, Jones, Maynard and Reed. The regiment was finally discharged from service on the 24th of July, 1865, at Louis- ville, Ky., after having been in thirty battles and engagements, after losing 119 men killed, 250 by disease, and 309 discharged on account of disability incurred in the line of duty. This
regiment also had the honor of participating in Sherman's famous " March to the sea," and when the fighting was all over, and when Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army had surrendered at Salis- bury, N. C .. it marched with the column across Virginia to Washington, and there took part in the grand review of the Army of the Potomac and of the Armies of the Cumberland, of the Tennessee and of the Ohio.
The Second Iowa Battery was organized at Camp Kirkwood on the 4th of July, 1861, with Nelson T. Spoor as Captain, J. R. Reed and David Watling, First Lieutenants, and Fred T. Reed as Second Lieutenant. The record of this battery is a glorious one, and the organiza- tion was mustered out of the service on the 5th of August, 1865, its last fighting being in the capture of Mobile, Ala. When the siege of the latter city began, it was found that the troops were deficient in mortar batteries with which to assail Spanish Fort with the ordinary bomb- shell. To supply that deficeney, wooden mor- tars were construeted from the ordinary South- ern gum wood, at the suggestion of Vic Kel- ler, of Council Bluffs, a member of the Second Towa Battery, and under his direction and su- pervision with most effective mortar batteries thus organized, they threw shells with the force, precision and effect of a regularly constructed cast-iron regulation mortars.
Company HI of the Fifteenth Regiment of Iowa Volunteers was raised at Council Bluffs. the officers being Capt. D. B. Clark, and Lieut. Stephen W. King, of Pottawattamie County,
*By Col. John H. Keatley.
176
HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
and John A. Donelson, of Harrison County. Capt. Clark, on account of his health, resigned before the term of service of the company ex- pired. William S. Burke at a later date took seventeen men from the county into the Seven- teenth łowa Infantry, and was made First Lieutenant of the Company H. John C. Len- inger of Council Bluffs, took twenty-three men, in 1862, into Company E, of the Twenty-third Fowa, and was made a Captain. W. H. Kins- man. of the Fourth Iowa, was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel of the Twenty-third łowa, on the 2d of August, 1862, and Colonel, Sep- tember 9, 1862, and was at the head of that regiment until killed in battle in 1863. One of the most brilliant young lawyers of the Coun- cil Bluffs bar, was Joel Tuttle. As Adjutant of the Second Iowa, he distinguished himself at Fort Donelson and Shiloh ; he died in the hos- pital, of fever, in St. Louis, in May, 1862. deep- ly lamented by hosts of friends, here and else- where, who admired his chivalrous and patriotic character. The name of Col. Kinsman is the especial property of Council Bluffs. His re- mains rest in an unknown grave in Mississippi, where he fell at Black River Bridge. He came to the county as a school teacher, and obtained employment in Hazel Dell. Few knew his ori- gin, but he rapidly made friends, and took part in correspondence in the Nonpareil, attracting attention by the quaintness and humor of some of his paragraphs. Among the first to offer his services to the country, and doomed to lose his life on the battle-field, his gallant career lias in- vested his memory with a balo that time will never dispel. Some of his gallant comrades of the Twenty-third Iowa still survive, among them Ernest Fischer, of this city, who, as a mere boy, as a fifer, went into Company E. and was near his gallant Colonel when struck by the fatal bullet, and assisted in placing his body at rest in the lonely Southern grave where the bright river will ever and ever murmur his requiem.
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