USA > Iowa > Story County > History of Story County, Iowa: A Record of Settlement, Organization. > Part 40
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"Whereas, through the kindness and disinterested liberality of the Hon. Oakes Ames of Massachusetts we are recipients of a first class church bell, therefore, be it,
"Resolved, that we. desiring to express our appreciation of his continued remembrance and timely and appropriate gift, do hereby manifest our grat- itude for this exhibition of public spirit and generosity and tender to him our sincere thanks for this magnificent present; and be it further.
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"Resolved, that these resolutions be published in the Story County Ægis and a copy sent to Mr. Ames."
The later explosion and scandal with which Mr. Ames's name is his- torically identified, related to the Credit Mobilier, which was an American company with a French name that had the contract for the construction of the Union Pacific railroad. The stock of this company Mr. Ames distrib- uted among public men, where, as he said, "it would do the most good." The performance was not in accordance with the best official taste; but when the exposure came, Ames was too independent to lie out of the mat- ter, and he was made the scapegoat of numerous politicians who with less frankness dumped onto him the responsibility for everything in congress that needed explanation. As a result the house of representatives passed a resolution censuring him, and he died not long after as the result, it was believed, of the humiliation. In the calmer judgment of time, however, it is felt that Ames was the victim of much injustice and the great services that he actually rendered to the country have come to be really appreciated. His sons fought after his death to vindicate his memory, and one of them became governor of Massachusetts-which is a position of very great honor as the matter is understood in that state. The incident of the church bell illustrates his disposition before his troubles came; and it has since become evident that if he had lived a few years longer he would have seen the troubles that vexed him to death pass into insignificance. He was in fact a pretty good man to name a town after.
The leading matter in connection with Ames' development during the season of 1866, was the successful struggle with Nevada for the location of the cross railroad to Des Moines. But the railroad itself did not pro- gress so rapidly as did the controversy over its location and this subject will be considered further on. The general local progress, however, was considerable and its measure is given with some definiteness in a letter written to the Ægis in March, 1867, by Captain Lindsey M. Andrews. Capt. Andrews was an ex-soldier, ex-editor, politician and man of affairs who shortly after the war bought what has since been known as the Mc- Elyea farm close to Ames, and was a prominent citizen of the county for a number of years, but moved away before very many of his predictions had time for fulfillment. He was a scholarly man and what he had to say was well stated as well as reliable. At this time he said:
"Six months ago our family settled here. At that time Ames contained one small dry-goods store, one drug store and one blacksmith and wagon shop. A few days after this our blacksmith and wagonmaker moved their shop to Nevada. The Congregationalists had commenced building a church, and the M. E. denomination had begun to purchase lumber for their church. Mr. Hoggatt & Co. also had a ware-room and a few thou- sand feet of lumber, which they called a lumber yard. I believe these em- braced all the business establishments then in operation. Since which time, the two churches have been completed and have more than quad-
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rupled the number of their communicants. A new wagon shop and two new blacksmith shops have been built and put in operation; a new dry- goods store, three grocery stores, an eating house and a new drug and book store have been opened, and business houses containing them have been built. Two large hotels have also been built and opened since that time, also hardware and tin shop, harness shop and shoe shop. The citizens have also taken initiatory steps for building a large new school house, which by another spring will be needed by at least one hundred and fifty pupils. A carriage shop and several shops and stores are already in process of erec- tion or under contract. A saw-mill is advertised to be here soon, and large numbers of logs await it. A grist-mill company is also being formed.
"Nor is the country in the vicinity of town behind it in progress. New houses are springing up all around; while new settlers are pouring in by scores. Only a few days ago, I am told, twenty-seven members of the M. E. church alone came here to make their homes near the State Agricultural College, only a little more than a mile distant from town.
"Probably the building of the I. M. & M. railroad attracts now a few. The contractors who are building the road expect to put a very large force at work on the grade near Ames as soon as the weather will permit.
"Mr. Richardson, contractor of the Agricultural College building, is pushing the carpenter work and stone cutting for that building forward with an energy that promises an early completion of the structure. Mr. Thompson, I believe, contemplates making numerous improvements on the farm during the coming season.
"Many of our farmers are preparing to build a great amount of post and rail fence (supposably to replace rail fence) and to break considerable prairie. If this portion of Story county continues to improve for a year to come as rapidly as it has during the last six months it will rival some of the young cities of adjoining counties. True, Story county is in places quite wet and interspersed with numerous ponds; yet it is not unhealthy. The water in these ponds is pure, and the soil in most places is rich. In fact, for grazing Story county is not excelled in central Iowa. (Note the ab- sence of any remarks upon Story as an agricultural county.)
"In the vicinity of Ames there is a plenty of timber, which lines the valleys of Skunk river, Squaw, Clear, Warrell and Walnut creeks, all of which, save Walnut, center within a mile of Ames. These give this lo- cality all the grades of soil found in the state.
"Several enterprising farmers hereabouts are making fine beginnings in the dairy business, for which these hills, bottoms, groves, streams and springs so well fit the country. A cheese factory at Ames is already con- templated.
"After all, it is only a question of time for Ames to grow into quite a little village. When the I. M. & M. R. R. is completed, as it will be before long, forming a continuous line from Galveston to St. Paul, Ames will be a fine railroad town, having at present the advantages of a continuous rail
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from New York to Fort Kearney. The freight business has increased more than tenfold in six months; but though settlers are pouring in rap- idly, yet we have room and work for hundreds more."
THE IOWA & MINNESOTA RAILROAD.
It has been before noted that the principal event of the year 1866, so far as Ames was concerned, was the campaign for the location of the Iowa & Minnesota railroad, or in other words "The Narrow Gauge," which later became the Des Moines branch of the Northwestern. The same event was also the most important of the year for the county as a whole, for though Ames did not immediately realize upon all its anticipations with respect to the second road in the county, its general influence was very great. The cam- paign began very early in the year and it was actively conducted by both Ames and Nevada and the rivalry of the two towns was most actively pro- moted by the management of the railroad. Mr. B. F. Roberts of Des Moines, vice president of the railroad, appears to have been the chief fo- menter of this divisive strife between the principal towns of Story county; and he appears further to have been an adept both at promoting the strife and at getting results for his company. And the strife was not confined to Nevada and Ames, for Cambridge would be on the Nevada route and was the ally, therefore, of Nevada, while Polk City was on the Ames route and accordingly was the ally of Ames. The record of the matter is found chiefly in the columns of the Nevada paper, for as yet there was no Ames paper; but from even this biased source of information, taken with the general knowledge of the matter that has come with the passing years, it is easy to see that there were two sides to the question. It was in effect admitted from the Nevada standpoint that it would cost ten or fifteen per cent more to build the railroad from Des Moines to Nevada than to build it from Des Moines to Ames; but on the other hand it was claimed for Nevada that the natural route from Kansas City through Des Moines to St. Paul lay by the way of Nevada; and that in the long run, the great north and south route would be much better built through Nevada than through Ames. This being a fair statement of the issue, and we believe it was such, and it being further conceded that the people along either route from Des Moines to the Northwestern railroad would contribute about all they could and that the difference in their ability to contribute was not great, the determination was destined to turn upon the relative anxiety of the railroad management for economical construction or for ultimate ad- vantage. As a matter of fact, the railroad was built about as cheaply as was possible and that only after long and wearisome delay. The five per cent tax in Washington township in aid of the railroad was carried by only a few votes, and we may well believe that if the tax there had been de- feated the route to Ames would have been abandoned; but the tax there was carried and it was carried also in the Polk county township which
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included Polk City; and also it appears that the right of way was almost wholly donated. So the friends of the west route maintained, by their liberality, all of the advantage which was primarily theirs by reason of easy construction. It is very evident that with the railroad management such practical arguments as these were not to be overcome by any expansive discussion of routes to St. Paul. What the railroad managers were actu- ally figuring on was a railroad of three foot gauge, the cheapest that could possibly be built, from Des Moines to the Northwestern railroad; and to this end, it was manifestly easier to follow the divide to Ames with no bridge of consequence excepting that over Squaw Fork than to come up through Cambridge and cross Skunk Bottom.
But this conclusion was not accepted until the matter had been very thoroughly thrashed out. As early as January, 1866, the subject was ac- tively mooted and from time to time meetings were held, committees ap- pointed, subscriptions raised and general activity manifested. Money was *raised on both sides for the survey and the survey was run to both Nevada and Ames. The Neyada editor reported that skeptics of the county 'seat were wont to suggest that the survey was all that Nevada would see of the railroad; but he insisted that such discouragement should not prevail; and he urged that the fight for Nevada should be kept up-as it was -; but fighting did not change the fact that the governing principle of economy was sending the road to Ames. Long years since, the Nevada argument as to the better route from Kansas City to St. Paul and Minneapolis, which last named city was not nearly so important then as it is now, has been twice justified: first by the course of the Chicago & Northwestern in deflecting its north and south line to the westward rather than to the east- ward in the direction of the Twin Cities and by the ultimate adoption of the Nevada route by another railroad system for its trunk line between the cities noted. But this is another story. The present proposition is that Ames by a narrow margin carried its tax and with the help of others sim- ilarly interested made its natural advantages count and so secured the rail- road. Insomuch as the matter was largely an Ames and Nevada fight and likewise the first fight of that order, the story of the fight may be concluded by the Nevada report of its outcome. This statement was in the Ægis for July 20, 1866, as follows :
"The board of directors of the I. & M. railway company on Wednesday last held their meeting in Des Moines and voted to locate the line of their road to Ames. So good-bye railroad. The unfairness our people complain of is this, that the company after sucking four or five hundred dollars out of us for surveys, never gave us an offer of how much would secure the road. It might have been beyond our means to raise, but we would have been better pleased had it been made. As is now appears, we were used as the monkey's paw to rake the dimes out of our neighbors at Ames."
That the location of the railroad, however, was not quite the same thing as the building of a railroad, the people of Ames had abundant opportunity
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to realize for some time. The right of way having been donated very largely, and a narrow gauge railway not requiring to be especially well graded, the construction work on the new road progressed after a fashion for a while; but the matter came to a stop and for some time the stop ap- peared to be indefinite. In October, 1868, the editor of the Ægis reported having spent a day in Ames and further observed "The faith and hope that animate the denizens of that little town are certainly deserving of a liberal reward; and such seems now imminent in the prospect of the resumption of work on the I. & M. railway." Perhaps the work was resumed, but the road was not completed in that year nor in the following year. How- ever, in 1874, it was actually built and though it was not nearly so much of a railroad then as it is now the little cars it operated were a great conveni- ence.
In the middle seventies the road was extended northward from Ames to Story City and up into Hamilton County where it stopped on the prairie at a now forgotten place called Callanan. But after being operated for . four or five years as a narrow gauge, the road was bought by the North- western. The line between Ames and Des Moines was promptly widened to standard gauge and also straightened sufficiently to cut out Polk City, save for the spur to that village, all too familiar to travelers; and the line north from Ames was also widened soon after. During the years that the narrow gauge was operated, it was the subject of very many jokes; but it became the basis of a very important line of railroad; and to the people of Ames and other places that contributed to its construction it was worth all it cost them.
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NEW AGRICULTURAL HALL, IOWA STATE COLLEGE, AMES
CENTRAL BUILDING AND MORRILL HALL, IOWA STATE COLLEGE, AMES
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CHAPTER XXXIII.
FOUNDING THE COLLEGE.
As is often the case in the matter of the first steps toward the founding of some institutions, the people who, in the first half of 1859, secured for Story County the location of the Iowa State Agricultural College had but small conception of the work they were actually doing. Their contribu- tion, with that of their neighbors in Boone County, had an estimated value of $21,000 of which amount $10,000 was in bonds voted by the people of Story County and the remainder was in private donations of cash and of land. This contribution, however, was a larger one than the people of any other county would make for the institution, and trifling as the amount was in comparison with the sums that have since been put into the institu- tion by the state and national governments, it was sufficient in the existing conditions to secure the prospective institution. What the people actually secured at the time was a name for an institution and a chance that some time the institution would be of account. The original state appropriation with which their cooperation was invited was for only $10,000; and there was very little suggestion in that amount of the public liberality, that would be necessary for the upbuilding of a considerable college.
The few hopes that may have been reasonably raised by the action of the general assembly in making the original $10,000 appropriation, were also very slow of realization. The next general assembly did not follow up the matter and the friends of the college proposition were glad to get through the session without having the previous action rescinded. The conduct of this general assembly is abundant evidence that public interest in the project was very slight; and it was only the activity of a few far-, sighted men, among whom were B. F. Gue and Peter Melendy, that kept the project alive. In 1862, however, came the great measure of encourage- ment of which no one in this locality could have had any anticipation, when the location was being determined. In the meantime, Lincoln had been elected and the withdrawal of southern senators had put the republican party in control of both branches of Congress. The administration and Congress were abundantly occupied in efforts to put down the rebellion and save the Union; but they nevertheless found time for a few very im- portant constructive measures. A few of these measures were especially directed toward the development of the West, one of them being the home-
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stead law and another the law making a grant of lands for aid in construc- tion of the Union Pacific railroad; and quite as important as either of these measures in its far reaching influence, if not in its immediate conse- quences, was a further law making a grant of lands in aid of state agri- cultural colleges. The grant was, in fact, munificent, and Governor Kirk- wood promptly convened the general assembly in special session to accept it. Two years later a quite determined effort, for which Governor Kirk- wood was the chief spokesman, was made to turn this grant to the uses of the State University upon condition that the University should establish and maintain a department for special instruction in agriculture. This was the course actually adopted in numerous other states and one may readily believe that it would have been adopted in Iowa but for the definite en- gagement into which the state had already entered with the peope of Story County. The bargain had been made five years before and the money of the people of the county accepted and there were in the state government enough friends of the separate college idea and enough believers in the square deal to hold to the original program under the new conditions and to give to the prospective Story County institution the splendid land grant.
So this general assembly of 1864 made a further appropriation of $20,- 000, to start the college building. The building was to cost altogether $50,- 000, and to plans of this scope the trustees appointed were required to con- fine themselves; but they found an architect whose conscience or ideas of cost of construction were sufficiently elastic so that he laid out the plans of a building that would cost a good deal more money but which he said could be built for $50,000. So the trustees started out to lay the founda- tions of a building which in fact proved to be fairly satisfactory for its purposes for nearly thirty years, and to complete which the legislature in 1866 appropriated $91,000 more, in 1868 $23,000 more, and in 1870 $50,000 still more. We do not understand, however, that there was any great amount of grumbling over this architectural expansion. The war was over, the state was rapidly settling up, and the rents from the 204,000 acres of the original land grant were accumulating so rapidly that the man- agement of the college lands found it convenient to buy with the accumu- lation 15,000 acres more. The state had finally caught the fever of having an agricultural college, it had the money and the people of Story County years before had persuaded the state to locate the institution on the west side of Squaw Fork.
So the college was actually to be started and Messrs. Gue and Melendy, as the business end of the board of trustees and of the committee having the matter particularly in charge, started out to find a faculty, and to out- line generally the scope of the institution. Their idea of a faculty as evi- denced by their report was a president, four professors and two assistants. For a course of study they proposed to follow the program of the original college act, which prescribed chiefly the natural and physical sciences, and they proposed to afford the students abundant opportunity to work for their
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living and education. A boarding department was necessary because there was not in the vicinity of the college any town that could provide sufficient accommodations for students, and in order that the dormitories might not be overrun by students from the immediate vicinity of the college, to the exclusion of later comers from greater distances, it was stipulated that ad- mission should be to one student only for each representative in the state legislature. These and kindred provisions were approved and carried out in good faith and the possible embarrassments as to the limitations as to students was conveniently evaded by receiving the surplus applicants from the locality as proxies for distant and unrepresented counties.
Just how the committee before mentioned and the board of trustees itself came to make the selection that was made for the first president of the new college, we have never seen fully explained; but the undoubted fact is that after diligent and quite well directed inquiry the choice fell upon A. S. Welch and he was on the IIth of May, 1868, elected as the first president of the college. He assisted in the organization of the institution and he was present at the opening of a preliminary term extending from Oct. 21, 1868 to Jan. 7, 1869; but he was accorded leave of absence from November till March and in the interim the duties of president were dis- charged by Prof. G. W. Jones, who had been chosen as the first professor of mathematics. President Welch returned in March and on the 17th of that month was formally inaugurated. The formal dedication of the col- lege and its opening for its first regular term occurred on the following day, March 18, 1869.
President Welch was a man well fitted for the position and work he thus assumed. He was a man of fine ability, thorough education and apti- tude for administrative responsibility. He was a Michigan man, had been an educator in that state before the war; and during the war he had been a field officer in the Second Michigan Cavalry. At the close of the war, like a good many other federal officers, he remained in the South and in the vernacular of that region he became a "carpet-bagger" in Florida. As such, he was upon the reconstruction of the state of Florida, elected as one of its two new United States Senators. He was yet to assume the position Of senator when he was elected president of the Iowa Agricultural College, and it was in order that he might occupy his senatorial seat for the last short session of his term of service that he was accorded the leave of ab- sence before noted. President Welch therefore came to his position schooled in educational, military and political affairs; and the training he had enjoyed came well in play for the organization of the college and the winning for it of the necessary popular favor and political support in the state. And in this work he unquestionably succeeded. The students loved him and, when they became alumni, they fought for him. The farmers of the state were brought to regard the college as their particular institution, and the leading politicians of the state were the confidential friends of the president. Appropriations were secured about as fast as they could be
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hoped for and the college distinctly prospered. The result certainly jus- tified the principles which he laid down in his inaugural address, along with numerous other excellent propositions, substantially as follows :
"Scarcely of less interest than the novel events that distinguish the opening of this new institution, is the fact that the plan of organization which we have adopted commits it to the promotion of two great and salu- tary educational reforms.
"One of these is the withdrawal of the ancient classics from the place of honor which they have largely held in our college curricula, and the liberal substitution of those branches of natural science which underlie the industries of this beautiful state.
"The other is the free admission of women, on equal terms with young men, to all the privileges and honors which the institution can bestow."
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