USA > Iowa > Story County > History of Story County, Iowa: A Record of Settlement, Organization. > Part 45
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Two fatal accidents in October, 1867, left their strong impression on the people of Nevada. One resulted in the death of F. W. Rhoads, who fell from a scaffold on the old Alderman building on or near the present site of the opera hall. His death was deeply felt by the people of town and county and is often referred to when any of the old-timers get to talking of pioneer days. Mr. Rhoads when he first came to the county located at Story City, where he was the first postmaster; but after a time he re- moved to Nevada, and here the members of his family continued to be iden- tified until long after his death. Mr. Rhoads was a carpenter and a man of much strength of character. At least two of his sons were successful newspaper men and his eldest daughter was Mrs. Laura Berry, who was a woman of much distinction.
The other accident caused the death of young Buchanan, who was one of a party of movers that consisted of Mrs. Eunice Buchanan, a widow, her invalid daughter Mary, a son slightly younger, who was her main sup- port, and her son-in-law, Lemuel Blood, and his family. They were on their way to Nebraska to take up homesteads; and camping near Johnsons Grove, the young man took a shot-gun and went after some prairie chickens. Returning to the camp, he accidentally discharged his gun and he was in- stantly killed. The party came on to Nevada and camped by the ford, where their distress became known. The result of the accident was that the western journey was abandoned; the good people here assisted in the burial of the young man in the Nevada cemetery; and the family located
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here. Mr. Blood bought what is now the Morse farm northeast of the fair ground; Mrs. Buchanan and Mary, and later her grandson, Will Blood, lived for years in a little house north of the Baptist church in Ne- vada. Mary died there twenty years later, and Mrs. Buchanan died still later at the home of her grandson Will, then a Methodist preacher, at Polk City, and was buried here. Will is still in the Methodist ministry and is in Kansas. All of the family have been always highly esteemed; but the death of the young man who was the mainstay of his mother and helpless sister made their path a hard one through many years.
One very distinguished visitor, who came to Nevada in the Fall of 1866, and from here drove across the country to Des Moines, was P. T. Barnum, the famous show man. Of this visit there is a story which was locally written up at the time and which Capt. George Child, to the day of his death, delighted to retell and confirm. As the story was first told it was as follows :
"The famous showman, Prince of Humbugs, was in our little village for a few hours on Saturday last. Mr. George Child, our popular livery- man, took him to Des Moines, where the showman delivered a lecture on Monday evening last. George thinks the trip down to the capitol with Barnum time well spent and gives us some items. Night overtook the pair at Madden's, down in Polk county, and there they stopped for lodging. Madden is considered, even in Iowa, some on stock and farming. Barnum also until now indulged in the idea that he was an extensive farmer, and so he was according to the Connecticut standard, owning eighty acres and feeding twenty steers. In conversation during the evening P. T. frequently alluded to his Bridgeport farm, and indulged in considerable blowing about the extent of his agricultural operations, making frequent allusion to those twenty steers.
"Learning incidentally that his host was in the same business, he in- quired how much land he owned. Madden was, like Moses, a little slow of speech and answered indifferently that he did not know exactly, he had about a thousand acres under cultivation and considerable lying around loose. This was an eye-opener; but the answer to the next question dried the showman up: 'How many cattle do you feed?' 'Well, we are fatting three hundred steers and have a lot of cows and young stock.' Barnum subsided and rested impatiently until daylight, when he went out to see this Iowa farmer 'feed his little flock,' and was doubtless impressed with the practical exhibition of the broad-gauge plan of conducting business among the Hawkeyes, which no mere heresay could ever have effected."
INTRODUCING BASE BALL.
The summer of 1867 should be permanently commemorated in the History of Story County as the season in which men, boys and the public were first made acquainted with the great American game of Base Ball.
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The contemporary references to the subject evidenced fairly that at the beginning of the season the game was locally known only by reputation, but that the first club was organized with general interest, a subscription raised for purchase of the necessary outfit and public enthusiasm aroused to its highest pitch by the first match game between Nevada and Ames. That is to say the enthusiasm of Nevada was at the highest pitch that was consistent with a victory for Ames in the initial game. While of the en- thusiasm of Ames, in which town there was as yet no local newspaper, there is no record extant. But how the Amesites really felt over winning from Nevada by a score of 66 to 55 the first match game of ball ever played in Story County people who have been familiar with the later course of events may have some imaginings, but may venture no description. In view of the awful score already indicated it is to be remembered that, ac- cording to the rules of the game in the first years of its popularity, the pitcher was required to deliver the ball with his arm straight, the impetus being such as he could give by means of a downward and forward swing of his arm along his side. The ball thus pitched was a straight ball and not especially swift and the conditions were absolutely favorable to the side that was in to bat the ball all over the field. In addition to what appears upon the record there is a verbal admission by John A. McCall that he was the party who in behalf of the first club sent off the order for the first base ball outfit, bearing in mind that no local dealer yet carried a base ball stock and that goods of this order had to be procured direct from Chicago. With such preliminaries let it here be recorded on the authority of the Ægis in the early summer of 1867:
"A club for the practice of this game (base ball) has been organized in our village with a membership of some thirty persons. The club has sent for the necessary 'traps,' elected officers and soon will be in trim to lug off honors and carry in health and muscle. It will be refreshing to see something better than pitching old horse-shoes, resorted to for amusement on our streets."
And the first match game between Nevada and Ames was played, as we understand it, on the old south square where now is the City Park and the date was the 2d of August, 1867, which date may be fairly considered as bearing to the subject of base ball in Story County the same relation as does the Fourth day of July, 1776, to the American Commonwealth. The Ægis of the following week published the momentous record, which in full was as follows:
"Base ball is all the rage-in fact everybody plays base ball. Big towns play, little towns ditto. Nevada has a base ball club, so has Ames. It seems that two base ball clubs cannot exist in close proximity without contending for the mastery. Hence the baseballists of Ames and Nevada played a social game on the grounds of the latter on the 2d inst. At two o'clock p. m. the game opened by Nevada going to bat, where they scored but three tallies and were put out. Ames followed, but were sent to the
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field again without a tally-clean white-wash. The contest was animated; some displays of brilliant playing, intermingled with some more common- place, serving to enliven the game. The following is the score:
"Ames-T. F. McCormick, 2 runs, 7 out; J. F. Barton, 8 and 5; N. A. Rainbolt, 10 and 1; H. May, 7 and 2; G. H. Gale, 6 and 6; T. Day- ton, 9 and 2; A. D. Gould, 9 and o; A. L. Tomblin, 7 and 3; S. B. Fare- well, 8 and 1; total 66 and 27.
"Nevada-A. L. Adams, 6 runs and 4 outs; T. Ross, 5 and 5; L. Ir- win, 6 and 3; John McCall, 6 and 3; H. Blanchard, 6 and 4; Christopher, 6 and 4; C. Garrett, 8 and 1; J. Chumbley, 7 and 1; C. H. Cobleigh, 5 and 5; total 55 and 27.
"By innings-
"Ames -0 20 9 9 6 5 14 4 0-66
"Nevada-3 7 1 10 2 3 6 12 11-55
"Fly catches, Ames 5, Nevada 7; foul catches, Ames 9, Nevada 13; Umpire, D. Y. Clark; scorers, S. L. Lucas for Ames, T. J. Ross for Ne- vada; time of game, 2 hours and 30 minutes.
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CHAPTER XXXVIII.
EDITORIAL REMINISCENCES.
What has heretofore been set down in this history has been gathered at various times and from various sources, but the subject matter all re- lates to happenings in the county before the compiler of this history had personal knowledge of the county. But in the fall of 1875, the editor's father having been chosen by the local school board to be the organizer of the city schools in the new brick school building and to supplement the lower departments with a duly constituted high school, the Payne family came to Nevada and with the exception of a couple of years in the begin- ning of the eighties they have lived here continuously ever since. In the relation therefore, of what is to follow, the element of personal associa- tion and familiarity largely enters, and the theme of the present chapter is to portray the situation as the editor found it when as a High school boy he came to the county seat of Story County.
As before noted, the time was the Fall of 1875, the editor's father had been elected principal of the city schools, his mother was to be an assistant and he, himself, was to be a member of the High school; but the new brick school building was not finished until late in the fall, and so there was no occasion for any of the family except the senior to be here until the build- ing was ready. The school was opened on the very first day that it could be opened, which was the first Tuesday in November; and we remember on that day looking at Nevada for the first time with the eyes of a resi- dent. It was to us an attractive place; but it is easy now to look back and see that the village had not yet passed the pioneer stage. Of struc- tures that might by any courtesy be called modern the barely finished school house was the only one. The court house had been voted for; but it had not yet been begun nor the contract let. The opera hall was not thought of until a year and a half later. The Ringheim building, which was the pioneer of good stores and office buildings, was yet to come along with the opera hall. The only building on the street that was called "brick" was Aderman's hardware,-and that was not a brick building at all, though it did then have a veneer of brick in front and half way back on the north side. The most pretentious residence in the village was that of Otis Briggs, which was west of the business street and is now included, cov- ered up and lost sight of in the Nevada hotel. Next probably was the Col.
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Scott residence, where R. S. Patrick now lives; and third was the W. S. Waldron home facing south on the back end of the lot which has the S. E. Briggs store and office building. Mr. Waldron ran a general store on the corner, and did a good business. The store, we think, went in the fire of 1882; but the house had been moved before that to the site now oc- cupied by the J. W. Ambrose home, where it was enlarged and improved ; and years later it was moved two blocks further north and now stands just south of the water tank.
But Nevada was a busy place in those days. There were no railroads through the county on either the south or the north side; and the "narrow gauge" from Des Moines up to Ames commanded small respect. Baldwin & Maxwell did a great business at Iowa Center and other points to the south; but Nevada, Ames and Colo were the railroad points of the county, and Nevada drew the cream of the trade through a large though thinly settled territory. Perhaps the sidewalks, too, were not so wide as they are now, and there was therefore not so much room on them for the peo- ple to congregate on a Saturday afternoon as there is now. Besides they were shorter. The business district extended for a block and a half on each side of Lynn street, measuring on the east side north from the old "Nevada Hall" south of the present "Representative" office, and on the west side from McCall & Thompson's office on what is now the post office corner. West of the latter corner was a building which was occu- pied by the Watchman newspaper, and over on the south square there were a lot of old and abandoned business shanties; but the business and the people were concentrated upon Lynn street as indicated. In this place, the sidewalks being high and narrow and the mud in the street being sticky and deep, the people who came for twenty miles or so about to lay in their supplies made a good deal of show. They blocked up the walks and made passage down the street for a woman something to re- quire her strict attention.
Present recollection will support the statement that the condition of the Story county prairie was not unrecognizablenged in ten years. In the middle '70s the farm which now belongs to C. M. Morse, two miles northeast of Nevada, bordered on the east a prairie which, so far as we know, might have been followed in the open to the Barrens of Can- ada. There were quite a number of enclosed farms in the Johnson Grove neighborhood ; but when the traveler had passed the "sheep farm" on his way toward Illinois Grove he came out upon a prairie, where he was liable to lose sight of the Seymour Hix place before he sighted the place of W. H. Golly north of the Little Minerva. Ten years later, in 1884, the prairie in the vicinity of southeast Warren and southwest Lincoln was just beginning to be fenced and improved; and at that time also there was a great tract of open country northwest of the Turner McLain farm in Milford and others in Grant, while southeast, toward Iowa Center through the oldest settled portion of the county, the main traveled road
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was not forced wholly off the prairie and on to the section and half sec- tion lines. But the pioneer days were really passing. The county seemed not to be improved, and much of it was unoccupied; while the town was scattered and thin and consisting yet of the original lot of frame build- ings of unpretentious dimensions; but the spirit of development and of permanency was here, and the time had come for beginning the work of building a county seat worthy of perhaps the richest twenty-four miles square of prairie in all this glorious state.
Somehow, as we look back at the scene it seems as if everybody must have been young in those days, and there may have been more than seem- ing in the impression. The fact is that the war had made men of a whole lot of boys before their time; and it was then only ten years after the war. The fraternity of the veterans was fully established, and they had a cohesion and force which is not characteristic of the average men of their age now; but they were in fact young fellows, and we believe that they did give a younger cast to the community than it will ever have again. It would naturally seem that with the passage of years the men who have come on in the community would seem younger to an observer who has been familiar with them all; but that is hardly the way it strikes us; and we are sure that the men who were best known in Nevada thirty years ago were much younger on the average than are the men who are equally well known here today. Perhaps when one thinks of it, this is a differ- ence in the situation quite as striking as all the differences that have come as the result of increased population, greater wealth and more modern con- veniences.
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THE HIGH SCHOOL.
The editor's strongest interest at the time and for some years after- ward was in the high school, which occupied the third floor of the new brick school building in Mills's addition. The portion of the present build- ing which is north of the hall is a later addition; and as matters then were there were two grade rooms each in the basement and on the first floor, with two grades of scholars in each room. Upon the upper floor the east end of the high school room, as it now is, was partitioned off into two reci- tation rooms, and the pupils in the main room sat facing the partition wall to the east. In the middle of that wall hung the picture of George Wash- ington-a copy of Stuart's most famous portrait-which even yet looks down upon the youth of the city to remind them of the lessons of truth and patriotism that are ever associated with the face and name of the "Father of his Country."
The teachers were the senior Payne as principal, his wife as one of the assistants and Miss Lou Curtis of Independence, Iowa, as the other assistant. The last named resigned at the end of the first school year to become Mrs. Foster and aside from a few of her pupils there are prob- ably not many here now to remember very much about her. But she is
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remembered with respect and affection by those who were brought under her instruction. She was a recent graduate of the Agricultural College, was strong in mathematics, and put her highest class through nine books of geometry and also plain trigonometry in one school year, which record has always kept the writer guessing why in the present day High school curriculum-not in any one particular school, but in High schools gener- ally-it seems to be thought necessary to devote two years to the same work. Along in the summer, however, with her wedding day only a few weeks off, it appeared to be a good deal of an effort for her to hold her attention strictly to the business in the class-room, and in her musings it seemed to make little difference whether the youth at the blackboard was really demonstrating something or was only talking, if only he kept the words coming fluently and wound up properly with "Q. E. D." But cer- tainly the situation excused any such lapses; for the school, having been opened late in the previous fall, was kept going without any vacation at the holidays-Christmas and New Year's coming on Saturdays-and with only a week's vacation in April, clear until the end of June; and with the coming of the hot summer days there was occasion enough for mental relaxation, even if there were no wedding ahead to be interested in.
The course of study, as it had been definitely outlined for the first time, put the work of the senior year above the attainments of any mem- bers of the school; but there was a strong junior class, with which the newcomer was so fortunate as to find himself identified. Holding the first place in the school for two years and being the first of all to pass through the formalities and celebrations of a graduation, this class had more than its legitimate share of fun and glory. Another respect in which this class proved exceptional was in the degree to which its members continued to reside in Nevada after growing up. Of the nine who graduated, Minnie Alderman Mills, Rose Murphey, Helen Harper and the writer still make their home in the town of their school days; Will Hague is only a little out of town on a rural route and Peter Joor prescribes for the ailments of people in and about Maxwell. Only a third of the class-Newton Sim- mons, Lina Hambleton Auers and Flora Dana Corey have moved far away. Others who were identified with the class but dropped out at or near the end of the first year, were the two Laytons-Will and Mollie-and Hilda Hoel. In the next class at that time were Will McCord, Bruce Harper, Mont Cessna, Ella Shugart Funson, Carrie Ross Horton, Ella Wright Lor- ing and Mame Hambleton Streit, who completed the course, and Rollin Davis, Emily Purkhiser Hornberger, and Georgia Warrick, who did not quite do so. Then in the next lot there were Ed. Alderman, Clyde Lock- wood, Channing Tichenor, Belle Hempstead Siddall and Agnes Harper Horton; while a crowd of others yet younger followed on.
Calling them all back in memory, some may be here omitted that should be included in an enumeration of the representative High school pupils of that time; but the foregoing were substantially the crowd who
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by age and rank-not counting the first year pupils-stood for the High school of thirty years ago this winter. They were a good crowd of, youngsters; and fortunate indeed was any boy or girl to find himself or herself admitted to their fellowship. Ability, character and youthful energy and ambition were qualities well and liberally distributed through the lot; and the rivalries of the classroom and of the athletic field, the experiences of the Friday afternoon exercises, the quarrels and reconciliations over nothing in particular that are common among people of that age, all were contributing to make men and women of the lot. And without entering upon any eulogiums or particularizations, we think that an inspection of the list above in the light of present knowledge will warrant the state- ment that Nevada's boys and girls of that time have turned out fairly well. We do not know that any of the lot have won fame or fortune in very exceptional measure; but practically all, so far as known, have become useful and fairly representative citizens. Here, there and elsewhere they are doing the work which circumstances and opportunity have laid out for them. It is said that there is upon a tablet in Westminster Abbey the epitaph that "all his sons were brave and all his daughters virtuous;" and some such encomium would not be out of place for the High school of that day. We do not think there is a boy in the list that ever became an habitual user of liquor, and the girls, we know, are ornaments to the state.
Although a majority of the first class have staid in the county, nearly all of the others named have gone far away. Ed. Alderman is here and Mont Cessna sleeps on the western border of the city; but these are the only exceptions. Flora Dana Corey lives at Seattle, Lina Hambleton Auers at Mission Creek, Minnesota ; Newton Simmons has not, so far as we know, any permanent address; Will Layton lives in Colorado but is frequently seen in Des Moines; his sister Mollie is married and in South Dakota; Hilda Hoel married and died in Colorado, and her daughter came back here and married Fred Wells and went with him to California; Will McCord lives in Des Moines and travels the west over as general agent for a school book house; Bruce Harper was clerk of Monona county ; Ella Fun- son lives at Minneapolis, and Mame Hambleton Streit teaches at St. Paul; Ella Loring lives at Lynden, Washington, and Emma Hornberger at Lin- coln, Nebraska; Georgia Warrick has been for years the principal of one of the great ward schools in East Des Moines; Rollin Davis is nearly lost to the sight of his old friends, but he is supposed to be in Kansas or Nebraska ; Clyde Lockwood is a successful engineer at Portland, Oregon; Belle Sid- dall is at Clinton and Agnes Horton at Creston; Channing Tichenor in some unaccountable way drifted down to Arkansas, whence he returned only once and that for his mother's funeral.
So they have scattered-all but a little knot of the older ones -; but the same school bell still peals on in the same old way, calling a much younger generation to the same scenes and to similar experiences, and it will doubtless do the same in turn years hence for some of their children. Vol. I-26
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But the new faces are not the old faces, and the occasional visitor within the once familiar walls finds it too hard to call back the shades of old as- sociates. Men and women may keep their spirits young; but youth itself comes only once; and about the old school house cling memories, among the fondest and dearest for all who have ever been sheltered there.
AMUSEMENTS IN THE 70'S.
A's to the first winter of our residence here, that of 1875-6, the chap- ter on amusements, so far as we can remember, will have to be much like one on the snakes in Ireland. We think that what really passed with the young people as a substitute for amusements, not because it was funny but because it was the only thing going, was a protracted meeting conducted at the old Methodist church by the pastor, Rev. J. C. R. Layton. Mr. Layton was an earnest preacher and had a most powerful voice and combative nature. He was strong on the polemics of religion, and he waged war alike on the sinner outside of the church, upon the recalcitrant within the church and upon the dissenter who divided the church with new doctrines or the revival of others so old as to be out of date. His meetings drew all the crowds that the church would hold, and they kept the school boys and girls who attended so late out of bed that the youngsters were likely to have a hard time of it keeping up to their work the next day. He also debated with Elder Kilgore, an Ad- ventist preacher then stationed here, and the two of them drew closer attention to the history and succession of the Sabbath than the matter has ever had here at any other time.
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