USA > Iowa > Story County > History of Story County, Iowa: A Record of Settlement, Organization. > Part 46
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But of formal public amusements there were practically none during that winter. The only hall in the village was "Briggs' Hall" in the old building on the east side of Lynn street which survived all the fires better than any other building in town except the old hotel, but which finally did succumb, without the very earnest protest of the fire department, to a fire that was bad enough to make it not worth repairing and not so bad as to endanger other property. So there really was a poor chance for shows, although we believe that the first theatrical troupe of our recollec- tion did come along and play for a season in the old hall sometime in the spring.
But the second winter things were different. The high school had been having exercises right along on Friday afternoons; there were now in the school five regular classes, the juniors of the previous year having become seniors, and the pressure for room in the lower departments having forced the highest grammar grade into the high school room for seating accommodations; and it was time to have an entertainment for the benefit of the school. The senior class naturally took charge of the performance, but necessarily accepted some help from the juniors. Two of the latter that we distinctly remember as participating were Will McCord and Sam
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McHose-now of the tile factory-, who had come into the school for this year and graded between the two upper classes. The performance after much preparation-about which we remember little-was given upon a platform erected in the high school room, and it was unanimously voted a great success. The main part of the show was a parlor play, "Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters," and we guess the piece was all right. What we are sure of, however, is that Will McCord got excited and sprung the denouement of the play before the others had brought things properly up to the climax. Then it was time for the rest to get excited, and there was a scurrying around to repair the damage. Sam McHose had to get on the stage quick, when he was not ready to go; and he used worse language than we ever heard him use at any other time in his life. But they all got around somehow; and though some of the spectators thought that the play was a little incomplete, none of them ever charged the youngsters with having mixed the show.
Along toward the end of the school year there was another high school entertainment in which the main performance was a pantomine about the bride who ran off and hid herself in a box that she could not get out of and in which her bones were found a long time afterwards. What we remember best about this show, however, relates to a rehearsal one night when it rained; for the heavens were indeed opened that night, and it was very late before it was practicable for the boys to scatter out to see the girls home and help them steer around the trees that had been blown down in the way. The next morning the bridges were all out of the creek, and out by the railroad crossing there had been washed the hole which is more or less of a swimming hole to this day and which was a splendid place of amusement so long as we had any taste for such diversion.
The purpose of both these entertainments was to raise funds for a set of Appleton's Cyclopedias, which were in time duly purchased and in- scribed with the names of the first graduating class. In the presenta- tion Mr. Gallup, the then editor of the "Representative," also bore a part; for he donated a year's advertising for the cyclopedia and so secured a discount in the price of the work, which discount was a very material matter in making the finances of the transaction come out even. The cyclopedias unquestionably were put where they would do the most good, for they did service in the high school for more than a quarter of a cen- tury, and after so much hard usage they became a sight for the occasional visitor to behold; but they have now been replaced with an up to date edition of the "International."
During this second winter two or three other things happened to make things pleasant. One was that the weather was the mildest that we have ever experienced here for the season, and in consequence the school boys were able to play ball all through February and from that time on through the spring with only occasional interruptions. It was really fine; and
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though the first football had been purchased by collection during the previous season, football as an amusement was yet to become established and it in no wise interfered with the continuity of the baseball season.
Another thing happening was that the Good Templars' lodge took a boom, and nearly all of the older pupils of the high school became mem- bers. From this time on for a considerable period the lodge was really the focal point for young people's society in the village. It would be hard now to tell why the lodge meetings were so interesting; but the young folks were all there; there was apt to be some sort of program, for which nobody cared; there was the later parceling out to go home; and once in three months there was the election, which gave an oppor- tunity for the exercise of political instincts and activities.
Perhaps also real interest in the temperance cause may have had a little to do with the success of the lodge; for at the time there was much temperance work in progress; and two further illustrations of this fact are afforded by the temperance revival which was conducted that winter in the Methodist church by the local preachers and lay speakers, and by the presentation in April in Briggs' hall-the last notable entertainment to be given there-of the play of "Ten Nights in a Bar Room." This performance was given on two successive nights by a company of the older set, and Josie Snyder, then a compositor in the "Representative" office but now and for many years Mrs. S. H. Carhart of Mapleton, had the star part of May Morgan, whose privilege it was to plead, "Father, dear father, come home with me now."
This presentation was so much of a success that the younger set concluded to imitate and outdo it the next winter, when Rose Murphey, Ella Wright, Will McCord, Jim Tanner, Homer Swafford and others presented the same play under more favorable conditions in the new opera hall. The performance was along toward spring sometime and was, we believe, the concluding appeal to the voters to vote the dry ticket in the spring election. We believe that the political end was not wholly realized; but the dramatic triumph was without qualification. There was abundance of real talent in the company; there was little of superior talent here known with which to make comparison; the public was stirred up over the theme of the play and aggressively in sympathy with its moral; and the opera hall was packed with the biggest crowd that we have ever seen jammed into that room.
HOME DRAMATICS AND OTHERS.
Pursuing the subject of the home dramatics that figured here in the later '70s. They began in 1877 and continued for five or six years, and they were typical of what may be considered the second stage in the de- velopment of the village. The opera hall was built in the summer of 1877; and with its completion opportunity was afforded for the acknowledge-
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ment of thespian aspirations that had up to that time had small chance to get before the public confessional. As before noted, there had been one recorded visit of a traveling dramatic troupe, and an older set had staged "Ten Nights in a Bar Room" in the old Briggs hall; but with the opening of the new and ample hall a new spirit seized the community. In the new situation every show was a novelty, and the way in which nearly every- body, old or young, turned out to the entertainments, at least a part of the time, was something to make the heart glad, if one were seeking either glory or diversion behind the foot-lights. So Nevada became at once a show town, and at the same time it furnished a good part of its own shows.
The opera hall itself, it should be noted, was practically a public enter- prise, which grew out of a happy suggestion by Judge Balliet, late of Des Moines. It happened that in the spring of 1877 Nevada had a little busi- ness movement to the west, and that four business men at once started to put up buildings across the street north from the new court house. The men were J. A. Fitchpatrick, John Beatty, Dr. A. G. Gorrell and J. S. Frazier, and they all got their workmen on the ground at once to put up some little frame buildings such as were still the recognized type of busi- ness architecture in this section. Mr. Balliet came along to see the work and remarked that it was too bad that those buildings could not be more substantially built so that the town might put a hall over them. The idea struck everyone so favorably that the whole gang quit work and a public meeting was called for that evening to consider the matter. The outcome was that a company was formed with Mr. Balliet as president, an addi- tional lot secured wide enough for a stairway, and the general plan of con- struction adopted that is shown in the present building. In the new deal Mr. Frazier dropped out; but Mr. Fitchpatrick assumed his interest and obligation, and the scheme was thus successfully carried out. Everybody was interested and took stock in the hall company; and perhaps here was an additional reason why when the hall had been completed and opened, everybody was favorable to the shows. At any rate it was the best time for shows that there has ever been in Nevada.
The opera hall was opened in December, 1877, with the "Two Orphans," presented by the Manton Marble company, and the opening performance was followed up on the succeeding evenings with the "Gilded Age" and a couple of other plays that we did not see and hence do not remember much about. Soon afterward the Home Dramatic Club which had already been practicing presented its first performance and from this time on for sev- eral years the entertainments in the opera hall which have survived that third of a century of forgetfulness were those which the young people of the village themselves put on the boards. The first of the series was a dramatization of Tennyson's "Dora;" and along toward spring of the same season there was a reproduction of "Ten Nights in a Bar Room," which was given for two nights and which on the second night at a ten
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cent price drew what was probably the most densely packed crowd that ever filled the opera hall. The next winter there was "East Lynne" and "Camilla's Husband;" and the next brought out the "Two Orphans" again, and an Irish comedy the name of which is forgotten, even by the one of the performers who helps us in our efforts to get the story straight.
The writer went off to school and missed in consequence several of these performances ; but "East Lynne" happened to be presented in vacation time, and that performance along with "Dora" and "Ten Nights" is well fixed in memory. We believe that the old time dramatists consider "Dora" their best performance; but somehow the one that stays with us the best is "East Lynne." Possibly the reason therefore is that the undying popu- larity of "East Lynne" has brought it around where we have seen it oftener than any other play on the boards with only the doubtful exception of "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" but it is not unreasonable that the spectator of "East Lynne" for the first time should have been impressed somewhat as have thousands of others who have heard it and been pleased and have gone to hear it again and again until the whole story and even many of the lines have become familiar. But whatever the reason, the lapse of time from youth to middle age has not been sufficient to dim the impression that that performance of "East Lynne" was a good one. Ella Wright as Isabel, Rose Murphey as Barbara, and Jim Tanner as Sir Francis had the lead- ing parts; and with their able support they made the story and lesson of the wayward wife as forceful as it ever needs to be. Perhaps we might think as well of "Dora" if we had heard it so often; but we never could see anything to Farmer Allen but a pig headed old fool who made himself and everyone else miserable with his obstinacy; and if there are out here in this free land on the prairies any old fellows who need the lesson that is in that story and play presented, they are very likely included in the number who would not be out to the theatre. "Camilla's Husband" was a Spanish play for which the performers had elaborate costumes, and when we got home from school some time everybody was talking about it; but in fixing the date for the performance the company did not have in mind the thought of getting themselves properly written up in this history, and so they omitted to accommodate the presentation to our convenience.
The Home Dramatic Club assisted various charities and worthy pur- poses with the proceeds of their entertainments. The "Temperance Re- form Club," which was another of the institutions of those days, was helped out of its financial difficulties a couple of times by the Home Dra- matics; but a considerable share of the net earnings went for scenery and stage-fittings for the opera hall. A hall well equipped as well as spa- cious was desired by the public in general and by the youthful performers in particular; and as a consequence there was investment of earnings in material that for many years furnished the stage settings with which play-goers here were most familiar-and may even yet possibly see put
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on for some occasions. Perhaps if the club had lasted longer, the local interest in things dramatic would have longer continued as strong as it was in the days when plays were a novelty for nearly all; but the dramatists scattered or went to school teaching-as young people do-, and the subject dropped. But in their day, the Home Dramatics gave the people of the village a considerable part of the current amusement, and got out of the performance a considerably larger amount of fun themselves-which illustrates once more that the people who seek to entertain others are the ones who best entertain themselves.
THE "R. E. C. A."
A local organization which impressed itself much upon the youngsters in the middle 70's, bore for its title the mystic letters R. E. C. A.
The organization was very secret, and it took possession of the high room in the old brick school house which had been abandoned by the dis- trict when the new school house was completed and which was later torn down and worked over into the O. B. Alderman residence. There were about sixty members, and the real purpose of the order was chari- table, to which end all of the revenues were devoted. The practice was to leave groceries, dry-goods or other necessary supplies at midnight at the doors and the windows of the orphans, so that none might be the wiser, save those whose distress was thus recognized and relieved. The order had a ritual that had come from somewhere; but there was no central organization having authority over subordinate lodges, and the lodge here was essentially independent and local. As a matter of fact, however, it was the working organization that for a time did the local lodge business; and it flourished from about the time that the old school house was abandoned by the district until about the time that building was torn down. The methods and practices of its initiatory ceremonies are naturally a little hard to learn all about, but one tradition is that the unfortunate was marched unconsciously and blindfolded upon a blanket and then asked if he was ready to go to heaven. About the time that he acknowledged that he would as soon go there as anywhere, the corners of the blanket were violently pulled and he started up. What we are sure of, however, is that shouts of laughter used to wake the echoes about the old school house; and we have never heard mention of "R. E. C. A." in the presence of one of the old boys, that he did not at once break forth in laughter.
The most notable public appearance of the "R. E. C. A." company was on the occasion of the laying of the corner-stone of the new court house. Flaming posters had long announced that on a certain night the ceremony would take place, and at the appointed time there was a great crowd about the mounds of earth and foundation stones that marked the site where now the court house stands. As is apt to be the case at
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such times, the performers were the slowest of all in arriving upon the scene; but along about ten o'clock the wierd procession solemnly sallied forth from the portals of its den of terror. It is not possible now to re- produce the whole scene; but the procession wound about to its scene of action and there went through a pantomine that was calculated duly to impress the curious and the youthful. Then the sable band passed about the hole on the top of the rock at the north corner, and each in turn put his fingers into the hole. There was a hole; for we inspected it before the performance; and after the performance there was still the hole; for we inspected it again; but it was as empty afterwards as it was before; and if anything ever was put in the place where it is wont to put things when new and great buildings are to be built, we do not know about it. But the performance was a success in entertaining the crowd and in fixing the "R. E. C. A." in the minds of a generation. Following the exercise the members had a banquet at the hotel, which banquet was different from one other which they had there on some other occasion, and upon which occasion the order in token of its modesty feasted upon water and raw potatoes.
But every order has its day, and this was like the others. When all of the eligible young or youngish men of the village that would do so had passed through the initiatory ceremonies, the interest in the proceed- ings naturally waned. There was no general organization to give strength and permanency to the order; the funds had been expended in doing good; the hall in which it had lodged was torn down; and it did not establish itself in other quarters. It was worthy and jovial, however, while it lasted; and its memory is green among its old members and with those who were beneficiaries of its thoughtful kindness.
THE CENTENNIAL FOURTH.
The first Fourth of July which the editor passed in Story County was the Centennial Fourth of 1876. The whole county celebrated that year at Nevada, and the celebration was one worthy to be remembered. From the amount of display it was manifest that subscriptions for the expenditures of the day had been liberal. Very few of the showier matters are now recalled in detail but recollection is clear that one brave man rode in a wooden cage with a very large dog that had been sheared like a lion, the combination representing "Daniel in the Lion's Den." The procession of which this was a feature led the throng to the Dunkel- barger grove across the creek southwest from the cemetery. At the opening of the exercises, there was a call, to which there were very few responses, for all who had lived in the county for twenty-five years to take seats on the platform. What impressed the editor then was the remark of a bystander that this invitation would not catch many and as nearly as we can now make out the heads of families to whom it applied
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were William Parker, Daniel and Mormon Ballard, John H. Keigley, Isaac S. French and possibly a very few others, but not many.
In the formal exercises, the Declaration of Independence was read by W. D. Lucas of Ames and the oration was by Col. John Scott of Nevada. In accordance with a plan quite generally urged in the state for the celebrations of that year, this oration was, in the main, a review of the history of the county up to that time. It was published by the Representative in red, white and blue, and it has been a standard work of reference for the enquirer into Story County history ever since. The sentiment in this address that most impressed at the moment, was one of disappointment on the part of the people of Nevada who had made the great and necessary effort to secure the location of the Agricultural College without any thought that they might thereby build up a rival town which should antagonize the interests of Nevada-referring doubt- less to the then very fresh controversy over the new court house.
The entertainments of the afternoon have passed from memory, but in the evening an elaborate program of fireworks and tableaux was begun. This part of the entertainment was on the then wholly vacant block on the northeast corner of which is now the Nevada West school and the stage was near the northwest corner of the block. There were arrangements for a spectacle worthy of the occasion but it was only fairly begun when the rain began to fall heavily and the entertainment was postponed until the next Saturday night, when it was finished to a smaller crowd, but with entire success.
The storm which thus interrupted the closing festivities was a mem- orable one. It was not one of the very few great floods in the county but no other great storm here ever caught so many people away from home. It was a storm which made impracticable the return home of the country people that night. Those who had friends in town, who could provide them with shelter were especially fortunate. As for the rest, and these were much the greater number, the store keepers opened up the stores of the city and made them as comfortable for the night as was possible on the counters and cracker boxes.
SOME OTHER STORMS.
The storm of the Centennial Fourth was a famous storm, but at least three floods have been much greater and according to local tradition have been in a class by themselves since the white man came to this country. The first of these was in 1866. This was before our coming to the country and we know nothing of it personally. But it carried away the bridge which had been built over the creek at the ford on Sycamore street in Nevada and because of the desire to get the new bridge above the reach of high water, it was rebuilt not on the old site but at the now familiar crossing on South street or Fifth avenue south. One consequence of this
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change has been that for forty-five years the travellers to Nevada from the southwest have climbed the hill to the east of the later crossing instead of approaching town by the much easier grades from the ford.
The second storm was in June, 1877, and was in the nature of a water spout around the head waters of the East and West Indian creeks, par- ticularly the West Indian. The resulting flood took out the most or all of the bridges on both streams including the Northwestern railroad bridges. And it gave the West Indian a width of probably 400 feet at the cross- ing southwest of town. An incident of this storm was of interest to the boys of the community for many years `this interest pertaining to the excavation of a swimming hole under the west railroad bridge. Prior to this storm the stream where it flowed under the bridge flowed over a gravel bottom, its depth being as little as the stage of water would permit. But this storm sent down the valley a flood which was turned into a whirlpool by the railroad embankments and the whirlpool dug a great pit under the bridge. The trestle work which carried the railroad was dropped in and carried away and the ties were left hanging from the rails. The railroad company drove piles to hold up its track; but until after many years the stream filled up the hole again that was the only good swimming hole there ever was around Nevada.
The third great storm was in July, 1881. This storm was much wider in extent and its flood in this vicinity was no greater than in other counties about. It was on the night of this storm that Kate Shelley made her famous trip across the Des Moines river bridge at Maingona to warn an approaching passenger train of a washed out bridge on Honey creek. And in Story County the washouts of 1877 were generally repeated. Railroad traffic was interrupted for several days and the county had to build a new set of bridges on the most of its highways. These three storms and their resulting floods are distinguished as being much the greatest since the settle- ment of the county.
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CHAPTER XXXIX.
IN THE LATTER SEVENTIES.
The impressions of the county to the youthful observer in the latter seventies have been set forth in the preceding chapter. The more mature judgment tends to strengthen the youthful view that the county at the time had reached its period of maturity and was about to enter upon the period of fuller development which comes with the gradual improvement of any country and community. The erection in this period of the new court house, which was the best in this portion of Iowa at the time it was built, and the beginnings of organized high schools were two matters of much significance. The exceptional character of the people; who, in a time when top buggies were yet a great rarity and much of the land in the county was yet unoccupied voted upon themselves an indebtedness of $40,000 with interest at ten per cent, all for the purpose of having a suitable seat of justice and suitable offices for the county officials, is something that is con- clusive.
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