USA > Iowa > Washington County > History of Washington County, Iowa from the first white settlements to 1908. Also biographical sketches of some prominent citizens of the county, Vol. I > Part 20
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A
JOHN WISEMAN
A. S. BAILEY
W. N. HOOD
A. R. WICKERSHAM
.W YORK : LIBRARY
DR. LENOX EN FOUNDATION
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glad to record in this veracious history, for a lesson to all the future genera- tions that may read it with a child-like confidence, this instance of righteous- ness. Rise and sing, "While the lamp holds out to burn the vilest sinner may return."
The Kalona "News" completes the list of luminaries that constitute "the light of the world," or of this part of the world. It was started in 1891 by U. B. Smith ( ?). He was a clever little man. He sold to D. C. Miller, who is making a very enterprising paper.
I salute the craft, and wish all "the boys" well. I have been something of a liar myself. Nothing draws, pulls, hauls me like the magic and fascination of the types, and the aroma of roses and carnations and violets is to me not near as ravishing as the scent of printer's ink.
Washington Telephone .- People do not stop to think what an educa- tional factor the 'phone is. Really, we do not learn so much, so many things, from any other preacher, doctor, teacher, editor, etc. A ring, two helloes, and then the cunning thing begins to leak information as a hoop-loose barrel or bursted hydrant hose gushes water. "Of course, it has done a lot of damage to our healths, by depriving us of the wholesome exercise of walking. We used to do a lot of mileage, chasing people on errands. The 'phone saves all that, economizes our time, and in a day it tells us many things. Especially the rural lines. They say when a ring thrills the country wires, it is just like pleasing sensations vibrating our bodily nerves. Every receiver is clapped to an eager ear in each house on the line, and to listen to the gossip as to the sick, the loves of this pair and that, the sales, market, parties and all the other neighborhood news, is equal to a liberal education.
L. D. Robinson started the service here November 4, '94, associated with Thomas Dupuis and D. H. Logan, with a capital of ten thousand dollars. A sketch of the plant appears elsewhere. This is merely to claim the telephone as a popular educator.
Rural Mail .- A like claim may be made for rural mail delivery. Farm life had been isolated. dull, dreary. The 'phone was "company." The daily mail carrier was a messenger as from heaven. These two agents revolution- ized the conditions of life on the farms. Nine carrier spokes radiated from Washington as a hub. This county was one of the first in the district to be threaded with routes, thanks to the energy of our congressman, Hon. Thomas Hedge, under the efficient administration of Postmaster James A. Cunning- ham. At first, three routes were established, later two more, still later four more. The first rural delivery dates June 1, 1901. The first three lines were about thirty miles long, and ran north-east, north-west, and south. The length now is twenty-five miles. The salary started at five hundred dollars,
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advanced to six hundred dollars, and now is nine hundred dollars a year, ex- cepting on one shorter line, which is docked to eight hundred and sixty-four dollars. The carriers have off fifty-two Sundays, five legal holidays, fifteen days' vacation on pay, in the year. Free city delivery was started with two extra country routes in 1902, and the mode of delivery of mail to five thousand to six thousand people was changed over night.
This governmental scheme for landing letters, papers, magazines in every home in this county nearly every day, is as truly a part of popular education as are school-houses, blackboards, chalk, text-books and teachers -it is apparatus, means to ends. Uncle Sam never did a humaner stroke, not even in providing homesteads. In all there are thirty-five to forty routes in this county, so laid out that no farm house is over a half, or at most, a full, mile from a line. Practically, every house-holder in the county is served daily. The Paul Reveres who bring the printed tidings on horse or in carts are like an enriching tide, feeding all the creatures glued to the coast.
Loan and Building Association-This is another educator, as practical as Ben Franklin, as wise as Poor Richard's Almanac-teaching people to save, to profit by saving, and enabling themselves to get homes on an easy monthly instalment payment plan. It was organized here in May, 1886, has loaned three hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and four hundred and thirty loans averaged seven hundred and fifty dollars per loan. It thus aided in building or buying three hundred homes in this county and other counties. During the last ten years, under the present law. it has not operated outside our county. It never had a loss worth mention. It set aside yearly two and one-half per cent from net earnings to meet losses, and this more than covered "accidents." The conduct of the association has been conservative. J. M. Denny has served wisely as president from the first. F. H. Graves was secretary one year, and Hon. C. H. Wilson ever since, and there have never been more than one or two changes in the directorate. The stock has always been at par, or above, and in demand.
I had forgotten one institution-a home lecture course. You may not credit it, but we had about all the big talent in the country here in two or three courses-Philips, Emerson, Douglass, Barnum, Tilton, Beecher, and many more, and it occurred to some that we could lay those fellows in the shade, so this home course, some thirty or thirty-five or more years ago. G. G. Bennett spoke of Stay-at-Home Travels, Wiseman on Tree Toads. Burrell on The Good of Evil, and Drs. Fraser and Scofield and Revs. Johnston and Chaffin on subjects I have forgotten. The strange thing about this effusion of eloquence, with chunks of wisdom in it like
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oysters in a soup, was that not one of those orators was asked to take the general platform and give dust to the men of national fame. It seems Washington was not a city set on a hill, and its light did not reach farther than that of a June bug.
CHAPTER XIII.
COURT, BAR, CRIME, ACCIDENTS.
As stated elsewhere, the first court in Slaughter, afterward Washington, county, was held at Astoria, on David Goble's farm, May 7, 1838. Half of his double cabin was devoted to the records. The weather being warm, the honorable court sat under the trees and the grand jury perched, like bumps, on a log. in a slough nearby. David Irwin, judge of the second judicial district of Wisconsin territory, presided. Thomas Baker was clerk under two thousand dollars bond. A nameless federal marshal sum- moned the jury. An old-style dime piece was made a seal. Some lawyers came, but no clients ; no cases presented, no indictments found. The august court masticated tobacco, ordered one day's allowance for officers and jurors, and adjourned till the next term, beginning October 22, '38, Joseph Williams, judge; Baker, clerk; G. A. Hendray, deputy marshal ; but this session, too, was a water-haul, "no person appearing, either parties, attorneys or jurors," the record says. The sole incident of interest was the meloning of the court, as related in another chapter. Simpson Goble, who carried the sweetened water to the elephant, and received a dime for it, could not rest until he had spent the hot cinder in his pocket, and as there was no store nearer than Burlington, fifty miles away, he went there with his father, walking half the way, and bought a-jewsharp!
The third court was held near Washington, Washington county, June 17, '39. The grand jurors were Wm. B. Thompson, Thomas Wilson, Wm. Ayres, David Goble, Sr., Wm. Basey, M. Moorhead, Richard Moore, J. W. Neil, Thomas Ritchey, Abraham and John Hulock, Wm. L. Harvey, Nathan Griffith. Geo. Parks, John Grimsley, Harrison Goble, Daniel Powers, David Goble, Jr., Ira and John Maulsby. No petit jurors that term. The costs in the first two cases were under eight and twelve dollars respectively. He who became U. S. Senator Grimes got a divorce for John Woods against Elizabeth. Nearly all the women were named Elizabeth, probably in honor of the red-headed and fiery-tempered Queen Bess.
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On the grand jury for 1840 were no well known men but David Goble, Sr., and Hugh Smith, while the petit jury for that whole year held James Dawson, Wm. Essley, John J. Jackson, Jonathan Wilson, Michael Hayes. Nearly all the indictments were for illegal sales of whisky, that is, by un- licensed sellers.
Judge Williams was a brilliant talker, a ventriloquist, a story-teller, a singer, fiddler : indeed, he could play many instruments. He was odd, humorous, variable, and got much of his fun by ventriloquial feats and practical jokes. One of his strangest eccentricities was making temperance lectures-he was a democrat !
The first court held in the court-house opened November 8. 41.
As late as '45, the county attorney got an annual salary of twenty-five dollars. It may be worth noting, that at the second court session two attorneys came here, who afterward became governors and one of them a U. S. senator of great power and of a courage so splendid he voted against the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, viz., James W. Grimes and S. P. Lowe. We cannot lasso prospective governors and senators as easy as that in our courts now.
On the 31st day of May, 1841, in Clay. Elijah Seacy murdered Peter Perry with a club, was arrested, indicted, but the case was so manipulated that he escaped. The case was not tried.
A Mahaska county murder case. Job Peck the murderer of Win. John- son, came here on change of venue September 9 '43. It was a melodrama ; a cultivated Canadian revolutionist, a beautiful girl Kit claiming to be his daughter, horse thieves, etc., being the personae dramatis, and elopement and kidnapping constituting the action of the piece. The Canuck was shot in his cabin and a lover of Kit was held for the crime. Kit was spirited to Pittsburg, Pa., and the lover proved an alibi. He had married Kit near Fairfield. While in jail here, he did not know his bride's where- abouts, nor for several months after, but he finally found her with fine people. They lived near Oskaloosa for years, then went to California. Who she was, was never known; she denied that Johnson was her father ; he may have been her husband. After Peck's death, she married again, and had a noble family, and was called the "Queen of a Thousand Isles"-in the oil business? Johnson was the subject of state correspond- ence between England and the United States. A British subject, he re- volted, turned renegade and spy in 1812, and robbed the mails to get information. Both countries offered a reward for him, and he fled to the "Isles."
NORMAN EVERSON
SAMUEL A. RUSSELL
ـرم
-
HIRAM SCOFIELD
J. F. MeJUNKIN
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX I ATION
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
And still we had no public execution. Courts are tedious without gallows attachments.
There was a double murder. Wm. McCauley was indicted for shoot- ing Don Ferdinand Coffman in English River, Aug. 4, '44. The victim's wife was the alleged woman in the case. There were not enough women in the world, it seems, to go round. The rival men had threatened each other often, and Mac ambushed himself in a fence corner, and, as Don rode a horse by, not over eighteen feet away, carrying a child in his arms, fired, killing both. The case was tried in Van Buren county, Mac was convicted and hung, but we were cheated out of a spectacle we had earned. Mac said he did not mean to kill the baby ; also that Mrs. Don put him up to the crime.
A fourth murder .- John C. Herriman was indicted for killing David H. Miller, on A. J. Disney's farm in Marion, August 9, '48. Herriman was an ex-Ohio convict, and- was- violent when drunk. Talk of challeng- ing his vote enraged him. He was. not .challenged, but was mad anyhow. Miller riding up with a child, dismounted, and Herriman voided profanity and obscenity on him, and' when Miller asked "What are you going to do about it?" drew a gun and shot him dead. After one continuance, the case was tried, he was convicted and sentenced to be hung November 17, '48. On that day there was an Apocalypse of Human Nature in the raw, with the bark on. Sheriff Jonathan H. Wilson had erected a gallows on amphitheater ground east of and adjoining the city cemetery, that a vast crowd of rubber-necks and morbid folk might have a nice roost from which to see a man die like a rat in a trap. Folk came for miles and miles all around, men, refined women, tender children, and camped out, cooked rations, slept overnight in the open, to be sure of having a good place to see the tragedy. When a messenger came dashing up on foaming horse with a stay of execution, that crowd suddenly filled themselves with Helen Blazes, and cussed the welkin blue. Sweet populace, wasn't it? Christian? Civilized? Noble humanity! The upshot was, the supreme court reversed the judgment of the court below ; a new trial, in Fairfield, was granted, and a judgment of manslaughter was reached, and he was sen- tenced to eight years at Fort Madison, but after three years Gov. Hempstead pardoned him.
Marion had another killing, July 15, '59,-Jonathan Dewees, the corpse. Near the Crooked creek ford at Van Doren's mill was a red light house, that a dozen decent citizens set out to abate as a nuisance, the night named above. In the attack, the inmates, two men and two women, fired, and
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Dewees was hit in the neck. Arnold Custar was suspected, but he escaped. and, though indicted, nothing came of it.
The tragic scene shifts to Brighton. Dr. L. E. Hogue, dentist, shot Dr. J. T. Sales, August 18, '68, and he died in a week. Hogue escaped, and that was the end of it. Sales and others had given Hogue a letter of credit for three hundred dollars to a Chicago house for goods, that Hogue sent to Fairfield, and he decamped. He was brought back and the goods attached. He returned to Brighton, paid costs of suit, and had team ready to escape. Sales and Hogue had hot words. and when S. shook H., the latter drew a gun and fired.
In October, '69, John McNally was tried for the murder of Thomas King. Mac had borne a grudge for twenty years, and when full of booze it became as hot as a poker. In the summer of '68, Mac had been hitting the bottle and called to settle the trouble. Invited into the house. he stabbed King. Verdict, murder in the second degree, a life sentence imposed. Su- preme court ordered a new trial : defense, insanity : sent to Mount Pleasant.
John O. Dayton was shot in a West Chester billiard room August 19, '76. He was playing with J. K. Dayton, waiting his turn, when a man fired through the curtains of a raised window. Ed. C. Clemons was arrested : marks in the soft soil tallied with his boots ; his enmity to Dayton since he was a witness for his wife in a divorce suit, was well known. He was convicted of murder in the second degree. There were several trials, resulting fruitlessly. Clemons went to Colorado, ran a sheep ranch several years, prospered, and set out in a late fall to drive here for a visit. He was overtaken by a blizzard in Nebraska, and perished of cold.
In '78. Wesley Miller was shot from ambush as he was walking in the road near West Chester. Tom Dayton was arrested on suspicion and bound over in eight thousand dollars bond. The case was continued from time to time, and finally petered out and was dismissed.
The last murder case tried here was imported from Oskaloosa. Phil Conklin, a large handsome man, was indicted for wife-murder. The case was sensational, and the court-house was packed for days by people eager to see and hear the flower of the Mahaska bar, men like the county at- torney. Geo. W. Seevers, Senator and Judge L. C. Blanchard and Mr. Malcolm. assisted by local attorneys, C. J. Wilson, H. M. Eicher, et al. An acquittal resulted, and then tears flowed, flowers were dumped on Conk- lin, as he floated in a sea of emotions.
Since then, no murders, no blood, and the county was quite free of crime, and for years the jail was empty and did not pay expenses. All told, about a dozen murders in our history, at least two of them committed
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by insane men, which is not an awful record for seventy odd years of white occupancy. Probably, the Indians did far worse. In every one of the murder cases, the cause can be traced either to bad whisky or bad women, or both. Moral, abolish whisky and women-what's the use?
John Ashworth was Highland's first criminal, and was convicted of forgery in '55. He enlisted and was killed at Shiloh.
Judge Irwin was a Virginian, and was appointed to the bench in Michi- gan, then to that in Wisconsin. He was a bachelor, returned to Wisconsin, was removed in 1841 by President Harrison, went to Texas, was a hard rebel, and at last accounts was still a Dave Hill-a democrat.
The year 1879 was thick with suicides and murder. Oliver P. Hull murdered his daughter Emma, in Lime Creek and suicided, and John Strahkirk in Marion and Geo. Hill near Ainsworth shuffled off. But why turn the spiggot to let loose the endless stream of suicides? Or why trace the fatal accidents by flood and field? Frost made icicles of many a man in this county, lightning transfixed several victims, fire cremated others, horses ran or kicked many into kingdom-come and slew them, and machinery and railway wrecks crushed our fair average, but probably, more went by the water route than by all other modes of violent elimination. Mammals are not amphibious. It would be dollars in our pockets if we were armed with fishes' air bladders as life-preservers. If mankind had been created on as fair terms as the one-half of living things were, viz., the plants, which subsist on food held in solution in the atmosphere ; that is, if our food had also been stirred into the vital air, and we, too, could breathe it as a sort of aerial soup, then our entire disgusting interior apparatus and economy could have been left out-stomach, liver, viscera, etc.,-and the cavity filled with air-bladders to make us buoyant in water, and the chief cause of human mortality would have been abolished. If we except earthquakes and wars, from Noah's flood down to date, water has killed more creatures of air-breathing habit than all of the combined agencies of earth and air and gas. More people, by far, drown than go hence by all other violent deaths. If I were to name all of the victims of creeks and rivers in this county. the list would be as formidable as a mortuary roster on Memorial day.
The officer who sentenced Herriman was Judge Geo. H. Williams, who, it is said, became U. S. senator from Oregon.
When news of the bombardment of Fort Sumter came here, Judge Wm. Stone, who, after the war, became governor of Iowa, adjourned court to enlist. He signed up several blank court records for the clerk to fill in, and some of these are still extant in our clerk's office, though the veteran deputy, Teller, never saw them.
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Clark Hoskins took into his home, in Clay, Harry McClain, a convict who claimed to have been converted. He fell in love with Ruth, Clark's sister, tho' several years Harry's senior, but she repulsed him, and he left, but returned in the night, struck Clark on the head with a club, his mother also, but he told Ruth he would not harm her. Florence Baker, a domestic, rolled under her lounge and escaped. Ruth ran to a neighbor's and gave the aların. Harry supposed he had killed Clark and his mother. He was never heard of, though long searched for.
I have known the courts and bar in this county since 1866. A few judicial faces stick in my memory. Judge Sampson was ideal. He had been a soldier, was as modest as a woman-that is, some women-was a hard student, as honest as truth itself, and he should have stayed on the bench, but was seduced into politics, into congress, for which he had no fitness.
There was never a keener blade on our bench than Judge Winslow. He died too young.
Perhaps Judge J. C. Cook, shifty in politics and a bit slick and agile in affairs, was the most resourceful judge in the list. Years later, he tried a railway case here, and the revelation of his power, adroitness, knowledge, his ready equality to every development of the case, were mental feats won- derful to see.
Judge L. C. Blanchard was a "horsey" and sporty judge, but later rose to prominence as state senator and was rated a strong man ; but he indulged a sneering, sarcastic, acrid habit. which marred his character and career.
Judge W. R. Lewis was a mechanical genius, a philosopher, a muser, and, perhaps, a dreamer, a man of cyes as soft and sad as Lincoln's, and a face truly beautiful. Eyes like pansics, all velvet and dew. If one could only see just how the world and life globed themselves in his fine brain and soul! One could love that man, somewhat like a woman. Not less could one love his perfect opposite. the burly, irascible, warm-hearted, impulsive Judge John Scott. He was a delightful old fellow.
In the '6os. the strong men at our bar were J. F. McJunkin, Col. Hiram Scofield, Joseph R. Lewis, Granville G. Bennett. The last two were appointed federal judges in Dakota, Idaho and Washington. Lewis got rich in Seattle, after he was cunningly "resigned" out of office by forged letters. He used to laugh over the cute, shrewd trick.
McJunkin was rated the best advocate at the bar, and he quoted Scripture in his jury addresses like a preacher. He became attorney-general of Iowa and state senator.
I. F. SHERMAN
ANTIS H. PATTERSON
J. F. BROWN
J. R. LEWIS
1
THE NEW YORK I UBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATION
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Everson did not do much at law, and ill health half disqualified A. H. Patterson from practice. Somewhat later he took in as partner John Rhein- art, but he was more financier and man of the world than lawyer proper. Born in Alsace, educated in Paris, steeped in the fine arts and literature, he was, on the whole, the best all-round brain and the most entertaining and versatile companion I ever knew here. He was a true Epicurean, with just enough Stoical ice in his philosophy to keep it from getting soft and rancid. He set his stakes at a fortune of fifty thousand dollars, and said that, when he touched that point, he would quit business, and he kept his word. He alternated between our little Washington and Paris, living there months on end ; his residence in Milwaukee was heaven, as he beat everybody at whist ; he finally moved to Los Angeles, and there I last saw the sadly broken old man in 1892. Not a great lawyer, but the juiciest and most agreeable man of native parts and varied culture who ever lived here, so far as I know. He had the art of living down finer than any one in my ac- quaintance.
Sam Russell hung on the fringes of the court, and was "nuts" to the humorists and wags. No other man tickled to the core so many of our people.
Another amusing lawyer was a Thersites named McGuigan. He was wont to hit the booze hard, and it made him a snarling hyena, and he used to refer sweetly to me as "that damned Bur-rell," accent on the last syllable. Being a democrat, he had it in for Scofield, or any other democrat. He par- ticularly resented Col. Scofield's intrusion into the councils of the democratic party after he Greeleyized in 1872. The Colonel used to tell in high glee and with a fine apopleptic red on his face and neck, of a scene in a conven- tion that proposed him as a delegate to a higher convention. He begged off, as he was a novice as yet in democratic politics, and Mac, with a nice snarl. agreed with him for once, and moved to rule him off the list, as "we have too much of that d ----- d truck in our party now." Scofield would here explode buttons and seams.
Judge J. F. Brown was a curious member of the bar. Master of intrigue. wonderfully fluent, masking his humor under a severe manner put on for a joke, he always cleverly managed to act as a sliver festering in the other fellow's flesh. He got as much fill out of such sallies, as a monkey does in roiling a stream above a group of drinkers.
Do not think I am going to spoil our present bar by making them severally and singly objects of the fine arts. They are alleged modest men-H. M. Eicher, C. J. and C. C. Wilson, S. W. Livingston. M. W. Bailey, S. W. and J. L. Brookhart, W. H. Butterfield, C. A. Dewey, E. D. Morrison, Mort Keeley, Clifford Thorn, J. J. Kellogg, A. S. Folger, Peter Hanley,-who would
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resent my effort to make them picturesque as portraits on the wall. With the exception of the Dean, the venerable J. F. Henderson, who is eighty-three years old, our bar is made up of young men, at least, men under middle age. Well read, shrewd, honorable, striving to settle cases rather than to promote litigation, they are as fine a bunch of lawyers as ever yelled "I object-it is immaterial, irrelevant, incompetent, impudent, insolent, leading, calling for the conclusion of the witness, not the best evidence," etc. Folger has been handi- capped by ill health ever since the war. Patriotic, heroic service in his case meant irretrievable damage to his constitution, robbing him of stamina, energy and endurance in mental work.
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