USA > Iowa > O'Brien County > Past and present of O'Brien and Osceola counties, Iowa, Vol. I > Part 29
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The county, as organized and managed by the board of supervisors, has been very fortunate in not having other than normal litigations, none over- whelmingly serious. Its criminal trials, in results and in costs, have been natural and reasonable in amount. It has never had a criminal suit where the costs have reached the sum of fifteen hundred dollars, exclusive of attorney fees. Its investigations, for instance, by coroners and justices of the peace, looking in the direction of murder and manslaughter, scarce reach a half dozen in the forty years, and the actual trials not that number. The county has never yet had in its criminal litigation what might be called a "swamper." either in amount of costs or excessive length of time taken by the court.
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The claims for damages against the county thus far have been minor in im- portance, and it has never had a judgment rendered against it as yet reaching above a few hundred dollars. Indeed, in both damage and criminal suits its expenses have been nominal, as compared with the fate of some other coun- ties.
The people of the county have had considerable litigation in the federal courts, over the overlapping lands, as we have recited in that chapter. The fact that one or other of the parties in suits have been nonresidents of the state has transferred many cases from the district court at Primghar to the United States court at Sioux City. This has been especially true in many cases against the railroads, the roads showing that they were nonresidents, by reason of having been incorporated in another state, and that the amount involved entitled it to go there.
REFEREE IN BANKRUPTCY.
The United States court at Sioux City, since 1898, has appointed and maintained a referee in bankruptcy residing in this county. He hears all petitions in bankruptcy, and takes all evidence, and passes upon all contested questions except that of discharge in bankruptcy, which must be done by the court at Sioux City. It becomes quite a court within itself.
The following persons have been appointed and filled this office of referee in bankruptcy, and who have presided over that court: J. L. E. Peck, from August, 1898, to September, 1903; George T. Wellman, from July, 1903, to July, 1911 ; Spencer A. Phelps, from 1911 to the present time.
During Mr. Peck's period of about five years there were brought and tried ninety-one bankruptcy proceedings. A corresponding number have been filed and heard during the period of the other referees.
The records of the referee's court are all finally deposited with and be- come a part of the proceedings in the United States district court at Sioux City or Dubuque. The referee handles these bankruptcies very much as an estate is handled in a probate court, and makes all orders relating to same. Trustees, however, are appointed by the referee, who conserve the properties and distribute the funds under orders by the referee, all matters of which may be reviewed on appeal to the court itself at Sioux City. Some large properties, reaching as high as forty thousand dollars and upwards, have been handled. One plunger of a merchant, or rather perhaps a transient merchant, at Sutherland in 1899 was refused a discharge in bankruptcy until
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he should pay into the court the sum of fifteen thousand dollars he was adjudged to be holding back from the creditors, which item was appealed to the United States court at Sioux City and the ruling of the referee sustained. Other items of like import and size, and of various phases on the lines of bankruptcy, have been before the court.
Referring again to general litigation in the county, the jury trials have run from three to five per term of court, or perhaps a dozen per year, occa- sionally fifteen to twenty, or about seven to eight hundred jury trials in the grand total of forty years.
So far in the history of the county during the forty years, and up to January 1. 1914, the suits and numbers of proceedings brought have num- bered as follows: In the old circuit court, abolished in 1886, there were brought one thousand four hundred and fourteen cases, and transcripts to that court amounted to thirty-nine. In the district court to January 1, 1914, and which court has existed for the whole period of the county, there have been seven thousand nine hundred and sixty suits and proceedings, and one thousand nine hundred and eighty-six transcripts. In the probate branch of the district court during the whole period of the county there have been, up to January 1, 1914, one thousand one hundred and thirty-four estates, guard- ianships and kindred proceedings. In grand total of all proceedings there have been twelve thousand five hundred and thirty-three up to January I. 1914.
Thus it can be seen that fully three-fourths of all actual material court work in the county is done by the judges. Of all that large number of suits and causes of action in the county only about seven to eight hundred have been tried by a jury. No single case in open court in the county has ever exceeded about nine days in actual trial. It may be truly said, therefore, that the county has never been seriously cursed with any Harry K. Thaw, Jarndice vs. Jarndice, or McNamara trials, as in other places.
ESTATES.
Of the large estates and guardianships the following are among the larger of the county: Jonathan A. Stocum, William Harker, Elizabeth Har- ker, John Metcalf, Henry C. Lane, E. Y. Royce, Thomas Nott, E. M. Brady, James McKeoen and others.
To sum up briefly, the litigation in the county has mainly consisted of normal law suits naturally arising, with conclusons reached. We have not
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attempted details and perhaps have not recited all or even the most important litigations. Among all these thousands of proceedings, as can be seen, it would be difficult to give a brief review in the space allotted in this article; it would need a book to enter into even a considerable number. We have, how- ever, given enough to show the general outline of the litigation in O'Brien county.
The justices' courts of the county are much the same as found in other counties in the state. This, however, is the people's court, with jurisdiction up to one hundred dollars, and by consent of parties up to three hundred dollars. It comes in touch in each neighborhood with the citizens in the several townships. As will be seen from figures above given, there have been in all two thousand and twenty-five transcripts filed in the district court. A large number. perhaps a full half, have been transcripts or appeals from the justices' courts of the county, the remaining transcripts being transcripts of judgments and proceedings from the courts of record in other counties. The above numbers, however, would only be a small part of the actual trials and judgments rendered in those courts, a large majority of whose trials and hearings become final.
CHAPTER XX.
1 THE PRESS.
In the educational chapter we named and gave the ten newspapers in our several towns a place among the educational features of the county. We sometimes smile at the country newspaper as if a sort of a little upstart. an amateur attempt to be a paper, and joke about its patent insides, as a product of a Sears, Roebuck & Company machine set of brains. But we will not retract our first measure. They have played a part in all the main historic incidents herein recorded. They are like matches and salt cellars, found in every home. They are a necessity.
How often, when absent from home, do we wait the mail with a long- ing thought of home and of neighborhood incidents going on. When the paper arrives it becomes a combination news-letter, of all the doings of the whole town and county, with a hundred items the folks at home have failed to tell. These county newspapers become gladsome and joyous, to the ears and to the eyes. Like the Stars and Stripes, they float, they stir up your loyalty to wife, children, home, town and county.
Perhaps they state that Mary has arrived home from Grinnell or Drake University and your vanity is tickled. "Little Johnnie spoke a piece in the school program." Your family letter had not thought it of sufficient importance or had not thought of it at all, but such an item is not thought too small by the patient news-gathering editor or the typesetter. A local man starts up as a candidate. You read it and ache to get home to help him or lick him out. Your wife is elected president of the Priscilla or Ladies Aid Society, or a daughter appears in the League and your mind thinks "some pumpkins." Your daughter is married and the time-honored list of silver pickle dishes and spoons is published. Your own getting on the train to make the present trip is noted, and you feel two inches taller. Your baby wins a prize in the baby show, and you jump three jumps twenty feet to show it to somebody. When thus away from home, you even find yourself reading the advertisements, the executor's notices and bridge lettings. You read perhaps that your own town bank has two hundred and eighty thousand dollars on deposits according to their advertisement ;
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that your neighbor sold three carloads of steers, or that the machine dealer sold twenty manure spreaders that season. You read the markets, even if you are not in business on those lines. They link you up, these county papers do, to "Home Sweet Home," and perhaps your throat begins to choke. The local doings, even if you are at home, are there condensed, in a way you never would have had time to run around and find out yourself. and saves you being called a gossip, hunting around for news. Careful notation of the "haps" and pointers and "squiblets," small per item, but you read them quickly. When mother is dead the obituary is carefully written up, and the tear drops fall as you read the notice over and over, in the years to come. All the hallowed items, including all the joyous senti- ments, revolve around mother, home and heaven, with love floating as a banner ; that word, the purest and holiest word in the English language, all bubbling up through the human heart and soul Godward.
The daily Chicago papers could not supply the place. Some pungent editor sticks you righteously between the ribs and you get wrathy when it hits you and roll all over with laughter when it hits the other fellow. When done. the paper is laid down, and then picked up again to read them over, and then still over again; you have secured a fund of information and knowledge of home and family and town and county and business, of dol- lars in value, as likewise showing up the joys and wits of local interest, and you must at last conclude rightly that the ten papers in O'Brien county are in fact real sources of information and education.
It is believed by many that the press is an educator which is only sur- passed by the public school and if it is true that truth and its dissemination is better than falsehood-if refined and elevating thought is better than groveling and bestial longings-then the country newspaper has a mission, and it is not without its responsibilities.
Again, the country editor occupies another peculiar place. In the affections of the people he is a public benefactor. He is generally poor because the spirit within him compels him to do the unremunerative work of the community. His talents are not always those of the financier. A part of the talent of the financier is to do the thing that pays-pays money. If there be needful things to do which have no profit, let others do them. All honor to the man whose life has been an industrious and helpful one and who has done the gratuities of the world and who comes down to the grave with an empty purse. Such a life dignifies privation and poverty above the dignity of kings, and is the growing sentiment of the world.
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The first newspaper circulated in this county was established in Old O'Brien in 1871 by John R. Pumphrey. B. F. McCormack, that ubiquitous and eccentrically talented individual who for nearly forty years was more or less connected with the business life of the county, was its first editor. It was denominated the O'Brien Pioneer, printed in Cherokee county by Rob- ert Buchanan and thus continued until the spring of 1872, when Col. L. B. Raymond, then publishing a paper at Cherokee, as part of a general plan for profitable establishment of newspapers in counties newly organized, to get the valuable county printing, opened a printing office at Old O'Brien and on May 24, 1872, he published the first paper printed in the county, con- tinuing the former publication as the O'Brien Pioncer. Without inter- ruption that paper has continued, published by varying printers and editors, awhile at Primghar and later at Sanborn. It is now known as the Sanborn Pioneer. In November, 1872, A. H. Willits purchased the paper and con- tinued the publication at Primghar the following spring, when the county seat was removed to the center of the county in compliance with the election of 1872. In 1873 Major C. W. Inman purchased a half interest, but he was soon displaced by J. R. Pumphrey, the banker of the county seat, who sold to A. G. Willits in April, 1875. The latter was a son of A. H. Willits. The latter was thus identified with the paper for some seven years. And during most of that time, by virtue of his office as clerk of the courts, he was able to throw much of the patronage in way of legal notices to his paper. In January. 1879, he retired from the clerk's office and nominally from the paper, but still loaned some of his energy to editorial work. July 1, 1879, Warren Walker, an attorney of Primghar, purchased an interest and he and A. G. Willits continued its publication until 1880, when the plant was moved from Primghar to Sanborn. In 1881 the name was changed to Sanborn Pioncer, A. G. Willits being then sole owner. A. H. Willits was a forceful character in the conduct of his paper, vigorous in his style and ready to defend his rights, his town and his paper. During his life of action in the county and while publishing the paper, there cropped out the first of that rivalry that has to a greater or less degree existed between Primghar and Sheldon. This jealously and strife frequently took the form of personal attacks on the characters of the editors in the respective papers, and if half of the charges made in the pages of the Pioncer and Mail dur- ing those years are true, both Willits and Piper should have been occupants of a state criminal institution. But as time flies swiftly by, it softens the asperities of life, and, reading the story from a distance, forgetting the highly
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charged atmosphere and aroma of passion and antagonism, we can see much good in both of these men. Their troubles first arose over the conflict as to the final location of the McGregor railroad, afterwards the Chicago, Mil- waukee & St. Paul. It was attempting to change its direction and, passing through Primghar, strike the Sioux City & St. Paul Railroad at a point between Alton and Hospers, thus giving it better selection of lands under its land grant. Primghar encouraged this, as it would bring the track to the county seat and for the same reasons Sheldon wanted it to run farther north. as it in fact later did. A county seat fight or two and other contentions caused periodical renewal of the "warfare."
J. H. Wolf, a veteran of the Civil War, who had arrived in the county in the fall of 1872, to "spy out the land," moved his family to Franklin town- ship in the spring of 1873. He had always taken a keen interest in county affairs, was a frequent contributor to the columns of the county papers and served as supervisor from 1879 to 1881. In December, 1883, he purchased the Sanborn Pioneer from A. G. Willits and began a newspaper career that has continued to the present time, leaving him the Nestor of the newspaper fraternity of the county. As an editor J. H. Wolf has always stood for righteousness and honesty. Frequently his positions have been subject to criticism by some of his patrons, as happens to every newspaper man, but none have ever doubted his sincerity and honesty of purpose. While con- ducting the O'Brien County Bell at Primghar, he had occasion to attack what he considered the extravagances of the board of supervisors, criticis- ing especially their expenditures for county bridges. The attack brought many new subscribers, made him some friends, but antagonized the members of the board and the paper suffered great financial loss in county printing. With the passing of the board that had been attacked, the Bell regained its patronage and its campaign eventually won it friends who have increased and multiplied many fold.
In succession, the Pioncer passed for a few months under lease to S. L. Sage, who was an experienced newspaper man and who had been engaged in newspaper work for fifty years, mostly in Iowa. Next Will F. Wolf, now publisher of the Hawarden Chronicle, had charge of the paper until it was sold to H. E. Wolf, another son of the veteran newspaper man. Later George J. Clark, W. S. Johnson, C. E. Foley and Richard Closson owned and conducted the paper, the latter being present editor and proprietor.
After a short experience as publisher of the Cherokee Free Press, F. M. McCormack, familiarly known as "Pomp" McCormack, came to the county in 1878, establishing his home in Sheldon. He was an actor of no
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mean ability and employed in various home talent dramatic companies dur- ing his many years residence in the county, beginning his first labors in Sheldon in such an enterprise. He was an original, unique character in the pioneer days. First employed as a printer at Sheldon, assisting his brother, B. F. McCormack, in the establishment of the Sheldon News in 1879, he continued employment on Sheldon newspapers until 1885, when he began the publication of the O'Brien County Bell. The first issues were printed at Sheldon although the paper was published at Primghar. Later the plant was transferred to the county seat, which at that time had no newspaper. Primghar was then in a gloomy and depressed condition, through the removal of many of its citizens to Sanborn and other adjoining towns. Pomp had an old-fashioned Washington hand press. The Bell office was in a small building. twelve by eighteen feet in size, the same that is now used as a shoe shop near the southeast corner of the court house square. There was scarcely room to move around, set type and make up his paper. It was the home of the Bell for two years. The editor was dubbed the "crank that rings the Bell." It was prior to the building of a railroad into Primghar and a very unpromising field for newspaper enter- prise. A few years previously there had been an exodus of people and buildings from Primghar to Sanborn, the new town on the Milwaukee Railroad eight miles north. Many buildings were vacant and even resi- dents thought the town had gone "flunk." For several years the building deals had consisted of the tearing down and moving of structures to San- born. It had been an age of demolition instead of construction. The Bell was thus started and indeed established as a permanent paper under these most discouraging circumstances. Be it said that no town in the county, or the county itself, ever had in an editor more of a booster-each day inside the town, each week in his paper. Pomp could make a boost out of an apparent failure or a joke. He understood the pioneer and early times, and, though often magnifying trifles, he did much in putting heart into the hard situations by his newspaper boosting and humor. For instance, in 1887 Herbert E. Thayer built what is now the pool hall at the southeast corner of the square for an abstract of title and land office. In fact it had been the first building venture since the "exodus." Each week Pomp had a write up, of how Primghar was building up again, one week writing it up as the "building at the southeast corner of the square," the next week as the "building on Main street" and so on from week to week during its building until a casual reader would conclude that the town was rushing in its construction work.
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The engraved head, suggestive of a birdseye view of the county, with the name O'Brien County Bell in large letters across its top border, so familiar to the readers of the Bell, illustrates Pomp's original booster clever- ness. The whiskered man in the lower right hand corner is a very good picture of old Adam Towberman, who was one of the oldest settlers, among the homestead crowd of the early seventies and who built the bridges (not the early fraudulent ones) for fifteen years of the genuine early bridge building of the county. A familiar figure in the county, he brought in nearly if not quite all the early trees first planted and which comprise what are now the groves. It was "Old Towb" that Pomp was putting in that head plate. Each town of the county is intended to be shown in the picture, with the enterprising telephone lines bringing in the news to the paper. It was in June, 1886, that Pomp brought to the senior editor of this history his sketch of the proposed heading. His idea was that that bell there ringing and suspended over "Priinghar, the Capitol of O'Brien County, Iowa," sounded forth Primghar and the county with a boost and placed them "on the map." This heading would "dress the stage" of the county, as he put it. The O'Brien County Bell has now for twenty-eight years handed down an eccentric and indeed a practical heading with an idea of its enterprise for all time to that paper. At one time Pomp got his old Washington hand press out of his office, set it up on a wagon, attached be- hind several large farm machines, including a threshing separator, hitched four horses to the outfit, got all the cow bells and tin pans and noisy articles in town and with the frisky boys all ringing them went round and round the court house square, with one big bell over the press on the wagon. The "Crank of the Bell" was ringing the bell.
McCormack had many streaks of eccentricity and triviality which neutralized his fine boosting qualities and left him anything but a financial success. He could entertain a crowd of twenty sidewalk listeners and keep them roaring with laughter, but with the final remark, "what was it all about anyway?" Nevertheless he established firmly one of the substantial news- papers of the county now for so many years under the management of Jacob H. Wolf, assisted by his two sons, Bert and Fred. Pomp was an inveterate practical joker, wit and humorist. On one occasion he ran in the canvass for county recorder, but was defeated. Called on for a speech. he nobly rose to the occasion and made one of the wittiest ever heard in the county. It could not be pictured in print. It was distinctly "Pomp" in its originality and good humor, given at a time when bitterness of defeat might
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have soured the ordinary speaker. His career as an actor was always mani- fest in his every action; he never was caught off his guard and always studied the effect of his speech and action. For many years he joined the business of auctioneer with his newspaper activities.
It has been said of "Pomp" that he "runs a paper in just that way and manner which commends itself to the editor." He was certainly original. if not erratic in his methods. He delighted in extravagant statement and the unusual method of presenting his news. Never a financial success, he worked hard for the best interests of his community and continually made sacrifices therefor. While his methods did not always bring the result in- tended, no one ever doubted his loyalty to his home town. After disposing of his paper in 1894 to Wolf & Gravenor, he established a paper in Prim- ghar in competition, but the project received but little support and quickly perished. Later he was for a short time in the newspaper business at Hart- ley, publishing the Hartley Journal. Later he conducted a paper at Clare- mont. Minnesota, and afterwards removed to Wyoming, where he now resides.
Under the management of Wolf & Gravenor, the Bell assumed a standing in the community it never before had. Its new proprietors were experienced business men, Mr. Wolf having been a printer in his early life in. Pennsylvania and later conducting the newspaper at Sanborn and having been well known in the county through his newspaper work and political activities. Mr. Gravenor was not long actively connected with the business, his interests being represented by his son, and he soon disposed of his share to H. E. Wolf, a son of J. H. J. H. Wolf & Son continued the publication of the Bell and the Sanborn Pioncer for some two years, when the Pioneer was sold to George J. Clark and H. E. Wolf withdrew from the control of the Bell and his father, in a sole ownership, assisted by his sons Fred B. and Bert Wolf, has continued the publication.
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