Tombstone tales from Iowaville

Restoring flesh to dry and forgotten bones is the most rewarding part of life along the tombstone trail, so I was gratified this week when something clicked in my head and the connection between Jonathan A. King's tombstone in the Iowaville Cemetery and an account of Alma King's accidental death in 1849 or 1850 along a trail in southeast Iowa finally dawned. Of course! Jonathan A. King was Jonathan Alma King, known as Alma to his family and friends more than 150 years ago when most of Iowa was wild and free and thousands of refugees were moving across it.

The name itself speaks when given to a male. The Book of Alma is the longest in the Book of Mormon; Alma the younger, a prophet and chief judge of the Nephites. Alma King was one of those refugees, the name says.

This is a series of stories involving intertwined lives, including Alma's, inspired by five graves at Iowaville, a pretty place half a continent away from the Great Salt Lake Valley where several of those who rest here were bound when claimed by death.

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To understand why that happened, it's necessary to know that in early February of 1846, when the Latter-day Saints' flight from Nauvoo, Illinois, toward Salt Lake commenced, Iowaville was a thriving village on the banks of the Des Moines that offered employment. Andrew Jackson Davis, later Montana's richest man, was building a milling complex just across the river in Black Hawk City (linked to Iowaville by a chain ferry) that would contain southeast Iowa's largest distillery. He would become the biggest employer of all. By all accounts, the Iowaville folks were friendly, too, and bore the Mormons little of the ill-will they had encountered in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and farther southeast in Iowa.

Many of the Saints had been forced out of Nauvoo without the resources needed to make the trek west. Some, known as the "poor Saints," had little more than the clothes on their backs as they crossed the Mississippi into Iowa, but many others also had to find places of refuge where they could live in safety temporarily and work to earn the money needed to outfit themselves before continuing the journey west.

Van Buren County, on the trail west, was one of those places. Some arrived here and traveled no farther for months or years. Other families made it as far west as Mt. Pisgah, in what now is Union County, even to Kanesville (now Council Bluffs) on the Missouri, before turning back to Iowaville where jobs could be found.

And so from 1846 until as late as 1853, there were many Mormon families living and working among non-Mormon neighbors in and near Iowaville --- at least dozens and perhaps hundreds of people when the fluid nature of the LDS population is considered.

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Asahel and Elizabeth (Schellinger) Smith were the most prominent, and among the first, to stop at Iowaville. They were old and ill and poor, but because they were accompanied and supported by their son, Elias Smith, and other family members, they were able to live as comfortably as possible considering their circumstances. Other members of the Smith family party at Iowaville included Elias's sister, Mary Jane (Smith) Gee, and her two young children, Elias S. and George W. Gee. Mary Jane's husband, George Washington Gee, had died on 20 January 1842 while on a church mission in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of "black measles" acquired while tending to a sick child. Elias, who had remained a bachelor until age 41, had just married in Nauvoo the previous year Lucy Brown, then in her mid-20s.

Asahel Smith, in line to become fourth presiding Patriarch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, would have ascended to that position primarily because of kinship but also because of the tension that followed the death of his nephew, Joseph Smith Jr., Mormon prophet and founder. Joseph Smith Jr. ordained his father (and Asahel's brother), Joseph Smith Sr. as the first patriarch. He was succeeded by Hyrum Smith, marytered with his brother, the prophet, on June 27, 1844. At that time, Joseph's and Hyrum's only surviving brother, William Smith, asserted his lineal right to the position and was so ordained by Brigham Young. But when William Smith joined a rival Mormon faction headed by James J. Strang, he was formally replaced by his Uncle John, brother of Asahel, primarily it is felt because Asahel was too ill to assume the duties of the position.

Whaever the case may be, Asahel Smith's wife, Elizabeth, died on 14 October 1846, soon after reaching Iowaville, and she may have been the first of the Saints to be buried in the Iowaville Cemetery. Asahel followed his wife in death on 21 July 1848 and was buried by Elizabeth's side.

On the 23rd of August 1850, when the 1850 federal census of the United States was taken, Elias and Lucy Smith and Mary Jane Gee and her two children were living just over the county line west of Iowaville in Salt Creek Township, Davis County. Elias's occupation was given as bookkeeper, but stories of the LDS years at Iowaville suggest that he worked much of the time as a teamster, hauling freight that included whiskey from the Davis distillery to Keokuk and supplies for Iowaville and neighboring villages back from the Mississippi.

In the spring after this census was taken, the Smith and Gee families outfitted themselves and continued the trek west to Utah. Elias, who has served in Nauvoo as business manager of both "Times and Seasons" and "Nauvoo Neighbor" newspapers became business manager and later editor of Salt Lake City's "Deseret News" and eventually was named probate judge of Salt Lake County.

It was Jesse Moroni Smith, son of Elias Smith and his plural wife, Amy Jane (King) Smith, who returned from Utah to Iowaville after the turn of the 20th Century to mark the graves of his grandparents in the Iowaville Cemetery. The paired inscriptions on the tombstone he placed there (at the top of this entry) read:

ASAHEL SMITH
SON OF
ASAEL & MARY DUTY SMITH
Born May 21,1773
At Windham,
Rockingham Co.
New Hampshire
Died July 21, 1848

ELIZABETH
SCHELLENGER
SMITH, Dau. of
ABRAHAM & JANE
SCHELLENGER
Born Dec. 1, 1785
At Chatham, Hartford
Co., Conn.
Died Oct. 14, 1846

Erected by Jesse M. Smith
In behalf of their grandchildren in Utah

As an aside, most of the online material regarding Asahel and Elizabeth state that they died at Iowaville, Wapello County, Iowa. Iowaville and the Iowaville Cemetery are located in Van Buren County. And it is possible that Asahel and Elizabeth actually died just over the county line in Davis County, since that is where their children were living in 1850.

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It is Jesse Moroni Smith, although not born until 21 November 1858 in Salt Lake City, who links the Smith and the King LDS pioneer families of Iowaville. Asahel and Elizabeth Smith were his grandparents. But when he marked their graves, he also ordered a similar tombstone for the adjacent grave of his uncle, Jonathan Alma King. Nearby were the already marked graves of another uncle, Enoch E. King, and an infant cousin, William R. King. The graves of Alma and Enoch offer insights into the terrible hazards of pioneer life in Iowa; the grave of William, a link to an even greater tragedy, the clash of native American and Euro-American cultures that led to an 1855 massacre in Washington state that claimed nine lives.

As noted earlier, Elias Smith (left), who had gotten off to a late start in marriage, and his new wife, Lucy, were living in Salt Creek Township, Davis County, when the 1850 federal census was taken. Soon thereafter, on 28 October 1850, the first of their four children, Emily Jane, was born.

In 1851, they outfitted themselves and pushed on toward Utah where in Salt Lake City on 15 April 1856, Elias married as his plural wife Amy Jane King (born 3 October 1836 in Mantua, Portage County, Ohio), the daughter of close friends and Iowaville neighbors Thomas Jefferson and Rebecca Englesby Olin King. Jesse M. Smith was the second of 13 children who resulted from that marriage, meaning that Elias (despite not starting until he was 41) fathered 17 children before his death on 24 June 1888 in Salt Lake City --- the youngest born when he was 72.

The Kings (that's Thomas J. at left) had come from Portage County, Ohio, to a farm in Morley's Settlement near Nauvoo in 1845, but had not yet harvested a crop when their home was burned and they were forced to flee into Nauvoo, then the next year across the Mississippi into Iowa. Thomas, Rebecca and at least seven children of their eight children managed to reach Mt. Pisgah in 1846, but could find no work there and so after a brief stay returned east to Iowaville where they settled among fellow refugees, including the Smiths. Thomas King and Elias Smith acquired ox teams and became partners in a freighting operation between Iowaville and Keokuk, much of the time hauling whisky from the Davis distillery to Keokuk and goods for the Iowaville store on the return trip.

In was this freighting operation that claimed the life of Jonathan Alma King, apparently during December of 1849 although December of 1850 also is the possible date of the event. Alma's brother, Thomas Franklin King, seventh child of Thomas J. and Rebecca, described the events as follows in biographical writings completed late in life:

"On another occasion my father and my next younger (actually an older) brother, Alma, were hauling salt to Keokuk on a pair of low bob-sleds. The weather being bitter cold, they took turns in going into houses to warm themselves. Thus one of them would go into a house to warm and the other drive on, When the one in the house got warm he would run and catch up with the team and drive, while the other went into another house to get warm. On one of these turns Alma had been in to warm himself, and catching up with the team he took the whip while my father went into another house to get warm; on coming out he (Father) ran to catch up with the team, but soon found the lifeless form of Alma. It was supposed that in trying to jump onto the sled his foot slipped and that he was thrown under the sled which crushed the life out of him. Father left his team there and hired a man to take the body home. It was a most heart-rending scene that took place when he reached home, as Alma was the model brother of the family."


It was Alma's grave that Jesse M. Smith marked with a stone similar to the one he erected at his grandparents' graves. The inscription on it reads as follows:

IN MEMORY OF
Jonathan A. King
SON OF THOS. J. & REBECCA E. KING
Born Feb. 2, 1835
Died Dec. 1850
ERECTED BY
JESSE M. SMITH
LAYTON, UTAH

There's a discrepancy here, I know, between the usual date given for Jonathan Alma's death, December 1849, and the date placed on his tombstone by Jesse M. Smith and I tend to think Jesse was mistaken, but that will come up here a little later.

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Located just north of Jonathan Alma's tombstone at Iowaville is the far older stone marking the grave of his brother, Enoch E., who died in Feburary of 1850 at the age of 10. This death date is easier to affirm because Enoch's death was recorded in the mortality schedule attached to the 1850 federal census of Van Buren County. That entry states that Enoch King, age 10, a male born in Ohio, died in Feburary of 1850 as the result of a fever of three days' duration. The inscripton on this stone reads:

In Memory Of
ENOCH E.
Son of
THOMAS &
REBECCA E. KING
Who died
Feb. 20, 1850
Aged 10 yrs.
4 mo. & 18 ds.

But the obvious question is, why did Thomas J. and Rebecca King mark Enoch's grave before they left Iowa, and that apparently is what happened since the tombstone is of that era, but not Jonathan Alma's? Frankly, I have no explanation.

According to Thomas Franklin King, his father, Thomas J., traveled to the gold fields of California in the spring of 1850 hoping to make enough money to take his family from Iowa to Utah. If that, as well as the account of Jonathan Alma's death while working with his father, is accurate then the death must have occurred in December 1849 as reported in much later biographical writings about Thomas J.

In addition, when the 1850 federal census of Van Buren County was taken, Rebecca headed the family as enumerated in Village Township which included four children, William, 17, Amy, 14, Thomas F., 8, and Angeline, 5. Son George E. and his bride, Mary, were living nearby in Salt Creek Township, Davis County. But there was no sign of Jonathan Alma, lending support to December 1849 as his death date.

Whatever the case, Thomas and Rebecca had by now lost three of their eight children, sons Jonathan A. and Enoch as well as a daughter (and Enoch's twin sister), Rhoda Eleanor, who according to some accounts died on 5 July 1846. If that date is accurate it would place her death somewhere along the trail in Iowa.

To conclude this chapter of the story, Thomas J. King returned to Iowaville from California by ship around Cape Horn in the fall of 1853 and spring of 1854 having met with mixed success in the gold fields. He outfitted the family immediately and set out for Utah with Rebecca, William, Amy, Thomas F. and Angeline. They arrived safely and thrived. Thomas J. died in East Layton, Davis County, Utah, on 23 September 1876. Rebecca followed him in death on 12 November 1876.

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A link to the greatest tragedy involving former Iowaville residents is provided by the small tombstone of William R. King. My own photo of it is worthless (I'll try again), so I've borrowed one from the excellent "Iowaville Cemetery" site that may be found by clicking here. The inscription on the stone reads as follows:

WILLIAM R.
Son of
GEORGE E. &
MARY S. KING
DIED
Jan. 19, 1853
Aged 11 mo.
&5 d.

George E. King, reportedly born 23 October 1828, was the eldest son of Thomas J. and Rebecca Englesby (Olin) King and a brother of Jonathan Alma and Enoch. It was George who went back to the burned-out farmstead at Morley's Settlement from the relative safety of Nauvoo in the fall of 1845 to help his mother harvest the corn she needed to feed her family. And it was George who walked many miles to Mt. Pisgah the next year to get the horses necessary to haul his family and their stranded wagon in from the Iowa prairie.

There is confusion about George's first marriage, but at some point prior to 1850 he apparently married a Sabrina Curtis and they had two children, but soon parted and divorced. Sabrina ended up in Utah without him and the children were sealed to her second husband.

By the time the 1850 federal census was taken on 23 August of that year, George E. and his second wife, Mary Susan Kinsley, a North Carolina native who was only 15, were living at Iowaville just west of the Davis County line in Salt Creek Township. His occupation is given as cooper.

William R., who died at 11 months, most likely was their second child, although that is by no means certain. His brother, George E. King Jr., may have been older --- we just don't know when the younger George was born.

When Thomas J. King returned to Iowaville from California in the spring of 1854, he immediately began to prepare his family for the trip to Utah. George E. and Mary, however, chose to head elsewhere, departing Iowaville in late April, 1854. George's brother, Thomas Franklin King, wrote:

"My brother, George E., who had married and had a young family, concluded to go his own way. He fitted himself up with a first class four-horse team and started a few days ahead of us, for Washington Territory, and that was the last we ever saw of him."

The decision to go his own way would prove to be a grave mistake.

By early September 1854, the Kings and their son, George, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Jones and their three children, had reached the Yakima River valley in south central Washington where they encountered Ezra Meeker, a major figure in and chronicler of Washington history, who camped overnight with them on or about the 8th.

Later that fall, the Kings and the Jones with other families settled on the White River about 20 miles south of Seattle not far from Puget Sound. It may have been soon after their arrival that Mary S. King gave birth to another child.

Almost exactly a year later, during a time of intense tension between the Native American and Euro-American residents of the Seattle area, what now is called the White River Massacre occurred on Sunday, 28 October 1855.

When all was said and done that day, nine people were dead in or near cabins on three adjoining claims: George E. and Mary S. King and their infant child, Harvey H. and Eliza Jane Jones, Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Brannan and an infant child and Enos Cooper.

Of the nine, Mary Susan King was the most horribly mutilated. George E. King's body had burned with the family cabin. The infant's body never was found.

The three Jones children escaped the massacre with assistance from a friendly Native American couple. George E. King Jr. was taken captive and held four months before being taken by his captors to Fort Steilacoom and turned over to officers there.

Young George then was placed by those officers in the custody of Ezra Meeker, eventually adopted by a family named Gunn and finally taken to Connecticut. No more is known about him, but Meeker implies that he was dead by the turn of the 20th century.

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It is at this point, having told these stories, that some sort of grand summing up seems called for --- maybe something about adversity and perseverance, lessons to be learned from the examples of our forbears --- you get the idea. But to that would trivialize some pretty tragic stuff I think. So draw your own conclusions.

For me, I'll fall back on a line attributed to Harry Truman: "The only new thing is history we don't know." Now I know a little more.

A note about sources: Because all of these families were Mormon, some quite prominent, an abundance of online genealogical material is available concerning them, much of it based on work done for sacramental purposes by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and made available to the public by that church. Noble purpose, however, does not ensure accuracy and among competing versions of the same data groups I've tried to choose the most logical.

Biographical writings by or about Elias Smith, Asahel Smith, Thomas Jefferson King and Thomas Franklin King found in the Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia and comparable volumes provided guidance for the narrative as well as specific data.

Pehaps the best account of the White River Massacre is found scattered throughout Ezra Meeker's 1905 "Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget Sound" (Seattle: Lowman W. Hanford Stationery & Printing Co.). Nancy Russel Thomas's "The White River Massacre," published in "The Weekly Ledger" of 18 November 1892, also proved helpful.

Salem Cemetery Update: Lot No. 33

I've now added content to Lot No. 33 at the Salem Cemetery blog, which links from the sidebar at left. These are my great-great-grandparents, Jacob and Harriet (Dick) Myers; and great-grandparents, Daniel and Mary Belle (Redlingshafer) Myers. There might have been more of us on this lot, but in part because of the space hoggishness of Jacob's two tombstones (that's the main stone up top), other members of the family, including my grandparents, decided they needed more room. Give me land, lots of land, in other words.

Winter reading

There’s rarely rhyme or reason to what I read, although I do it all the time. I wish I were disciplined enough to have a rhyme or reason, but mostly just grab whatever interests me. Here’s a rundown of what’s been going on since Jan. 1.

I started the year tying up a couple of loose ends, most notably Annette Gordon-Reed’s “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008), a highly detailed account of the extended slave family that surrounded Thomas Jefferson and included Sally Hemings and her children by him. I’ve mentioned this book before, but for some reason it got put down and not picked up again so I still had a chapter to go.

Now I’ve finished it and am looking forward to a sequel that will examine the lives and times of those who descend from Jefferson and Hemings. This book more or less ends with the death of Jefferson and the dispersal of the family --- his own children into freedom by one route or another; most others sold to clear at least some of the debt Jefferson built over a lifetime.

It was interesting to hear Gordon-Reed, a professor of Law at New York Law School, as a commentator on National Public Radio’s coverage of the inaugural Tuesday.

THAT LED once I figured out where I’d put it to a quick reread of Tony Horwitz’s perceptive and funny “Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War” (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998). I’d read this first when it was published and it’s held up remarkably well despite the ground-shifting events of the last 10 years.

It’s worth noting, considering its title, that Horwitz’s book was not received especially well by some --- and his wry account of Alberta Martin, who as a young woman married a very old Confederate veteran (more than likely a deserter) and thus became the iconic last surviving Confederate widow at the time the book was written, generated a lawsuit encouraged by the Sons of Confederate Veterans alleging that he had ridiculed her (which he hadn’t).

I especially enjoyed accounts of his travels, trials and tribulations with Robert Lee Hodge (that’s Hodge on the cover), a hard-core Civil War re-enactor; and a chapter on Shiloh, where many young Lucas Countyans fought and some died.

STILL IMMERSED in the past, I picked up David L. Holmes’ small volume, “The Faiths of the Founding Fathers” (New York & London: Oxford University Press, 2006), especially interesting now because of the role religion played in the 2008 elections. I’m at kind of a disadvantage because the book and I are not in the same place this week, but the most perceptively entitled chapter was something like “The Past is a Foreign Country.”

Holmes’ answer to the question asked often in recent history, “Was the United States founded as a Christian nation?” might be summed up as, “Well, sort of but probably not exactly in the sense you mean.” Our founding fathers and mothers, for example, would not have heard or understood the phrase “born-again Christian.” Pietism, the base for great 19th century Protestant revivals and a founding principal of many current denominations, had not yet spread widely.

So the founders who were devout --- Samuel Adams, John Jay, Patrick Henry and others, including the spouses of many who were not so devout --- were for the most part members of the orthodox and established (tax-supported) denominations of the time, Congregational in New England, Anglican in the mid-Atlantic and southern states. And even those who were not devout remained for the most part within the denominations where they’d been raised and if asked if they were Christian, more than likely would have answered, “certainly.”

This was, however, the age of the Enlightenment --- when reason rather than faith was most highly valued in what might be called intellectual circles. Anything that could not be supported by reason --- including basic tenets of orthodox Christianity such as virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, resurrection --- was dismissed or altered to fit into a framework called deistic.

So other founders --- Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe among them --- most likely would be classed as deists. John and Abigail Adams were Unitarians, although most certainly Christ-centered Unitarian, a concept foreign to many who now find themselves within the Unitarian Universalist denomination but also quite different from orthodox Christianity.

It seems most likely, Holmes suggests, that neither today’s most conservative religious conservatives nor most liberal liberals are going to find quite what they’re hoping to find in the religious convictions of our forebears.

Holmes does offer one of the most coherent explanations of deism that I’ve read, so that makes it especially worthwhile for those interested in getting into the heads of great figures in American history.

THEN I BOUGHT Sarah Lyall’s “The Anglo Files,” subtitled “A Field Guide to the British,” New York & London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008. It’s an at-times funny and well-written book that will carry you through it quickly written by a New York Times staff writer assigned to that newspaper’s London bureau.

However, Lyall, who is married to an Englishman and it would seem most likely intends to remain a resident of the U.K., has chosen to dwell on just about every cliché regarding the British that’s out there --- casual approach to dentistry, fondness for eccentricity, obsession with class and cricket, and so on. Which is too bad because it makes “Field Guide to the British” a vast overstatement.

FINALLY, Shreve Stockton’s brand new “The Daily Coyote,” subtitled “A Story of Love, Survival, and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008). I’m just not into books about cute animals, so quite frankly would not have not picked this one up had it not been set in and around Ten Sleep, Wyoming, a small town at the west base of the Big Horns. My great-grandfather died on a ranch near Ten Sleep in the 1930s; a great-aunt and great-uncle lived out their lives near and in Ten Sleep; and I really like Wyoming, although I’ve spent more time on the Buffalo than the Ten Sleep side of those spectacular mountains.

Stockton, a city girl who fell in love with Wyoming while on a Vespa trip from San Francisco to New York, moved to Ten Sleep on a kind of whim --- a rental house was available there and she took it even though her earlier trek through the state been on the more northerly route down into Sheridan.

Romance blossomed between Stockton and “Mike,” a trapper/shootist paid by the state to exterminate vermin that threatened livestock in the region. And it was he who gave her the tiny coyote pup, the only survivor from a den he had exterminated.

The book, which contains many lovely photos of the coyote pup named Charley as well as the Wyoming landscape, revolves around the trials and tribulations of raising as a pet a creature born to be wild. It grew from Stockton’s popular Web site/blog, also called “The Daily Coyote.” I enjoyed the book, but felt a little sorry for poor Mike whose personal demons, most involving the accidental death of a daughter, were fully aired as were the ups and downs of the Shreve/Mike romance.

Stockton has taken some grief for adopting a wild critter as a pet, but as she points out quite rightly, had she not agreed to do that the pup would have been killed and once raised by humans Charley, could never return to the wild. Nor does Stockton in any way advocate coyotes as pets for the general public.

So there you have the reading list for the first half of January.

Salem Cemetery Update

I've added three lots to the Salem Cemetery blog, which links out of the sidebar at left. The updates are Lot No. 35, which contains only the unmarked grave of Cora Houck, 12; Lot No. 48, which contains only the grave of Lilly Bell Parsons, 4; and Lot No. 30, which contains the graves of the Rev. Marcus L. Evans and his wife, Elizabeth (Hetser) Evans. Unfortunately, I've misplaced the photos of the Evans tombstone, so either will have to find it or retake it.

The Evans entry does contain a lengthy account of the collision of two freight trains at Chariton in 1875 that claimed the Rev. Mr. Evans' life and remains interesting reading. The five who died in that crash included the first passengers to be killed on then then relatively new main line of the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad (later the C.B.&Q and now the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe}.

Praise song for the day

"In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

"On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp --- praise song for walking forward in that light."

Those words from Elizabeth Alexander's magnificent inaugural poem, "Praise Song for the Day" fairly well summed up for me Tuesday's inaugural. I can't remember the last occasion in our collective recent history so filled with hope and eloquence. Now the work begins and we'll see, as we do every four years, if hopes and dreams expressed on the Capitol steps can become real.

I listened to the inaugural events on National Public Radio driving north across Iowa, and there are advantages to that because the focus shifts from television's array of sights and sounds and commentary to the words --- what's being said and sung.

Frankly, if I'd been sitting at home in front of the television I'd probably have gone out to fill my coffee cup during Alexander's poem rather than sitting behind the wheel speeding through an Iowa winter transfixed by her words. I wouldn't have listened as carefully to Aretha Franklin's magnificent performance of "America" or really thought about the words arranged into prayers by the Rev. Rick Warren and the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery.

Much of President Obama's inaugural speech coincided with those few miles of my narrow gravel shortcut west of Marshalltown where the snowbanks were taller that the truck, the surface hard-packed snow with ice beneath and heavy equipment was being used at intersections to push the mountains back in anticipation of the next storm. Is that an analogy for the situation we're now in? It almost seemed that way.

I liked the speech --- sober and reflective. There was mild complaining among some NPR commentators who felt the speech didn't soar --- and anyone who has listened to Obama speak knows he is a master of the language and can use effectively any rhetorical device he chooses to. So the sober nature was intentional. I especially liked this:

"We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."

Funny to me at least was the whispered commentary on the Rev. Rick Warren's invocation: "He said Jesus." Warren did a fine job, I thought, but the apparent surprise is bemusing, a sign of a mild cultural divide, as was the pre-inaugural speculation about whether he would or wouldn't. It's useful to know that if you invite a Southern Baptist preacher to preach you'll sit longer than 20 minutes and there will be an altar call. Invite a Southern Baptist preacher to pray and it is inconceivable that Jesus will not be part of the equation.

But I thought the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery's benediction more eloquent and moving. Nothing could have been more fitting than closing prayer delivered by that 87-year-old civil rights pioneer and United Methodist preacher.

"With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

"Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen."

Seeing photographs later of George W. and Laura Bush board a helecopter after the inauguration on the first leg of their journey home to Texas was surprisingly bitter-sweet. I'm afraid history will not be kind to the Bush presidency and that it may be consigned to footnotes --- the unique father-son succession of George H.W. and George W. Bush, the responsibility that falls on George W. Bush's shoulders as commander in chief for the war in Iraq.

I hope the bright footnote of his strong and reassuring leadership immediately after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon will end up in the books, too; as well as acknowledgement that because of the war on terrorism we really will never know what he might otherwise have done had he presided over eight years of peace. I probably wouldn't have liked it, but there is the benefit of that doubt.

Jimmy Carter, to whose presidency the historians have not been especially kind, is one example to how an ex-president with an ambiguous record can soar unambiguously. Bush might choose that path, or if as sometimes is suggested he is not an introspective man, he may just get on with life. But it would be very bad manners indeed not to wish him well.

Tuesday was the easy part, the inspiring part. Now it's time to get to work and I hope and pray that the work goes well.

Just for the record ...

... the official overnight low in Mason City overnight Thursday-Friday was -31F, breaking a 1977 record of -27F. Of course that's out at the airport, on flat land with no shelter from the wind, where it's always colder than it is in town. It's now above zero with a high near 30 predicted (and light snow in the air).

I've enjoyed complaining about the cold snap, but didn't have to do farm chores or other outside work and spent most of my time in warm places, so really didn't have much to complain about at all. But that's the best kind of complaining --- when there are few justifications for it. Now it's time to move on.

ALTHOUGH ... It's after 1 p.m. now and a balmy 24, but what with the wind and the blowing snow seems to feel colder. I switched from insulated to regular pants this morning and now my legs don't know what to do. Since I had to go to HyVee West (the grocery) anyway, I decided to have lunch in the deli (which translates as cafeteria, not a deli at all). After seating myself in a booth beside a window it began to feel as if the heat had been turned down, way down; my legs began to complain and I began to think hypthermially.

I've eaten at a lot of HyVee deli's whilst roaming around Iowa in a hurry, working on the premise it's healthier to eat where vegetables are available than in other fast-food establishments where iceburg lettuce is about it. Although the decor all looks roughly alike, the HyVee food ranges I found from unspeakable to decent. Go to a larger store and you get real plates; to a smaller store, and you get styrofoam that heaves and buckles under its load (something to do with dishwashing equipment I supposed). I've only had to give up on one --- in Eldora --- because of the chief cook's apparent fondness for salt. This is not a blood pressure issue; I just can't handle food that consistently tastes as if the top of the salt shaker fell off while it was being prepared.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS are developing gradually. I resolved to get a haircut on Jan. 2 and it took me two weeks to get it done. But it was a beast of a day when I did it, so I got right in and didn't have to sit around.

Today's resolution is not to lose household bills. This is a mildly complex matter few people other than me would have problems with, but I'm challenged by having two sets of bills for two establishments that arrive at two locations and the fact bills no longer all arrive on or soon after the first of each month. So it's not possible to sit down on let's say the 5th and pay everying at once.

This month I lost the Chariton water bill, a postcard affair that has a habit of slip-sliding away. After dropping the midmonth bills off at the postal station at HyVee today, I finally spotted the water bill peeking out from under the passenger seat in the truck. So now I can pay it --- two days late. Had I not spotted it, I'd have moved on to the alternative --- send a check in the general amount with "sorry" written on it and leave it to the water department bookkeeper in Chariton to sort out.

Heaven help us ...

... or where is Billy Graham now that we need him? Sadly, the Rev. Mr. Graham, now 90 and beset by the infirmities of old age, rarely leaves his North Carolina home and certainly is not up to a trek to Washington, D.C., to pray at Tuesday's inauguration of Barack Obama. I'm sure he'll be praying for Obama and the nation anyway, bless his heart, but it will not be quite the same. It was kind of nice when most felt one guy, even though unabashedly Christian and Southern Baptist to boot, could pray for us all and few minded --- and no one seemed to feel he or she was being prayed against.

So we've been treated recently to a variety of unseemly skirmishes on the inaugural prayer front. First Obama asked Rick Warren (upper left), a preacher licensed by Southern Baptists who leads the Saddleback megachurch. Because of that, there was rejoicing among conservatives and great wailing and gnashing of teeth among liberals, including many of my queer brothers and sisters.

Then Obama asked V. Gene Robinson (lower left), Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and gay, to lead prayers on Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial during an inaugural kickoff event. Because of that there was great shrieking and hand-wringing among conservatives and general rejoicing among liberals.

And so it's gone. Betwixt and between we've learned that the Rev. Sharon Watkins, head of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a moderate to liberal denomination, will preach at the National Prayer Service, and that here and there along the inaugural parade route we will hear from a Roman Catholic archbishop, at least three rabbis and a Muslim. We heard from atheists and agnostics in the form of a lawsuit (rejected) challenging prayer of any sort, or for that matter mention of God, during the proceedings. About the only folks not heard from, as nearly as I can tell, are the Mormons (take that, Mit Romney). If we're going to all of this bother to be inclusive, it would have been nice to include them. There are more Mormons out there, after all, than many of the other varieties heretofore mentioned.

I read a good many religiously-oriented blogs, ranging from ultraconservative to flaming liberal --- including a few Mormon ones, and much has been said there about all of this. But I'll spare you. Nor I would never link to those faith-based (?!?) blogs because quite frankly they all manage to give religion a black eye on a regular basis. If any of the great unchurched mass out there are looking for faith-based homes, I'd prefer they just pick a few churches and start attending (OK OK Take the BeliefNet "what denomination am I?" multiple-choice test if you must). But read the blogs and you'll have the bejesus scared out of you before ya get off the ground.

I guess in general I'm OK with this multiple-choice inaugural prayer business if one of its points is to say "Now looka here. No matter what we think or believe about each other, we've got to keep all this sniping down to an uproar and make sure everyone's got enough to eat." And what with the economy and all, that could become an issue unless we behave ourselves in more ways than one.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind if there were no prayers at all. Somewhere in the process of offending no one many of them end up sounding a tad hollow. And presumably our leaders and all the rest of us would be off in our respective closets praying privately anyway, something I think there's a New Testament precedent for.

Minus-22 and rising

It was -22F and clear here just before sunrise and even a hyperactive furnace couldn't keep the cold from creeping toward my feet from the (covered) window a couple of feet away. The good news is we will top zero today (by as much as eight degrees); the not-so-good news, freezing rain of all things is in the forecast. Ya just can't win this year.

All things are relative, and when I saw it was only -7F while driving the block (yes, just a block) back to the office at 6 last evening I thought, "well, that's not bad." When I left work at 11 p.m. it was -9F and after driving around town for 15 minutes, -15F. I'd never think of driving if it weren't for the truck, which seems to benefit from regular exercise when it's this cold. So the drill three or four times a day is to start it (mild complaining), let it warm up for 10-15 minutes, then drive around at a gradually-accelerating pace to get the juices moving. Without the truck, boots, good socks, insulated pants, a heavy parka and sensible gloves keep me going for a reasonable length of time in just about any temperature. But the key is to not be without the truck.

The overnight low Wednesday-Thursday was -27F, one degree short of a record, so all schools in the region were cancelled Thursday and perhaps they are today as well (I haven't looked). That's intended (a) to keep smaller children inside and out of the cold when they'd usually be headed for school and (b) to avoid problems with diesel-powered school buses that sometimes react badly to extreme cold. No one wants a busload of kids stranded on a back road somewhere if the diesel gels.

So it's just another day on the prairie. When I looked at the Iowa forecast map this morning, there was a tiny spot of white (meaning more or less seasonal cold and otherwise reasonable weather expectations) down around Lamoni. The rest of the state still was covered with brown, light blue and grayish blue meaning winter-weather advisory and differing degrees of wind-chill watches and warnings. Maybe we'll dig our way out of this yet.

In the meantime, I've been spending too much time reading blogs written in warmer places. Australia's good this time of year since it's summer there and folks are complaining about the heat! Stay warm.

Baptists always have the best stained glass ...

I doubt that's universally true, but I like the line --- used by an acquaintance when talking about First Baptist Church in Humeston at a time when the United Methodist and Christian (Disciples of Christ) congregations there were merging, tearing down their old buildings and building a new joint house of worship that incorporated glass from both buildings.

What is true, in Lucas County at least, is that First Baptist Church of Russell (photos top and bottom) has what may be the most architecturally significant building in the area --- and I say that with appreciative nods to both First United Methodist and First Presbyterian churches in Chariton, both of which are larger and grander and quite beautiful.

I can't say that I grew up in First Baptist Church, but I was on the Cradle Roll there (and have the registration card to prove it). This was the only church my parents ever joined other than birthright assimulation into their childhood family churches, neither Baptist.

But sometime after the pastorate of the Rev. Donald Brong ended amicably in 1952, holy war erupted among the Russell Baptists and my parents, neither of whom were religious combatants, fled. And so my career as a Biblical scholar was nipped in the bud, a sad occurance for someone who while he was neither born in a log cabin nor walked miles barefoot through the snow to school did learn to read at age 4 or so from the Bible while perched on parental knees.

But my first memories of church are here, and they are all good ones: Sitting in a pew in the warm glow of sunlight streaming through the Woodman memorial window, the splay of gold organ pipes (now gone) across the front of the church, the dark wood structure that supported the roof and --- best of all --- as the Sunday school hour ended and the time for worship neared, the ceremonial opening by ushers of the immense (or so they seemed then) doors that slid first to double up and then vanish into the walls to reveal the adult Sunday school room, equipped with theater seats, that formed the north end of the church building.

That was a time when many small-town churches, including First Baptist, actually were full on Sunday mornings and the overflow seating area was needed.

I'd always thought First Baptist was a pretty church, although not exactly in the traditional triumphal southern Iowa way, but hadn't thought about its significance until a couple of years ago when I received a query via this blog from Elizabeth Vandam of Minneapolis, a research historian working on a biography and catalog of works of Minneapolis-based architect Harry Wild Jones.


She had found among his papers Wild's drawings of the elevation and floor plan of "Baptist Church, Russell, Iowa," and wanted to know if I could tell her if it still was around. I was able to tell her it was and went down that winter to take a couple of exterior photos so I could show her how near to the original design it remained.

The only exception is the absence of a towering steeple designed to top the bell tower and I have a feeling (but can't prove) that the practical Russell Baptists just never added that final flourish.


The major interior change I noted was the disappearance of the pipe organ I remember, perhaps an enhanced version of the one salvaged from the original First Baptist Church, a quite different building destroyed by fire. This was gone by the time I went to a wedding at First Baptist the summer after high school graduation, sacrificed (as many, many pipe organs were at that time) to the wonders of a shiny new electric organ. The pipes had vanished and had been replaced by an expanse of cream-colored wall.

Vandam now has published the results of her research (Vandam, Elizabeth, "Harry Wild Jones, American Architect," Minneapolis: Nodin Press, 2008), and I assume Russell First Baptist is mentioned in the large catalog of his work appended to it, although I've not yet seen the book itself.

I did a little research myself, trying to figure out exactly when the undated design was undertaken (probably 1913-1914), but issues of the Russell newspaper for those years have vanished and Chariton newspapers were not especially helpful. So there's still some doubt here.

Charles M. Wright, in his 1966 centennial history of Russell, tells us that the original church, built in 1883, burned in October of 1913 and includes the following transcript of an undated clipping:

"The Baptist Church in Russell caught fire last Sunday afternoon and was completely destroyed. The fire, which was discovered about four o'clock, started in the furnace room and from the headway it was making when discovered had evidently been burning two or three hours. The firemen arrived as soon as the alarm was given and made heroic efforts to save the building, but it had gotten too much of a start and all that could be done was to watch the building burn and to keep the nearby buildings from catching fire.

"Entrance to the building was gained through the southeast window, and the pulpit furniture and choir chairs were saved. The pipe organ was too large to get out through the window, but by quick work the sides of the window were chopped out, making a hole large enough to get the organ through and it was saved just as flames came through the floor near the pulpit.

"The church was dedicated thirty years ago the 30th of September, and was a good building, much better than could be built now for the same money.

"The building was insured for $2,000, and with that and what money will be raised later, the Baptists intend to rebuild as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made."

The Chariton Leader of Thursday, 23 October 1913, reported as follows: "The Baptist Church at Russell was destroyed by fire on Sunday afternoon and was a complete loss. All that was saved was the organ and pulpit furniture. There was only $2,000.00 insurance on the building. The structure had cost many thousands of dollars and was one of the prettiest edifices in the county. It will be rebuilt, no doubt, and people will generally assist in the enterprise, as the Baptist congregation there has always been liberal and free to help in the cuase of Christianity. So the people feel that is is a general loss and not confined to the Baptist congregation alone."

On 6 November 1913, The Chariton Herald Patriot reported, "At a special meeting of the members of the Baptist church this week plans were made to erect a new structure on the same site of the old one. It will be a good modern church."

Charles Wright goes on in the centennial history to tell us that after the fire, the Russell Methodists invited the Baptists to share their building and the pastors of the two congregations alternated as officiants. According to Wright, the new Baptist church was "built by Reuben Dixon and was completed in 1915."

Dixon undoubtedly was the contractor, the the architect is not mentioned; and there is no account of why the enterprising Baptists picked a Minneapolis architect with a nation-wide reputation to design what probably was the most remarkable church in the county when it was completed.

But Harry Wild Jones (1859-1935) was himself a staunch Baptist, born in Michigan as the only son of a Baptist preacher who, as preachers tend to do, moved about considerably before alighting at last in Bristol, Rhode Island. There seems to have been some expectation that Jones would become a preacher himself and he spent two years at Brown University in Providence before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he completed in 1882 its Short Course Architecture Program. After his marriage in Rhode Island, Jones established his Minneapolis practice in 1883.

So that strong Baptist link may explain in part at least how a church in Russell came to be designed by an architect highly regarded across the nation and whose work now is gaining a new generation of admirers. Known for his versatility, Jones also was among the most skillful structural engineers then working as an architect. So that may help explain why the building has proved to be so durable.

There's not much more to say here, other than I consider myself lucky to have these pleasant early church memories from Russell First Baptist to carry around with me --- and I think Russell, and the current generation of First Baptists, are lucky to still have this remarkable building doing the job it was designed to do.

Have I mentioned the snow?

Or the ice? Or the extreme cold? I suppose so. The red pickup (above) lives outside in Mason City and doesn't seem to mind. There are days when I do. We had about six more inches of snow overnight, so I've taken the preliminary steps needed to get moving (sweep some of the snow off and shovel a foot or two so I can back out into the driveway (the guy who clears the paths and the parking came while most of us still were parked). The next step will be to start her up, let her run for a while and then I should be mobile again.

It is -5F here right now. That translates to -21C, so perhaps we can feel a little warmer in Fahrenheit than Celsius and be grateful the U.S. has resisted urgings to switch. Sadly, -24 (-31C) is predicted overnight. Since the sun was out earlier today than predicted, it could get colder I suppose.

A warning that Interstate 35 was closed north of Webster City kept me home in Chariton for an hour longer yesterday morning, but that turned out to be pointless. The blockade actually had been in southbound lanes only due to a crash just where the great diagonal north of Blairsburg begins. By the time I got there, only a sedan in the configuration of a pancake (probably after rolling several times) and a few of the vehicles it had taken with it remained scattered in the median and beyond.

Actually, I counted only 20 vehicles in the ditch between Des Moines and Mason City, so it hadn't been a bad night accountable most likely to the fact the blizzard lasted only a couple of hours rather than the predicted several. We had about two hours of early-evening blizzard in Chariton after perhaps three inches of snow Monday morning followed by a warming-up period in the afternoon when it was possible to shovel it all comfortably away (of course it blew back Monday night).

It grew progressively colder as I drove north: 0 in Chariton, -4 at Dows and -6 in Mason City. Now I'm going to go start the truck and think warm thoughts.

Week that wuz: Good riddance

I drove nowhere yesterday, since I always walk to and from work, so now comes the job of sweeping the snow off the truck, firing it up and going out to do what needs to be done. Chinese snow torture continues: One flake at a time.

The day that began with snow ended (for many at the office) with a really uncomfortable confrontation between two of the participants at the late-afternoon meeting. Why is it, with at least eight hours in a work day, looming disputes cannot be resolved earlier and in private? When they're not, two peoples' unhappiness suddenly spreads to include several uncomfortable witnesses.

These are not good days in media-related businesses, especially newspapers, because of the general financial mess complicated for us by a corporate master teetering on the brink of Chapter 11 after having shot itself in the foot financially by being the rabbit who tried to swallow the elephant some years ago. So everyone's on edge to begin with.

I usually don't worry much about the important stuff like that and spend my time obsessing about inconsequential things --- like why I couldn't find my glasses a while ago after putting them down in a place I usually don't. It's not complacency, but in the course of a middle-aged life I've managed to wobble through Vietnam, the AIDS pandemic and good deal of other gloom, doom, death and destruction. So in all likelihood I'll make it through this, too, as will everyone else.

The third health-related shoe also dropped Friday in the circle of people I'm concerned about. First it was surgery to repair an ankle bone of a guy who while on a routine visit to his doctor said "Oh, by the way" and discovered that the bone apparently had just broken spontaneously. Then a trip to Mayo for the gal who had a benign tumor removed there a couple of years ago, then received a troubling report after a scan. No major problems turned up in either of those cases. But the capper is impending colon cancer surgery for another friend who already has survived breast cancer. Sheesh.

So there's my gloom and doom report. Now I'm going forth into the snow!

Freedom at last

More snow in Mason City (darn it) overnight and this morning, so I'm still breaking my only new year resolution so far --- get a haircut --- and fiddling around here. It's not that bad. I just don't feel like going out in it until I have to.

Someone at a newspaper I know of decided to conduct an online poll asking North Iowans what their favorite winter-time activities were. Snowmobiling? Ice fishing? Cross-country skiing? As it turned out the overwhelming majority favored staying inside, off the ice and out of the snow as often and for as long a time as possible. I can identify with that, although I don't mind being out in snow. It's the ice underneath that concerns me. I used to bounce when I fell down. Now it's more of a splat.

I had two errands out at Freedom Cemetery Monday, so this will be a little about the other one. But speaking of Freedom, isn't that a great name for a cemetery? I'd never really thought about it before, since those of us native to Lucas County for the most part know that the name "Freedom" actually comes from a little town there that made it onto the maps only briefly before drying up and blowing away. So our thought processes never move much beyond that, or Freedom Bible Camp just up the road west, still active and used by several Iowa congregations, that also owes its name to that once-upon-a-time little town.

Another of my favorite cemetery names is Eureka (after the Greek, "I have found it!") down in Marion County, where several of my Brown relatives are buried.

Back on track: The photo up top is of the tombstone of Barbara (Teas or Tease or Teese) Tuttle, first wife of Noah. Noah is the most prolific patriarch buried at Freedom with 14 children by two wives to his credit. Barbara was his first wife, daughter of Joseph and Sarah (Hartley) Teas (or one of those variant spellings). Barbara came to Benton Township with her mother, Sarah, and stepfather, Levi Fox. Somewhere around here there's a post entitled "Fox Hunting at New York" that was in part travelogue but primarily directions intended to guide Fox descendants to Levi's and Sarah's graves in the New York Cemetery.

Barbara married Noah on 8 February 1855 in Lucas County and they settled down on a farm just south of the Lucas/Wayne County line and produced a family of eight children before Barbara's death on 21 November 1871. So this photo is for the Fox descendants who didn't make it out to Freedom on their visits or who haven't made it back to Lucas County at all (are you reading this, Roberta?).

Some years after Barbara died, Noah married Margery Williams and they produced a family of six, one of whom was Guilford Tuttle who married Augusta "Gusty" Schreck, a Redlingshafer/Rosa descendant who, so far as I know, is my only kin at Freedom.


My favorite given name at Freedom is Gatsy, as in Gatsy Tuttle, wife of Benjamin and mother of Noah, whose tombstone you see here. It's a unique name in Iowa, at least, and when I plugged it into the Ancestry.com search engine to see just how unique it really was I discovered that a majority of the Gatsys in the world came from North Carolina. As you might guess, so did Gatsy Tuttle and her brood.

There are two Gatsys at Freedom, although Gatsey (Tuttle) Mitchell has an "e" and her grandmother apparently didn't, if her tombstone is to be trusted. Gatsey-with-an-e was Gatsy's granddaughter, daughter of Noah and Barbara.

Arthur Lillly Revisited

I wanted to use the title “Arthur Lilly Redux” here, but some folks are fussy about that word “redux” and heaven knows Arthur Lilly already has generated enough controversy.

In February of 2008 I wrote about Arthur’s death and burial in a piece entitled “The Contentious Passing of Arthur Lillie,” which you can find here if interested. If not, here’s the summary:

Arthur was something of a hermit who lived during the 1860s and early 1870s in a cabin just northwest of where the New York Road and the Lucas-Wayne county line intersect in far south Benton Township. Born in Ireland and far from kith and kin, he had neither known relatives nor intimate friends, only good neighbors --- including the Levi and Sarah Fox family and my own Myers ancestors and their extended family.

In late May, 1875, neighbors who knew Arthur was not in the best of health and who hadn’t seen him out and about for a few days investigated and found his decomposing body on the floor of his cabin. They built a coffin and buried him near the cabin, then turned his assets, roughly $70, over to the Lucas County courts.

There it might have ended had this footnote to Benton Township history not caught the attention of an anonymous source with the pseudonym Alba Owen who poison-penned a report to The Chariton Leader alleging that Arthur appeared to have been strangled, that those who buried him ransacked is body and cabin and made off with his treasure and then addressed the deceased as follows, "You lived like a hog, and we will bury you like one," as they unceremoniously buried him. That report was published June 5.

This report caused considerable unrest among the neighbors whose reputations it blackened, and on June 12 The Leader published a somewhat red-faced retraction, then went on to recount what really had happened.

I ended that piece a year ago convinced that Arthur’s unmarked grave still was out there somewhere on those 40 acres that he claimed. But I was wrong, as my cousin Frank Mitchell kindly pointed out a few months ago.

I had violated Rule No. 1 to follow when dealing with folks who are buried in Lucas County: Check the Lucas County Genealogical Society’s 1981 compilation of county tombstone inscriptions first before sticking one’s foot in one’s mouth and chomping down.

Frank, out at Freedom Cemetery last fall on a Tuttle-related errand (Freedom is a Tuttle boneyard), noted a tombstone way off by itself in the far northeast corner of the cemetery, walked over to examine it and lo and behold, there was Arthur Lilly. He checked the cemetery book, and yes --- there was a recorded, if not quite accurate, Arthur Lilly inscription. The actual inscription on the stone reads,

ARTHUR LILLY
Died May 21, 1875
Aged
60 years

The odd thing about Arthur’s grave at Freedom is this: It is barely inside the cemetery fence (although that fence dates from long after 1875) and a considerable distance from any other marked grave in the cemetery. Look carefully below and you can barely see the tombstone in the middle distance, right against the north cemetery fence.


So how did this all come to be?

Frank speculates (and I agree) that Alba Owen’s poison pen stung Arthur’s Benton Township neighbors so badly that they decided to deal unambiguously with anything that might be perceived as a wrong. My guess would be that Michael Reynolds, who The Leader reported had been named Arthur’s executor, ramrodded the project.

In all likelihood, Michael (who lived closer to Freedom than he did to either Salem or New York, the other cemeteries in the vicinity) probably obtained a gravesite at Freedom and the neighbors who buried Arthur in the first place disinterred his body, perhaps the following winter, and reburied it there. The $70 found among Arthur’s possessions when he died probably bought the tombstone.

Since cemetery lots in those days usually were quite large, Michael would not have wanted to buy a full lot for a single burial and because he apparently was Roman Catholic, probably would not have been interested in purchasing a lot of his own in a Protestant cemetery on which Arthur might be buried. So he probably obtained a site for a single burial in what was considered the “public” area of the cemetery, set aside usually for those who lacked enough money to purchase a burial plot.

Inscriptions from Calvary Cemetery in Chariton, Lucas County’s only Catholic cemetery, show a Michael Reynolds, born 4 March 1816, who died 4 March 1876, less than a year after Alfred did. If this is our Michael, then he outlived Arthur by under a year.

Most likely the date of Arthur’s death on the tombstone, May 21, and the age, 60, are best guesses.

Whatever the case, it’s good to know that Arthur Lilly’s whereabouts are known and that he’s not lost out there somewhere in Benton Township in an unmarked grave.

These photos were taken out at Freedom Monday. As you can tell, all but a few scraps of Lucas County's snow and all of its ice have melted. I wish that were the case in Cerro Gordo County.

Salem Cemetery Update: Daniel Ragsdale lot

I'm back on track now after holiday hiatus, I think, at this blog's sibling, the Salem Cemetery site. An e-mail from a descendant of John Houston, buried in Lot No. 31 with his daughters Margaret (died unmarried in 1857) and Sarah J. (Houston) Ragsdale as well as several members of the Ragsdale family, spurred me into action. So that lot now has been added and may be accessed here by anyone interested.

The photo up top is of John Houston's tombstone. I also posted Margaret's, but will have to wait until the weather improves a little before getting back out to Salem to adequately photograph the rest. A good tombstone photo depends upon arrival at a cemetery when the light is just right --- and I've not managed to do that yet with the Ragsdales.

Death and Texas

I've been following for perhaps a year the relatively new LDS FamilySearch effort to index (using volunteers) and then make available free the gazillion microfilmed records from around the world held by the Genealogical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's an exciting project and early results (this is project that will take decades) come online for use on a regular basis at the project's beta site. If you're not familiar with the project, you can read more about it here as well as access (after free registration) the search engine and available records.

I used "Texas Deaths, 1890-1971" last week to track down the mortal remains of Granville B. Boswell, a first-cousin of my great-grandmother, Chloe (Boswell) Prentiss/Brown. Digital images of death certificates or death records are available here (as are similar records from other states, including Michigan, Ohio and Arizona), so that makes it especially nice for obsessive-compulsive people like me who don't quite trust transcriptions and feel more secure after they've seen the record themselves.

Tracking Granville down involved dealing with some of the pitfalls that face genealogists, so I thought I'd talk a little about the process.

The first problem is Granville's name. Although his parents, William M. and Eliza Jane (See) Boswell --- brother and sister-in-law of Peachy Gilmer Boswell, my great-great-grandfather, named him Granville B. when he was born in Wayne County, Iowa, he picked up the nickname "Macalola," often shortened to "Mac," early in life. Heaven only knows why.

So in order to track down scattered references to Granville, who moved from Wayne County to Chariton with his family in the mid-1860s and then as a young adult to Texas, it's necessary to be aware of all his names. Since he didn't marry or have children to tell his stories, the references are few and far between. But he seems to have worked nearly all his life as a printer, at times as a partner with others to publish weekly newspapers in Texas, so there are some. You'd have to know that he was called "Mac" in order to discover that he also went to Alaska during the gold rush, however.

In any case, I started the Texas death records search with "Granville" Boswell, then switched to variant spellings of that name, then to "Mac" and finally found him as "G. B. Boswell, the name apparently supplied to the coroner by Granville's brother, John C. Boswell, with whom he spent much of his life and who is listed on the death certificate as "informant."

The certificate told me that Granville died on 7 May 1924 of a heart attack in San Antonio at the reported age of 67 and was buried in "Mission Burial Park."

But there's a problem here with his age. The death certificate gives his birth date as Feb. 21, 1857. However, all census records, 1860 through 1920, suggest that he actually was born in 1859, not 1857. And when the 1900 census of Texas was taken, Granville told the census-taker that he was born in January 1859, not February.

The discrepancies probably result from John C. Boswell's faulty memory. Someone in his 60s in the 1920s who was not a military veteran and lacked a wife and/or children ran risks like this. Granville may not have been asked to state his birthday for official purposes after 1900. He wouldn't have had a driver's license or Social Security card, for example, nor would he have applied for a pension.

After fussing for a while about how to enter his birth date in my records I used the day, 21, provided in the death certificate, but the month and year, January 1859, from the 1900 census, since that was as close as I could get to a date straight from Granville's mouth. Then I footnoted the reasons why I'd done this, so that anyone who cared to reach another conclusion could.

In a way all this caution will prove fruitless, since someone somewhere will find the date 21 January 1859 in my online database and add it to his or her database without the footnote and my conclusion will become definitive. But I've done the best I could do given what there was to work with.

WALKING WOUNDED

We had ice in Mason City on Saturday, the kind generated by a light freezing mist that just went on and on, coating streets and sidewalks already messy because of previous snowfall. At least 30 folks ended up in the emergency room at Mercy with broken bones, head injuries and the like as a result. It was as slippery as I've ever seen it by nightfall.

I went down twice, once walking back to work Saturday night on the First Christian sidewalk which had a long stretch of rough ice before the new ice came --- damn Christians and their damn sidewalks. Then again with only myself to blame when I got in a hurry heading into church Sunday morning and crash landed in the street just before I reached the salted and sanded Episcopalian sidewalk.

No permanent damage and the aches and pains have for the most part gone away, other than a pain in the wrist when I type too much, so that suggests I'd better stop typing for now.

We still need a little Christmas, darn it!

So I thought I'd start off the new year with a fuzzy photo of the Christmas tree that sits in a corner here in Mason City and never goes away. Fuzzy because I'm too lazy to do what I'd need to do to get a nice crisp entirely-in-focus shot into that dim corner.

Never goes away for the most part, too, because I'm lazy and it's a time-consuming task to decorate and undecorate this heavily-decorated little fake. So its lights comes on year-around when I flip on the living room lamps and in general it makes me happy --- although it does have to be taken apart and dusted every year or so.

Besides, the big plants on steroids I used to keep in this corner before the advent of the tree always died, and this is cheaper. And I have a hard time giving up on Christmas any way.

One friend in Chariton at least waited until the day after Christmas this year before yanking the family tree down and sending it to storage (it's rarely survived Christmas afternoon in the past). Another neighbor was disassembling and boxing up his outdoor display as I drove away Tuesday morning.

But I'll still turn on the outside lights and light the lanterns on the front steps until Epiphany, then we'll see. The (indoor) Nativity set will stay up, too, for at least a while since (a) it looks nice and (b) it was joined by an three-piece angelic ensemble this year --- on lute, harp and violin --- and I want to admire the whole thing for a while longer.

I'm never quite sure why we want to plunge so quickly into January's chilly gloom, making resolutions we'll not keep and leaving the bright lights behind. Having put Christ into Christmas I say we should now put more of the pagan back into Xmas and dance around the fire for a while longer.

THIS WAS THE YEAR Iowa's skittish weather punctuated the season. I drove south the Sunday before Christmas in a blizzard (not a stunt to try at night or on two-lane roads --- when the DOT says "no travel advised" they mean it). I waited until the no-travel advisory was dropped, but it was good to have most of the Interstate to myself since visibility sometimes was a problem.

After two feet of snow up here it was nice to find just a skim of ice covered by a couple of inches of snow capped by another layer of ice down there. Then it snowed some more. With help from Nash, the accumulated mess on the the driveway was chipped away Christmas Eve. The day after Christmas, spring arrived and I spent a neighborly morning helping to chip the mess off Lee's driveway. Then everything melted. By nightfall, there was nary a scrap of snow to be seen. But on Saturday we had another ice storm. On Sunday and Monday, however, that went away, too. And so it went.

I WISH I HAD reports of a really exciting holiday week to report, but I don't. Lots of visiting, lots of weather, lots of reading --- it was great!

Plans for a quiet New Year's Eve turned really quiet when I made the mistake of going into the office Wednesday afternoon do do a few necessary things, then inadvertently agreed to post the online edition. So there I sat as 11 p.m. approached awaiting the results of a local hockey game. At 10:45, the results came, I posted, turned out the lights and went home with no complaints at all.

So here I sit without a resolution to my name. Guess I'll think one up real quick then go out and break it immediately and be done.