I know they're a pest ...

... invasive, non-native, a threat to ponds, but I still think the water primroses (Ludwigia something-or-another, but which one?) just coming into bloom in places along the east shore of the big pond at Pin Oak are pretty.

Had I been paying attentiion this morning, I could have immortalized with a fair portrait a fat and happy northern water snake sunbathing on the small dock anchored to the north shore of the spit of land I was navigating while trying to get within camera distance of the flowers (or weeds, depending upon perspective).

Concentrating on keeping my feet dry, however, I didn't look up in time to see it from a distance and sneak. It saw me first, gave a disgusted look and over the side it went before it occurred to me that I was holding a camera.

Green magic

Confronted by a potluck, the sort of event I’ve been known to play single helpless male prior to and mooch, I dusted off the family three-bean and green magic salad recipes and rose above outdated yeast to bake a loaf of bread, inclined to mooch no more. Truth is, I can cook and can even do it well, providing nothing fancy is expected.

Green magic is my favorite, and a potluck staple for so long as I can remember. It’s cool, travels well, tastes wonderful, has a sensual texture, contains jello (it’s not a potluck if there’s not jello) and best of all it has absolutely no redeeming nutritional value. The perfect salad. It’s hopelessly old-fashioned now that the heath-conscious are determined that we all should endure diced or sliced fresh fruit and naked vegetables.

By sharing the recipe here I’m channeling Lucile (Driftmier) Verness, bless her heart --- and if y’all don’t already know all about Leanna, Lucile, Margery, Dorothy (Lucas County’s own) and Evelyn and neighboring on the air from Shenandoah, Iowa --- shame!

This recipe does not call for Kitchen Klatter flavoring, however, so I’m uncertain of its source (and I do have the complete set of Kitchen Klatter cookbooks).

GREEN MAGIC SALAD

One package lime Jello
One cup boiling water
Three-fourths cup cold water
A half pound (32) large marshmallows
A three-ounce package of cream cheese at room temperature
A half cup Miracle Whip
A medium (two-cup) container of Cool Whip or equivalent
A small can crushed pineapple drained

Dissolve jello in one cup of boiling water and melt marshmallows in the result, returning pan to stove on medium heat then removing quickly once marshmallows are dissolved. Add three-fourths cup cold water immediately. Set aside.

Cream together the cream cheese and the Miracle Whip and add the crushed pineapple.

Combine the jello mixture and the cream cheese/pineapple mixture, stirring until well blended.

Refrigerate until jello begins to set, then fold in the Cool Whip. Return to refrigerator and cool until firm.

You can substitute a couple of ingredients here if you like --- one cup of heavy cream whipped for the Cool Whip if you’re a believer in all dairy products, but the result won’t be as light; mayonnaise for the Miracle Whip, but the Miracle Whip adds a hint of tartness that complements everything else.

Because I hate to wash dishes, I usually do everything (other than mixing the cream cheese, Miracle Whip and pineapple) in one largish cooking pot. The caution, if you do that, is that jello sets quickly in refrigerated in metal and the Cool Whip does need to be added before it gets too firm.

+++

It was a beautiful day for the St. Andrew/Grace outdoor Eucharist and potluck in a shelter reserved by Bill Gode (God with an “e” he says) on a remarkably pretty and peaceful wooded prow of hillside along the east shore of Corydon Lake. After the rain, heat and humidity of the last couple of weeks, surprising to wish you’d worn something with long sleeves.

And what a treat to have both of those hard-core clerical troopers, the Rev. Sue Palmer and the Rev. Canon Richard Lintner, in one place at the same time. Should have taken the camera along, but didn’t.

Death and one-upsmanship

It's been an eventful week in the celebrity death market. First Ed McMahon (major factor, age) whose departure was trumped by that of Farrah Fawcett (cancer) and then both were blown out of the roiled media waters by Michael Jackson (excess, it seems likely).

I noticed a headline, "Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon will always be remembered." Always is an awfully long time and I have my doubts.

All had redeeming virtues --- McMahon, a decent guy whose heyday came when it still was possible to be funny without being even slightly obscene; Fawcett, whose stunning beauty was enough; and Jackson, a pop music revolutionary who shattered entertainment color barriers.

But I wasn't that taken by any of them, so won't adjust my rabbit ears to watch their funerals. Nothing personal.

Ed Thomas, the Aplington-Parkersburg football coach shot dead Wednesday by an apparently dereanged former student and player, is another matter. If the reports are accurate he was an outstanding role model as both football coach and human being. In the grand scheme of things that may be of more consequence, although on a smaller scale (but who knows?), than memories carried forward of McMahon, Fawcett and Jackson combined.

Watching all the Hollywood hoopla during early-morning doses of television, I got to feeling downright smug about my ability to rise above the masses and not get tangled up in the circus of celebrity death.

Oops. Thinking back a little, I have this vague memory of arising as some silly hour so I could watch Princess Diana's funeral live from London (as I'd done for her wedding). Then there was Heath Ledger (the "Brokeback Mountain" factor). And Lady Bird Johnson --- I loved Lady Bird and of the three, my devotion to her last rites is the only only instance of death obsession I'm not feeling a little sheepish about right now.

I liked Lady Bird so much, I even saved her picture --- taken in a field filled with Texas wildflowers. That's it on top here.

But so far as televised farewells are concerned, Ed Thomas's is the only one I'll make an effort to locate out there in the world of digital television this time around.

Consider the lilies ...

...of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Not bad advice there from the Sermon on the Mount as reported in Matthew 6:28-30, expressed most beautifully of course in King James English.

And to think that I got up this morning after reading some of the coverage Wednesday of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's interesting performance thinking that I might write a little something about adultery.

Like, "Isn't refreshing that we have bipartisan consensus on at least one family value --- infidelity: We're for it."

Then I stepped out the back door first thing into this patch of old-fashioned daylilies and thought again: Nah, why waste effort on another awful little zipper-challenged guy when there's all this glory round about.

These are my favorites among the lilies, good old Hemerocallis fulva L. This is what I think about when I hear "lilies of the field" and they just might be since they are Eurasian natives, one of the good things brought over by our Euro-American forbears.

They're everywhere. The patch here came in from the farm. But drive along many rural roads in southern Iowa and you'll see them --- chances are there was a farmstead nearby once and they were in a much-loved garden or they lined the embankment in front of a farm house and were scattered in the great post-World War II push to regrade, widen and gravel rural roads.

The fancier varieties are fine and there are a couple smaller clumps of these yellow ones in the flower beds, but they don't have the enthusiasm of their genetic parents and seem a little spindly to me.


There are other lilies out there, too, today --- and I don't know exactly what these white-tinged-with-pink ones are (not a daylily, however). I should have staked them since the trumpets are so heavy they droop, but didn't get around to it. These lilies smell wonderful, too, but they're a hybrid of some sort engineered for showy bloom but without a sturdy enough stalk for support.


And while I'm out in the garden, take a look at the coneflowers and black-eyed susans along the south side of the house. It's been great growing weather for these prairie natives.


One thing about coneflowers, however --- they reseed themselves with great enthusiasm and will very quickly take over unless monitored. I don't mind, but there are a few smaller plants now completely overshadowed by these purple giants that I'm going to have to evacuate to a new location if and when it dries out enough to let me do it.

We're having a heatwave, but ...

...come on, Jeriann and Brad, it's not that bad! This is Iowa and it is summer, but watching those two, Jeriann the weather person and Brad in charge of monitoring traffic, sqwak and flap inside WHO-TV's air conditioned chicken house early mornings, you'd think the world was about to incinerate.

Brad's distressed because when he arises on Sherman Hill to leave for work he has to use windshield wipers to clear the condensation before driving downtown. Jeriann advises everyone to stay inside unless they absolutely have to be out and suggests that an afternoon at an air-conditioned mall, a season in hell if ever there was one, would be the best bet for an outing. And what's this business of "today's high will be 92 but it will feel like 178?" It's either going to be 92 or it isn't I'd think. What sort of alternate universe are those two occupying?

But it did feel like walking headfirst into a warm moist washcloth when I stepped out the front door about 5:30 Tuesday morning, then I stepped back inside, flipped the switch that activates two of the four table lamps in the living room and made a new discovery about my shaky link to the brave new world as digitallly televised. With those lamps off, WHO comes in loud and clear; once they're on, it's goodbye Jeriann and Brad.

So I had my coffee, oatmeal and banana, then headed down to the marsh --- wondering as I crossed it what the guys at work replacing the decking on the Highway 14 overpass were making of Jeriann's advice and thanking my lucky stars I wasn't out there with them, or loading bales or pitching loose hay (even worse), memories from a former life.

What it is around here is way too wet with thunderstorms every other day for farmers who need to get into the field --- too late now for row crops, a constant irritation for those who need to put up hay.


But it was a great morning at Pin Oak with the heat rising, all those shades of green simmering in the early sun. The guardian cormorants were parked in the dead trees toward the east shore of the big pond (I know you can't see them clearly here, but a telephoto lense is not in my budget plan), fish were jumping, red-winged blackbirds, wrens, meadow larks and goldfinches were out and about and the swallows, swooping over the water scooping up bugs.

Two foreigners and a native daughter were in full bloom along the path. First, crown vetch (Coronilla varia L.), an import that is one of the most common plants in Iowa now because it has been and continues to be so widely planted as an erosion control measure.


Then birds-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus L.), that extremely pretty bright yellow import from Europe that has naturalized itself after being extensively planted as forage.


And finally the native daughter, Penstemon digitalis Nutt. (with more nicknames than you can shake a stick at), one of the showiest white flowers around.


Coming home, I spent a good chunck of the day outside, despite Jeriann's advice, doing the chores slowly with adequate periods of rest and doses of lemonade in the shade enjoying the heat, the breeze --- and listening to the air conditioner condenser cool the house I wasn't inside.

Imponderables

I’ve been thinking about Paul Miller up at Lacona, a first-cousin of my late mother who at 96 is the elder in our extended family. Paul and his immediate family are having a Job-like year --- and it isn’t fair.

Last October, Paul’s great-granddaughter, Jennifer Luedtke, 24, and a companion were gunned down by her estranged husband and left to die along Highway 14 near Marshalltown.

In February, Paul’s wife, Veda, died in the 75th year of their marriage.

On June 9, two of his grandsons, brothers Christopher and and Chad Miller (left and right above), ages 28 and 34 respectively, died while kayaking the Brandywine River near West Chester, Pa.

Christopher was working in Yonkers, N.Y., while his wife, Nicole, attended Sarah Lawrence College. Chad was associate pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Del. Their parents, Paul Joseph and Eleanor (Max) Miller, both of whom grew up in Lucas County, now live at Creston. Eleanor’s father, the Rev. Homer Max, was a long-time pastor of First Church of the Nazarene in Chariton.

The men, both experienced kayakers, attempted to negotiate a low-head dam across a storm-swollen river. Christopher’s body was recovered the day of the accident; Chad’s, a few days later. Both were buried Thursday at the Newbern Cemetery --- a hilltop with a view that stretches for miles astraddle the Lucas-Warren county line northwest of here, southeast of Lacona.

This all seems like more than one family should have to bear, although other families have borne more and will again --- it’s part of the human condition. Nor is there any point in trying to figure out the “why.” It’s beyond us, an imponderable.

There’s an old gospel song I like that dates from the great depression of the 1930s. Some of the lyrics are downright whiney and more than a little self-righteous --- along the lines of why am I in this fix, Lord, while that guy over there who obviously is a bigger sinner isn’t? --- but the tune is lovely and the refrain says it well.

“Farther along we'll know all about it,
Farther along we'll understand why;
Cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine,
We'll understand it all by and by.”

Some Quakers use the expression “holding in the Light” to express what most of us are trying to do in situations like this --- on the edge of sorrow, not grieving because of a loss but for those affected by a loss. A Pentecostal friend similarly “lifts up” those in trouble, in sorrow or in need. I can’t think of better ways to say it.

We risk trivializing the tragedies of others by announcing that there are lessons to be learned from them, but some thoughts are hard to push back --- the usefulness of keeping our own troubles real or imagined in perspective and the wisdom of seizing the day. For now it’s all we’ve got.

Iowaville: Let us now praise Lance M. Foster

A quirk of Iowa history as taught is absence: We’re fascinated by what our Euro-American ancestors did once they got here just the other day, beginning in the 1830s or so, and obsessed at times with the Spirit Lake Massacre (involving renegade Wahpekute Santee --- Dakota --- and white settlers who probably should have known better than to settle where they did when they did anyway). The Sauk and Meskwaki get a good deal of attention, too, although in Iowa terms they were Johnny-come-latelys.

No offense here to the Meskwaki --- they’re still part of us, thank goodness.

But how many I wonder even know that “Iowa” --- the state, the river, Iowa City and my personal icon, Iowaville down there in Van Buren County --- take their names from the Ioway tribe; that the Ioways were here for centuries before the other tribes --- Sauk, Meskwaki and white --- arrived; and that the Ioways are still around, although few live now in this beautiful land between two rivers.

Names are one sign of historical obscurity. Look at a few of the places scattered across our landscape and consider the leaders after whom they were named: Appanoose (Meskwaki), Black Hawk (Sauk), Waukon and Decorah (given and family names of a Winnebago), Keokuk (Sauk), Osceola (Seminole), Poweshiek, Tama and Wapello (Meskwaki) and Winneshiek (Winnebago). Even Inkpaduta, that guy who led the renegade band of Wahpekute Santee at Spirit Lake back in 1857, has a trail named after him for heaven’s sake.

But only Mahaska (translated into English as White Cloud, 1784-1834, portrait up top) among the Ioways is honored with a place on Iowa maps in the form of a county that is maybe a 45-minute fast drive northeast of here.

Part of the reason for that obscurity is a great battle involving an ambush about 1819 by confederated Sauk and Meskwaki of the Ioway near and in their last great village in this state along the Des Moines River where the later Euro-American village of Iowaville arose in the late 1830s and 1840s. This was in a way the last stand in Iowa of the Ioways, already weakened by losses in battle with other tribes and white tribe diseases. It greatly diminished a once-powerful tribe that by 1836 had been exiled entirely, a factor in its almost footnote status in Iowa history books. Euro-American Iowans remembered the Sauk, the Meskwaki and the Dakota, but not the Ioway.

There are many hearsay accounts of the battle and the dates set for it range on either side of 1820. Some among the white tribe even doubt that it occurred, but that seems to be a factor of white male historians’ tendency to doubt the validity of anything about which a white male historian has not written a book.

Here are four paragraphs of Lance M. Foster’s account of the battle and the events that preceded and followed it:

“On May 1, 1819, the Ioway were celebrating their successful return to their beloved principal village on the Des Moines after the winter buffalo hunt. The men were at a horse race on a course about two miles away from the village. They were so happy and relaxed after a good hunt, with so much meat, that they had relaxed their vigilance, and left their cumbersome arms in the village. In the village, the women prepared for a celebratory feast. The old people sat around and talked, and the children played.

“No one saw that two divisions of combined Sauk and Mesquakie forces lay in wait in the thick tallgrass prairie near the race track, commanded by the Sauk Pashepaho. No one saw that another division lay in wait in the woods beyond the village, under Black Hawk. If anyone wandering about saw any sign of the waiting enemy, they were quickly and efficiently silenced.

“When the sun had reached a certain height, pandemonium broke loose. Pashepaho's forces ran in shouting waves onto the shocked Ioway, who grasped in vain for the weapons they had forgotten, and who fell in numbers before the attackers. They fought the best they could, with sticks or stones or quirts, whatever they could find, and barehanded if they could find nothing. They began to make a break for the village and their weapons, and then new fear arose in them, fear for what might be happening to their defenseless families at home.

“They fought and ran and died. But it was too late, and the horror that they felt at seeing the carnage at the village, flames scorching the framework of the houses and the charred and ravaged bodies of the dead women, children, and elders, gave them the desperation of the hopeless. The Ioway fought the best they could but their hearts were gone, and they gave up just before sunset, and submitted to the enemy in unconditional surrender. Only a handful of the people were left, over a thousand dead, scattered over the darkening landscape for two miles.”

This is taken from an article by Foster entitled “The Ioway and the Landscape of Southeast Iowa,” published in 1996 in the “Journal of the Iowa Archeological Society.”

The Iowaville Cemetery remains the best vantage point from which to view the landscape of this decisive event and I have stood there often looking out to the southwest and west, thinking about it. It seems like there should be a memorial of some sort here, an interpretive sign to note it, but there isn’t. Iowaville, and the Ioways, remain obscured.

So here’s the reason to praise Lance M. Foster, a registered member of the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska headquartered on a small reservation in extreme northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska west of the Missiouri River and south of the Great Nemaha.

Foster, who grew up in Montana and has returned there to live, researched and wrote extensively about the Ioway while earning advanced degrees at Iowa State University. He is Webmaster of an extremely informative site, “Baxoje, The Ioway Nation: Ioway Cultural Institute,” which is here.

You’ll find articles written by Foster and others about the Ioway in “The Ioway Library” portion of the site. I’ve been a regular visitor for quite a while and learn something new whenever I spend time there.

Even better, perhaps, the University of Iowa Press will release in October a new book by Foster entitled “The Indians of Iowa,” which promises to pull together for the first time in comprehensive form information about 26 tribes who called what we call Iowa home. That’s a book I’m looking forward to.

And I’m wondering if it’s time for a new book about the Ioway. I have Martha Royce Blaine’s “The Ioway Indians” (University of Oklahoma Press, 1979; paperback 1995) and am getting ready to reread it. But surely there’s room for another.

Them bones gonna walk around

Or you never know what's going to happen when you start rattling dry bones, genealogical truth to which many will attest. Aw shucks, you're saying, just coincidence compounded by wishful thinking. Maybe, but I've seen too much to be entirely doubtful.

Take this week. On Monday I decided to move that big chunk of my great-great-great-grandfather's, William Clair's, original tombstone from a flower bed out back to a more prominent spot near the front door.

You can read more about William Clair and his traveling tombstone here, "The Misspelled Pioneer Cemetery." The short version: When William died in January 1853 there was no cemetery at what's now Columbia in Marion County so he picked out a hilltop burial site owned by his son, Zolomon Jones Clair, in Section 3, Pleasant Township, Lucas County, with a view that went on for miles. His sons scratched his name and death year into a slab of sandstone and put it on his grave.

A century later, my granddad decided to buy a new tombstone for the grave, now just inside the gate to a hilltop farm field, but left the original stone on the grave.

Enter a series of tenant farmers with big equipment who would not leave that grave alone. They ran over it, they moved the new tombstone around to suit their fancies and finally broke the old stone into pieces with a tractor tire. We picked up the biggest piece, the only one we could find, and brought it home. It landed in a flower bed at the farm, then came into town with my mother, William Clair's great-great-granddaughter.

Now it's out front beside the steps. I doubt many will recognize it as a tombstone. You have to look real close to see "1853" and a fragment of William's name. But I like having it there and someday, now that the gravesite has been declared a pioneer cemetery and has a little fence, I expect to take it back to Pleasant Township.

No sooner had I gotten that stone settled in a new home than I heard from Bill, a great-grandson of Zolomon J. Clair and his wife, Delilah; then another from Mickey, asking for clarification concerning Delilah's ancestors. I'd already heard from Laura, who had visited the gravesite for the first time over the Memorial Day weekend. Wonder who will be next.

Adventures with my television

Somewhere I heard about or read about a family who lived in a low spot where TV reception was absent or poor back in the days before satellite TV. So they bought a television with rabbit ears, a converter for the cigarette lighter and once or twice a week loaded the family and the equipment in a station wagon, drove up the mountain to a spot where there was reception, plugged the set in, fired it up and watched for a couple of hours before driving back down.

I kind of know how they felt now that the final switch to DTV is over and done.

My big problem is the fact I've never been intimate with a television. Never had cable. Never had a dish. Put the TV in a closet once and forgot about it for about five years and don't think the TV I had in Mason City before the move had been turned on in about that long either. In fact, I just recycled it before I left; didn't even bother to see if it still worked. At least it was color. Finally got one of those when the old black-and-white up and died.

But I had gotten in the habit here in Chariton of turning on the TV when I got up about 6 to check the weather report and make sure nothing major had blown up over night, then letting it run for a while. Also got hooked on "Antiques Roadshow" Monday nights on Iowa Public Television.

So the first time the switch to DTV was scheduled I bought the converter box and plugged my rabbit ears and the TV in. Best picture I've ever had --- from WHO-TV and FOX (seriously, does anyone watch FOX?), but nothing else. Bypassed the box when I wanted to watch public television.

Then the big switch was postponed, but WHO went ahead and switched anyway. After that, for some reason, WHO vanished but KCCI and public television, both broadcasting both digital and analog, started coming in.

Got up Saturday morning after the final switch and all that was left was FOX. FOX? Yikes. KCCI and public TV both had vanished, moved I think to new frequencies rabbit ears can't access out here in the deep country. So I meditated Saturday about losing the converter box and the rabbit ears, both kind of ugly, and just using the TV for DVDs, its primary purpose anyway. Maybe get the smallest, cheapest digital TV I could find for upstairs, where reception might be better and I could watch the morning weather before I got out of bed.

Then on Sunday I figured out that if I laid the rabbit ears flat and made sure one was in contact with the front door knob the front door became part of the antenna and I could get WHO again. So I guess I've got to keep the rabbit ears for now and stay in the TV business. There's something reassuring about Jeriann Ritter when storm clouds are banking in the west. But I am going to miss that little guy, Brian something isn't it?, who does the early weather on KCCI.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?

Or meet the groundhog with one of Chariton's best-kept lawns --- courtesy of the Chariton Cemetery maintenance crew. I'd been hoping for a chance at a better shot after coming across this guy again after running into him a couple of weeks ago, but that's apparently not to be. And even if I got the chance, it's unlikely my little camera lense would do much better than this.

About 7 one morning a couple of weeks ago I spotted him (or her; who knows?) strolling up from the woods toward the parking area those of us who walk the cemetery generally use. I watched him; he reared up and watched me. Then he moved in no particular hurry toward a den in the slight hillside that descends from a driveway to the ditched stream that flows down to the river, glanced at me again, then vanished.

No sign of recent earthwork, so this must be an established den. No graves in the immediate area so no need to get excited about his presence. Fun to watch. I hope he sticks around.

A little Brown family history

It turns out that Mary Ann, who I've grown accustomed to visiting with over coffee after church at St. Andrews on Sunday mornings, is a cousin, a great-great-granddaughter of Jonathan Edward Brown, elder brother by some 40 years of my grandmother, Jessie (Brown) Miller. When I tell you that much of Lucas and adjoining counties is related I'm not kidding, so such occurrances are not that surprising.

Since that branch of the family doesn't know much about the Browns, and I do, I started most mornings this week assembling what follows for the honorable descendants of Jonathan Edward and Elizabeth Laurel (Crawford) Brown. It's far from complete but the point was to assemble an outline, not write a family history.

Posting the outline here is a lazy (and cheap) way to distribute the thing --- far easier to provide a Web address than to print, assemble and mail.

The photo at the top of the post is my great-grandfather, Joseph Brown, and his second wife, Penelope Dawson (Jonathan Edward's mother was Joseph's first wife, Hester; and Jessie's mother, his third wife, Chloe). The photo was taken during the fall of 1869 in Washington, Iowa. Penelope lived less than a year after her marriage to Joseph and is buried in the old cemetery (Woodlawn) at Washington. The photos at the end of the post are of her original tombstone and a later stone that marks the graves of both Penelope and her first husband, Isaac Dawson.

+++

William Brown, our emigrant ancestor, was born about 1778 in Northern Ireland, perhaps near Belfast. We know nothing about his parents. When he was 18, about 1796, he came to the United States and made his way to southwest Ohio.

More than 10 years later, probably during 1809, William married Eleanor Kelley, a daughter of Solomon Kelley. The Kelleys were natives of North Carolina who also had moved into southwest Ohio. The marriage most likely occurred in or near what now is Clark County, Ohio, but we have been unable to find a record of it. We do not know Eleanor’s date of birth or her date of death.

William and Eleanor established their first home in Clark County and it is likely that all of their nine children (two of whom died young and three of whom were triplets) were born there. In the mid-1820s, the Brown family moved one county west to Lost Creek Township, Miami County.

Eleanor died between 1840 and 1850 on the farm in Lost Creek Township and was buried in a family cemetery nearby, now lost. William Brown moved soon after 1850 a couple of miles north to property just north of Fletcher in Brown Township (reportedly named for him) that he had purchased in the 1820s but had never lived upon (his sons Joseph and Archibald and their families were the first to build homes and live there).

William died 21 August 1864 at his home near Fletcher and was buried beside Eleanor and other family members in the now-destroyed Brown Cemetery. He was by trade a farmer and a weaver, according to family stories, and a fierce Presbyterian, an organizer and the first presiding elder of the Fletcher Presbyterian Church.

The Brown family scattered south and west like buckshot from Miami County and by the mid-1930s none of the family remained there.

The nine children of William and Eleanor (Kelley) Brown were:

1. Solomon Kelley Brown, born 6 February 1810 in Clark County, Ohio, married (1st) Mary Ralston 24 May 1832 in Miami County. They had four children, William B. Brown, Elizabeth Jane Brown (died young), Andrew R. Brown and John Forgy Brown (died young). Following Mary’s death on 18 July 1841, Solomon Kelley married (2nd) Anna Denman on 20 September 1842 in Miami County. Solomon Kelley and Anna had eight children: Mary Ellen (died young), Wilson Holiday Brown (died young), Joseph Brown (died young), Sarah Abigail Brown (died young along the Oregon Trail), Jonathan Rollins Brown, Solomon Kelley Brown Jr., Levi Wellington Brown and Alfred Rinehart Brown. In 1847, the Solomon Kelley Browns followed the Oregon Trail west to become pioneers in the Willamette valley. Solomon Kelley died at Philomath, Benton County, Oregon, on 16 January 1893. His family spread widely in the Pacific Northwest where many of his descendants continue to live.

2. Joseph Brown, our ancestor (which see).

3. Margaret Brown was born 7 March 1813 in Clark County, Ohio, and died there on 9 February 1818. We do not know where she was buried.

4. Mary Brown was born 13 October 1815 in Clark County, Ohio, and died 25 August 1826, probably in Lost Creek Township, Miami County. It is likely that she was buried in the Brown family cemetery, no longer extant.

5. James Brown was born 2 February 1818 in Clark County, Ohio, and remains the most enigmatic of the Brown children. He married (1st) Catherine McGinley on 9 May 1839 in Miami County, Ohio. They had two children, John M. and Ellen. Catherine died about 1848 perhaps in or near Fort Madison, Iowa. James then married (2nd) a woman named Louisa although the date and place of that marriage are unknown and they settled at Fayette in Jefferson County, Mississippi, and had two children, Eugene and Eva. James died of a gunshot wound described as accidental during April of 1860 in or near Fayette.

6. Jane Brown, the eldest by several minutes of triplets, was born shortly before midnight on Nov. 13, 1819, in Clark County, Ohio. Jane, who was deaf, spent much of her life caring for her birth family and married in middle age after the death of her father, on 12 September 1865 in Miami County, an older widower named Joseph Van Horn. Jane died 8 October 1893 at the Brown homestead north of Fletcher and was buried in the Fletcher Cemetery.

7. Archibald Steele Brown, one of triplets, was born early Nov. 14, 1819, in Clark County, Ohio. On 17 March 1846 in Miami County he married Lucinda McCashen. Archibald and Lucinda began housekeeping on land north of Fletcher, Brown Township, owned by his father, as did his brother and sister-in-law, Joseph and Hester (Eldridge) Brown. Following Hester’s death in 1850, Archibald and Lucinda and Joseph and his elder children moved west to Washington County, Iowa. A couple of years later, Archibald and Lucinda moved to a farm on the south edge of Cincinnati, Appanoose County, Iowa, where Lucinda died between 1856 and 1858. Archibald S. then married Mary Boswell, daughter of Thomas B. and Mary Boswell, on 25 January 1859 in Appanoose County. They had one child, Jeannette B., known as Jennie. Mary (Boswell) Brown died 28 June 1884 at Cleopatra, Mercer County, Missouri, and was buried in Wilder Cemetery near there. Archibald died 5 December 1886 at Cincinnati and his body was taken to Cleopatra for burial.

8. Elizabeth Brown, one of triplets, was born early on Nov. 14, 1819, in Clark County, Ohio. She married Thomas Heston on 13 November 1845 in Miami County, Ohio, and died in childbirth on 25 September 1846. It isn’t known where she was buried.

9. John McPherson Brown, was born 19 December 1821 in Clark County, Ohio, and married Nancy Bigger on 21 February 1850 in Miami County, Ohio. John and Nancy had four children, William Wilson, Louisa Jane, James Hearst and John Campbell. John died 13 August 1859 in Miami County and was buried in the family cemetery. Nancy died 8 October 1891 on the Brown homestead at Fletcher and was buried in the Fletcher Cemetery.

Brown family tenure in Miami County, Ohio, ended with the deaths of first-cousins who had married late in life as a matter of convenience (although they certainly were fond of each other, too) --- William B. Brown, son of Solomon Kelley Brown, and Louisa Jane Brown, daughter of John McPherson Brown. Their marriage united Brown family holdings inherited separately and they lived until old age on the homestead north of Fletcher. William B. Brown died at the age of 95 on 10 April 1929 and Louisa died 9 June 1932 at the age of 79. They are buried in the Forest Hills Mausoleum in Piqua, Miami County. Following their deaths, Brown property that had been in the family for more than a century was sold and family belongings scattered (mostly among the John McPherson Brown family) or sold.

THE FAMILY OF JOSEPH BROWN

Joseph Brown, second child of William and Eleanor (Kelley) Brown was born 4 July 1811 in Clark County, Ohio, and moved with his parents and siblings to Lost Creek Township, Miami County, Ohio, in the mid-1820s. He married Hester Eldridge, daughter of Jonathan and Mary (Ramsey) Eldridge, on 3 March 1836 in Shelby County, Ohio. Hester was born about 1816.

Joseph and Hester along with his brother and sister-in-law, Archibald and Lucinda Brown, built the first homes on property north of Fletcher in Brown Township, Miami County, that their father had purchased in the 1820s but never lived upon.

Joseph and Hester became the parents of seven children there, but she died of tuberculosis during May of 1850 when the youngest, Lucinda, was under 2 years old. Presumably Hester was buried in the Brown family cemetery, no longer extant.

Not long after Hester died, Joseph and his older children, William Wilson, Jonathan Edward and Eleanor, moved west to Washington County, Iowa, along with his brother and sister-in-law, Archibald and Lucinda. They were joined later by three of the younger children, Archibald S. Brown Jr., Mary and Lucinda. Lydia, about 4 when her mother died, was given to a cousin of Joseph, William R. Forgy, and his wife, Elizabeth, who had no children of their own, to raise. The Forgys lived in Clark County, Ohio.

On 10 September 1869, Joseph married as his second wife in Washington County Penelope Dawson, widow of Isaac. Penelope, born 12 May 1817 in Maryland, had a large family by her first marriage. Sadly, Penelope died less than a year after her marriage to Joseph, on 5 July 1870 after returning home from Washington’s 4th of July celebration.

Family heirlooms include a silver serving spoon monogrammed “PB” for Penelope Brown, given to Joseph and Penelope upon their marriage by her children. When she died her children asked that the spoon be returned, apparently feeling that the marriage had not lasted long enough to justify the expense. Joseph declined. My cousin, Alice Sims, is the spoon’s current custodian.

After Penelope’s death, Joseph moved from Washington to Appanoose County to be near his brother, Archibald S. Brown Sr., and two of his children, Archibald S. Brown Jr. and Mary (Brown) DeMack, who were living there with their families.

Archibald S. Brown Sr. had married Mary Boswell in 1859 and through her Joseph was introduced to her widowed niece, Chloe (Boswell) Prentiss, whose first husband, Moses Prentiss, had been killed 6 July 1865 when the boiler being used to power a saw mill he was operating exploded. Chloe had been left with four young daughters.

Chloe, a daughter of Peachy Gilmer and Caroline (McDaniel) Boswell, was born 23 August 1833 at Point Pleasant, Mason County, (West) Virginia, and had married Moses Prentiss on 18 March 1852 in Van Buren County, Iowa. They had moved to Corydon, Wayne County, in 1854.

Joseph and Chloe were married at Corydon on 17 November 1870 and in the spring of 1871 moved across Lucas County to Columbia, in southern Marion County. They purchased 40 acres that now is the northwest quarter of Columbia and built their home and outbuildings on a two-acre lot in the southeast corner of Columbia’s only intersection. Reportedly, Joseph selected Columbia as a home because he liked the Presbyterian church there. Unfortunately the church burned and was not rebuilt. So this staunch lifelong Presbyterian spent his final years among Methodists, including Chloe who had always been just that.

Joseph and Chloe became the parents of two children while living in Columbia, Joseph Ellis Brown, born when his father was 60, and my grandmother, Jessie Frances Brown, born when her father was 64.

Joseph died at Colmbia on 4 December 1893, during the same year his surviving siblings, Solomon Kelley and Jane, also died, and was buried in the Columbia Cemetery.

Chloe, daughter Jessie and their granddaughter and niece, Verna, continued to live in Columbia until Jessie married William Ambrose Miller in 1905. Chloe and Verna then moved to English Township, Lucas County, to live with Will and Jessie. Chloe died there on 15 June 1914 and was taken to Columbia for funeral services and burial.

CHILDREN OF JOSEPH AND HESTER BROWN

Joseph Brown’s extended family consisted of 13 children, seven by Hester Eldridge, his first wife; two by Chloe Boswell/Prentiss, his third wife; and four who were daughters of Chloe and therefore his stepdaughters. William Wilson Brown, Joseph’s eldest child, was nearly 40 when the youngest child, Jessie, was born. The children of Joseph and Hester (Eldridge) Brown were as follows:

1. William Wilson Brown was born 19 December 1836 in Brown Township, Miami County, Ohio, and came west to Washington County, Iowa, with his father and siblings Jonathan Edward and Eleanor in 1850. After service during the Civil War he returned to Iowa and married Josephine W. Basey, daughter of William and Rebecca (Ayers) Basey, on 15 March 1866 at Sigourney in Keokuk County. The William Wilson Browns lived near Sigourney, near Durham and finally in Oskaloosa, where he died on 2 May 1915. Josephine, born 17 March 1846 in Keokuk or Washington county, died 19 November 1923. Both are buried at Forest Cemetery in Oskaloosa. They had 7 children: Amy J. Brown (died young), George Edward Brown (married Louella E. McLaughlin), Charles Brown (married Alice M. Warrington), Purl G. Brown (a boy who died at age 12 and is buried at Eureka), Harry T. Brown (died young), James A. “Tad” Brown (married Anna) and Besse A. Brown (married Harry Scull).

2. Jonathan Edward Brown, born 20 April 1838 in Brown Township, Miami County, Ohio, came west to Washington County, Iowa, with his father and siblings William Wilson and Eleanor in 1850. He married Elizabeth Laurel Crawford 6 October 1859 in Washington County, Iowa. Elizabeth was born 21 March 1838 at Fallston, Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The Browns lived in Washington County, in Oskaloosa, at Otley in Marion County and finally at Durham, also in Marion County, where Jonathan Edward farmed and worked as a stone mason. He died of an apparent heart attack while at work on a barn foundation on 18 March 1897 and was buried in Eureka Cemetery. Elizabeth continued to live in Durham until 26 May 1919 when she died, probably of asphyxiation after the oil stove she was lighting apparently exploded in her face, knocking her to the floor and filling the house with soot and fumes. She, too, was buried at Eureka. Jonathan Edward and Elizabeth had 10 children: Oren Brown (married Marinda Anderson), Florence Della Brown (married James William Larew), William Tecumseh Sherman Brown (married Easter C. Parsons), Harriet D. Brown (married Webster J. Payton), Blanche May Brown (married John Wesley Lancaster), Sarah Ellen Brown (married J. Cliff, Benjamin Franklin Smith, William H. Keeves and James Montis), Jessie Jane Brown (married David Smith), Minnette Brown (married William Lewis Winslow and Luther Smith) and Fanny and another child, both of whom died young. About Jonathan Edward Brown’s name: The Browns had a habit of naming their sons after preachers, so it seems likely that Joseph and Hester intended to name their second son Jonathan Edwards Brown after the Calvinist preacher, missionary and theologian Jonathan Edwards. The “s” on Edwards tends to be dropped nowadays, however.

3. Eleanor Brown, born 5 February 1840 in Brown Township, Miami County, Ohio, moved west to Washington County, Iowa, with her father and elder brothers. She married Silas Jagger, a widower, on 27 December 1859 in Washington County. About 1862, the Jaggers moved from Washington County to a farm in Poe Township, Ringgold County, Iowa, southwest of Kellerton, where the remainder of their lives were spent. Silas, born 5 October 1832 in Indiana, died 2 March 1899. Eleanor died 16 June 1903. Both are buried in Oakland Cemetery, Poe Township. Eleanor and Silas became the parents of 12 children: Silas Manson Jagger (married Ida), Laura Alice Jagger (married William Hardin Goodall), Emma Kay Jagger (married Benjamin Leonard Cracraft), Keziah Jagger (married Frank Bayless), Anna Jagger (married George N. Davis), Etta J. Jagger (did not marry), Joseph Jagger (died young), Jonathan Jagger (twin; died young), John T. Jagger (twin; died young), Josephine Jagger (married Gustav Heinisch), Nora May Jagger (died young), and William N. Jagger (died young).

4. Archibald S. Brown Jr., named for his uncle and “junior” because uncle and nephew always lived near one another, was born 5 January 1843 in Brown Township, Miami County, Ohio, and joined his father and elder siblings in Washington County, Iowa, before 1856. He then joined his uncle, Archibald S. Brown Sr., at Cincinnati in Appanoose County, Iowa, where the remainder of his life was spent. Following Civil War service, Archibald returned to Cincinnati and married Rebecca A. Brown (not a relative) on 7 March 1867. Archibald, who returned from the Civil War with impaired health, developed tuberculosis. He farmed, mined coal and apparently operated a store before his death on 7 October 1876, age 33. Archibald and Rebecca had five children: William Henry Brown (married Lyda M. Stripe), Cornelius Elmer Brown (died young), Charles Wilson Brown (died young), Ida Belle Brown (married James Gallett Rogers) and Archibald Anson Brown (born after his father’s death; died young). Following Archibald’s death, Rebecca married(2nd) widowed Cincinnati businessman John Alden Corder (27 December 1847-24 July 1927) and they had two sons, Homer S. Corder and John Fenton Corder. Rebecca, born 14 September 1848 in Ohio, died 17 October 1920 at Cincinnati and was buried with Archibald and her sons who died young in the old cemetery at Cincinnati, Evergreen.

5. Mary Brown, born 23 October 1844, joined her father and elder siblings in Washington County, Iowa, before 1856. She married Thomas DeMack, a native of England, on 24 January 1861, in Washington County. They moved to the area of Cincinnati, Appanoose County, where Mary’s uncle and brother, both named Archibald S. Brown, already were living. The DeMacks always lived in or near the neighboring towns of Cincinnatti, Iowa, and Mendota, Missouri, just across the state line, while Tommy mined coal and farmed. Tommy, born 20 May 1821 and more than 20 years older than Mary, died 21 August 1899 at Mendota. Mary died 21 February 1905, also at Mendota. Both are buried in the Mendota Cemetery. Their eight children were: Frank M. DeMack, Hester DeMack (married Miles McCann), Albert DeMack (married Maggie Clinkenbeard and Marie Kelly), Florence DeMack (married William Wilson), Sarah Mary DeMack (married John Edward Ruch), Archibald DeMack (married Kate Sammons), Maude Gertrude DeMack (married Lee Ollie Ryals) and William Thomas DeMack (married Clara Etta Branscomb).

6. Lydia Jane Brown was born during July 1846 in Brown Township, Miami County, Ohio, and following her mother’s death was raised in Clark County, Ohio, by Joseph Brown’s cousin, William R. Forgy, and his second wife, Elizabeth Milhollen, who had no children of their own. She married Bushrod N. Spencer (also born July 1846) on 29 November 1866 in Clark County, Ohio, and they had two sons, William Forgy Spencer and Clarence P. Spencer. Although Lydia remained in contact with some of her siblings she became estranged from her father, who did not know her whereabouts or married name when he died. Lydia was far closer to her extended Eldridge family and because of that moved with her family to St. Louis where Bushrod worked in mercantile establishments owned by Eldridge kin. After financial and other reverses, Bushrod died on 23 March 1904 in St. Louis, crushed to death in an elevator shaft while working as a night watchman. Lydia, then critically ill with tuberculosis, was taken under the wing of her Eldridge cousins and moved to Colorado Springs in hope of a cure. She died there at the Alta Vista Hotel on 4 March 1905. Both Lydia and Bushrod are buried in St. Peter’s Cemetery, St. Louis.

7. Lucinda Brown, born about 1848 in Brown Township, Miami County, Ohio, and was about 2 when her mother died. She joined her father and older siblings in Washington County, Iowa, prior to 1856. Lucinda died at age 16, about 1864, although it is not known where that death occurred or where she was buried. Lucinda was living with her sister and brother-in-law, Eleanor and Silas Jagger, in 1860 and may still have been living with them in 1864 but that is by no means certain. The only family story that survives regarding Lucinda is that when she became critically ill, word was gotten to her father, Joseph, and he set out on horseback to reach her bedside. She died, however, before he arrived.

CHILDREN OF JOSEPH AND CHLOE BROWN

Joseph Brown’s youngest children, Joseph Ellis and Jessie Frances, were 30-40 years younger than their Brown half siblings and as a result had much more in common with their nieces and nephews. My grandmother was closest to Ida Belle (Brown) Rogers, daughter of Archibald S. and Rebecca Brown, and the daughters of Jonathan Edward and Elizabeth Laurel Brown.

Because Columbia and Durham were near each other, Joseph Brown’s younger family and the Jonathan Edward Brown family saw each other most other often. On the other hand, my grandmother recalled seeing her sister Eleanor Jagger only once when she, Jessie, went to Kellerton for a vaist.

Chloe’s daughters by her first marriage, to Moses Prentiss, were important members of the Columbia-based Brown family. They were Eva L. (who married John Rush West), Laura R. (married Alpheus Elkanah Love), Sarah Olive (married Samuel Prentiss McCorkle) and Emma Caroline (did not marry but had a daughter, Verna, known as Verna Brown, who was an important member of the extended Brown-Miller family).

1. Joseph Ellis Brown, born 4 September 1871 at Columbia in Marion County, Iowa, was a blacksmith and farmer who occasionally worked in the quarries at Durham. He married Anna E. Stone (29 July 1872-20 May 1959) on 15 March 1895. Unfortunately, Joe developed tuberculosis, which had killed at least two of his older half-siblings, Archibald and Lydia. In the hope drier air would improve his health, Joe and Anna moved west to Nuckolls County, Nebraska, on the Kansas state line south of Lincoln not long after their marriage. Their only child, Ronald Merle Brown, was born here on 27 October 1897. The widowed Chloe Brown and her two children by Joseph Brown were an extremely close-knit family and wanted to be closer to each other so Joe returned to Columbia in the fall of 1898 and drove Chloe, Jessie and their granddaughter and niece, Verna, west to Nebraska in a covered wagon. Joe died near Bostwick in Nuckolls County on 25 September 1899, age 28. The Brown family accompanied his body home to Columbia by train and he was buried in the Columbia Cemetery. Chloe, Jessie and Verna then resumed their lives in Columbia. Joe’s widow, Anna, married twice after Joe’s death and her second husband, surnamed Fraser, adopted Merle and he took the Fraser surname. Anna and Merle spent most of their lives in Seattle, Washington.

2. Jessie Frances Brown was born in Columbia on 19 January 1875 when her father was 64 and her mother, 42. Soon after 1900, the switchboard that served the Columbia telephone exchange was moved into the Brown sitting room and Jessie became its principal operator for several years. During that time she met William Ambrose Miller, treasurer of the telephone exchange that served his neighborhood in English Township, Lucas County (his family operated the switchboard, too). They were married 3 July 1905 in Corydon and settled on the Miller family farm in English Township where they were joined by Chloe and Verna. Chloe died there in 1914 and Verna remained with the Miller family for the remainder of her long life. Jessie and Will became the parents of seven children during 40 years of marriage. She died 7 January 1945 at home in English Township of complications from diabetes. Will Miller died 26 February 1969, age 94. Both Jessie and Will are buried in the Columbia Cemetery. The seven Miller children were: Joseph Edwin Brown (married Helen Krutsinger), Loren Owen Miller (married Norma Wilson), Olive Mae Miller (married Elmer Gibbany), Mary Ellen Miller (married O. Kenneth Krutsinger), William Ambrose Miller Jr. (died young), Reefa L. Miller (married Daniel F. Myers) and Richard Lloyd Miller (married Marie Lindquist).

Thoughts for the day: Or just how trite is it ...

... to quote Dwamish Chief Seathl (Seattle)? And can you say, "reverse snobbery?"

I was going to reread Douglas Preston's 1992 "Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest in Coronado's Footsteps," which has been gathering dust on a shelf in Chariton since I read it soon after the paperback edition was published. It's one of the better examples of pop history, a good informative fast-moving read. I liked it then and I'll like it again --- later.

Early on just as I was getting interested I got aggravated at Preston, who went to the trouble in opening pages of pointing out his superioriority in education, family affluence and background ("I came from Boston, and most of the male members of my family had gone to either Harvard of Princeton and the females to Wellesley. Walter came from Wichita Falls, Texas ....") to the education, family affluence and background of his traveling companions and those he proposed to write about. Pissed me off. So I reshelved it. Simon & Schuster got my $14 fifteen years ago, when you could still buy a decently-bound book for $14, so what the heck. It'll look better another day. Or was I just struck down in the prime of an introduction by a bad case of reverse snobbery? Why shouldn't an author with a fancy East Coast background now slumming in the Desert Southwest be honest about it?

I did read the "quote" page, which is where authors with aspirations plant profound quotes from profound people to --- among other reasons --- make the point that they plan to be profound, too. One quote was from T.S. Eliot (wouldn't you know?); the other, from Chief Seattle (or Seathl). I really liked the Seattle quote and I'm going to put in here trite, though that may be. Still chasing Gypsies, I'm fresh out of profound today and I've got to get to mowing lawn since it's finally stopped raining:

"When the ... memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.

"Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds." (Seathl, 1854)

Prince among Gypsies or a chief of the Cherokees? (Part 1)

Tip your hat next time to Chief John Rinehart here just inside the gate, dead since 1881 and buried alongside the open road in January of that year. I wonder if his family and friends planted him so close to life and traffic on purpose because they were people of the road. There surely were prettier, quieter and more secluded places deeper inside the Chariton Cemetery if privacy had been a concern. We’ll never know.

And give the old chief’s family and friends credit while you’re at it for launching at his death a legend that seems to incorporate some of the longest-running tricks ever played on Lucas Countyans, tricks that resurrect whenever Rinehart’s memory is invoked. Coyote is at work here in the heartland thanks to that merry band of tricksters, Gypsies spliced to Cherokee.

But be warned that I can’t prove much --- neither Romani nor Cherokee genealogy is an easy road --- so I could be old Coyote, too, just messing around with a treasured legend --- that one about the Indian chief buried among us, a vicarious link between pale skins and noble red.

Attempts to find out exactly who John Rinehart was result in more questions than answers. Chief is probably a stretch, although there’s really no proof that he ever claimed the title for himself. There’s no particular reason to doubt that he was indeed Cherokee. What we do know is that he was loved and honored by a family that returned to Chariton for more than 50 years to care for his grave and now and then brought along the remains of other family members to be buried near him.


The legend begins with an article published in The Chariton Patriot of January 12, 1881.

“For two months past, five families of Cherokee Indians, some 30 persons in all, have been camped on the Chariton river, a couple miles from this city. On Monday, one of their number, Rinehart by name, a man of 40 years or more, succumbed to the fell destroyer and his spirit joined its kindred in the happy hunting grounds beyond the clouds. The party of which the deceased red man was a member left the Indian Territory two years ago and had traveled through Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota, Minnesota and thus far through Iowa on their way back home. They stopped here on account of the illness of Rinehart, whose poor health was the cause of the long trip undertaken by the company. Several days ago Rinehart realized the approach of death and sent for Rev. J. S. Reed who visited the camp and gave the dying man religious consolation. On yesterday afternoon the funeral took place from the Presbyterian Church, to the Chariton Cemetery where his companions had bought a lot and the red man was laid away to rest after this long wonderings. The party will remain in their present camp until warm weather.”

As the years passed, family and friends returned to Lucas County regularly to decorate John Rinehart’s grave. Occasionally, the body of a deceased family member was brought along and buried beside him. There may be as many as four additional graves on that lot, but only two can be accounted for.

On Oct. 29, 1897, The Patriot reported that, “Mrs. Rachel Rhinehart, wife of the Cherokee Indian chief who lies buried in the Chariton cemetery, died at Wheeling, Missouri, on August 30, 1896, at the age of 104 years. The remains were brought to this city the first of the week and on Tuesday afternoon at four o’clock were interred by the side of her husband. Rev. A. C. Ormond of the Presbyterian church conducted brief services at the grave.”

Many years later, on July 24, 1923, The Chariton Leader reported another burial under the headline, “Another Indian Grave: Body of Daughter of Chief Rhinehart Brought Here for Burial”:

“On Sunday afternoon, the body of Sahria Mason, an Indian lady, 98 years of age, and a daughter of Chief Rhinehart, was brought here and buried in the Chariton cemetery, where the remains of the old aborigine lie, together with other members of the tribe. You will see the new mound near the entrance. The services at the grave were conducted by the Rev. J.D. Pontins of the Christian church.

“The aged Indian lady had been living near the Minnesota line Her remains were accompanied here by a son and son-in-law. Local members of the Redmen Order acted as pall bearers. Her spirit is now with her ancestors beyond the flowing river.”

There were those who doubted the stories about Rinehart, of course, and some of that crept into the following report published during 1902 in The Chariton Herald. The headline reads, “Indians Visit Grave: Annual Visit of Red Men to the Grave of Their Chief in Chariton Cemetery.”

“A few of the Indians who have visited Chariton annually for the past fifteen years to hold services over the grave of their chief, Rhinehart, were camped near Chariton on their annual visit last Friday and Saturday, but omitted the customary grave ceremony, perhaps because they are growing too civilized to believe in it any longer. They departed on Saturday on their way to Miineapolis, where they will spend the summer in a cooler climate.

“It is generally believed that the principal one of the four Indian graves just south of the main gate in the Chariton cemetery is that of a noted Indian chief, but it is not so. The man was called a chief, and was named Rhinehart, but he was not an Indian. He was a Frenchman who married a full-blooded Indian squaw, probably the widow of a minor chief, and thereby became the chief of the little tribe. Fifteen years ago Rhinehart’s band was camped on the Chariton river, two or three miles from town, when he took sick and died. His family bought a lot in the Chariton cemetery and buried him here, and each year since then some of his Indians have come back to see that the grave is kept in proper condition. There are now three or four graves on the Indian lot, the newer ones being younger members of Rhinehart’s family or tribe, and it is saide that his widow is buried here. The other day when they were here, one of his daughters, a half breed who is almost white, was negotiating for a head stone for the grave of one of the children buried on the lot.

“The Indians who were here look fully as much like Gypsies as Indians, but they attend to their own respectable business which Gypsies do not. Rhinehart’s daughter is an intelligent woman, and is a member of the Rebekahs, while many of her tribe belong to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.”

For future reference it’s important to note this final paragraph, including a fair description of what Lucas Countyans thought they knew at the time about Gypsies.

And then take a look at the following report of what may have been the final pilgrimage to John Rinehart’s grave, published in The Herald-Patriot on May 3, 1934, 53 years after he died. The headline reads, “Granddaughter of Chief Rinehart in Lucas County to Decorate His Grave: Members of Cherokee Tribe Build Camp on River Near City.”

“Indians again are camping on the Chariton River.

“They are here to pay respect to the memory of a famed ancestor, Chief John Rinehart of the Cherokee tribe, and to other members of his family buried at Chariton cemetery.

“Members of the tribe have visited the cemetery here almost every year since Chief Rinehart died Jan. 2, 1881.

“Included in the group of 14 men, women and children living in tents southwest of Chariton is a granddaughter of the chief, Mrs. Dolly Friar.

“All members of the group are related. Their home is at the reservation in Tama, Ia. They have been in Missouri collecting herbs and will go back to Tama from here. They will stay here at least until after Memorial Day, when the graves of the chief and hisfamily will be decorated, and perhaps longer.

“One of the women at the camp is, according to Mrs. Friar, “expecting a little papoose.”

“We are certain to stay until after it arrives,” she said.

“It was Mrs. Friar who this afternoon told of the events which led to the burial of Chief Rinehart in Lucas county, far from his native Oklahoma.

“Mrs. Friar’s father was an Englishman who traveled through this section as horse buyer for the United States army. He married an Indian girl, daughter of Chief Rinehart. It was while accompanying his daughter and her husband on a trip through Iowa that the chief died and was buried here.

“His monument stands near the entrance to the cemetery, on the south side of the road. It was one of the finest monuments of its time. The inscription reads:

“Behold the pilgrim as he lies
With glory in his view,
To heaven he lifts his longing eyes
And bids the world adieu.

“Four other graves are on the Rinehart burial ground, said to be those of his wife, Rachel, who died Aug. 30, 1896, and children brought for burial in later years.

“Mrs. Friar’s father, Ephraim Joles, was well known to Lucas county’s early settlers, she said. He was a Mason and an Odd Fellow. In a spring wagon he once took Chief Rinehart’s wife from Oklahoma to Minnesota.

“To make a trip like that in those days one needed to know and be liked by everyone,” Mrs. Friar declared.

“Ephraim Joles died three years ago at the age of 94. He and his wife are buried at St. Paul.

“In spite of her English ancestry Mrs. Friar has most of the Indian characteristics in appearance. She is stately, young looking, with sharp cut features and coal-black hair. Today she was wearing an all-black ankle length dress. Her only ornament was a unique brooch.

“She knows the name and the purpose of each of the 165 roots, barks, teas and berries which the group sells for medicinal purposes.

“They have a license, she said, to sell al types of medicines, but sell none which have any habit-forming drugs or impure ingredients.

“We wouldn’t know how to handle such things. The medicines of which we know are those made by nature,” she declared.

“It is a pleasure, she said, for Indians to follow the old trails of their ancestors.

“The paths which they set are clean and pure. They did not rob. They broke no laws. They lived honest, good lives and we are proud of them.”

“Life in the camp seemed to be flowing on an even tempo. The women and children were sitting in the shade, and the men were at work, principally on their automobiles.”

This is a fine report by a reporter who obviously knew what he was doing and actually had invested a little time in research, but you’ve got to wonder just how much trouble Dolly Friar (actually Frier) had keeping a straight face when she informed him that a member of her party was “expecting a little papoose.”

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Meanwhile, back at the marsh

There's been a pause here after unforeseen technical difficulty unwired me --- clever virus that slipped into the laptop while thumbing its nose at my new ISP's security system that turned out not to be secure at all. The laptop has been cleansed and purified, thanks to the good folks at Willis PC Support, and the security system, fired.

While arranging to have the laptop purified, I somehow ended up buying a new PC to replace the big Gateway, now at the end of its natural life, so I have that to fuss with, too --- transferring data from old to new and loading programs.

Amazing how that old hard drive resembles my brain --- cluttered with a gazillion gigabytes of useless stuff that make finding the good stuff a challenge. We do not edit our hard drives --- or our lives --- rigorously enough. The new hard drive at least I can do something about.

As you can tell from the photo of the little shelter house near the entrance to Pin Oak Marsh, nature served up a monsoon Monday. Now it's far too nice to stay inside and I'm not going to for long.

I've sometimes wondered what would happen if you visited the same scrap of the more or less natural world on a daily basis just to watch what happens and have been developing a modified form of that relationship with convenient Pin Oak.

This morning I stopped to admire a patch of blue flags (Iris versicolor) that I'd first noticed Sunday.


Sat down on the paved trail for a while to consider this painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), probably a female headed into the grass to nest.


And wondered where the rest of the monarchs were since this guy seemed to be brunching alone.


Not a bad way to start the morning.