Friday, April 30, 2010

A grave with a view


The view is east across the Des Moines River from the Vernon Cemetery towards Bentonsport.
I've been sorting snapshots --- remember those? Back in the day before digital photography. Several that turned up were taken between five and 10 years ago in the Bentonsport-Vernon neighborhood, down in Van Buren County. The season obviously was fall and my dad would have been standing by the truck off to the left --- we used to roam a lot on weekends and both of us enjoyed it. Don't do it so much now. Not as much fun to roam alone.
  

Anyhow, I took these two shots because I was interested in the rusty iron fence surrounding the tombstone and the view of the Des Moines River and Bentonsport beyond. The composition isn't great, but both the fence and the view are.

This is in the Vernon Cemetery and I don't know who is buried in the enclosure. Sorry. But like I said, I was more interested in the fence and the view.

The cemetery, perched as close to the edge of the bluff on the west side of the river as it can get without tumbling in, served Bentonport's twin, the ghost town of Vernon. Bentonsport has a cemetery, too --- turn east at the old Presbyterian church and drive to the top of the bluff on that side. But it's farther from the river, lacks a view and is less atmospheric.

What's left of Vernon today is best known because of the Vernon schoolhouse, a lovely stone building that served as watercolorist Wendell Mohr's home and studio until his death at age 82 in May of 2008.

You have to work to figure out how to get to the cemetery, since the trip involves driving down what looks like someone's lane after turning off the new pavement that curves out north around Vernon and down to the new river bridge that will take you across to Bentonsport and then, if you're smart, on south and east to Bonaparte.

I've no particular interest in being buried in the Vernon Cemetery, despite the view, but It's getting to be about time to drive down thataway and enjoy it again.

35 years after the fall

Vietnamese civilians arrive aboard a U.S. carrier offshore during Operation Frequent Wind.
Don’t mean to be too obsessive about this, only to mention in passing that today is the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

If we were playing the “do you remember where you were?” game, I could tell you about standing in the lobby of the post office in Thompson, Iowa, and talking about it with the postmaster of that time, a veteran of World War II.

The final assault began on the 29th and by the afternoon of the 30th, the North Vietnamese flag had been raised above the South Vietnamese presidential palace, the government capitulated and Saigon was Ho Chi Minh City.

The last U.S. personnel as well as some “endangered” Vietnamese had been evacuated by helicopter to U.S. carriers offshore in Operation Frequent Wind.

I’d come back four years earlier leaving behind let’s say 20-30 Vietnamese civilian co-workers at CDEC and friends, now as “enemy collaborators” in deep shit --- not to put too fine a point on it.

Some got out --- Mr. Suk, Nguyen Thi Niehm --- but I don’t know what became of most.

Then there were the 58,000 U.S. troops who had died, or were dying --- let’s say 38,000 in combat. For nothing.

Still pisses me off..

Hubert van Es's iconic photo of a UH-1 Huey loading frightened refugees on April 29, 1975, atop the Pittman Apartment Building, 22 Gia Long St., in Saigon, used as a residence by U.S. Embassy personnel.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Sunshine and a new LCHS Web Address


The neighbor, now in the upper end of his 80s, stopped a while yesterday to sit on the front steps and remarked that getting out of the house after several consecutive wet days (and five or so inches of rain) felt like release from prison.

And it did, especially for all those plants I bought during a brief period of sunshine, and optimism, on Saturday that had been cooling their heels in the garage ever since.

I keep reminding myself that it's only late April and that it's generally not considered safe around here to plant less sturdy stuff until May 1, when the danger of a late frost has diminished. But most have pushed the season this year during what was until last weekend an unusually warm and dry month. Lots to do today!

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After the trip to the greenhouse, I spent the rest of a wet Saturday putting together a new Web presence for the Lucas County Historical Society, something that's been absent for more than a year. It's far from done, but in good enough shape to be looked at, which you can do by clicking here. I'll link it in the sidebar another time.

Since rain is in the forecast for Friday, most of the day had better be spent outdoors --- and that's where I'm headed right now.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

If the crick don't rise ...


Somebody thought I was kidding this morning when I said that for a little excitement after lunch I was going to drive out to Lucas and watch the water rise. I wasn't.

We've had between 4 and 5 inches of rain within the last couple of days and it's darned wet.

We kind of judge moisture content around here by the behavior of Whitebreast Creek in the Lucas bottom, where Highways 34 and 65 intersect. If part of 65 is under water (as it is here), the water's rising; if 65 and part of 34 are under water, it's risen; and if the Lucas pond spills out over 34 and both go under, it's high tide.

At least I'm home safe and dry now after all that excitement. The neighbors (two adults, three kids and three large dogs) spent the weekend up around Montezuma at a dog training event in a nice, but compact, travel trailer. I wonder how many square feet per body that comes out to. Not my idea of fun.

I'll think I'd just as leave sit back and watch the water rise.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

After 40 years, not forgotten ...


Marilyn and I spent some time on Friday unlocking and assessing the contents of four deep storage drawers under tall lighted cases that display some of the museum’s artifacts related to Lucas County veterans of conflicts ranging from the Civil War to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We’ll need to inventory those drawers, match artifacts to accession records and find a place to display more of them --- newly-cleared space on a library wall may offer a home to the large group photos of World War I soldiers that are among items now in storage, for example.

An estimated 98 percent of Lucas County Historical Society artifacts are on display, but we can do a little better here I think --- although finding appropriate display space even in a large museum complex always is a challenge.

I thought a little bit at the time about the lives each of those artifacts represent and how the military service and sometimes war-related death of every soldier, Marine or sailor represented altered the course of history, not most likely the course of a war, but most certainly history on an intensely personal and local level. And how effects of that service or those deaths continue to be experienced, even when nearly 150 years have passed.

Overnight, a new comment was added to an earlier post in this blog --- one related to Albert B. Crouch, a graduate of Seymour High School killed in Vietnam on May 18, 1970. By reading that post, which is here, and especially the comments added to it by family members and friends you can get an idea of what I’m talking about.

Here is the comment added overnight to that April 4, 2008, post:

My name is Dave Foster. I was the crewchief on the helicopter Albert was killed in. It will be 40 years since Albert was killed next month. Not a day goes by that I don't relive that day. I can still see as if it happened yesterday. B Troop 7/1 Air cav lost people on the 10th, 25th and Albert on the 18th of May.

That day started as a typical day, troop insertions into an enemy stronghold. We teamed up that day with the 135th AHC Emu's, this was a combined unit made up of Australian Navy and U.S. Army aviators. The landing zone we were going to was near an area known as Go Cong. The NVA/VC had over run a fire support base and were heavily armed from the weapons they had captured. My helicopter was number three in the flight. I can still see the LZ as we came in across the Mekong River, it was so green and beautiful.

Then we started to recieve heavy automatic weapons fire from the treelines. Our Cobra gunships provided us cover as we went in and we returned fire at the muzzle flashes in the trees. There were red and green tracers everywhere. We went in and kicked out our load of troops and then turned 180 degrees and departed the LZ to go and get another load. We went into the LZ three times under very heavy autmic weapons fire. As we were turning around I was standing in the door and returning fire as we lifted off. I turned forward and saw Albert bent over forward in his seat. After we were safely clear, I went forward to help Albert. He was bleeding heavily and it was evident he felt no pain. We headed for the aid station at a place called Tan An. I lifted Albert out of his seat and laid him on the stretcher and they took him away. It was the last time I saw him.

We returned to our base in Vinh Long and cleaned my ship and myself. The airframe shop came and put a patch over the hole in the windshield. I saw that patch every day for the next 5 months until I left Vietnam.

I have had Albert with me everyday since then. I didn't even know him and I miss him so much. I hope his wife and family have found peace. He is not forgotten.

Dave Foster

Friday, April 23, 2010

"The past is a foreign country:


They do things differently there” is the opening sentence of a 1953 novel, "The Go-Between," by British author Leslie P Hartley. Google told me that. I remembered the sentence this week, but not the source. Ain’t the Internet grand?

I was looking at this snapshot, taken during 1954 in the front yard of the home place south of Russell, when struck down by literary allusion. Although this looks entirely natural to me, it may look to others as if it were taken in a foreign country --- and perhaps the 1950s on the Lucas-Wayne County line down here in southern Iowa were just that in some ways.

I’m the geeky little kid with glasses and a flannel shirt front and center, looking down at my dog, Skipper. Skippy is seeking attention from Linda Allard, a gentle soul now sadly deceased.

We were all students at Dry Flat country school, a mile south across the fields. Thanks to Dianne (Vincent) Mitchell --- she’s the girl with red hair in the second row, far right --- we’ll be having a Dry Flat reunion come Friday, June 18 (you-all are invited --- e-mail me for details).

Although Dianne is doing the heavy lifting, Doris (Cottrell) Christensen --- the taller girl with dark hair in the middle of the back row --- and I are helping out. Dianne’s brother, Jacob, the guy with short hair just in front of and to Doris’s right --- who looks like trouble but wasn’t --- will be there, too; as will their older sister, Elzan. And, we hope, their mother, Pauline --- so far as anyone knows at age 97 the oldest Dry Flat alum.

Hopefully, some of the others here will be able to come, too. I recognize (but can’t connect a specific name to a specific face) the Savage kids --- they’re all wearing either caps or scarves. I think I recognize the Wishmeyers, too --- but could be mistaken about that. Sadly, both Ralph and Keith are gone now.

This was actually not an official Dry Flat gathering --- it was instead taken during a meeting of the NL Club (that translates as Nature Lovers Club, although no one now living remembers exactly why). Neither scouting nor 4-H was an option this far from town in those days, so our parents had organized the NL Club instead. To the best of my memory there was no great purpose other than fun. This was before the days when it was felt play should be a learning experience, too.

Schools are in financial trouble these days, too --- facing millions in program cuts and the loss of thousands of teachers according to news reports. Down at old Dry Flat we had one teacher for nine grades (including primary), running water when we took a bucket and ran up the road to Vincents’ to get it, and air-conditioned restrooms --- a boys two-holer at the bottom of the hill and girls at the top. Neither better nor worse, but different. That foreign country again. Looking back, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Sideswiped by history


One summer during the late 1960s, and I forget which, I was home from university for the summer and standing idly around in the A.J. Stephens House, newly-acquired and renovated and the only building on the Lucas County Historical Society museum campus in west Chariton.

Irene Garton, founding curator, asked for help and so three of us I believe went off in a pickup to a nearby home to load up a donated parlor organ and bring it to its new home, the Stephens House back parlor, where it still presides. The legendary Young Pearson was LCHS president at the time.

In the 40 years since, the campus has grown to include Puckerbrush School, Otterbein Church, a log cabin, the John L. Lewis administration and display building and a substantial barn built using traditional methods. Currently a seventh building is under construction --- a blacksmith shop that also will include much-needed storage and work space.

Monday night, I was elected LCHS president --- a development not anticipated when I began working as a volunteer last year and quite frankly something I’m intimidated by. I’d have preferred to spend a year or so on the LCHS board, which seemed likely a couple of months ago, and learn more about operations. But as it turned out, I was the only one of several people asked to stand for president who said “yes,” so there you have it.

In many ways it’s an ideal situation to step into --- all buildings on the campus are in a high state of good repair, more than 40,000 artifiacts are well displayed, the endowment is adequate, the 12-member board, volunteer curator and office associate work hard --- and so do the volunteers.

It’s the mountains moved cooperatively by hundreds of people under the leadership of downright amazing individuals to create and maintain what exists now that’s the big intimidator. A guy would hate to mess up …

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Many of the challenges facing Iowa’s museums, large and small, as well as the field of Iowa history in general were illuminated by our guest speaker at Monday evening’s LCHS annual meeting --- William B. Friedricks, youthful and dynamic Anna D. Hunt professor of history at Simpson College and founding director of the Iowa History Center.

Among the bleaker signs cited by Friedricks were greatly diminished emphasis on Iowa history in Iowa’s public schools as well as private and regent colleges and universities and elimination of history-related leadership positions and cuts in programs and hours at the State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa State University and elsewhere.

The Iowa State University Press, once the premier publisher of Iowa history, now sold to private enterprise, has elminated Iowa history entirely --- choosing to focus instead on agricultural and technical subjects, Friedricks reminded us.

Some of this is related, of course, to hard times --- Iowa history is considered expendable when funds are short and “science” and “mathematics” are the academic mantras. More of it is related to trends building in momentum --- increased competition for time, a growing tendency to seek escape in entertainment rather than information, diminishing of the conviction that in order to move ahead effectively one needs to know about past.

A bright spot, according to Friedricks, is a newly-forged partnership with the University of Iowa Press, once focused on literature, to pick up some of the Iowa history slack created by ISU’s move toward the dark side --- although perhaps only those of us who believe in the relevance of local and state history would consider it dark.

All of this is reflected in Iowa’s history-focused museums where the greatest challenge is involving younger people by showing them that the past is both relevant and interesting and also illuminates the road to the future.

Poet and philosopher George Santayana told us first that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In that, I’m a believer.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

The old rugged - make that red - cross


In to the lives of all affiliated with a church must come an occasional work day. St. Andrew's first of the season was after services today, involving roughly 10 people and two Corgis plus an end-loader that made the trek in from the country on a flatbed bearing a load of dirt for the big planters we'll start dealing with on Tuesday.

The major project was turning the two big crosses on the west and east ends of the main part of the church from white to red to ensure that they're noticed. That was the intent of the builders of our little A-frame back in the 1950s. Underneath that pesky vinyl siding is the original redwood exterior against which white crosses stood out. When the siding was added, however, the crosses just blended in, showing up well only at night when spotlighted. Since the cross is the point, after all, we thought a few coats of Episcopalian red (look at many Episcopal church doors and church signs you'll see red) would do the trick.

Fred Steinbach, up the ladder, volunteered to do the heavy lifting here since he is both (a) fearless when it comes to heights and (b) a skillful painter. Suzy Miller is holding the ladder, helping to ensure that Fred doesn't take a nosedive into one of the planters. The two Corgis, resting elsewhere when this photo was taken, belong to Suzy and Mel. There would have been three, but the youngest managed to get his ear stepped on by a horse Saturday and still is recuperating.

The rest of us chased cobwebs and dust, cleaned out 40-year accumulations in various parts of the kitchen, scraped and painted trim, did some raking, refreshed the red paint elsewhere and, with the aid of a rope and a pickup plus considerable digging, removed a shrub that had declined for many years to behave itself.

All in all, it turned out to be a good investment of about five hours, including lunch. I wonder if the Narcotics Anonymous group that meets in the parish hall on Sunday evenings noticed. I'm going to check in tomorrow morning with the artists who gather there Mondays to make sure they're paying attention, too.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Simple gifts, Great Possessions


Two books are never far from hand here, usually findable in a place where books rise to the surface then sink again (a favorite bird-watching book poked its nose out from under a pile of papers last week, but now is gone).

Both are by David Kline, a gifted naturalist, keen observer and eloquent writer. One, first published in 1989 and arranged seasonally, is called “Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer’s Journal”: the other, published in 1997 and arranged by theme, “Scratching the Woodchuck: Nature on an Amish Farm.” Each is a collection of essays, many written for publication in what could be called the “plain” press. I come back to “Great Possessions” seasonally and to either when I want to learn more about a topic Kline has considered --- or just feel the need to calm down.

Both are written from the perspective of someone who has spent much of his life plowing, planting, cultivating and harvesting behind a team of horses in cooperation with creation, family, friends and neighbors.

Neither is preachy, although Kline is bishop (substitute pastor if “bishop” makes you nervous) of his Holmes County, Ohio, church district (congregation) and, unless I’m misinformed, has recently led that flock from New Order Amish to an Old Order Amish affiliation.

It is rare to find an Amish voice in the mass marketplace, not because eloquence or writing skill is lacking in that community, but because putting one’s self forward is considered prideful. And while Kline has published no book recently, he remains active in the production of “Farming Magazine” and in demand as a speaker on sustainable agriculture.

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Kline’s “Great Possessions” essay titled “Wings of Spring: The Canada Goose” drew me back this week as our great white pelican visitors lorded it over the usually dominant Canadas down south of town.

Even the honks have seemed more subdued this week --- and overnight Thursday and Friday the pelicans invaded one of two nesting islands in the east pond, covering its western end but hopefully not tromping goose eggs under big flat orange feet.

We take the Canadas for granted around here because they’re almost always with us, in abundance at Pin Oak and elsewhere, likely to appear on almost any body of water with suitable shoreline.

During mild and dry winters, unlike the one just past, they’ll stick around as long as some water can be kept open and grazing areas are free of snow. Even when they migrate, it is only far enough to find open water and food.

“The giant Canada was thought to have become extinct around 1920,” Kline writes. Some scholars believe that it never existed and lived only in the minds and legends of old-time gunners who boasted of having shot twenty-pound honkers. However, in 1951 Jean Delacour, working from extensive notes left by earlier naturalists, became convinced it did indeed exist at one time and named it Branta Canadensis maxima. But even he doubted that it was still around, for several years later he said, “The giant Canada goose appears to be extinct.”

“Imagine the surprise and consternation of the skeptics,” Kline goes on, “when Harold Hanson of the Illinois Natural History Survey announced in 1962 that he had rediscovered the giant Canada goose in, of all places, a city lake in Rochester, Minnesota. A remnant population was also found nesting in almost inaccessible cliffs along the Missouri River between St. Charles and Jefferson City, Missouri. After carefully studying and surveying these flocks and others, Hanson estimated that at least fifty-five thousand of these large wild geese were in existence!”

Midwest departments of natural resources used the Minnesota flocks to re-establish the giant Canadas throughout their former range, according to Kline, and that includes southern Iowa, where they now thrive.

I’m sure our Canadas will get back to the business of being top geese on the pond when the pelicans depart and will be around for many months more to observe and enjoy. And when you see them, think for a little bit about the miracle of survival and regeneration that they represent.

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Occasionally, when frustrated by the land, my dad would mutter “should give it back to the Indians,” something the Ioway, Sauk and Meskwaki might appreciate but that seems unlikely to happen --- although the landscape might be better off.

On the other hand, visiting last week with Meg who lives now on the old homeplace south of Russell, she reported the discovery of a bobcat denning with kittens in a hollowed-out area of a partially fallen giant maple in the east pasture.

So the giant Canadas, the bobcats, the eagles, the occasional trumpeter swan and even in places prairie chickens are making a comeback. And it’s good to see.

Occasionally I try to memorize scenes so that I can recall them later when I want or need to. Certainly this morning it was the sight of flight after flight of these great birds lifting off from the pond, circling again and again until they circled out of sight. Presumably, they were moving off to feed elsewhere although after a full week here, time is nearing for the trip farther north to continue.

A couple of the human kind also were at the marsh this morning and I took the south trail to south shore and the wooden dock so as not to disturb them. But there were only three of there. I'm always surprised when wonders like this fail to draw a crowd the size Elton John is supposed to attract to the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines this weekend. Of course I'm selfishly glad to be alone with the birds, or nearly so.

Friday, April 16, 2010

The latest in kitchen technology


I think it so important that one keep up with the latest technology in the kitchen, too. Like rolling pins.

I have three. The one on the left, dating from about 1900, was my grandmother’s. The middle pin, with red handles, dates from the 1940s and was my mother’s. I bought the one on the right during the 1970s from a friend and master woodworker named Waldo Tinderholt, now deceased. It is similar from a technology standpoint to my mother’s pin.

The great innovation here occurred between the manufacture of the 1900 pin and the 1940 pin --- someone decided to drill a hole length-wise through the roller, insert a dowel and cap the dowel at both ends with handles. The idea is, the roller turns but the handles don’t, cutting down on handle burn. What will they think of next?

I decided to do a little comparison testing of the two technologies this evening while making cracker crumbs with which to coat a batch of fish the 4-year-old insists he caught, although I think Dad helped at both the baiting and filleting ends of the farm pond adventure. For fresh fish, you need (a) flour, (b) egg, (c) cracker crumbs, (d) hot oil. How else would you do it?

I can report that both the 1900 pin and the 1940 pin did a top-notch of turning saltines into crumbs, but I felt more in control of the process while using Grandmother’s pin. There was just something spooky about watching that 1940 roller turn while the handles remained gripped in my hands. It wasn’t natural.

So I’m sticking with the 1900 pin, which lives on the refrigerator and is the handiest to grab in any case.

The 1970s pin? Well I didn’t have the nerve to try it out. That thing is too pretty --- layers of wood in alternating colors bonded before the roller was turned, then carefully finished. Truthfully, I’ve never used it. It lives on top of the microwave, fully-powered in the docking station Waldo built for it, but unused.

It’s a little like the blender that lives underneath the kitchen sink --- decorative but pointless. This is a top-of-the-line blender, by the way. You could liquify a steer in it if the steer were cut into small enough pieces. But has anyone ever used a blender? Why do they make the things?

Actually, I do use it --- once every six months strictly to justify the storage space wasted on it . The last time I used it was to make bread crumbs, turning slices of stale bread that had dehydrated several hours in a warm oven until cracker-crisp into nutritional dust in no time at all.

I could have used a rolling pin for this process, too --- and it probably would have been about as efficient considering the amount of time it took to haul that sucker out from under the sink, dust it off, break the bread into blender-size pieces, refill the blessed thing several times, then finally disassemble the thing, wash all of its bits and pieces, put it all back together then shove it under the sink for another six months.

Did you know, by the way, that you can buy ready-made stale breadcrumbs at the grocery store nowadays? Golly. I mean, really, what will they think of next?

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Still on pelican patrol


Well, these are still fairly exciting days in Lucas County --- if you measure excitement and big news (as I do) in terms of pelicans, still with us during what seems to be an unusually late migration to nesting sites in northern Minnesota and Canada.

When they're parked on water and cruising, it's hard to understand just how big these big birds (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos or American White Pelican) are --- some can weight as much as 30 pounds and have 9-foot wingspans.

The biggest flock (but not the most gregarious) was parked at Pin Oak, having taken over the gravel spit near the entrance as well as moving into cormorant territory and appropriating all the submerged or nearly submerged logs along the eastern shore of the big pond. I guessed 150 birds. And they even had the big Canadas subdued.

Naturally, as I walked closer to them (not intending to disturb them, but along the path paralleling the shoreline) the pelicans moved off the spit a few feet into the water, either walking or with a short flying hop, then sailed away to more remote locations.

A little later, parked on a chair and visiting at the museum, Lynne (who had just driven up from Russell) stopped in to report a pelican sighting on the most easterly of the twin lakes east of town along Highway 34 --- just north of the twin bridges. Thanks Lynne!

So I drove out and clambered down an embankment to take a look. These birds were not intimidated and seemed inclined to stay put --- I think they were enjoying the view of passing traffic on 34.

What a great day! Spring is practically exploding around us. Who could ask for more?

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The best church in the whole wide world


Let’s say Jesus and a couple of the disciples were on a road trip through these southern hills some Sunday morning and decided to drop in for fellowship and some preaching --- maybe dinner on the grounds. Where do you suppose they’d feel most at home?

If this seems dangerously close to the old WWJD (What would Jesus do?) game, get that idea out of your head. WWJD is a tricky exercise since a lot of times we’d have Jesus do what we would do if we were Jesus, which we’re not, and a whole lot of confusing self-projection gets involved --- so I’m not advocating it.

I just mean that, considering who they were and where they lived, when they lived and how they operated, what surroundings would seem most familiar to those good old boys?

My theory is that if a building were involved, it might be a farm house in an old order Amish church district where neighbors gather to worship, share lunch and fellowship every other Sunday, moving from house to house as the seasons progress. That’s what the early church did, too.

Or how about an Easter sunrise service out at Red Haw State Park, since a lot of preaching back in those days took place in the open air. If baptism were involved, I’d put money on a farm pond down in a pasture somewhere, frogs, mud and all.

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I got to thinking in these mildly subversive terms while beginning to index some of the church buildings I’ve written about here over the years in the sidebar on your right.

Truth of the matter is, I’m a sucker for old church buildings --- and don’t think much of most of the newer ones. My favorite church exterior in Lucas County belongs to First United Methodist in Chariton; my favorite interior, to First Presbyterian. I admire well-executed stained glass as well as those clear glass windows in and views of the countryside from old frame country churches.

I relish the embroidery, from the elaborate altars at Sacred Heart in Chariton to the stained glass dome in the aforementioned First Presbyterian. But I also admire the restraint in those denominations that keep their buildings plain, focused on the fact the people who gather there are the church, not the place they meet.

Nothing makes me happier than a well-played pipe organ --- unless it’s a bunch of shape-note singers who can fill a room with harmony after no more than a cue from a pitch pipe or tuning fork --- entirely without accompaniment.

Sometimes I try to decide if a building was designed and built to glorify God --- or the congregation. And then there’s the power factor. Some church buildings are so overwhelming they seem more a pawn in a power game than a place to worship. You can admire the result but be bemused by the motive. Whatever the case, I enjoy them all.

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This is all a roundabout way of getting to what for now is my favorite church in the whole wide world, although admittedly I’ve not traveled that widely. I have, however, visited a fair share power churches in my time, including St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, the Washington National Cathedral, Saigon Cathedral and, closer to home, both the cathedral churches of St. Paul and St. Ambrose in Des Moines and (from the outside since non-Mormons are not allowed in) the newly-rebuilt LDS Temple at Nauvoo.

But soaring above them all in my estimation, just as it soars above the Des Moines River down in Van Buren County, is the old Bentonsport Presbyterian Church. I love that old building that just seems to bend over backwards to make you feel at home.

I wish I had more historic detail to share, but can tell you only that it was built in the early 1850s and reportedly dedicated in 1855. The proportions and the interior are classic, but the exterior detail is light-hearted gothic revival. According to lore, the clear-toned bell in the tower came from a river boat.

The steeple ran into a few structural problems some years ago and was restored, but for the most part the original structure is intact. An arched ceiling lifts your spirits and the light coming in through clear glass is wonderful.



This was a Presbyterian church, remember, so the interior is very plain although the woodwork is beautiful --- even the wooden cross now up front would not have been endorsed by the plain-spoken and plain-worshiping folks who built it.

If the love of God built the church, poverty preserved it long enough for the Bentonsport Improvement Association to acquire and conserve it. It’s open for walk-in traffic during the summer tourism season, now fast approaching --- and for interdenominational Sunday worship, too.

There originally were four churches in tiny Bentonsport, we’re told. The Methodist church is still there, but now a dwelling. The interesting old two-story brick Congregational church has been demolished. And I’m not sure anyone remembers what the Universalist church looked like. Be that as it may, we’re lucky old Presbyterian survived. If you’re in the neighborhood this summer, don’t miss it.


Monday, April 12, 2010

A pelican update


Why is it that when I set out along the marsh shoreline after deciding whether to take the camera or the binoculars along, I find out I've decided wrong? The camera is small, fits in a chest pocket and always should go along.

Two-thirds of the way to the dock this morning I spotted through maybe 30 feet of shorline brushyness what I took to be an inflated white plastic sack stuck among the weeds. Rounding the point, the sack took off and soared just a few feet above my head --- a lone pelican that had been drowsing or browsing until I'd disturbed it.

It circled, then headed back northwest across Highway 14 to the west pond, where about a dozen pelicans --- and a lone great blue heron --- were resting.

As I walked back in that direction, most took off for the northeast corner of the big pond, but four still were there when I parked, walked across the highway and got as good a photo as I'm likely to get. The heron, still there when I parked, had flown by the time I got across the road.

Magnolia x soulangeana


To say that the saucer magnolias (magnolia x soulangeana) now in full blossom around town are the most showy of the early bloomers is an understatement --- they're more like lavishly produced Broadway musicals. This example is in the arboretum near the Southgate apartments.

These are not the magnolias of the South, which are evergreen and cannot withstand harsh northeren winters, but a deciduous hybrid apparently developed in France and now widely popular in England, the United States and elsewhere.

Wherever they came from, I'm glad they're here --- and hope they make it through the blooming cycle without getting singed. I'm still a little haunted by the great Easter freeze of a year or two ago that turned many things bright and beautiful into small blocks of ice, including the magnolias.

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I did battle for a while yesterday afternoon with the big clump of Indian grass that grows in the back yard surrounded by a few other native plants. A very small prairie fire seemed like a good idea several weeks ago and the neighbor assured me the flames would be out by the time the fire department arrived --- but I desisted. So now, denied fire, I'm hacking away at last year's growth.

Interested in instant gratification, I always plant stuff too close together, so the expanding prairie grass now is overwhelming a few other plants that need to be moved --- and right now. I also have an over-abundance of purple coneflowers elsewhere and intend to move some of the excess out there, something else that needs to be done this week. No matter how small and modest, and my gardening efforts are both small and modest, there's always something to do.

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By design or accident, the gate to the tree dump down by the river was left open yesterday, so I was able to haul away dried stalks, branches and other winter-related debris. The dump, intended only for lawn and garden debris, became a bone of contention last fall because of illegal dumping --- and now it's supposed to be open only from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I'm putting that here so I'll remember it and avoid the embarrassment of driving around for a day or two with a pickup load of tree limbs while waiting for the dump to open.

So much junk, so hard to get rid of. There are about half a dozen items in the garage that require hauling over to the landfill northeast of Attica --- if I ever get around to it. Remember the good old days when much of the stuff you bought was intended to last at least a generation or two? Now it's designed to fall apart or become obsolete in a year or two so we have to buy more.

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Not throwing stuff away allowed me to solve a minor genealogical puzzle yesterday evening. The troublesome accumulation, starting to tumble out of the closet where such things are kept, is a pile of unfiled notes and research notebooks dating back 40 years. Something has to be done --- filing the useful, disposing of the rest.

These notes were gathered back in the pre-Ancestry.com days when most of us interested in genealogy spent a lot of time writing letters, traveling to research libraries and visiting courthouses and cemeteries rather than plugging names into Internet search engines.

The puzzle involved a niece of my great-grandmother, Susan Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Dunlap) Dent. Great-grandmother Lizzie's family was plagued to a degree unimaginable now by tuberculosis. She died of it along with three of her siblings prior to the turn of the 20th century near Rock Rapids in extreme northwest Iowa. When that happened, my great-grandfather, Cassius M. Dent, and their two sons, Homer and Frank, set out for Wyoming. My grandmother, Ethel, was sent to Lucas County to live with relatives.

The moves to Wyoming and southern Iowa fractured ties with what remained of the Rock Rapids family --- Great-grandmother's sister, Allie, who had married Frank P. Wallace, Rock Rapids undertaker and furniture merchant, and had three daughters, Irene, Ida and Kathryn.

I remember Irene, who lived in Des Moines with her daughter, Aletha --- a pioneering female executive for one of the Des Moines insurance companies before her unexpected death while still in her 30s. Aletha was a friend of my dad's, but he didn't especially care for Irene --- who could be a major piece of work when she put her mind to it --- so we lost touch.

Years later, I reconnected with Irene and tracked down Ida, who had never married. But could never find Kathryn, in large part because she and Irene were severely estranged. I didn't even know, or thought I didn't who she had married --- and that husband was the bone of contention between Irene and Kathryn --- he wasn't quite good enough for the almighty Dunlap-Wallaces.

Sorting through a notebook yesterday I discovered that I'd transcribed parts of the Frank P. Wallace probate file many years ago while on a research trip to Rock Rapids, and lo and behold there was Kathryn's married name --- Werkhoven. Her husband was, as it turned out, Gordon Ivanhoe Werkhoven, who had for some reason changed his name to Workhoven after moving his family to California.

So I was able to track down Kathryn at last --- not in any great detail, but at least enough to know what became of her. And I'm glad to know that.

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The cormorants, dozens of them, were back in their bleacher seats (dead trees) along the east shore of the big pond last evening and two pelicans, either left over from Saturday night's party or new arrivals, were overnighting.

So I'm anxious to get down there and see what's going on this morning and had better call it quits here.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Sunday morning at the Pin Oak Motel


Two hundred and fifty or so pelicans checked in late Saturday and I wanted to be there this morning when they got up --- just to be there since without the proper equipment and with limited skill this wasn't going to be much of a photo opportunity.

The big birds had been parked along the north shore of the east pond enjoying supper Saturday night, but most still were drowsing well out into the pond --- only a few heads visible when I drove down before 7.

Then the alarm sounded --- a Union Pacific freight rumbling down the tracks that parallel the marsh levee (and also the Chariton River just beyond). Pelicans that had been having early breakfast rose from a neck of the pond concealed by trees and were joined by about a third of their more altert brethren on the pond propper for a quick in-flight jog before all settled down for breakfast.


When I checked in again at 11 a.m., the pelicans had checked out --- last seen heading north.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Excising a little unkindness

To the best of my memory, I've never removed a post from this blog in the course of its five or so years. But the Dry-Flater reminded me a couple of weeks ago of an especially unkind reference in a long-ago post that has been floating around out there in the blogosphere ever since. And so, while browsing among old posts as I attempt to index this beast a little more effecively, I just flat out killed that sucker this morning.

It involved a teacher, fifth- or sixth-grade if I'm remembering right, against whom I've always held a grudge. I never liked her. Even though she never whacked me, I watched her smack others back in the day when teachers could do that. I saw her be unkind to what now would be called a learning-disabled student. And so on and so on. So I decided 40 years later to get even with a little unkindness of my own. Now that's gone. The blogosphere is a mean enough place without my contribution to it.

Looking back, I wonder if teachers sometimes lose track of the amazing influence good and bad that they have on their charges; of the fact that memorable teachers --- good and bad --- will be remembered forever. Although I may not get the spelling quite right in a couple of instances, here's a list of my unforgettably outstanding teachers.

Ethyle Cummins, primary at old Dry Flat, and Teddy Chapman in third grade at Russell (along with Ruth Roach, who taught music and played the autoharp).

The incomparable Jerry Ellis in eighth grade; Mrs. Wantland (typing) and Helen Frerichs (English) in high school. Helen, mandatorially retired down in northwest Missouri, declined to give up --- driving up to Russell across the state line early Mondays so she could continue to teach, home to her husband and family in Missouri late Fridays.

In college, Dr. George Forell, of the School of Religion; and at the J School, Fr. John B. Bremner.

As for the unforgettably bad ones, and there was only that one --- water under the bridge.

Friday, April 09, 2010

The greening


Lawn grass has greened and grown so aggressively during the last few days I thought fleetingly last evening of disentangling a lawn mower, firing it up and getting to work --- but didn't.

I don't mind mowing lawn, but has it ever occurred to you what a waste of energy and resources those acres of neatly clippled stubble represent? The lawn guy turned up a week ago to fertilize the front and side yards and nuke the crabgrass and creeping charley. There's nothing about that process I like or even approve of, but do it to keep peace in a neighborhood where charley is taken by some as a personal affront. The much larger back yard runs wild and free (although it's mown, too) and to heck with critics.

Years ago I read a book, "A Sense of Seasons," by Jean Hersey, who with her husband had built a house in a New England meadow and decided to mow only a 10-foot strip around it to keep varmints and grass fires at bay. The rest of the meadow was allowed to do its thing, but clipped once in the fall. That, I thought, was a sensible arrangement.

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Elsewhere spring's advance is more subtle. Brown residue from last season's growth mutes meadow, prairie, marsh and pasture and although the timber looks as if a green mist has settled over it, leaves are just beginning to emerge.

I took to the woods on deer trails in the late afternoon yesterday stalking violets, but found none --- only colonies of mayapple emerging on the hills and other greenery that will send forth blossoms soon. Won't be long.


Flowering occurs, of course, but outside of our beds of imported bulbs it's subtle ---- as in these catkins on a shrubby plant I can't name at the marsh.


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The real carnival of life right now involves our fellow sentient critters. The swallows seemed to have gone mad with joy (or nesting instinct) yesterday morning at the marsh, swooping by the dozens around my head as I walked along the shore of the pond, perching in pairs atop nesting boxes they had claimed.


Red-winged blackbirds, the most melodic, were perched singing on cattails and dried stalks --- and I saw for the first time this season an old friend, a red-headed woodpecker.

Other varieties of woodpecker came to the feeders last winter, but no red-heads. I got to know the red-heads first, when I was a kid, because of their habit of perching on the front porch roof while pounding their way through a layer of asphalt shingles to reach lunch lurking in the layer of decaying wooden shingles beneath.

On the water, pairs of Canada geese patrolled in pairs like so many miniature galleons --- honking in annoyance at the human intruder --- as smaller ducks slooped alongside.

Too many disaster reports this week --- destruction and deaths, the appearance in an old friend who has survived previous assaults of an especially aggressive form of cancer ...

It was a good morning to park worries, woes and concerns on a bench and merge for a while with the surroundings, let the wind blow it all away. They start out by telling us that we're atop the critter pile, that the earth and everything in it is ours. But that most likely is just a delusion.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

"Let me see the sunshine one more time ..."


Driving west through the hills to Lucas last evening as a storm rolled in, I was thinking about the 25 miners (perhaps 29 since four still are unaccounted for) dead in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia.

Accelerating down Whitebreast hill into the creek valley as lightning flashed and clouds rolled, wondering if there was restlessness, a wind of empathy blowing east perhaps, atop Fry Hill, which rises to the northwest.

Most of the dead from the Lucas and Cleveland mines (and we have no idea how many) a century and more ago and many of their loved ones rest there.

They would understand the economic necessity and the lure of mining coal, the hazards then as now, the ever-present undercurrent of fear, the frequent grief --- and know that mine owners get rich while miners get by, and occasionally die.

The coal trains don’t stop at Lucas any more. Coal is no longer mined in Lucas County (the last mine, Big Ben, closed years ago). But a dozen or more coal trains, hundreds of cars each, roll along front street in Lucas daily on the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe, carrying Wyoming east gradually to fuel the Midwest’s power grid. A few minutes later, the trains pass a block and a half east of my house in Chariton, each saluting with whistles, train after train, day after day and night, endlessly rolling.

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Lucas, like Russell to the east, was platted along the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line as it was pushed west from Ottumwa to the Missouri River after the Civil War. Russell’s birth year is 1866; Lucas’s 1868.


As Lucas County’s vast coal reserves began to be exploited in the 1870s, Lucas boomed and a twin named Cleveland, now truly a ghost town, was platted and developed just to the east.

Miners from Wales and Scotland, France and Italy, freed slaves from the South, poured in to push its population above 3,500. I’ve heard there were as many as 29 saloons (not necessarily operating consecutively) and 14 churches.

Today about 200 people live in Lucas in houses clinging in many cases now as then to the hillsides rimming the north side of the Whitebreast valley. Only front street, paralleling the railroad tracks at the base of the hills, neatly kept and relatively intact, is truly flat.

There is one saloon now and soaring above it, like a great white bird preparing to take flight from its hillside perch, the only surviving church, Presbyterian, supremely elegant in its simplicity, hardly touched by time.

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There were many other mines in Lucas County and other coal towns. Olmitz and Tipperary near my mother’s childhood home northeast of Chariton in Pleasant Township, Zero, east of Russell --- all vanished entirely. Williamson hangs on.


But Lucas was the jewel. Lucas/Cleveland gave birth in 1880 to John Llewellyn Lewis, son of a Welsh coal mining family and a miner himself, who went on to lead the United Mine Workers as it forged some parity between mine owners and the miners who did the work, and died, and became one of the great labor organizers of the 20th century. He is honored in Lucas at the John L. Lewis Museum of Mining and Labor.

Most of it’s gone now. The mining industry faded as deposits of cleaner-burning coal were exploited elsewhere, including West Virginia and Wyoming. Lucas County was spared the strip mining that left deep scars in adjoining Marion and Monroe counties and so our landscape is mostly intact.

I can take you to the locations of most of the old mines in my mother’s childhood neighborhood, but not to the sites of the Lucas-area mines. Although underground chambers and tunnels remain and occasionally collapse, shafts have been sealed and above-ground traces obliterated.

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We sat around tables in the Presbyterian Church basement last evening talking of Interchurch Council business --- possible camp scholarships for county young people, the Ministry Center (where food is collected and distributed to those who need it), a council-sponsored baccalaureate service for graduating seniors May 5, an ecumenical worship service July 4th on the courthouse lawn.

What we did not do is what we should have done, considering life in general and the specific place where we were gathered --- pray for those West Virginia miners and their families, for all who still go down into the mines daily to ensure that we can turn on the lights at night. I wish we had and I’m sorry we didn’t. I could have suggested it.



Note: This YouTube version of Dwight Yoakam's classic ends clumsily, but it's a moving presentation none-the-less.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Happy Easter!


A little late, but it’s been a long Holy Week --- it always is. Up this morning at 5 to cook a little for the meal that followed this morning’s festival Easter service, I came home after that service and meal --- and took a nap. That tends to put you a little behind. The service was wonderful, the “brunch” great. But like I said it’s been a long Holy Week.

I came to appreciate the rhythm of Holy Week in the liturgical church as a Lutheran and have carried that with me into the Episcopal Church. I’m grateful now to be able to participate in it fully rather than trying to squeeze profound and solemn services into a supper break during those years I worked an odd afternoon-into-night schedule.

After Palm Sunday, there is a break, of course --- then Maundy Thursday,“Maundy” from the Latin mandatum, as in "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" --- "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you" --- the statement by Jesus quoted by St. John the Evangelist to explain to the Apostles the significance of his action in washing their feet.

Foot-washing is a part of the Episcopal rite, which commemorates the Last Supper. Then stripping of the altar and the church as Psalm 22 is read, carrying everything bright and celebratory and light out, empying the ambry of consecrated oil and elements of the Eucharist, extinguishing the sanctuary lamp.

The Good Friday service in that darkened and austere church was the most moving, I think. We read the Gospel account of the Passion most years as choral readers, many taking individual parts, the congregation acting as the crowd: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Astonishingly, we scream that. It’s powerful stuff.

A cross fashioned from the timbers of a fallen century-old barn had been laid across the side altar. As we left, each took a slip of paper bearing his or her name and pounded it into the cross with hammer and nail, then stepped out of the darkened church into total darkness.

Light returned during the Great Vigil of Easter, after sunset on Saturday. It began around an open fire outside the church --- new fire. Candles were lighted from the fire and carried into the church where the paschal candle was lighted, then light gradually returned elsewhere in the church as the service continued and Resurrection neared.

We partnered with Lutherans for the vigil this year at Grace Church in Albia and blended Episcopal and ELCA liturgies, an interesting combination that also shortened the service --- the Episcopal rite is fairly hard-core and can be very long if all the readings and prayers are included, as they tend to be.

This Saturday night, there still was light in the western sky when we set out to dodge deer on the road back to Chariton --- and that was appreciated.

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We have been following during Lent this year a little book of devotions distributed to all parishes by Episcopal Relief and Development, one of the benevolence agencies of the church. The devotions, written by Sr. Claire Joy of the Community of the Holy Spirit, are short and simple and I was especially struck with the meditation for Tuesday in Holy Week, March 30.

It is based upon Psalm 31:2-3: “Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.”

“Wash me thoroughly, it says in the King James Version (the Bible I grew up reading), the author writes. “We’re not talking about bubble bath, not a gentle cleansing with Ivory Snow.

“No., when we are sinful, we are soiled --- needing to be spotted, soaked and scrubbed with a stuff brush. Cleansing is such an innocuous word. It sounds easy.

“But cleansing is not a gentle action. It takes work, it takes elbow grease. It uproots wickedness from the fiber of our beings. It’s not bleach that does this, but blood. And not our own blood.

“Knowing our need for cleansing is the first step. Accepting the radical gift of how that happens takes a little longer.”


We celebrated the triumph of that radical gift today, ending Lent, ending Holy Week. The end. Back to life as usual. Or is it? Accepting the radical gift is the easy part, or at least it should be, because it’s free for the taking. But having accepted it, now we’ve got to figure out what to do with it. So Easter really isn’t the end at all, merely the beginning. And it's time to get to work.


The interior of St. Andrew's Church after the flowers had been placed and the candles lighted Easter morning, but before the congregation arrived.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Becoming Lucas County


This land called Lucas County was until the fall of 1842 recognized by the U.S. government as territory of the confederated Sauk and Fox (Meskwaki) nations and therefore closed to land claims by non-native settlers.

Although native Americans (most notably the Ioway for whom Iowa is named) had lived and hunted here for millennia, as their artifacts testify, they had touched the land lightly. It remained virgin prairie astraddle a high curved ridge dividing the Mississippi and Missouri river drainages punctuated by creek and river valleys fringed by timber and marsh.

The Chariton River, named tradition tells us for French trader Jean Chariton whose trading post was deep in Missouri near where his namesake river joins the Missouri, rises near Smyrna in what now is Lucas County's western neighbor, Clarke, then meanders northeast to the center of Lucas County where it comes to a point — Chariton Point — then turns abruptly southeast toward the Missouri state line.

It is impossible to say how long Chariton Point had been a landmark or who had named it. Countless non-native hunters and explorers, many from Missouri, had passed this way for at least a century and had used the point to orient themselves.

Fringed by bottomland marsh to the south and west, the eastern flank of this point consists of wooded slopes that descend sharply from prairie to river. Early settlers described the exhilaration they felt as they traveled across endless grassland and then spotted Chariton Point's timber on the western horizon.

Thomas Brandon, who at 16 settled with his family during May of 1843 in extreme southwest Monroe County, wrote many years later about trips to the point he made with his father during June and September of that year.

"About that time (mid-June 1843), three men drove up to the camp (northwest of what now is Iconium in Appanoose County), and said they had been out west looking at the land. They lived in Missouri and we knew them when they drove up. They stated to us that they had crossed the Chariton pretty much west of a point we named Chariton Point. The timber growing up on the prairie showed grand for five miles east of there.

"We called it twenty-five miles from where we first landed to Chariton Point," Brandon wrote. While camped there, "Father looked around at the timber and admired the place as the timber came up so boldly to the top of the prairie, but he would not think of changing his place as he had such fine spring water."



Chief Keokuk and son, 1838, by Charles Bird King (hand-colored lithograph).

Under terms of a treaty signed at the Sauk and Fox agency just east of what now is Ottumwa on 11 October 1842, the Sauk, led by principal chief Keokuk, and the Fox, led by Poweshiek, ceded all of their claims to land west of the Mississippi to the United States in return for various financial considerations and the promise of new land in "Indian Territory" west of the Missouri River.

Under terms of that 1842 treaty, the Sauk and Fox agreed to move prior to 1 May 1843 west of a line drawn north to south from the Neutral Ground in northern Iowa to the Missouri border through the red rocks on the Whitebreast fork of the Des Moines River, north of what now is Knoxville. That Red Rock Line formed roughly what now is the Lucas-Monroe county line.


The Sauk and Fox were given three years of grace to occupy the land west of the Red Rock Line, including Lucas County's territory, but pledged to leave Iowa by the third anniversary of the treaty, 11 October 1845.

Settlers flooded into Monroe County on and after 1 May 1843, but what would become Lucas County remained officially off limits until late fall 1845.

There were no roads, only trails that had been followed for centuries. The principal route was defined by the great curving ridge, northwest to Chariton Point, then southwest to Smyrna.

"We had no road from our place to Chariton Point," Brandon wrote of his 1843 travels. "We followed the main ridge from where we lived to Chariton Point."

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The 1843 opening of Monroe County and other areas east of the Red Rock Line had aspects of a land rush as settlers camped on the border of the new territory and dragoons were stationed there to prevent them from entering to stake claims until celebratory gunshots were fired at midnight on 30 April/1 May.

There was none of that when Lucas County opened to settlers just after midnight on Oct. 10/11, 1845. Monroe County had relieved the pressure on Lucas and the lands farther west would be settled more gradually.

Lucas County was created three months later by an act of the final Iowa territorial Legislature dated 13 January 1846 and named for Robert Lucas (left), the first territorial governor. That act defined county boundaries, directed that the uncharted territory be surveyed and placed it under the jurisdiction of Monroe County, which already was administering as best it could a county-wide strip of territory that stretched all the way to the Missouri River.

So far as anyone knows, there were no permanent settlers in Lucas County during that January, but history and geography soon would conspire to turn the broadly curved ridge that bisected it into the nation's busiest highway.

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To understand why this happened, it is necessary to travel southeast to Nauvoo, Ill., lying within a broad bend across the Mississippi River midway between Fort Madison and Keokuk, Iowa.


Joseph Smith Jr., founder, president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, called Mormons, had led his flock there after they had been driven from northwest Missouri during 1838-39. Under his leadership, Nauvoo grew into one of the largest cities in the Midwest, rivaling Chicago, and was among the region's most beautiful and cultured communities. A great temple, rebuilt and consecrated during 2002, was its crowning glory. Estimates of Nauvoo's peak population during 1845 range from 12,500 to 20,000 with thousands more Saints scattered around the city and in southeastern Iowa.

As the Mormons flourished, so did troubles with non-Mormon neighbors and anti-Mormon agitators. These troubles climaxed when Joseph and his brother, Hyrum, were murdered by an Illinois mob at the jail in Carthage, Ill., on 27 June 1844.


As Brigham Young emerged as the new Mormon leader, the Illinois mobs continued to pressure the Saints. Finally, Young determined to lead his people west across Iowa, then the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, to refuge in the Great Salt Lake Valley of Utah. Most of these thousands of Mormon pioneers would pass through Lucas County.

The first fleeing Saints, led by Young, crossed the iced-over Mississippi on 4 February 1846 and headed west. Their route took them to Bonaparte, then northwest to a point just west of what now is Drakesville in Davis County. Here, trek diarist Erastus Snow tells us, "finding it impracticable for us to haul grain for our teams, owing to the bad condition of the roads, we thought it expedient to deviate from the direct course which we had intended to travel (a course that probably would have taken this first party through Lucas County) and bear further south, so as to keep near the (Missouri) border settlements where we could obtain feed for our teams."

This rough and challenging route, known today as the Mormon Pioneer Trail, angled sharply southwest to a troublesome Chariton River crossing southeast of Centerville, then angled northwest to Garden Grove in what now is Decatur County. The first Saints arrived at Garden Grove on 24 April 1846 and set about building a way station to serve those who followed.

Three weeks later, a second way station was commenced 40 miles northwest at a place called Mt. Pisgah in Union County, and Brigham Young directed that the southern route he had blazed to Garden Grove be abandoned because it was too difficult to travel.

Instead, he directed scouts to travel back from Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah to southeast Iowa, blazing as they went a new trail that headed creeks, rounded Chariton Point, then angled southeast toward Drakesville down Lucas County's great ridge. He instructed the Saints who followed to use this new trail through Lucas County — and thousands did, commencing as early as late May 1846. It is now called the Mormon Trace.


The Mormon Trace departs Dodge's Point just west of Iconium in Appanoose County, cuts for a short distance through extreme southwest Monroe County and enters Lucas County in the southeast corner of Washington Township. The Trace then angles northwest up the ridge past Greenville to Russell and west past Salem Cemetery (where a shortcut joined the main Trace) to Chariton Point. From Chariton Point, the Trace angles southwest past Last Chance to Smyrna in Clarke County. At Smyrna, the Trace forks. One branch leads south to Garden Grove; the other, due west through Lost Camp to join the trail from Garden Grove to Mt. Pisgah.

The timber and fresh water at Chariton Point offered respite to hundreds if not thousands of Saints during the summer and fall of 1846, but it was a family tragedy during the harsh winter that followed that turned the Point into a Mormon way station that, although it never rivaled Garden Grove or Mt. Pisgah, still has a place in the grand saga of the Saints' remarkable trek.



Mormon Elder Freeman Nickerson, his wife, Huldah (Chapman) Nickerson, and their children — along with at least one and perhaps two of Freeman's plural wives — were among the last of the Saints to leave Nauvoo. Called "poor Mormons" because loss of property had left them penniless and in many cases in frail health, they were ill-equipped to travel, but forced to do so. The Nickerson family party of more than 20 people, a majority of them children, was driven out of Nauvoo and across the river on 29 September 1846, according to descendant Maxine Rasmusson.

Traveling very slowly, they had reached the Bonaparte area by 8 November 1846, where Freeman's plural wife Huldah Howes died. Continuing on, they reached Chariton Point during late November or December, and could go no farther as a harsh winter settled in.

Family members took refuge in crude shelters built at the base of bluffs on the east banks of the Chariton River, across from what now is Pin Oak Marsh, and felled trees so that their livestock could feed on buds and branches. Elder Freeman died in one of those shelters on 22 January 1847, age 69, and a child in the party shortly before or after. Their bodies probably were taken up to the prairie and buried at the site of what now is known as Douglass Cemetery. According to Uriel Nickerson, a son of Freeman who arrived at Chariton Point to assist his family during April of 1847, the young victim went unburied for 10 days because illness had made adult members of the party too weak to undertake the sad task.

By April of 1847, the Nickerson families had come up to the prairie from the river and begun to built cabins and plant gardens. They lacked resources to go farther, but the adults were entitled to claim 160 acres each by pre-emption, claims that could be sold later to help finance the journey west. These claims, cabins and gardens became the basis for a way station used by the Saints who followed them and also the site of the first permanent settlement at Chariton by non-Mormons who purchased Mormon claims, most notable William S. "Buck" Townsend. The Nickersons themselves had moved on by the winter of 1847-48, most to Fort Des Moines where they worked until they had earned enough money to continue the trip to Utah.

Shortly after the Mormons commenced their temporary settlement at Chariton Point, a few permanent settlers began to arrive in Lucas County.

Notes taken during the first survey of the county contain information about only three permanent settlers who had arrived by late fall 1847. Those first surveyors found claims occupied by Peter N. Barker and Daniel Barker in the Whitebreast Creek valley north of what now is Oakley and a claim occupied by John Ballard in Section 12 of what now is northeast English Township. By his own account, William McDermit had moved his family from the Pella area to an area he called Ireland at the site of Bethel Church some seven miles northeast of Chariton Point in what now is Cedar Township during September of 1847. The Barkers seem to have moved on, so Ballard and McDermit are recognized as Lucas County's first permanent settlers. As other settlers moved in, most settled in McDermit's Ireland neighborhood and in the neighborhood of Xurey E. West's later Greenville in Washington Township.

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A supplemental act directing the organization of Lucas County and dated 14 January 1849 was passed by the second General Assembly of the state of Iowa. That act set 4 July 1849 as the date the county would gain its independence and appointed James Roland, a resident of McDermit's "Ireland" neighborhood, as organizing sheriff. His principal duty was to call an election on 6 August 1849 to select county officials and justices of the peace.

That election was duly held at the McDermit home with 25 men voting. William T. May, Jacob Phillips and James G. Robinson were elected county commissioners, predecessors of today's county supervisors. These commissioners held their first meeting four days later, on 10 August 1849, at the home of Buck Townsend, who by that time had purchased a Mormon claim and settled at Chariton Point.

The organizational act of January 1849 also had named three independent commissioners whose job it was to locate a county seat. They were Wareham G. Clark of Monroe County, Pardon M. Dodge of Appanoose County and Richard Fisher of Wapello County.

These commissioners gathered with the county commissioners and others on 10 August, also at the Townsend cabin.

Townsend, a Kentuckyan and one of the county's more colorful early residents, had built his cabin (or modified an existing Mormon cabin) about a mile and a half southeast of the current courthouse along the Trace (now Blue Grass Road). Townsend's cabin functioned as a primitive inn and as a gathering point for all who arrived at the point, Mormon and non-Mormon alike.

Although Townsend had hoped that his claim might become the county seat, the commissioners had other ideas and instead selected a survey stake to the northwest, at the intersecting corners of Sections 19, 20, 29 and 30 of what now is Lincoln Township, and declared the 160 acres surrounding it the city of Polk, honoring then-President James K. Polk (1845-49). That survey stake reportedly was located at what now is the intersection of Court Avenue and Main Street, near the southwest corner of the Chariton square. The decision became official when the locating commissioners' report was accepted by the new county commissioners on 11 August.

For reasons probably political the name "Polk" did not set well with those assembled at Chariton Point, a public meeting was called soon thereafter and the city's name was changed to Chariton and recorded as such.

The county commissioners appointed Buck Townsend on 12 September 1849 to survey the county seat and scheduled the first sale of town lots for the first Monday of November 1849.

During these fall days of 1849, the Mormon Trace remained the principal route to Chariton. While the Trace would continue to be an important route for many years, as settlers began to pour into the new county, the Trace was supplanted by a more direct route leading more or less due west from Albia.

The same 1848-1849 legislative session that ordered the organization of Lucas County also directed that a state road be surveyed west from Ottumwa through Lucas County to Traders Point on the Missouri River some four miles below Kanesville (now Council Bluffs). Buck Townsend, along with John G. Baker, John Webb and John Clark, had been appointed surveyors by the Legislature. Work on this route was deferred, probably at Townsend's behest, until Chariton had been located, then it was driven through the new town following the approximate route of today's U.S. Highway 34.

According to a report from Townsend, published in The Burlington Hawk-Eye of 9 December 1849, survey work began on 13 August at Ottumwa and concluded on 15 October at the Missouri River. According to Clark's report, the route followed the Mormon Trace/Trail west from Chariton through Lost Camp (southeast of Osceola) to Mt. Pisgah, then west to the Nishnabotna and West Nishnabotna rivers and Silver Creek to Traders' Point on the Missouri.

Early travelers noted that although the new road had been surveyed, they couldn't find it — so continued to make their way along its approximate route as best they could. But gradually the ruts deepened and the route began to emerge. The now-ghost town of LaGrange was platted just west of where Highway 34 now enters Lucas County and for a few years that town rivaled Chariton in size. LaGrange, however, died soon after the Burlington & Missouri River rail route was place a few miles south during the 1860s.

As those pre-Civil War years passed, more rough and muddy Lucas County roads were developed along earlier trails — northeast to Knoxville, northwest to Indianola and south to Corydon — and a web of secondary roads developed, some surveyed and others not, to connect the homes and villages of the county with Chariton.

But until 1867, the old Mormon Trace and the new State Road remained the principal transportation routes.