Mallory's Castle: The Blog

I've relaunched the Mallory's Castle blog after puttering around with it for a few days, designing a header I can live with for now and fussing about other details. About all that's there now is a slightly updated Mallory chronology, but I'll be adding more. You can access it here.

The first version of this blog, the "Mallory Castle Log," was launched during 2005, but never quite got off the ground. After reclaiming it, it turned out the template could not be updated because of its age --- so I launched another. Once everything has been moved to the new blog I'll kill off the old so it doesn't continue to add to cyberspace clutter.

That's the "castle," formally the Ilion, up top --- as it looked soon after completion in 1881 and from its most photogenic angle, looking northwest. Click to enlarge it and you'll see a woman and a dog in front of the solarium. That gives some idea of the scale of the place. And that's the builder, Smith H. Mallory, at left.

Below is another example of Mallory triumphalism, the second St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, once located a half block east of the southeast corner of the square. Our current building is considerably less ornate and located at the north edge of town. The Mallory's Castle grounds are now a housing development.

The fact that both these grand buildings had such short lifespans --- the house 75 years and the church, only 50, is one of the reasons why the Mallory saga interests me. There are a lot of good stories involved in the rise and fall of the Mallorys --- and a few cautionary tales, too.

My friend Nick and I spent a lot of time on the Mallory trail a few years ago, tracking down two of the castle's mantlepieces to a house built in Osceola not long after the castle fell, rescuing two others from a chicken house. I can see a small pile of battered books from the Mallory library, bearing the "Ilion" bookplate, from where I'm sitting now.

I also acquired a mountain of Mallory-related notes and documents and other stuff and kept thinking I should come back to this project and get to work. And now I have. Here's the text of the introduction that will be added to "Mallory's Castle" when I get around to it:

FOREWORD: ABOUT MALLORY'S CASTLE

When I was 9, the old house known as Mallory’s Castle --- named Ilion by its builder --- was torn down to clear the way for a housing development. It was the most elaborate house ever built in Lucas County, constructed by the most elaborate family ever to live here --- but stood for only 75 years.

Liability was not a major concern during 1955, so the owners felt free to throw open the doors of the old place one last time during April of that year so that everyone interested could tour it. We did, along with my dad’s cousin, Edwin Johnson, his wife, Betty, and their daughter, Martha. So did thousands of others.

Thieves --- also attracted by the publicity --- had made off with a chandelier or two and a few other fixtures beforehand, but that made very little difference, except to the owners.

I remember the tour distinctly, but as it turned out remembered very little else about the building accurately. I’ve been interested in the house and, to a lesser extent the family, ever since.

Smith H. Mallory and his wife, Annie, along with their daughter, Jessie, arrived in Chariton during 1867 with the first trains. He had just begun to build a fortune constructing rail lines and bridges, enriched as all rail entrepreneurs were at that time by vast public subsidies, mostly in land.

Mallory left no stone unturned to earn a buck. Rail revenue poured in until his death in 1903, but he also built one of southern Iowa’s most powerful banks, became the region’s most innovative agriculturalist on his 1,000-acre Brook Farm and had a financial finger in virtually every other county enterprise --- from manufacturing plows to mining elusive gold and silver (in Arizona).

Mallory’s Castle was built 1879-81 to a probable design by Des Moines architect William Foster. It was not grand in the sense that Terrace Hill, now the Iowa governor’s mansion, is grand --- but it was grand enough. In fact, it became legendary.

The view from the southeast was most pleasing. From the southwest it looked clumsy and slightly out of whack. It’s tower dominated the horizon, as the Mallorys dominated Chariton’s business and, among those with aspirations at least, social life.

Mallory’s legacy seemed assured when he died during 1903 of stomach cancer and was buried in the Chariton Cemetery near a family tombstone that rivaled his house and his church (St. Andrew’s Episcopal) in triumphalist splendor.

But then it all came tumbling down during 1907 when the suicide by morphine of trusted Mallory associate and First National Bank manager Frank Crocker revealed that Crocker had gutted and dissipated bank assets. It was Lucas County’s greatest financial calamity until the Great Depression.

In the aftermath, all Mallory assets in Lucas County were turned over to the government to cover bank losses after a long and bitter court fight involving the widow, Annie, and daughter, Jessie. The women fled to Florida, taking the Ilion’s contents with them --- along with Jessie’s still-substantial fortune, sheltered from creditors. Lucas County and the Mallorys did not part friends.

The Ilion and Brook Farm were sold by bank receivers to the partnership of William Eikenberry Sr. and Luther Busselle. The house then went to sleep for 50 years, remaining structurally sound but deteriorating through neglect to the point where not even farm hands could live in its back rooms.

In 1949, after Eikenberry and Busselle died, the property was sold to Otto Brown, who took an active interest in the old house and in part restored it. Families lived in its rooms again. But then Brown died and his heirs turned their focus to the value of the land under and around rather than to the house itself.

During the years between 1903 and 1949, most of Mallory’s monuments to himself vanished --- the Opera Block burned, his north-side business block was demolished and replaced. In the 1920s, Jessie and Annie had both Mallory and his tombstone removed from the Chariton Cemetery and shipped to Orlando.

As his house was coming down during 1955, his church --- by then structurally unsound because of flaws in design or construction or both --- was coming down, too.

Few reminders remain. The date stone and the shattered name stone, once embedded in the brick fabric of the Ilion, are at the Lucas County Historical Society museum. The clock Mallory gave in 1894 still keeps time in the courthouse tower. One of his barns remains at what once was Brook Farm. The graves of Jessie’s stillborn daughter and first husband, Deming Thayer, who killed himself, remain in the Chariton Cemetery.

The legend of Mallory’s Castle still has a certain power, however. Mention it, and someone’s bound to say, “that should never have been torn down.” Of course it shouldn’t, but no one made an effort to save it in 1955 and it’s a little late now to become heavily invested in regret.

There’s no harm in telling the story of the house and those who built it, however.

Scared to death by FDR

My late cousin Elisabeth was fond of a story in her family involving a grandfather, staunchly Republican and incapacitated by old age who whiled away bedridden hours in the 1930s cursing FDR and his programs. The grandchildren decided it would be amusing to hang a portrait of the president on the wall opposite Grandpa’s bed so that it would be the first thing he saw upon awakening, and they did. Grandpa opened his eyes the next morning, focused on the presidential portrait --- and died.

So it apparently is possible for politicians --- even photos of them --- to scare a guy to death, especially as age encroaches.

I thought of that Friday when surprised by a telemarketer who announced that he was taking a poll of likely GOP participants in the impending Iowa straw poll. The scale of the mistake stunned me and all I could do was say, “you seem to have mistaken me for a Republican” --- and hang up.

Maybe I should have played along, pretended and told the guy I intended to cast a write-in vote for Fred Karger. But that would only have resulted in more potentially fatal phone calls, so perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t.

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I’ve been wondering lately how the national debt would be affected if all the money expended on political promotion and similar campaigns related to social issues were invested instead in chipping away at it. Just a thought --- although not a viable one.

I’m in favor of collecting property taxes on church buildings and many other tax-exempt structures, too, although amenable to design exemptions. In Chariton, First United Methodist, First Presbyterian and Sacred Heart would be largely spared because redemptive design value can be documented. The others would pay.

Tax credits would be given to religious groups that gather in homes or public meeting rooms. Any congregation that commissions a Morton Building, radically alters an historic structure or proceeds without the services of a qualified and creative architect would be surtaxed into submission. I would be the design czar.

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I also think Christians, once they’ve tucked away enough cash to see them through modestly until glory, should be required under rules of faith and practice to give the rest of their money to the poor in order to open heaven’s gates. That would help with the national debt, too. And that guy Jesus seems to suggest this strategy would not be out of line.

And of course income tax rates for the affluent would be based entirely on the percentage of income given away. The more you give, the more you get to keep --- up to let’s say a 90 percent penalty for those who don’t give at all, depending upon just how rich your are.

Just a few ideas ….

That old steel guitar rag

Ed Sparks, Larry Wheeldon and Pat Sparks

Well, we served all the ice cream and cookies we had as well as lots of ice water --- and lost count at somewhere in excess of 100 --- but Al Risbeck and friends were the coolest part of Thursday evening’s LCHS ice cream social on the patio and inside the barn on the museum campus. We were really pleased with the turnout and doubly pleased by the music.

Al Risbeck on steel guitar.

 

Al, who has played steel guitar for more than 40 years, is professionally good although he had another career. And the same can be said for the friends who joined him, Ed and Pat Sparks of Liberty Center with vocals and on guitar and Chariton’s Larry Wheeldon, also vocals and guitar. Jean Wheeldon joined her husband on vocals, too.

The mix was country classic, which works well in a place that is classic country.

Everyone involved had a great time, I think, and the weather cooperated. Although it was hot it also was a little cloudy headed into the evening so what breeze there was kept the audience on the patio reasonably cool. Fans helped out inside the barn.

All of the musicians are regulars on the jam circuit that’s one of the attractions in this part of southern Iowa, including Al --- a Lucas County native who lives most of the year in Colorado but comes home to Chariton during the summer in part because of the music.

If you’ve not heard these folks, you should. I know for sure they’ll be playing and singing at Woodburn Saturday night.

LCHS board members Frank Mitchell and Ilene Church, as well as myself, were especially gratified because Al Risbeck, too, is part of the vast Redlingshafer conspiracy. His ancestors were John L. and Anna (Redlingshafer) Risbeck (because she died young there are differences of opinion about exactly what her given name was). John Risbeck came to Lucas County about 1850, then went back to Pennsylvania after his wife’s death, and it probably was on his recommendation that John G. Redlingshafer, ancestor to Ilene and myself, decided to scout the county out in the mid-1850s and settle here in 1856. The alternate Frank’s ancestor, Anna Margaret (Redlingshafer) Rosa/Wulf --- sister to John G. --- arrived in the 1860s.

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Also this week, I’ve reclaimed a blog called “The Mallory Castle Log” that I started six years ago, then neglected after becoming preoccupied with a whole lot of other stuff. It was started at a time when a friend, Nick Cattell, and I were hot on the trail of all things Mallory, including the “Castle” --- its real name was the Ilion, a legendary estate on Chariton’s north edge that was the centerpiece of the 1,000-acre Brook Farm.

At some point, however, I lost track of exactly how to access my own blog --- carelessness. But I recently found the notes I’d made, including the user name and password, that allowed me to reclaim the blog.

Because the Log hadn’t been updated in so long, however, it no longer is possible to modify the template on which it is based and that template is hopelessly outdated. Because there aren’t that many entries any way, I’ve decided to recreate the whole thing as “Mallory’s Castle” and get back to work.

That will take a while and the Log still is linked in the sidebar to this blog under “Lucas County Links” as “Mallory Castle (The Ilion).” As time passes, the old blog will disappear and the new blog will take its place. That will help keep me, and perhaps some others, amused.

Fried green (and red) tomatoes

I’ve had the first ripe tomatoes this week from what passes for a garden, small and stressed by heat (both tomatoes and garden). The first locally-grown sweet corn showed up this week, too, at HyVee and from private vendors. So mid-summer’s upon us in this troublesome year.

The corn’s late --- last week’s “fresh” sweet corn had been imported from Florida. It tasted good but seemed odd, in Iowa, in mid-July.

Although my tomato plants look ok, so far, the peppers look just plain scorched. I don’t water the garden, as a rule --- it’s not cost-effective. So everything out there is on its own.

But I do feel a little guilt shopping the farmer’s market or the HyVee produce aisle. Grandpa Miller continued to garden on a farm-family scale after building a house just southeast of here and moving into town in his 80s. And he preserved and canned --- in quart and half-gallon jars, never in pints.

When I think about that I think about plowing up more of the back 40 and planting a full-scale garden --- briefly.

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One of the news stories this week has involved a new round of cuts proposed by the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service --- 3,700 “low-activity” post offices nationwide, about 12 percent of the total.

That could affect 178 Iowa post offices, including two in Lucas County --- Derby and Williamson. Wayne County post offices considered for closure include those in Lineville and Promise City. Other familiar post offices now in danger include those in Melrose (Monroe County), Woodburn (Clarke County) and, in Appanoose County, Cincinnati, Exline, Mystic and Plano.

It’s sad, but hard to justify the existence of most. In Derby and Williamson, the post offices are among the few remains of what once were business districts --- the Williamson café/bar’s still there; nothing’s still there in Derby. Derby once was a thriving farm center; Williamson, a thriving mining town.

My mother, who grew up on a farm northeast of Williamson, used to talk about the summer routine there that involved going door to door in Williamson selling fresh produce during summers in the late 1920s and early 1930s --- before the mines closed and may of the houses were moved away --- to help make ends meet.

That was torture for shy farm kids --- and there were language barriers as well, since many of the mining families were first-generation immigrants and some of the women at home during the day were not accustomed to speaking English.

I wonder how many folks drive through or pass by Williamson nowadays with no idea of or interest in why it’s there.

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And in Washington, the budget train continues full-throttle toward a washout while the crew squabbles in the caboose. It’s fascinating in a horrifying kind of way as more attention is devoted to who will be blamed for the wreck than to working together to avert it.

I’m going to go sweep out the barn this morning, getting ready for tonight’s ice cream social. Such things clear the head.

Maybe if we moved the Capitol’a janitorial staff into the House and Senate chambers for a while and let those guys and gals work on the budget while senators and representatives clean the toilets we’d get something accomplished.

Christian fundamentalism, mislabeling

Anders Behring Breivik

Anders Behring Breivik, whose official body count in Norway has been trimmed to 76, was labeled a “Christian fundamentalist” by some in the aftermath of his deranged attacks. No sign has emerged that he’s any such thing. But the branding is interesting, seems to be sticking and is in a way logical in a world increasingly uninformed or misinformed about Christianity.

It is a fairly good example of what happens when self-identifying “Christians” are perceived to be cutting loose from their underpinnings in theology and Christology and shifting toward ideology. And a good deal of that’s going around. So if Christians are misperceived and lumped in with the Breiviks of the world it’s largely our own fault.

The misperceived Breivik seems have some adherence to a skewed form of cultural Christianity that has been integrated into a white supremacist ideology. We’ve seen elements of that in Iowa recently in The Family Leader’s “Marriage Vow” that deifies a view of marriage, rather than a deity, and in the process demonizes LGBT people, celebrates “robust” reproduction (a coded call to produce more white babies) and includes another supremacist flourish --- that nutty clause involving “Sharia Islam.”

There’s no indication, however, that Breivik has any understanding of Christian theology, any interest in who Christ was or what he may or may not have been trying to accomplish or, as some of my Baptist friends might put it, any form of “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” According to my definition of “Christian fundamentalist,” all three elements would have to be present in order for the label to be accurately applied.

Part of the labeling difficulty involves the elusive and shifting meanings associated with the various adjectives we now use to modify the noun “Christian.”

“Orthodox” is one. I understand Christian orthodoxy, for example, as whole-hearted affirmation of prevailing but varying traditional Christian doctrines involving Christ --- incarnation and atonement, the virgin birth, death and resurrection, justification in one manner or another, etc.

I’m not orthodox most days. But the orthodox are present within every Christian expression, from Roman Catholic to Quaker.

I understand Christian “fundamentalism” as orthodoxy to which has been added a sincere but selective commitment to Biblical literalism and reliance on some form of “born again” experience. While I may expect a Christian fundamentalist to believe God created the universe in six 24-hour days, then rested on the seventh, I don’t expect a fundamentalist to run around shooting people with whom they disagree or waving “God hates fags” signs while protesting at military funerals. I’m not a “fundamentalist” either.

“Evangelical” is perhaps the most confusing modifier of all. The word, tracked back to the Greek “euangelion,” means simply “good news,” although it now is a term most frequently applied to a big and vaguely defined chunk of Christianity that is both generally orthodox and to some degree fundamentalist.

However, all Christians no matter how they define themselves, generally are committed to sharing the good news from their perspective, so a Lutheran, a Roman Catholic, a Methodist or an Episcopalian actually is no more or less “evangelical” than a Baptist.

Maybe we need to start using more descriptive modifiers. I’d call myself a radically inclusive Christian but prefer radically inclusive Episcopalian because it’s more specific. Bible-believing or born-again Baptist, at the other end of the theological spectrum, works well, too.

I suppose it would be nice if all Christians could all just agree to be “Christian,” but that seems increasingly impossible.

Slipping from Christian faith and its related theology and Christology into Christianist ideology is the big hazard in a world that is increasingly secular --- if we expect Christianity to have any positive relevance whatsoever in the long run.

Ice cream, weather & words

Bob Ulrich, Fred Steinbach and Sherry Steinbach (from left) serve ice cream to museum guests during last summer's Lucas County Historical Society ice cream social.

We're getting ready at the museum for an ice cream social Thursday evening --- hoping to dodge the weather bullets although rain is in the forecast.

In cases like this, you always make two plans. If it's fair, seating will be on the patio; if it isn't, we'll all be inside the adjacent barn.

Live music will be provided by Arlan Risbeck on steel guitar with friends Ed and Pat Sparks of Liberty Center providing bass, rhythm and vocals. Serving will begin at 6:30 p.m.; the music, at 7 p.m.

Risbeck is a Lucas County native whose primary home is in Colorado now, but he and his wife return every summer to a home they own in Chariton in large part so that he can play in the music jams and other events scheduled across the south of Iowa during the summer.

"My wife keeps asking me when I'm going to get over this," Risbeck said late last week when he stopped by to decide where to set up Thursday in the barn. We're glad he hasn't.

It's all free --- music, ice cream, cookies and ice water. So come if you can.

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It looks like there was quite a bit of moderate damage from the storms that swept through parts of Wayne and southeast Lucas counties Saturday evenings --- in addition to the Dry Flat damage noted yesterday.

Meg, who lives on my home place in that neighborhood, mentioned when we were visiting Monday morning that high winds took down a big pin oak on the hillside north of the farmstead and that she spent some time in the basement as black clouds moved in, the wind began roaring in a circular pattern and the air pressure changing abruptly with ear-popping results. A machine shed on what I call the Kelso place also was damaged, Meg said, as well as other trees, a barn door and some metal roofing at her place.

I took to the Internet to see if I could find more information, but couldn't. That's not surprising, since much of southern Iowa outside the limits of cities where newspapers still operate is a black hole, so far as news is concerned.

Expecting reports on anything other than major disasters from the dailies large and small that kind of serve us these days --- Des Moines, Ottumwa and Centerville --- will lead to disappointment. Maybe there will be more in the Corydon Times-Republican, which should be in the mail box today. We had about three inches of rain and a little hail in Chariton, but that was about it.

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Looking for news, I did happen on this headline in the Centerville Iowegian --- "Missing person found dead in SW Davis County, no foul play expected." The headline writer, I expect, was reaching for the word "suspected," but fell short. If not, it's nice to know that foul play isn't among those things Davis Countyans need expect.

Headline writing used to be considered something of an art --- one was expected to be literate and accurate, even witty without being offensive sometimes. Those days are past, I'm afraid.

Alas Dry Flat, RAGBRAI & links

Dianne sent along some photos yesterday of Dry Flat, my country school alma mater, that took a hit during the storms that roamed around here Saturday evening at the end of another "excessive heat" day. Well-mannered (and well-built) even when in extremis, it didn't collapse on the baler, but seems to have been badly twisted and left wihout one of its visible means of support --- to the future is not necessarily optimistic.

It's not that the old school building was exactly pretty or that anyone had plans to restore it --- it was just the fact that it was still there and still serving a purpose.

Dry Flat has worked for a living as a hay shed/machine shed on the Vincent farm down south of Russell (or northwest of Confidence, or northeast of Bethlehem) since it ceased being a school during the late 1950s. We had a lot of fun last summer riding down on hayracks to take a look at it during the Dry Flat reunion at Harold's and Dianne's place.

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The excessive heat warnings have receded this morning below the Missouri border, which is a good thing for RAGBRAI riders, who began their week-long trek on wheels from the Missouri to the Mississippi rivers at Glenwood on Sunday.

Surely everyone by now knows about the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, but just in case --- it is, I think, the nation's biggest mass bike ride involving many thousands of folks from around the nation who (in theory at least) dip a bicycle wheel in the Missouri River on Sunday, ride across the state together, then dip a wheel in the Mississippi the following Saturday.

In between, there's a lot of sweat, much grazing, a lot of socializing and considerable partying in host towns along the way. Chariton played host two summers ago; this year's route meanders up from southwest Iowa to Boone, north of Des Moines, then heads south and then east to Davenport.

A RAGBRAI visit is a monumental organizational task for host cities, but a lucrative one, and the bikers (plus a few skaeboarders, an inline skater or two and a vast non-cycling entourage) are as a rule well-behaved and tidy. Or at least they were in Chariton, where overnight population was multipled by at least four.

Anyhow, those of us who watch rather than ride hope they have a good time, don't overheat and that all those "excessive" warnings stay in Missouri.

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I've added a couple of "stuff I read" links to the sidebar --- something I usually forget to do (and I do spend a little time each day reading other blogs).

The first, The Ragged Society of Antiquarin Wanderers, is British --- and a little quirky, involving a group of folks who just wander, visting a variety of sites --- churches and the like --- of antiquarian interest. I've done a certain amount of that, too, although "antiquarian" is not as antique here as it is there.

The other belongs to Rachel Held Evans, a Tennessean who writes mostly about religious issues from what I would call an "enlightened" evangelical perspective. And by "enlightened" I do not mean theologically liberal --- because she isn't. But thoughtful, willing to ask questions and explore answers involving issues that some at that end of the Christian spectrum are inclined to ignore or dismiss or are just downright scared of.

It's an interesting perspective in a time of what seems to be increasing Christian polarization, conservatives  who consign liberals to hell and liberals who dismiss conservatives as wingnuts. Neither approach is especially useful, or accurate, or helpful --- unless the goal is to marginalize Chrstianity.

Frontier Forts of Iowa

All of this heat has opened more time to read, so I’ve just finished another recent (2009) University of Iowa Press Bur Oak book, “Frontier Forts of Iowa.” Edited by William E. Whittaker. this is a compilation of articles by Whittaker and others subtitled, “Indians, Traders, and Soldiers, 1682-1862.”

And it’s related to Lance Foster’s “The Indians of Iowa” and other stuff I’ve been reading and rereading lately because all of Iowa’s frontier forts were related in one way or another to American Indians --- as trading posts, as control posts, as defensive posts and as posts in use only long enough to prod Indians deprived of their land out of Iowa.

Frankly, it’s not a book that starts promisingly for structural reasons. The aggravating decision to include references within brackets inside the text is made doubly-aggravating in the opening chapters by constant references, also in brackets, to other chapters in the book.

It’s a little like starting down a road into which potholes have been intentionally dug. The temptation is to turn around and back out rather than soldier on.

Fortunately, these annoyances smooth out after a few chapters and the rest is smooth and informative reading.

About 50 forts are mentioned, some only in passing. None lasted long. And some cannot be located definitively primarily because they were transitory. Since the book includes forts in view from Iowa, as well as on Iowa soil, the range is broader than it might otherwise have been --- various forts at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and Warsaw, Illinois, for example.

Fort Des Moines II (1843-46) probably is the most familiar to central Iowans (although everyone has heard of Fort Madison, too). Erected at the confluence of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers in downtown (more or less) Des Moines as the Sauk and Mesqwaki were being forced west, this really wasn’t much of a fort --- not even defensive features since attacks were neither expected nor did they occur.

Fort Des Moines II followed Fort Des Moines I, along the Mississippi, and preceded Fort Des Moines III, which dates from 1901 and remains in fragments south of Army Post Road in south Des Moines.

The founders of Fort Des Moines II wanted to call it Fort Raccoon, but wiser heads prevailed and it was named Fort Des Moines instead. As the author of this chapter points out, we could easily have ended up with a capital named Raccoon City had common sense not prevailed.

I was most interested in a brief segment devoted to Fort Sanford (aka Sac and Fox Agency, 1842-43, not to be confused with the agency at Agency, a couple of miles northeast) downstream from Ottumwa right along the river at the base of a bluff formation still called Garrison Rock.

This “fort” actually consisted of eight log buildings no longer in use by their owner, the American Fur Company, which by then had moved upriver as the Sauk and Meskwaki had. Of course there’s no trace of the fort now, but at least I know where it was and the next time I’m down that way plan to look it up.

Whatever the case, despite its somewhat rocky start, this is a book that anyone interested in Iowa frontier history, or Iowa trivia, will enjoy.

Crises de jour, and a big Blue Bunny

President Barack Obama signs the certification stating the statutory requirements for repeal of DADT (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell) have been met, in the Oval Office on Friday (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).

Well, it’s certainly been an interesting, and in at least one instant tragic, week on various fronts.

President Obama on Friday, with backing of U.S. military leaders, certified for repeal after 18 years “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” institutionalized hypocrisy in the U.S. military. Repeal becomes effective after a 60-day waiting period.

The process has been a good example of how determined but peaceful advocacy on the part of a minority, gay and lesbian troops and their allies, backed by common sense on the part of a majority can alter a landscape for the better.

There was never any doubt, among intelligent folks at least, that the military would have little if any trouble disposing of this odd and discriminatory policy. These are descendants after all of the honorable men and women who helped lead the way out of the morass of U.S. racial segregation after President Harry S. Truman ordered an end to it in the military with a 1948 executive order.

I wonder how many folks nowadays actually realize that it took World War II to, among other things, destroy the prevailing theory that black folks were not qualified to fight alongside white folks.

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The elaborate game of chicken regarding national debt that carries with it the threat of some sort of government shutdown continues in Washington. Much of it involves posturing for political advantage, a hazardous game --- both for politicians and the public in general.

I wonder if electing more women would help. They always seem more sensible in many ways, although there are exceptions.

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Thanks to Dean Genth, I’m now facing a personal crisis every time I open the freezer door and see that big “family-size” bucket of Wells Blue Bunny vanilla. Dean has called for a boycott of Blue Bunny products because of donations exceeding $500,000 by the Wells family to old Bob Vander Plaats (displayed widely on film this week laughing heartily at a “fag” joke) and his The Family Leader.

Blue Bunny is headquartered in Le Mars, which advertises itself as the ice cream capital of the world. That’s northwest Iowa, so affection there for Vander Plaats and his agenda is not surprising. If brownshirts ever march into Des Moines, they’ll most likely come from that direction.

I actually like Blue Bunny ice cream and don’t consider myself a fool where ice cream is concerned --- so I’ll keep eating away at that bucket. Then I’ll probably switch brands --- and cut back on ice cream consumption. Then I’ll have to figure out if Blue Bunny also manufactures and packages HyVee’s generic brand, the least expensive fallback.

Life is just so darned complicated any more. Maybe I’ll just buy an ice cream freezer and make my own --- but where would I store the danged thing? And what if the cow who produced the cream turned out to be a Republican?

But I certainly don’t want any of my ice cream pennies flowing, no matter how indirectly, into Vander Plaats pockets.

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And then there were the tragic terrorist attacks Friday in Norway that killed at least 91, several in Oslo in a car bomb attack aimed at government buildings and at least 84 shot to death cold-bloodedly at an island youth camp.

The suspect in both attacks is Anders Behring Breivik, 32, described preliminarily as a right-wing Christian fundamentalist who has problems with multi-culturalism. Sound familiar?

Horse-power and heat

Our week-long experiment with temperatures in the 100-degree range and no rain ended this morning with a few flashes of lightning, some thunder and a nice shower to water the grass. The daytime highs, by Sunday, might even drop into the 80s again.

The most noticeable souvenir of the hot spell is brown grass --- not unusual this time of year, but no brown was in sight a week ago. Now I suppose I'll have to mow the front yard, which had purposely been left a little shaggy until moisture returned.

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The photo here of "the gang" was taken during a July sometime in the early 1930s, when my grandparents' farm house in English Township usually was full of company, but there was no air conditioning --- no electricity, either, for that matter; and no running water. Imagine that on a 100-degree day.

The riders were all cousins (from left) Louise Riley aboard Queen, my mother (in the hat) and Lessie Riley aboard Daisy, Uncle Richard Miller aboard Charley and Lawrence Tharp aboard Coley. They're standing around in front of the big south barn, where the stables were located. The equally big north barn was used for other purposes.

Louise, Lessie and Lawrence were city kids --- from suburbs of Detroit --- and looked upon Iowa as the wild west. The Rileys visited every summer; I'm not sure how often Lawrence came along.

You can get a better look at the crew here (from left) Louise, my mother, Lessie, Lawrence and Richard. I'm not sure what Lawrence has in his mouth. Bubble gum? He looks like trouble, but wasn't.

Louise's and Lessie's parents were Wilford "Chief" Riley and his wife, my grandmother's niece, Katherine (McCorkle) Riley. Both were originally from Superior, Nebraska, but had moved to Michigan and "Chief" was called that because he was the founding chief of police in the Detroit suburb of Allen Park. He remained chief for so long that when he finally retired, a school was named in his honor.

Katherine and the Chief, during the Depression, operated something of a halfway house in Allen Park for young nephews and cousins from Iowa and Nebraska who were having trouble finding work. Although times were hard everywhere, there were jobs to be had in the steel mills and manufacturing plants of Motor City and Wilford was well-connected. A few years after this photo was taken, Uncle Richard moved to Allen Park, too, and found work in the mills.

My mother used to talk about these summer visits fondly --- and also about how the family dealt with a houseful of company and extreme heat. Cots were set up on the porches and under the trees and made up for the girls; the boys just slept on blankets in the grass --- everyone moved outside. This was considered to be lots of fun, my mother said, and quite often younger members of the family slept outside even when  heat didn't force the issue.

For some reason this week, I've been waking up in the middle of the night in the air conditioned inside and thinking about how hot it was outside. I wonder if I'd have slept better outside. And what would the neighbors have thought?

The photo below, taken a couple of months earlier, is of my mother again --- and a peony. Since my peonies always flop all over everything when they bloom, I was interested to see how carefully this one was propped up.

We'll not see their like again ...

Paul Miller, who was my late mother’s eldest surviving first-cousin, died earlier this week at age 98 (his funeral will be at 1 p.m. Friday at First Baptist Church here). Because of a big and supportive family and an excellent hospice program, he was able to remain at home in Lacona until very near the end. We should all be so fortunate.

He also was an amazing guy who I didn’t know well enough to characterize --- although my parents did --- but these paragraphs from his obituary do a good job:

Paul was born December 27, 1912 near Carson, Iowa, to Clair and Vesta (Brenaman) Miller. He attended country schools and graduated from Chariton High School in 1931. Paul traveled the country as a hobo, riding trains to where there was work. He worked the orchards in California, gold mines in Colorado, a bakery in Oregon and the wheat harvest in the Great Plains.

On March 15, 1934, he married Veda Bingham. They were blessed with six children: Harry, Melvin, Colene, Roberta, Joe, and John; and with nearly 75 years of marriage. Paul was a wonderful, loving husband to Veda and especially provided loving care to her in their later years.

Paul was very resourceful and could do, fix, or engineer just about anything. He farmed, drove a truck for Dico, and worked for the Co-op before working and retiring from Johnson Machine Works. Paul was Lacona’s first school bus driver and after retiring returned to driving the bus for several years. He also was the Mayor of Lacona for many years.

Paul was a faithful church member and served the Lord in many ways. He taught Sunday school for many years and on most Sundays Veda and Paul had their entire family plus invited different preachers and missionaries to their home for dinner. Paul was a man of many talents including being an expert quilt and blanket maker, making over 200 blankets. He enjoyed fishing, taking his grandchildren fishing, and getting his children to take him fishing.

My uncles, Joe and Owen Miller, were a little older --- but like Paul traveled widely as young men during tough economic times in the 1930s to find work in the wheat fields of the Plains and to any other place where it was available. Joe eventually settled down to build highways in Colorado and Owen, after serving in the U.S. Cavalry and work as a trapper and cowboy in the West, on a ranch in Wyoming. My youngest uncle, Richard, found work in the steel mills of Detroit and went on to serve during World War II.

They were part of an amazing generation who coped with economic adversity in ways I’m not sure any of us are up to nowadays.

Although Paul came home to raise his family, the others were part of a diaspora that scattered many rural families in many parts of the country during what we now call the Great Depression and during the great war that followed it.

For the most part, they did not complain and emerged stronger. We’ll not see their like again, I expect.

This photo of all the Miller first-cousins then alive, including Paul, taken during a family reunion on Aug. 22, 1924, their grandmother’s birthday, amazes me every time I look at it. Two of the grandchildren of Joseph Cyrus and Mary Elizabeth (Clair) Miller, married in Lucas County during 1875, had died young and four had not yet been born when it was taken. Juanita Brenaman, Esther Belle Miller, Warren Miller and Elizabeth Miller came along later, but the rest are here.

Mary Elizabeth had raised her eight children alone on an English Township farm after Cyrus died at age 42 in 1895. All of the children married in Lucas County and all raised their families here. Such things just don’t happen in this day and age.

The grandchildren are (first row from left) Ray Mason, Lowell Dachenbach, Pearl Abrahamson holding Glenn Abrahamson, Richard Miller (my uncle), Earnest Miller, Raymond Taylor, Willa Brenaman, Wanda Brenaman, Marie Taylor and Velma Miller.

Second row from left, James Miller, Paul Miller, Wilma Miller, Lola Dachenbach, Reefa Miller Myers (my mother) and Lavon Abrahamson.

Third row from left, Eleanor Mason, Mary Abrahamson, Mae Miller Gibbany (my aunt), Ila Dachenbach, Marjorie Taylor, Evelyn Abrahamson, Mary Ellen Miller Krutsinger (my aunt), Fred Taylor, Merlon Brenaman and Warren Dachenbach.

Fourth row from left, Erma Mason, Ruth Dachenbach, Aerial Mason, Ustel Mason, Tom Taylor, Anthony Taylor, Joe Miller and Owen Miller (my uncles) and Mahlon Miller.

Here's Paul's funeral folder, courtesy of Pierschbacher Funeral Home (click to enlarge):

Iowa Place Names of Indian Origin

Here’s another essential volume for the Iowa bookshelf, Virgil J. Vogel’s “Iowa Place Names of Indian Origin,” first published by University of Iowa Press during 1983 and still available.

Although nearly 30 years old, it remains the best source for accurate information about the American Indian origin of names that dot Iowa maps, including 22 of Iowa’s 99 county names, more than 160 years after all natives except the Meskwaki and scattered members of other tribes were driven out.

The only Lucas County place name in the book is White Breast, one of our major creeks, that also lends its name to a tributary, the Little White Breast. White Breast proper rises in Clarke County, enters Lucas from the west and is the source of all the flooding that occurs during periods of heavy rain in the Lucas bottoms. The Little White Breast rises just east of Chariton and heads northwest to join White Breast proper before flowing on to enter the Des Moines River, now submerged in the Red Rock reservoir, northeast of Knoxville, downstream from the red rocks that give the reservoir, the ghost town of Red Rock and the legendary Red Rock Line their names.

Lucas County’s Whitebreast township (spelled as one word) takes its name from the creek, which flows through it.

There have been, and still are, all sorts of fanciful legends regarding the origin of “White Breast,” but Vogel demythologizes the legends with the following explanation:

“The last treaty signed in Iowa by the Sauks and Foxes (Meskwaki), on October 11, 1842, named “White Breast Fork of the Des Moines River” as part of the boundary of the tract that the Indians were to occupy for the next three years, preceding emigration to Kansas.

“According to white accounts, the Indian name for ‘White Breast River’ was Waupeka sepo. That differs somewhat from the more correct rendition, Wapeskikaka (‘White Breast’) plus Sepo (‘river’). The longer word was a name borne by several generations of a Fox (Meskwaki) Indian family of the Thunder gens. The name appeared as a stream name on maps by Albert Lea (1836) and J.N. Nicollet (1841). It is likely that whites named the stream for one or more of the Indians bearing the name ….”

The source of the name Des Moines --- the river, the fort, the county and of course our capital city --- also has been the stuff of various legends.

But according to Vogel, “the evidence is convincing that the Des Moines River, the source of all these names, was so-called by the French for the Moingwenas, a now-vanished branch of the Illinois Indian confederacy.

“Not until late in the eighteenth century did some English and American writers begin to confuse matters by shortening the river’s name,” Vogel writes, pointing out that it was identified as the “R. des Maingoana” in 1684, “Moingona R.” in 1718, and “La Riviere des Moins or Moingona” in 1721.

Vogel, a Chicago educator who retired as a full professor at Truman College, City Colleges of Chicago, also authored three other books: “Indian Place Names of Illinois” (Illinois State Historical Society), “American Indian Medicine” (University of Oklahoma Press) and “This Country Was Ours: A Documentary History of the American Indian" (Harper & Row). I haven't checked to see which, if any, of these volumes remain in print.

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Another scorcher predicted here today --- meaning the afternoon would be a good time to sit with a book, if you can. Probably not a very complicated one.

We're prone around here during extreme heat to the exploding pavement effect, caused when moisture trapped by non-porous concrete builds such a head of steam it blows. The same thing could happen to an overtaxed brain, I suppose, so don't intend to take any chances.

Bye-bye Borders

I guess I won’t bother to shred my Borders Reward Card --- there aren’t going be any book stores left and therefore no rewards either for me or for whatever scofflaw might manage to swipe it. That’s too bad.

The bankrupt Michigan-based chain announced this week that after failing to find a buyer it will liquidate its remaining 399 stores, putting more than 10,000 employees out of work.

I began shopping Borders at its first central Iowa location in West Des Moines, a few blocks east of its final West Des Moines location just off University Avenue in Water Tower Place, and followed when it moved to the “super store.” That store, part of an earlier round of liquidation, closed at the end of May.

Just a few years ago, the chain opened a smaller but satisfying store along South Duff in Ames and my principal loyalty shifted there. Now that store will close, too.

Borders always made me happier than Barnes & Noble for some reason and I’ve never had much to do with that chain’s competing super store, farther west along University in West Des Moines.

During the many years that I drove back and forth weekly between Chariton and Mason City, I almost always stopped at one Borders or the other. I’d be afraid (and am too lazy) to figure out how many thousands of dollars I’ve invested there in books, some CDs, some DVDs.

I still have all those books, CDs and DVDs, however, and reread, relisten or rewatch regularly, so the investment was a pretty good one. Too bad about the retailer, however.

The experts say the chain made some fairly dumb business decisions --- failing to react fast enough to changing trends, hiring CEOs who knew nothing about the book trade, etc. In other words, it shot itself in the foot.

One thing I did notice, especially about the West Des Moines store, as years passed, was the declining variety of titles and the expanding scope of DVD and CD offerings --- one mistake cited by those interested in figuring out why the chain failed.

I always checked the “architecture” shelves --- until it became evident new titles weren’t being stocked. In the beginning, Borders had the best section devoted to LGBT concerns, gay lit if you like. That collection diminished to practically nothing, too. The same decline happened in the several subsections devoted in one way or another to “nature,” another area where I shopped regularly --- field guides, classics from such authors as Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, Iowa’s own Aldo Leopold and many more plus the latest offerings related to ecology and the environment.

Borders still had the best selection of best-sellers, which I generally don’t buy but enjoy looking at, and new releases in many categories. And all those magazines.

Like I said, driving south to Chariton on Sundays, I almost always took a swing off the Interstate into Ames or made the loop around to West Des Moines and came away with a book or two, perhaps a DVD, came home and dived right in.

In all that time, I never had a bad experience with a Borders staffer --- as tends to be the case in deals like this, they’re the big losers.

When I stopped making that weekly drive, I didn’t exactly stop buying books --- but switched for the most part to the Internet. I don’t shop much and an 80-mile round trip to and from Des Moines to buy a book or two is a bit much. If I need a book store fix, I run up to the Book Vault, an excellent independent in Oskaloosa.

A principal contention made during the National Main Street Conference in Des Moines during May was that retail emphasis is shifting away from “big-box” and related malls --- and to multi-use, sustainable and more intimate development, town centers and main streets. We’ll see about that. If so, I hope independent book stores are part of the mix.

Another thing I noticed while spending quality time in downtown Des Moines, is that The Book Store, perhaps the city's oldest independent, is still flourishing and now has outlived most of the smaller mall bookstores and big boy Borders. It survives by knowing its customer base and working hard to serve it --- a useful lesson there.

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Iowa is a rich plum again on the weather maps this morning, signaling an excessive heat warning. Yesterday’s official high here was 99, but the time-and-temperature signs varied from 102 to 105. Whatever, the case, it’s hot --- and no immediate relief is in sight.

It’s too hot to do much work outside, unless you’ve got to, but everything drinks water faster. This is my morning to water the big planters at the church --- and I’d better go do that before it starts heating up.

Lance M. Foster's "The Indians of Iowa"

Until Lance M. Foster came along to simplify the process for us, sorting out the framework of Iowa’s American Indian past involved a major research project for anyone interested in doing it.

Although much of the information was out there, it was necessary to consult scattered articles in publications scholarly and otherwise, chapters in a variety of books of varying veracity, plus other sources --- while dodging the pitfalls of white settler folktales and EuroAmerican bias --- then average the results, hoping for the best.

Foster, a member of the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska who returned to the land of his forebears to earn advanced degrees in anthropology and landscape architecture from Iowa State University, swept most of the confusion away with his “The Indians of Iowa,” published during 2009 by University of Iowa Press as a Bur Oak Book.

Reviews generally state that every Iowan interested in the state’s history should have this book on his or her shelf --- and the reviewers are right. I just added it to mine.

My only complaint, echoing that of others, is that it’s too short --- but that’s part of the point. The book’s 145 pages, which also contain an excellent bibliography, were intended to be an overview, not an in-depth study --- a launching point for further study.

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Most Iowans know a little about our American Indian past. We’re surrounded by derived place names and many of us have attended the powwow at the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama. However …

After assembling a series of articles about the Indians of Iowa on his ISU student homepage during the mid-1990s, Foster writes, “I received an e-mail message from an anthropology professor at the University of Iowa, thanking me for the information and revealing that scholars had been teaching for over twenty years that the Ioway tribe was extinct.”

This despite the fact one of two Ioway tribe branches is headquartered near White Cloud, Kansas, just across the Missouri River and upstream a ways from St. Joseph, Missouri (the other branch is headquartered at Perkins, Oklahoma).

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Foster writes clearly, concisely and gracefully, devoting short chapters to the tribes that rose in Iowa and others that relocated to newer homes here --- the Ioway, the Meskwaki, Sauk, Omaha and Ponca, Otoe and Missouria, Pawnee and Arikara, Potawatomi, the Illinois Confederacy, Santee and Yankton Sioux and the Winnebago.

Interspersed are “A closer look” chapters devoted to topics ranging widely from Indian women in Iowa to native spirituality.

It really is a must-have book for those interested in a comprehensive view of Iowa’s history and may be ordered directly from University of Iowa Press or from favorite booksellers.

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Foster now lives in Montana where he devotes considerable time to his art. “The Indians of Iowa” is illustrated by his lovely drawings --- and a cover painting. His blog, “The Sleeping Giant,” his linked from the sidebar of this blog.

Rick Perry, the Bachmanns & barbarians

Michele and Marcus Bachmann

Heat isn’t the only thing that’s intensifying out here in the land of corn --- so is speculation that Texas Gov. Praying Rick Perry will toss his Stetson into GOP presidential free-for-all. Gov. Terry says it’s likely and Praying Rick acknowledges that the call is getting stronger. He’s got that big prayer meeting set up for Houston on Aug. 6 --- what better time for Pentecostal flames to light the fuse? We’ll see.

I don’t think he’d have much trouble winning over Iowa Republicans --- and sending current front-runner Michele Bachmann scurrying back to Minneapolis. He’s slicker --- and he’s got a penis, still a major advantage in politics. No matter how enlightened we think we are, those not so equipped seem to have a terrible time moving out of the “little woman” role of vice-presidential candidate or, as in Iowa, lieutenant governor.

Maybe a Perry-Bachmann ticket? Who knows? Sarah Palin seems to have marginalized herself into well-deserved obscurity and while Bachmann at least seems sincere, there’s that worrisome shakiness in the areas of education, experience and the ability to pronounce such words as “chutzpah.”

But she’s certainly smarter than, say, Newt Gingrich --- and most likely more sincere than much of the rest of the field, perhaps including Gov. Perry. But he’s a heck of a lot slicker ---plus the penis factor.

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I’ve been feeling a little, but not too, sorry for the Bachmanns this week as aspiring first-spouse Marcus came in for a good deal of ridicule because he appears to have, in the eyes of some, a few slightly effeminate mannerisms and a light voice punctuated with a slight lisp.

That, combined with allegations he referred to LGBT people as “barbarians” in an interview at some point, has caused several folks who should know better to play the “looks-like” card and engage in a little Bachmann-o-phobia.

Not that I share any of Bachmann’s views --- he believes you can, as they say, “pray the gay away” and anyone with a lick of common sense knows that ain’t so. Nor do I know what impulses he does or does not harbor.

But in all fairness, the guy seems to have been referring to children in general when he used the term “barbarian,” perhaps not the wisest word choice. And to gay as just another trait you need to beat out of the little beasts before it takes hold.

Some of those mocking Marcus probably have had the “looks like” card played against them, however, and should know better than to use it themselves. Teaching kids not to judge their peers by what they may appear to be is part of current anti-bullying strategy.

So it’s really not at all useful when those who have been bullied become, in a way, bullies themselves.

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Something else to worry about: I’ve been readling a little lately about the effects of earlier climate change on the tribal movements of America’s indigenous people. Let’s just make sure, if we allow Rick Perry to campaign here, that it isn’t a subversive strategy to pave the way for mass movement of that Texas tribe into the Midwest in search of humidity. I’m not suggesting it’s time to build a fence along Oklahoma’s south border, but you can never be too careful.

Breaking rock on a hot day

I know that the young man in this photo with an "x" on his chest is my great-uncle, Joseph E. Brown. He and other members of the crew probably were photographed at the Rees Quarry northeast of Durham in Marion County by another great-uncle, Alpheus E. Love, in the late 1880s.

We're in for a hot spell between now and Thursday, if forecasts are believed --- highs in the upper 90s and heat indices, higher; a good time to be grateful for air conditioning. And, if you've got it, to be grateful for work that isn't outside.

I've been looking at these two old photographs this morning, thinking about just how hot you'd have gotten breaking, loading and hauling rock in this kind of weather at the old Rees Quarry at Durham. Or at least I'm reasonably sure this is the crew at the Rees Quarry, just northeast of Durham, some time in the late 1880s.

Durham, now a ghost town, is located in southeast Marion County along English Creek (which rises in Lucas County's Williamson Pond) not far upstream from its mouth on the Des Moines River. Harvey, the little town a mile or two to the southeast and closer to the river, has survived. Durham actually has been eaten by a much larger and newer limestone quarring and mining operation.

Because the limestone near Durham, in the St. Louis formation, is not of especially high quality it is no longer used for building, but instead is crushed --- to surface roads and and for other puposes.

All I can tell you for sure about the photo is that the young man with an "x" on his chest is my great-uncle, Joseph E. Brown, then somewhere in the neighborhood of 18. The photographer probably was his brother-in-law, Alpheus E. Love, but I can't prove that. Both lived at Columbia, also in Marion County, but to the west and south.

Uncle Joe was my grandmother, Jessie's, only full brother. Both Jessie and Joe had 11 older half-sisters and half-brothers, however. One of the brothers was Jonathan Edwards Brown, a stonemason who lived at Durham with his family and specialized in building barn foundations --- barn construction was a growth industry in Iowa during the 1880s. The fact Uncle Jonathan lived there probably explains how Uncle Joe, a blacksmith by trade, found a seasonal job at the quarry, and why Uncle Al came trailing along with his camera.

If enough of the quarry crew bought copies, Uncle Al could have made a buck or two off this photographic endeavor.

I'm speculating that the man at far left in a vest is the quarry boss, perhaps Mr. Rees himself. Maybe someone sometime will happen onto this photo and be able to tell me more.

Quarrying was a major industry in Marion County at the time this photo was taken. There were small limestone quarries up and down the Des Moines River valley. And sandstone --- the red rocks after which the ghost town of Red Rock and the current, vast Army Corps of Engineers Red Rock reservoir, or lake, were named --- was quarried at Red Rock (due north of Knoxville on the north bank of the Des Moines) and shipped as far as Des Moines and St. Louis for use in major building projects.

Marion County limestone, because of its quality, was used for the most part locally, principally for foundations.

Anyhow, this would have been hot work on hot days and I wouldn't have cared to do it. And it needs to be kept in mind, in these days of on-the-job shirtlessness and shorts, that the men would have worked in the heat fully clothed. A male at that time would no more have considered baring his chest in public than would a woman have considered baring her knees.

Uncle Joe, unfortunately, did not live happily ever after. He suffered from tuberculosis, which also took the lives of at least two and perhaps three of his half-siblings, although that would not have been affecting him when this photo was taken.

At age 24, in 1895, he married Anna Stone and soon thereafter, because of his deteriorating health, they moved to Burr Oak in Jewell County, Kansas, hoping a dryer climate would help. Their son, Ronald, was born at Burr Oak in 1897.

In the fall of 1898, Uncle Joe came back to Columbia, loaded his widowed mother Chloe, sister Jessie and niece Verna into a covered wagon and drove them to Burr Oak, where the family remained as a tight-knit unit until his death on Sept. 25, 1899, just a few days past his 28th birthday.

The family brought his body home to Columbia for burial a few days later.

Here's a broader --- and badly faded --- view of the quarrying operation.