Timber leads Lucas Countyans into temptation & sin

Joseph Fowler's tombstone.

I wrote yesterday about Joseph Fowler (1789-1850), Lucas County's largest land owner when he died on Aug. 23, 1850, aboard the steamship Ohio as it was headed up the East Coast, bound for New York City. He had acquired 12,000 acres in Lucas County and thousands more in adjoining Monroe and Marion counties by purchasing at discount military land warrants from those to whom they had been issued, then turning them in for land during 1847-48 at the regional land office in Fairfield.

Fowler died intestate leaving an estate valued at $1.5 million ($50 million today) to be divided among three surviving sisters and the children of four deceased siblings, none of whom lived in Iowa. It was an immensely complicated estate to settle and 10 years after the process began the Civil War intervened. The Iowa land was not divided among the heirs until after the war and so could not be sold

In Lucas County, the Fowler holdings included some of the most highly valued timber land in Cedar and Pleasant townships --- the 1875 map above gives some idea of where those acres were in relationship to Chariton and LaGrange, then Lucas County's second city, now a ghost town. During the years the land was in legal limbo, resident pioneers began helping themselves to the timber and that became big, if illegal, business among some of our most distinguished pioneers.

After the war, the Fowler heirs hired a young Albia attorney named James Coen to represent their interests in the region and he did his best. He ran headfirst, however, into opposition in Lucas County from what seems to have been a well organized Vigilance Committee (think Vigilantes) then operating north and west of LaGrange.

This all came to a head during May of 1869 during a confrontation at LaGrange reported upon somewhat cryptically by Chariton Democrat editor John V. Faith under the headline "The 'Fowler Land' Squatters" in his edition of May 27:

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A man at Albia, named Coen, agent for the Fowler lands, concluded to arrest a "squatter" in Pleasant township. He visited LaGrange, swore out a warrant, and had a special constable deputized. Accused arrested, brought to LaGrange, Coen takes charge of his horse, and leaves prisoner in hands of constable. Twelve o'clock --- Coen in bed "snoozing" --- prisoner still safe, a crowd of about thirty men appears, the landlord is aroused, requested to call Coen, and Coen appears. The party of men is informed that the prisoner is in the hands of constable; constable applied to, and given five minutes in which to release prisoner; after four minutes elapse, prisoner walks forth, his horse is brought to him, and Coen is informed that it may not be healthy to be found in that locality again. Results --- prisoner gone, Coen minus a saddle and muchly chop fallen, returns to Albia, meditating severely upon the inefficiency of the laws, and the villainies of mankind in general.

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The next week, The Democrat picked up and republished another account of the confrontation at LaGrange that had been published in The Albia Republican under the headline, "Mob Law" ---

On last Monday week, Mr. Jas. Coen, of this place, who is agent for a portion of the large body of Fowler lands lying in Lucas, Marion and Monroe counties, caused a man named John Henry to be arrested near Columbia, Marion county, for stealing lumber off these lands. The Fowler lands comprise a fine body of lands, including some of the best timber lands in the country. About four thousand acres have been stripped of their fine timber by unprincipled pillagers. Mr. Coen has been vigilant and persevering in his efforts to protect the lands since he has been agent for them, and has incurred the hostility of many residents in that section who seem to be in close alliance with the thieves.

John Henry was arrested by constable John Wellman upon a warrant which Mr. Coen procured to be issued, and taken to LaGrange in Lucas county. The next morning Mr. Coen was awakened from his slumber at Moore's hotel in LaGrange by a mob of about forty timber thieves who called him out of his room and demanded his company with them to release the prisoner.

The mob was composed of many pecuniarily, well-to-do, farmers of Lucas and Marion counties with a body of low retainers. They beleaguered Mr. Coen about half an hour, who finally sent them off by informing them where they would find the prisoner. After rescuing the prisoner they departed for their homes.

This is a case in which the full power of the State ought to be invoked to enforce the processes of the law. There is an opinion with some that non-residents' lands are legitimate subjects of pillage. There is a sort of an ill-concealed hostility among many good men against non-residents owning real estate in this country. But the men who committed the depredations on these lands are constitutional thieves, who steal because the opportunity is offered, and would pillage resident lands as quickly were the risk of retribution as light. The men who combine to resist the process of the law against such are particeps criminis to the most culpable extent.

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Three newspapers were published in Albia at the time and the incident was reported in the others, too. The Albia Union of May 27 was especially harsh in its criticism of Lucas County:

It is one of the most disgraceful and lawless acts that have lately been committed, and is an outrage and scandal on Lucas County. It is becoming pretty generally understood that the East part of Lucas County is made up of such timber thieves, and if the honest men of that county want that part of their county settled up with decent and honorable men it is high time that they were bringing these thieves to justice.

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There's no sign that justice ever rolled down like a river for the Fowler heirs in Cedar and Pleasant townships. The property eventually was surveyed into marketable lots and sold, although in some instances tracts that had been stripped of their timber and therefore of minimal value were abandoned, to be sold for taxes.

Today, many of those acres are included in Stephens State Forest; others remain privately owned. Joseph Fowler is not remembered in Lucas County, but many land owners need look no further than the bulky abstracts that accompany their deeds to find references to him and to the legal complications his long-ago death at sea set off in landlocked southern Iowa.