Moses and Priscilla, Sophronia and Almira

Those of us who practice family history always find in the complex web of creation men and women who had to die to give us life, a cause for reflection if ever there was one. These are the spouses of our ancestors who died accidentally, of disease, in childbirth or in war and whose deaths resulted in later marriages by the survivors --- and thus in us.

The tombstone here marks the grave in the Corydon Cemetery of Moses Warren Prentiss, the first husband of my great-grandmother, Chloe (Boswell) Prentiss/Brown.

The inscription is difficult to read, but when I was a kid it was easier to make out “Moses W. Prentiss, died Jul. 6, 1865, age 38 Y, 5 M, 11 D” and then a short poem:

“Remember friends as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so must you be.
Prepare for death and follow me.”

Moses died on a hot July day more than 140 years ago, blown sky-high when the coal- or wood-fired boiler used to power a portable saw mill then working in the woods on Wildcat Creek just north of Corydon exploded. We don’t know for sure why, but that sometimes happened when a boiler threatened to run dry and workers too impatient to wait for it to cool down added cold water --- a fatal mistake if the boiler had the slightest flaw.

This was an explosion that reverberated down the generations. Visiting many years ago with Cousin Glen Chapman, who lived just up the road with his wife, Pansy, from the farm where I grew up, he recalled that his grandmother, Hattie Olivia (Garnes) Tracy, only 4 in 1865 but playing nearby, remembered the blast all of her life and was scared to death for as long as she lived of steam-powered equipment.

Moses’s untimely death left Chloe, then 31, with four young daughters, Eva, 10; Laura, 7; Sarah Olive, 3; and Emma, 9 months.

That was a time hard for us to conceive of now, when there were no social welfare programs other than family, life insurance was almost unheard of and the great majority of southern Iowans were separated from poverty only by the good health of a husband, father and provider. About the only option for a young widow was remarriage, but who in the world would take on the support of Chloe and her four daughters, left in poverty?

As it turned out, my great-grandfather would --- and did. A fierce old Presbyterian (with a twinkle in his eye), Joseph Brown, too, had known his share of sorrow. His first wife, Hester Eldridge, died of tuberculosis during May of 1850 in Miami County, Ohio, leaving him with seven children ranging in age from 2 to 13 who he raised single handed. He brought all but one of his children to Iowa and nearly 20 years later, in 1869, married in Washington, Iowa, a widow near his own age --- Penelope Dawson. But she survived less than a year, dying of an apparent heart attack during the early morning of July 5, 1870, almost five years to the day after Moses was killed.

As it happened, Joseph’s brother, Archibald Steele Brown --- then living at Cincinnati in Appanoose County --- had married Chloe’s aunt, Mary Boswell, and they introduced him to Chloe and her daughters. And so on the 17th of November 1870, just a little more than four months after Penelope’s death, Joseph and Chloe were married at the Methodist parsonage in Corydon and during February of 1871, loaded all their belongings and Chloe’s daughters, too, into wagons and headed for a new life first near and then in the little town of Columbia just north of the Marion/Lucas county line northeast of Chariton.

Four years later, when Joseph was 64 and Chloe was 41, my grandmother, Jessie Frances (Brown) Miller, was born --- on the 19th of January, 1875.

So that’s why Moses Prentiss is important to me --- had he not been killed 142 years ago I wouldn’t be here, nor would my 13 surviving Miller first-cousins. And we owe the same odd and sorrowful debt to Hester, whose grave was lost when the family cemetery in Ohio was destroyed, and Penelope, buried in Woodlawn, the old city cemetery at Washington.

I sat out this fall in a minor form of tribute to visit as many of Moses’s kinfolk as I could find, and will tell herewith something of their story.

The first stop on a beautiful October day was at Zion Lutheran Cemetery, on a prairie rise just northeast of Douds-Leando, villages astraddle the Des Moines River in Village Township, northwest Van Buren County, Douds on the north side and Leando (originally Portland), on the south.

Moses’s mother, Priscilla, is buried at Zion and remarkably --- considering that she died in 1847 --- her tombstone survives in pristine condition. Its inscription reads, “Prescilla, wife of Robert Prentiss, Born Jan. 28, 1792, Died Aug. 1, 1847.”

In all likelihood, this was not Zion Lutheran Cemetery when Priscilla died, but just a neighborhood burying place close to her home (the cemetery reportedly dates from 1835). The Zion Lutheran congregation was formed a little later, during 1849, as the first Lutheran church in Iowa that from the outset conducted its services in English. When Zion Lutheran Church (now Zion Bible Church) was built at the top of the hill north of Priscilla’s grave, the old cemetery was enlarged to the north and west and took the congregation’s name.



Priscilla's grave is located in the extreme southeast corner of the Zion Lutheran Cemetery which, in the top photo here (taken looking southeast from the parking area) would be to the far right.


Priscilla, whose maiden name was Warren, and Robert Prentiss were married 25 January 1816 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and had a family of eight children: Sophronia, Warren (who died young), Almira, Alphonso, Mary Lovica, Alonzo Robert, Moses Warren and Margaret. Moses was born 2 February 1827 in Cuyahoga County.

Some time after 1830, but before 1840, Robert and Priscilla and at least six of their children moved west from Ohio to Village Township, Van Buren County, where they located north of the Des Moines River in the neighborhood of what now is Douds/Leando. Leando, on the south bank of the Des Moines, was at that time known as Portland and with Iowaville, upstream on the river's north bank, was one of northwest Van Buren county's major villages.

Their daughter, Sophronia, however, became in Ohio a member of Joseph Smith’s emerging Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and after her baptism at Kirtland at his behest followed thousands of others, including my Miller family, to northwest Missouri where, the prophet taught, New Zion would arise. It was reportedly at Far West in Caldwell County, where the Mormons were headquartered at that time and the foundation stones of a great temple were placed, that Sophronia married another convert, John Henderson Reid, on 4 December 1837.

As the Mormons were driven from Missouri during the next two years, John Henderson and Sophronia Reid and their first child, Joseph Sidney Reid, fled east across the Mississippi to Quincy, Ill., where the infant died, and then traveled upriver to Nauvoo, where the Saints regrouped, rebuilt and briefly thrived. Sophronia’s sister, Almira Prentiss, joined them once they were settled in Nauvoo.

Robert and Priscilla and family seem to have prospered in Van Buren County and by the time the 1850 federal census-taker called at Robert's home on 22 October, his real estate holdings were valued at $1,000, a substantial amount for that time. Their neighbors included a number of Mormon refugees who had come up into southeast Iowa rather than resettle at Nauvoo, including another family connection of mine, Robert Rathbun, that pioneering Mormon blacksmith and elder, who landed prior to 1840 at Iowaville, now a ghost town but then a thriving village.

The Mormon population of Van Buren County soon would become far larger.

After a very few years, life in Nauvoo became intolerable as Illinois natives organized to drive the Saints out, murdered Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, and Brigham Young, with little other choice, decided to lead the Saints west to the Great Salt Lake valley in Utah, as far from their enemies as possible. John Henderson, Sophronia and Almira received their endowments at the new temple in Nauvoo on Feb. 6, 1846, then fled across the river to find refuge in Van Buren County with Robert and Priscilla.

Van Buren County filled with refugees as 1846 progressed. Those who had been able to outfit themselves continued through southern Iowa, including Wayne and Lucas counties, on trails to way stations at Garden Grove, Chariton, Mount Pisgah and beyond. But many others who had little more than the clothes on their back settled down to earn enough money to continue the westward trek. A good many of them died here. The prophet Joseph Smith’s aged uncle and aunt, Asahel and Elizabeth Smith, for example, died at their temporary home near Iowaville and were buried with a number of other Saints in the Iowaville Cemetery.

The Reid family suffered a succession of tragedies in Van Buren County. Both Sophronia and her infant daughter, Elizabeth Louisa, born 30 June 1845 in Nauvoo, died on the 17th of October, 1846, and were buried in the Leando Cemetery, located in a clearing alongside a creek just south of town. In December of that year, John Henderson Reid married Sophronia’s sister, Almira. On 8 August 1847 Priscilla Prentiss died and less than a month later, Amelia also died --- on 1 September, perhaps in childbirth, although that is not clear. Amelia was buried near Sophronia at Leando and Robert Prentiss apparently marked his daughters’ graves, as he did his wife’s, since the inscriptions on the identical Reid stones, now eroded to illegibility, clearly identify them as daughters of Robert and Priscilla.



The tombstones of Almira, Elizabeth Louisa and Sophronia Reid are shown(from left) in the foreground here, looking northwest across the Leando Cemetery, back in the woods along a small creek just south of the village.

Several other Prentiss children also married during the 1840s in Van Buren County: Margaret, at age 15, to Benona Freel on 15 May 1845; Alonzo Robert to Christiana M. Ream on 16 July 1846; and Mary Lovica on 25 January 1847 to David Robbins.

Moses, still single, helped his father farm and worked as a carpenter, a profession in demand in Van Buren County at that time.

But during 1850, gold fever struck and several Van Buren County men headed west to California that fall, including Moses, his brother Alonzo and his brother-in-law Benona Freel. The 1850 census of California records Benona and Moses as miners in the Peru vicinity of Eldorado County during December and Alonzo, mining on the middle fork of the American River, also in Eldorado County, during January of 1851.

All three men returned home safely to Van Buren County within the next year, but it does not appear that any found fortunes in the gold fields.

Upon returning to Van Buren County, Moses began to court the eldest daughter of a family that had arrived in Village Township during the spring of 1850 from Point Pleasant, Mason County, Virginia (now West Virginia). Chloe Boswell, born 23 August 1833 not far from the banks of the Ohio River, was the first of seven children of Peachy Gilmer and Caroline (McDaniel) Boswell.

Moses and Chloe were married in Van Buren County on 18 March 1852 and set up housekeeping near their parents in Village Township. Supposedly one of their first purchases was the massive cherry bureau, bought second-hand, that greets me from across the bedroom here every morning when I awaken 155 years later.

Two years later, Moses and Chloe --- and presumably the bureau, along with Peachy and Caroline and their family, Benona and Margaret Freel and family and others pulled up stakes and headed west to Wayne County. Moses and Chloe and Peachy and Caroline settled on adjacent farms about two miles north of Corydon along Wildcat Creek.

The Freels soon headed even farther west, to Nebraska, and Moses and Chloe reportedly followed them at some point prior to 1860. The family story holds that after a time in Nebraska Chloe became so ill that Moses was convinced she would die. He wrote to her parents, and Peachy resolved to go to his daughter‘s side. It was spring, according to the story, and the Boswells had only one horse --- needed by the Boswell boys, Reed and Ellis and Tommy, to do farm work. So Peachy set out on foot and walked to Nebraska.

As it turned out, Chloe did not die, but the family had enough of Nebraska. So they loaded up the wagon and with Peachy aboard headed home to Corydon.

Moses was killed only a few years later, and this chapter of the Prentiss story ends.

So far as the rest of the Prentiss family is concerned, father Robert reportedly survived until just after 1870, but I can find no trace of him after about 1852 --- so where he landed is a mystery I’ve not resolved. Mary and David Robbins also are mysteries.

Alfonso married a widow, Sarah Weldon, during 1854 in Missouri, then moved to Kansas. He reportedly died in Kansas during the early 1860s leaving one son who died as a young man.

Alonzo reportedly survived until 1892 or 1893, but I know next to nothing about him. He was last sighted by me during 1880 as a 55-year-old widower, a laborer, living with his niece, Almira (Reid) Hall, in Idaho.

Margaret and Benona Freel prospered and raised a large family in Nebraska. She died in Richardson County during June of 1894 and Benona lived until 1901.

John Henderson Reid, following the deaths of his two wives, moved into Robert Rathbun’s Iowaville House hotel at Iowaville where he lived single for a couple of years until his surviving daughters, who had been named Sophronia and Almira after the Prentiss sisters when they were born during the Junes of 1842 and 1845 respectively, were a little older. Reunited, they headed west to the Council Bluffs area, finally en route to Utah.

Almira married an Englishman, William Wood Hall, during October of 1858 in Pottawattamie County (she already had a young son, Josephus, from a failed marriage to Enos Huddleston consummated when she was about 15,but he reportedly abused her, she fled and he filed for divorce). And Sophronia had married Truman Root Barlow during 1857, but he died in Pottawattamie County during February of 1858 leaving her a very young window.

In May of 1861, Almira and William Wood Hall, young Josephus and Sophronia crossed the Missouri from Council Bluffs on a steam ferry with all their possessions and headed west. John Henderson Reid probably had intended to accompany them, but became ill. He died a year later in Pottawattamie County.

In June, the Hall party joined the David H. Cannon company comprising 57 wagons and approximately 225 souls for the trek to Utah, reaching the Salt Lake Valley during August.

And so, more than 15 years after the flight from Nauvoo, Almira and Sophronia finally were home. Sophronia reportedly married as his plural wife her brother-in-law, William Wood Hall, and had a daughter --- but both died during 1870 near Ogden, Utah.

Almira moved about in Utah and Idaho with her family, outliving William by more than 30 years; and died 25 July 1912 at Lago in Bannock County, Idaho.

Please note that after this entry was written, descendants of Sophronia (Prentiss) Reid kindly shared the text of the autobiography of her daughter, Almira Jane (Reid) Huddleston/Hall, which clarifies and will allow me to correct much of the information presented here about Robert and Priscilla (Warren) Prentiss and some of their children. Until that happens, however, this entry is under reconstruction and will remain that way until this note disappears. FDM, 27 March 2008

Veterans Day

They will not grow old
As we who are left grow old
Age shall not weary them
Nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We shall remember them

Semper Fi! Rich; thank you Bobby and all you other guys out there. May you rest in peace, rise in glory and never be forgotten.

Not to toot my own horn or anything ...

...but I am, after all, the Lucas County Arts Council's Arts Patron of the Year for 2007. Wow. This was a surprise, delivered at the Council's arts show Saturday at the Freight House in Chariton and reflects, I think, a few things I've done on a volunteer basis for the Council over the last couple of years. It's also a good reminder that I've got other projects in the works and need to be getting on with them.

It really is an honor, and I'm astonished and grateful (although awards aren't necessary when what you've been doing is fun).

So thanks Nick and Dru, Judy and everyone else!

The Arts Council is a fairly remarkable organization, especially respected by me because it has over the years applied the proper broad definition of "arts" and recognized that architecture, too, is an art --- hence salvation of the Dual Gables House and Chariton's old C.B.&Q. Freight House, both of which might have perished had it not been for a Council inspired initially by the late Dorothy Many and since by Nick Cattell and others.

The only down side to Saturday's award was the photo on the front page of Tuesday's Chariton Leader. Nick looked great. I looked as if I'd just eaten an Arts Council board member for lunch. With warning, I'd have gotten a hair cut and tried to smile. Oh well, at least as dictator of this blog, I can be sure that photo will never appear here.

All are sleeping on the hill ...

My buddy Deb Nicklay ran into a guy a while back whose idea was to craft a book from the lives of those buried in a particular cemetery, a worthy idea --- but it has been done and he’s unlikely to top Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology (fictionalized and in free verse) from whence the line, “all are sleeping on the hill.”

Anyhow, Deb said to this guy, “You’ve got to meet the man whose been in more cemeteries than anyone else on earth,” or so she said --- referring to me: A connoisseur of bone yards.

I’m here to tell you there are cemeteries, good cemeteries and great cemeteries. The site, the ambiance and the occupants combine to equal greatness, and the greats are few and far between.

Examples? I think the Chariton Cemetery is great and that has a good deal to do with site --- on rising slopes north of the Chariton River --- and the fact that it was designed during the early days of the great enthusiasm for cemeteries as expressions of rural paradise. There never seems to be anything to fear here --- remove the graves and replace the tombstones with picnic benches and you’d have a pleasant park: Precisely what was intended.

Other cemeteries, developed out of the urgent need to find a suitable place to bury the dead, sometimes are less successful from an aesthetic point of view.

Still wandering around in Decatur County, I've added the Old Davis City Cemetery to my list of greats, although like Topsy, I think, it just grew. Although small, it is perfectly sited at the edge of a bluff falling away to the Grand River bottoms, ancient oaks shade it, few modern slices-of-granite-toast tombstones intrude and there are some fascinating occupants.

I came here to find John Clark (scroll down a ways and you’ll find more about him and his Davis City Union Church) and found Ignace Hainer, too --- a fascinating bonus.

To visit Davis City cemeteries, drive south on U.S. 65 from Leon and as soon as you cross the Grand River bridge into Davis City, turn right. If you head straight west up the hill, you’ll end up at the newer I.O.O.F. Cemetery, good but not great. If instead, you start following the dead-end streets to the right, all headed toward the Grand River bluffs, you’ll eventually pull up right beside the old cemetery. Although beautifully sited, its originators underestimated death’s sheer volume and allowed it to get hemmed it. That’s why there are two cemeteries in this small town.

John Clark, as Davis City’s first citizen, has pride of place out on the edge of the bluff where his family enclave is enclosed by a recently-restored and highly decorative wrought iron fence. Within are the John Clark Family Vault, miscellaneous family tombstones (including John’s towering obelisk), a wrought iron bench and two remarkable wrought iron confections designed to hold floral offerings --- also recently restored and freshly painted.



The inscription above the sandstone vault’s door reads, “John Clark Family Vault, Erected A.E. 1882,” but there is no indication of who is interred inside. John himself and his wife, Margaret, rest beneath pink granite slabs shadowed by a the monumental gray and pink obelisk just south of the vault.




Ignace Hainer and his daughter, Laura, are buried immediately north of the Clark enclave, their graves marked by a remarkably-shaped granite boulder into which has been sliced mounting slots for two bronze plates, one of which reads, “Ignace Hainer, November 15, 1818, March 26, 1900” and the other, “Laura Hainer Radnich, February 17, 1848, August 9, 1871.” Sadly, Laura reportedly died by her own hand. Ignace, however, lived a long and full life.

To understand how Ignace and his family ended up in southern Iowa, it is necessary to go to Hungary in the mid-19th century, when Lajos (Louis) Kossuth --- after whom North Iowa’s Kossuth County is named --- became the leader of a movement reasserting in Budapest and elsewhere Hungarian independence from Austria. Eventually named regent-president of Hungary, Kossuth’s movement was crushed during 1849 and he and many of his followers were forced into exile. Ignace Hainer was among those forced from their homeland.

A lawyer, scholar and journalist for Kossuth's revolutionary Hungarian newspaper, he also served as an adjutant-general and secretary to Hungarian Premier Lajos Batthyany.

Upon arrival as an exile in the United States, Ignace bought into a dream shared by many fellow exiles --- to develop a new Budapest in the Midwest, in what now is known as New Buda Township, Decatur County --- south of Davis City.

The dream was doomed, however: Most of the exiles were sophisticated and urban; southern Iowa was remote and rural --- and few of the exiles were equipped to support themselves as farmers. The Hainer and Radnich families, along with a few others, persevered, however.

Ignace’s career took some interesting turns, although he always returned to New Buda. Recognized as one of the world’s leading Latin scholars, he served for five years as a professor of modern languages at the University of Missouri at Columbia --- until his abolitionist views cost him his job in a slave state.

He served Decatur County as a teacher, postmaster, county treasurer and preacher and produced a family of productive children, nearly all of whom moved elsewhere. He also returned several times as he grew old to his native Hungary.

Ignace, however, always returned to Decatur County and died there along the road from his New Buda farm into Davis City at age 81, not long after returning home from St. Louis where he had spent the winter with a daughter.

And now, along with daughter Laura and the Clarks, he is sleeping on the hill in Davis City.

Union Church at Davis City

While we’re in the neighborhood of Pleasanton, Nine Eagles State Park and such, it would be a shame to go directly to Lamoni and not turn right on Highway 69 and go on into Davis City, situated right on the Grand River and the home of a fairly remarkable survival, Union Church.

Davis City now is home to about 250 people and its business district, like those of most small Iowa towns, has fallen on hard times. But also like most small Iowa towns, it once had high aspirations. A native Scotsman named John Clark, who once operated a milling business here that now is hard to conceive of, was responsible for many of those.

I’ll let a biography of Mr. Clark, published on pages 336-341 of the “History of Decatur County and Its People” (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1915) tell his story and, indirectly, part of Davis City’s. It’s a good read.

Clark’s principal monument today is Union Church, built during 1878 to serve as a home for the village’s three congregations (Methodist, Presbyterian and Christian), none of which had a building. It’s a very plain building, as befits a Scotsman, but gracefully designed and beautifully constructed of brick. Most churches constructed by people of means in 1878 were highly decorated. This building instead looks back to plainer Federal times. It also contained (and still does) the town clock. Clark himself claimed no religious affiliation, but an affection for all --- thus his Union Church.

I do not know what the building is used for today, if anything. It is well maintained and the front seems to have been given a fairly recent sprucing up. And I’m glad it’s still here.

John Clark’s 1915 Biography:

Although more than a quarter of a century has elapsed since the death of John Clark, his memory is still enshrined in the hearts of those who knew him and the influence of his work is still potent. He was one of the earliest manufacturers of woolen goods in Iowa and was also connected with the development of the lumber industry in this state. For many years he resided in Decatur county and was prominently connected with its industrial and financial growth. His integrity and sense of justice were equally as well developed as his business sagacity and power of initiative, and his life was a force for righteousness.

John Clark was born in Paisley, near Glasgow, Scotland, on the 25th of September, 1813, and three years later was brought by his father, John Clark, to America. The family landed at Philadelphia and settled on a small river flowing into the Delaware, about ten miles from that city, where the father conducted a cotton factory. While living in Scotland he had been a silk weaver. In 1818 removal was made to Beaver county, Pennsylvania, and two years later he took his family and went to New Lisbon, Ohio, where both he and his wife spent their remaining days. She was a member of the royal family of Stuarts of Scotland, her father, Charles Edward Stuart, being the prince of Scotland and her grandfather the king of the united kingdom of England and Scotland. Her demise occurred when she was but forty-five years of age and her husband also died when comparatively young, being forty-eight years old at the time of his death. They left four sons and five daughters, all of whom are now deceased.

John Clark of this review resided in Columbiana county, Ohio, until the fall of 1846, when he removed to Jefferson county, Iowa, with his family and engaged in the wool-carding and cloth-dressing business in connection with the manufacture of lumber. This was the pioneer plant of its kind in Iowa and was farther west than any similar establishment. In 1843 Mr. Clark lost the entire mill property by fire but through the assistance of others his machinery was replaced and he was enabled to resume business. His mill cut the first plank for the first plank road in Iowa and its history forms a part of the industrial history of the state. In June, 1856, Mr. Clark removed to Decatur county and settled in Morgan township, purchasing a thousand acres of land from the government, half of which was timbered. He erected a sawmill upon his holdings and added two burrs for the manufacture of flour and also carding machinery, while two years later he installed spinning machinery and looms, manufacturing all kinds of woolen cloth. During the Civil War the demand for woolen goods was so great that twelve looms were kept busy and he handled not less than seventy-five thousand pounds of wool annually. In 1869 the First National Bank of Leon was organized with a capital stock of fifty thousand dollars and Mr. Clark was elected the first president of the institution, continuing in that position until it was reorganized as the Farmers & Traders Bank. In 1870 he, in connection with his son William, bought the mill property at Davis City and five years later he and his sons erected the flouring mill which is still in operation at that place. He had the astuteness of mind which enabled him to recognize opportunities where others saw none and he also possessed the energy and aggressiveness to formulate and carry into execution plans for the utilization of such opportunities. These qualities made him a pioneer in the manufacture of cloth and lumber in Iowa and his connection with the industrial and financial development of Decatur county resulted in good to the community as well as in his own material prosperity.

Mr. Clark was married on the 25th of September, 1834, in Columbiana county, Ohio, to Miss Grace Gammill, who died September 21, 1835. To them was born a daughter, Elizabeth, now the widow of James F. Bolon, of Davis City. On the 21st of September, 1836, Mr. Clark married Miss Margaret C. Gammill, an older sister of his first wife, both of whom were daughters of James Gammill, a native of York county, Pennsylvania. To this union were born two sons and four daughters, of whom two survive, namely: Williams, a resident of Omaha; and Mrs. Caroline Biggs, of Leon. Mrs. Clark passed away upon her farm near Davis City in 1902.

Mr. Clark was a republican in his political belief but was never an aspirant for official honors. He never identified himself with any religious organization but realized that the work done by all the churches of a community is of great importance in promoting the moral welfare. He also saw the advantage of church unity and in 1878 erected a good church edifice which he presented to all of the religious societies of Davis City, representing two branches of the Methodist denomination and the Presbyterian and Christian churches. The building is still used by the three congregations and is known as the Union church.

At the time of his death the Decatur County Journal published the following: “Deceased died as he had lived, calm, placid and self-possessed, September 4, 1888, aged seventy-five years. Thus ended the life of John Clark, one of nature’s noblemen, a model man and citizen, a noble and honored father, a loving and true husband, a friend whose friendship was like the light of the sun, true and steadfast in its course. The life of Mr. Clark furnishes an example to the youths of today of what may be accomplished by energy and continued labor, combined with the honest and noble resolution of benefiting his fellowmen with a portion of the material results of a successful life. Mr. Clark was fully aware of the seriousness of his last illness some time prior to his departure and made every arrangement for his burial. Also in talking over the matter with his children he stated: ‘I know that my case is a critical one and that no physician can do me any good. I leave my case entirely in the hands of Providence and feel perfectly resigned, let that be as it may, it’s all right.’ This well balanced and perfect consciousness was with him when he breathed his last, for, leaning back into the arms of his son James, surrounded by those he loved, he said to all: ‘I am going --- I will soon be gone.’ ”

"The old lady won't fall down ..."

Or so said an attendant at the visitor center in Burlington when I stopped there during early September and we got to talking about Burlington First United Methodist Church, a fire-gutted ruin up hill from the riverfront at the corner of Washington and Fifth streets.

This wonderful old church, built during 1889 of jasper granite quarried near Sioux City, S.D., fell victim to an arsonist during the early morning of Sunday, April 29, and has stood there roofless and filled with rubble since as members of the congregation debated what to do. That in itself is a testament to both the building’s importance and the commitment of Burlington residents to it, since both Washington and Fifth streets have been blocked since the fire and the building surrounded by a chain-link fence.

“The old lady won’t fall down” referred to the fact that as and after the church burned fire officials were concerned that the building’s towering northwest steeple would come crashing down and I believe they even attempted to encourage it to do so. But it’s still standing, and looks as if it may continue to do so for many years to come.

Not long after I was in Burlington, according to The Burlington Hawk Eye, the First Church congregation voted by a very narrow margin to spend $380,000 to stabilize the ruin’s walls, take down the wood portion of the steeple and weatherproof what’s left of the building --- giving it the option of rebuilding within the old walls. That work began during late September, The Hawk Eye reported, and is expected to be completed during November.

Rebuilding is far from a done deal, however. The congregation will have about $8 million in insurance if it rebuilds onsite, but the cost of doing that is estimated to be in excess of $11. As might be expected, members have differing views of how First Methodist can best carry its mission forward. Many want to rebuild onsite. Others want to build an entirely new church outside historic downtown Burlington. There are sound reasons for both options.

But I’m pulling for the “old lady.” Iowans have allowed more than their share of the state’s architectural birthright to slip through their fingers as the years have passed.

On another front, The Des Moines Register is reporting this morning that the state’s Vision Iowa Board has committed $545,000 toward restoration of All Saints Church in Stuart, a rare and beautiful 1908 Byzantine-style building destroyed by an arsonist during 1995 --- providing Stuart residents approve a $1.7 million bond issue to help with the project. Total restoration costs are estimated at $2.5 million.

After that church burned, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Des Moines and parish leaders decided restoration was impractical and even pushed to have the ruins flattened and taken away so that they would not become a focal point for congregational disputes.

Eventually, however, the ruins came into the hands of The Project Restore Foundation, committed to restoring the exterior of the building and installing within it a modern cultural center. The Foundation already has restored a small chapel and created a meeting room, restrooms and a kitchen in the least damaged portion of the building.

So here’s another grand old lady that declined to fall down; another restoration to hope for.

These two buildings at the opposite end of the grand spectrum from Pleasanton Methodist Chapel date from an era when it was felt praise could be raised heavenward architecturally, too. There’s not much of that sentiment around any more. Just look.

Pleasanton Methodist Chapel

Pleasanton is still a pleasant place, tucked down against the Missouri state line in Decatur County, even though much of it has vanished as the years have passed, the number of farms has diminished and declining population has wiped out its retail business district and schools. As buildings have been taken down, the village has opened up into fields with remnant structures scattered across them.

I guess it’s remote, in a way, but I’ve never thought of it that way because it is at the crossroads of two of my favorite southern Iowa/northern Missouri drives. The first involves driving south from Humeston on Highway 65, turning right onto paved county roads at the north limits of Lineville, then cruising west up and down sweeping hills and through deeply-cut creek valleys parallel to the Missouri line with wonderful views off to the south. (If you follow my trail, make sure to take the left turn at the curve a couple of miles west of Lineville --- if you stay on the Lineville road, you’ll head northwest to Highway 2 east of Leon.)

Once at the “T” intersection on Pleasanton’s north edge, you’ve got a choice. Take a left, and you’re in Missouri before you know it. A mile or two down the road, turn right and follow the Little River bluff tops for a curving picturesque ride down into Canesville, an interesting little town in its own right with some wonderful old buildings.

If you take a right, the road curves northwesterly past the entrance to Nine Eagles State Park, one of Iowa’s best, then down and around the hills into which Nine Eagles is tucked and out across the Grand River valley to Davis City. Hang a left onto Highway 69 and you’ll arrive shortly at Interstate 35 and, just beyond it, Lamoni.

Just across from the Nine Eagles entrance is the Pleasanton Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). Although the congregation’s current building is an innovative and somewhat surprising dome, that dome houses the earliest of Iowa’s Community of Christ/RLDS congregations.

Some will know, and many won’t, that this part of Decatur County was where many Latter-day Saints who chose not to follow Brigham Young to Utah came together around the family of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith Jr., which also was estranged from Young. Lamoni became the focus of this emerging church which eventually moved its headquarters to Independence, Missouri, but left behind the vibrant Graceland University as well as Joseph Smith III’s restored home and other interesting stuff.

Although there is a “Chief Lamoni” motel at Lamoni, don’t be fooled into thinking we’re talking about Sac and Fox here. Lamoni, according to the Book of Mormon, was a Lamanite king converted by the missionary Ammon back to the law of Moses, thus becoming righteous. Community of Christ is a fairly recent change in name undertaken, I suppose for a variety of reasons: Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a bit bulky, its members quite frankly got tired to explaining that, no, they weren’t a branch of the big boys in Utah and, finally, Community of Christ better reflects the denomination’s 21st century mission.

But that’s a side trip for another day, especially since I forgot to photograph the Pleasanton Community of Christ when out roaming around Monday --- something I’ll have to do another day.

What caught my eye Monday, as it has a couple of other times, is the Pleasanton Methodist Chapel which, unlike the Community of Christ, is actually inside Pleasanton’s village limits --- tucked away down a dead-end side street. It’s a wonderful survival, I think, and still used for regular Sunday services according to its neighbor, who I talked with briefly.

Country churches of the Protestant variety are sometimes called, somewhat dismissively by those who want to generalize, “preaching boxes.” Part of the reason for that is that unlike Catholic, Episcopal and even Lutheran churches, where the sacraments are a major focus, Methodists, Baptists and the like focused instead on the sermon. So the pulpit rather than an altar is front and center in many of these buildings. Beyond that, many of them look a little like shoeboxes with pitched roofs.

But if this is a preaching box, look at how wonderfully it was embellished --- the fish-scale shingles centered on diamond-shaped windows in the eaves; a wonderful little apse on the business end of the building, pointed carpenter gothic windows. It’s just wonderful on a very small scale.

The bell mounted near the entrance suggests that there was once a tower to house it, perhaps over the vestibule that is inset into the southwest corner. Firmly locked, there was no way to explore the interior, but I’d guess that there’s a sunny Sunday school room to the right of the vestibule with the nave to the north.

The neighbor said the foundation is a little shaky --- it looks as if it’s the original. But for now at least the Pleasanton Methodist Chapel and its congregation are hanging in there, still balanced on solid rock and defying winds of change and Morton Building aesthetics.



I stopped twice at Nine Eagles Monday, once on the way to Eagleville when it was cloudy and again, headed home, after the sun came out.

The first stop was more productive in the wildlife category. Wild turkeys, lots of them, were emerging from the woods, scooting across the roads and then disappearing again. From the south lake overlook, I watched an immature eagle fishing --- quite a sight, but of course the camera wasn't handy. Sun turned the lake and surrounding woods into postcard material. This shot was taken from a high point on the north side of the late looking southwest toward the dam and beyond.

Eight swans a swimming

Cerro Gordo County's Mallard Marsh, several miles northwest of Mason City in Grant Township, is the site of a major success story in the effort to reintroduce trumpeter swans to the state. Thousands of these birds once nested in the state, but uncontrolled hunting and loss of wetland habitat cut their numbers to zero. The last nesting pair sighted in North Iowa prior to the 21st century was during the 19th.

In 2001, a juvenile released at Mallard Marsh during 1997 returned and, with her mate, successfully hatched --- the first time that had happened in more than a century.

Mallard Marsh remains the home of that swan and her family and eight family members were parked on the near shoreline of the marsh area's first pond when I drove up Friday morning. They didn't seem particularly bothered as I walked along the trail around the pond's north shore, but sailed out onto the water as I got closer --- honking all the way.

By the time I'd walked as far as the trail (a recently-clipped grass driveway) could take me, then returned and climbed the area's high prairie hill to have a good look around, the swans had scattered across the pond. It was a spectacular way to spend part of a Friday morning!

At Aspen Grove

I went to Aspen Grove, Burlington’s large and beautifully kept city cemetery, earlier this month to visit Charles Elliott Perkins’ imposing obelisk (below). Perkins, president of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (C.B.&Q.) Railroad from 1881 to 1901, is a fairly important guy in Lucas County’s history.


The C.B.&Q. main line across southern Iowa and through Chariton (built as the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad, now the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe), had stalled at Ottumwa in 1859, and that was as far as the tracks went until after the Civil War. As the war wound down, rail investors became skeptical about the future of the southern Iowa route, feeling the region was too sparsely populated to make it a paying proposition.

Perkins’ faith in the route and his effective lobbying for it ensured that the line was built, reaching Chariton during July of 1867 and then continuing west to the Missouri River and beyond.

A wonderfully effective manager, Perkins went on to build the C.B.&Q. into one of the nation’s major rail carriers and, something of a rarity, he earned the respect of nearly everyone during that process --- from railroad workers to railroad investors and common folks along the route.

His home was in Burlington, an estate called The Apple Trees that now is a city park (most of his mansion, perhaps Iowa’s largest home at that time, was demolished at his family’s behest after they gave the property to the city), but he died during 1907 in Boston, where the family maintained a second home, and was buried there.

His family erected this grand obelisk in Aspen Grove to memorialize him, however, situated to be visible from the nearby C.B.&.Q. main line at the foot of West Burlington Hill. And for many years, passing trains saluted Perkins with blasts of their whistles as the monument came into view.





It’s interesting, too, that visitors to the the Garden of the Gods at Colorado Springs also have Charles Elliott Perkins to thank. He purchased 240 acres in the Garden of the Gods for a summer home in 1879 and later increased his holdings there to 480 acres. He never built on it, however, preferring to leave it in its natural state for the public to enjoy. Prior to his death, he made arrangements for it to become a public park and in 1909, his children conveyed the 480 acres to the city of Colorado Springs, to be known forever as the Garden of the Gods, "where it shall remain free to the public, where no intoxicating liquors shall be manufactured, sold, or dispensed, where no building or structure shall be erected except those necessary to properly care for, protect, and maintain the area as a public park."

Railroading in southern Iowa began at Burlington, so it’s filled with memories of the C.B.&Q. and that line’s successors and many of those who rest at Aspen Grove were connected in one way or another with railroading. The cemetery’s east entrance gates (top) were erected in 1907 by a lesser C.B.&.Q. official, Thomas Potter, division superintendent, in memory of his daughter, Mary E. Potter. The current main gates to Aspen Grove, far more pedestrian than these, offer entrance through the newer part of the cemetery far to the north. But if you wander around this part of Burlington long enough, you’ll find this imposing arch and be able to make a far grander entrance.


Cyrus S. Jacobs: Showdown at the Burlington Corral

Although it seems improbable now, Iowa once was the far west and there was more than a little wild to it. Cyrus S. Jacobs is an example of that.

The inscription on his tombstone, located just southeast of Aspen Grove's Potter entrance gates, reads: "Here lieth interred the mortal remains of Cyrus S. Jacobs, a native of Lancaster county, Pennylsvania, who died on the 31st day of October, 1838, of the effects of a pistol wound, in the 39th year of his age."

Cyrus was the editor of Burlington's first newspaper and poised to become one of Iowa's leading political figures when he was shot down on the streets of Burlington.

To back up a couple of years from 1838, Cyrus and his business partner, James Clarke (who went on to become Iowa's third and final territorial governor), had won the contract as official printers for Wisconsin Territory during 1836, the year the first territorial legislature met in Belmont, Wisc. The next year, the territory's temporary capital was moved across and down the Mississippi to Burlington and Clarke and Jacobs and their families followed.

The first issue of their The Wisconsin Territorial Gazette & Burlington Advertiser was published on July 10, 1837, with Clarke as publisher and Jacobs as editor.

Iowa Territory was formed from Wisconsin effective July 4, 1838 (and encompassed in addition to what now is the state of Iowa all of Minnesota west of the Mississippi and the Dakotas east of the White Earth and Missouri Rivers). Jacobs, who also was an attorney, was elected to the first territorial legislature and was appointed U.S. district attorney by President Martin Van Buren at the same time Robert Lucas (a former Ohio governor after whom Lucas County was named) was appointed territorial governor.

Before he could assume either position, however, Jacobs was shot down on a street in Burlington by David Rorer, also an attorney, with whom he had been engaged, some said, in a "long-simmering" political dispute. This encounter sometimes is described as a duel, but most likely it was just an argument that escalated and then turned deadly. Rorer, who went on to become one of Burlington's most prominent citizens, never was prosecuted. It isn't clear if Jacobs was armed, although one biographer described him as "sensitive, high-tempered and sudden and quick in quarrel."

Governor Lucas was infuriated and wrote the following, "The recent transaction in this city that deprived the Legislative Assembly of one of its members elect as well as all other transactions of a similar character, should meet with the indignant frown of every friend of morality in the community; and the practice of wearing concealed about the person, dirks, pistols, and other deadly weapons, should not only be considered disreputable but criminal and punished accordingly. There certainly cannot be a justifiable excuse offered for such a practice; for in a civil community, a brave man never anticipates danger and an honest man will always look to the laws for protection."

Rorer was not amused and became one of Lucas's most fervent political enemies, according to John Carl Parish's 1907 biography, "Robert Lucas."

It seems likely that Jacobs was not buried at first where he now rests, but instead in Burlington's first cemetery, sometimes called Smith. Bodies were removed from that cemetery when the land was needed for development and relocated here, at Aspen Grove. His grave now is just north of that of his business partner, James Clarke, and the grave of a second territorial governor, Henry Dodge.




Two Governors

James S. Clark, following his partner’s violent death in 1838, went on to build a career in public service for himself. He was named secretary of Iowa Territory in 1838 and served until 1841; was mayor of Burlington during 1844-45 as well as the city’s first school board president; was named delegate from Des Moines County to the Iowa Constitutional Convention; and finally was appointed Iowa’s third (and final) territorial governor, a post he held until 1846 statehood. Lucas County’s neighbor to the west, Clarke, was named in his honor.

But his career, too, was cut short by death. James died at Burlington 25 July 1850 at age 38 during a cholera epidemic that also claimed the life of his wife, Christiana Helen (Dodge) Clarke, and one of their children, James.

They are buried just south of Cyrus Jacobs at Aspen Grove.

James S. Clarke’s father-in-law, Henry Dodge, was one of Wisconsin Territory’s most influential citizens. A renowned soldier in the various wars with American Indians and recognized as the man who engineered Chief Black Hawk‘s defeat, he was named governor of Wisconsin Territory by President Andrew Jackson during 1836 and served until 1841; was elected to the U.S. House from Wisconsin Territory in 1841; was reappointed territorial governor in 1845 and served until Wisconsin statehood during 1848; and then was elected to the U.S. Senate from Wisconsin, a seat he held through 1856, when he retired from public life.

Upon retirement, he returned to Burlington, where he had lived first when Wisconsin’s territorial capital was located there briefly in 1837-38. He died at Burlington on June 19, 1867, and was buried south of the Clarkes at Aspen Grove. Southeastern Iowa's Henry County was named in his honor.

The original Clarke and Dodge tombstones remain in place, but a large contemporary monument detailing the careers of James and Henry was erected between them by the Burlington Women’s Club during 1991. Click on it to read more about them.

And finally, ancient stones

Aspen Grove’s Potter’s Field, located to the right just inside the cemetery’s Potter gates, is an anomaly in an otherwise beautifully landscaped cemetery although it certainly is well maintained. But this is where Burlington’s poor, who could afford to be buried no where else, were interred. As most will know, “Potter’s Field” has noting to do with the Potter family --- it is just the old, old name for a place where the poor and unknown were buried (The Chariton Cemetery’s Potter’s Field was hidden shamefacedly in the extreme southwest corner of the original plat until time caught up with it and fields of Twentieth Century tombstones moved into that scenic area).

But Aspen Grove’s Potter’s Field also was the place where graves were relocated from the city’s original cemetery, sometimes called Smith, when it was decided by city fathers to use that area for other purposes. So many of Burlington’s earliest residents rest here, shoulder-to-shoulder with the poor, primarily because no one was left to ensure more exalted sites when their original resting places were disturbed. This collection of ancient tombstones from the 1830s and 1840s probably accompanied bodies from the old cemetery which were reinterred in a trench grave. Stones of this age are rare in Iowa and these are worth a visit.

Gertrude Jekyll I'm not

But the garden is growing nicely anyway, thank you very much, despite a harsh start: The Good Friday freeze killed all the chrysanthemums, wiped out all the tiger lilies and caused the iris to decline to bloom.

The holes left by that disaster have been filled in and what's come along since seems to be flourishing, thanks in large part to lots of rain.

This is not a large garden, limited to beds alonside the house. I don't have time to plow up the back 40, which probably is just as well. Also, what's here has to be sturdy because I'm not around all week to coddle delicate flowering things --- a once-a-week watering, if needed, is all I can promise.

Everything is planted too close together for some tastes, but I was raised in the no-bare-earth school of gardening and with a disdain for mulch --- spots of green in a sea of shredded bark.

I'm also too fond of purple cone flowers (Echinacea purpurea) and goldenrod, evident in what I call the prairie bed along the peculiar-looking south side of the house. Something I wish I had more of is a miniature variety of cone flower (shown here with butterfly) about the size of a large daisy --- but none were to be found at the nurseries this year.


I'm thinking of adding St. Francis to this bed, but must finish G.K. Chesterton's little biography of him and decide for sure if this is the best use of my Earl May Garden Center July fun money before committing myself to a touch of holy zeal.

However you look at it, a week in June was a good time to spend uninterrupted hours with the plants --- digging, planting, sitting and looking or walking in circles around the house to make sure nothing had escaped my attention.

Where be the heathen Methodists?

The sign in front of this church along Highway 65 in Humeston has always struck me as funny, although members of the Christian United Methodist congregation may not find it quite so amusing. But is it really necessary to state the obvious? Or are there pagan United Methodists around the corner?

Anyhow, headed home to Chariton from Eagleville Monday, I stopped and took a couple of pictures.

The explanation is simple. Some years ago the Humeston Christian (Disciples of Christ) and United Methodist congregations decided to get together and jointly construct this lovely new building. They did a good job of incorporating elements from both old buildings, including stained glass; and decided on a name that reflected the congregation's origins: Christian and United Methodist.

If it brings a smile to the face of someone driving by, so what? God surely must have a cosmic sense of humor. He invented us after all.

Salem Church

This is Salem Church as I remember it in a photo I took sometime during the late 1970s when it still had an active contregation and was about a century old. This was an extremely simple building and had been altered very little.

The chain-linked posts in front of the church were put there so that horses could be tied up during services and this "fence" actually outlived the church, although it since has been replaced.

Spirea bushes bloomed along the north and south sides of the church and the churchyard, north and south of the building, was shaded by the trees you see here and a few massive old maples that probably were planted when the church was built. The cemetery was behind (east of) the building.

There was no water on the grounds and outhouses in the southwest corner of the churchyard (still there) served the congregation.

I wish now that I had attended a service here, but didn't. However, the church generally was unlocked so we sometimes went inside to look around. About the only interior change had been a new, dark ceiling that presumably kept plaster from falling onto the heads of those seated below and electric lights. The walls were papered above wainscotting and the floor, scrubbed planks that never had been varnished. Light flooded in through tall clear-glass windows over which venetian blinds had been installed.

The pews looked as if they could have been hand-made and had been painted, but that had worn through to bare wood here and there, polished by a century of use. A big wood stove stood in the northwest corner of the building, where the chimney was.

Up front, there was a platform, a piano and an handsome dark wood pulpit. And that was about it. I wonder how many 21st Century Christians would consider it suitable.

Mary (Sutphin) Howard and Margaret (Sutphin) Hobson

These are tombstones at adjacent graves in the Chariton Cemetery of two women closely associated with Salem Cemetery.

Mary (Sutphin) Howard (top and center) purchased the 160-acre tract that contained the lone grave around which the cemetery developed with her husband, John Howard, on 23 May 1850 from the U.S. government for $1.25 an acre. She died five months later, on 12 October 1850, and was buried in the old Chariton Point (now called Douglass) Cemetery, although her body later was moved into Chariton. The inscription on this stone reads:

MARY,
Wife of
J. HOWARD
Dau. of J.I. & R. Sutphin
Died
Oct. 12, 1850
aged 47 Yrs.
2 ms. 19 ds.

After Mary's death, John Howard sold the cemetery tract to Mary's widowed sister, Margaret (Sutphin) Hobson, whose husband, Joseph, had died 4 September 1849 in Van Buren County and who is buried in the Bonaparte Cemetery there.

Margaret moved to the farm with her family and developed it; and it probably was during her time in Benton Township that neighbors began to use the land around the Mormon grave as a public cemetery.

Margaret died 19 August 1870 and was buried beside her sister, Mary, in Chariton. The inscription on Margaret's stone reads:

MARGARET
Wife of
J. HOBSON
DIED
Aug. 19, 1870
Aged
67Y, 9D

Salem Cemetery: A Community Still (Part 2)

Although Lucas County opened for settlement during 1846, the same year the Mormon Trace was blazed, the land around the lone grave in Benton Township remained in government hands for a few years because it was open prairie, considered less desirable than timbered land.

The 160-acre tract that included the grave was purchased from the U.S. government by John Howard and his wife, Mary (Sutphin) Howard, on 23 May 1850 for the going rate of $1.25 per acre. At the time it was unbroken, open and treeless prairie with only one landmark --- the grave. The Howards did not live here, however.

They also had purchased land about two miles northwest along the Mormon Trace, due south of what now is the city of Chariton and encompassing part of Chariton Point settlement. It was here, apparently, that the Howards lived until Mary’s death on 12 October 1850. Although her remains now lie in the Chariton Cemetery, she was buried first in the old Chariton Point burying ground, now known as Douglass Cemetery.

Not long after Mary’s death, John Howard disposed of his holdings in Lucas County and moved “back east” to Jefferson County, Iowa, where he married as his second wife a woman named Gracie.

The prairie farm in Benton Township went to Margaret (Sutphin) Howard, sister of John’s first wife, whose husband, Joseph Hobson, had died 4 September 1849 in Van Buren County and who had been buried in the Bonaparte Cemetery where his grave still may be found.

On 14 February 1852, John and Gracie Howard (then of Lockridge Township, Jefferson County) sold the 160-acre cemetery farm to Margaret for $100 and she moved there with some of her children, including Rebecca (who married first Nelson Bell and then Chester F. Plimpton), Elizabeth Adeline (who married Francis M. Wilson), John Milburn (who married first Margaret A. Clark and then Mary Eugenia Taylor Gove) and Lucinda (who married John P. Martin).

It was Margaret and her family who broke the land and built a home probably in the southwest corner of the farm, where what I still call the Johnny Jennings home is located.

It probably was during Margaret Hobson’s tenure that neighbors began to bury their dead near the lone Mormon grave northeast of the Hobson home, thus forming a cemetery with a name that, if there was one, has faded into obscurity.

Margaret Hobson died 19 August 1870 and was buried in the Chariton Cemetery beside her sister, Mary (Sutphin) Howard, whose body by that time had been moved from the Douglass Cemetery.

Upon Margaret Hobson’s death, her son, Milburn, purchased from her estate for $1,100 140 acres of the 160-acre farm on 26 August 1870. This farm was known a century later as the George and Faye Lovell/Johnny and Ora Gartin farm (Johnny's wife was Ora Lovell, daughter of George), and it probably was the Milburn Hobsons who developed the farmstead there. The cemetery was included in this purchase.

The 20-acre tract in the southwest corner of the farm that probably included the original Hobson farmstead was sold for $500, also on 26 August 1870, to Margaret’s daughter, Adeline, who had married Francis M. Wilson.

Three years later, on 6 March 1873, Milburn Hobson sold to the Wilsons the 20-acre tract that included the cemetery.

And on the 12th of June, 1873, Adeline and Francis M. Wilson sold the cemetery site for $50 to the Salem Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church.


This is why the year “1873” is inscribed on the plaque that marks the cemetery entrance, although the burial ground itself is about 25 years older.

Soon after purchasing the land, Salem Methodist Church was built in front of (west of) the cemetery and, during 1875, the cemetery was replatted as Salem Cemetery into 52 lots, each 9 by 41 feet with space for eight or nine graves. Since there are no graves at Salem that seem out of place, it is likely that the new plat followed at least partly an earlier one.

Salem remained an active Methodist congregation until the 1930s and its members administered and maintained the cemetery during those years.

The Methodist congregation had faded by the 1940s, however, and the church was closed for a time. It was reopened by community residents during the 1940s, but took a Baptist turn and declined to accept Methodist preachers. As a result, the Iowa Methodist Conference during 1947 sold the church and church grounds to what became known as the Salem Community Church. The cemetery was deeded to the Benton Township trustees who assumed responsibility for its care.

Salem Community Church remained active well into the 1970s, but declining rural population and the deaths of key members caused it to close during that decade. A decision was made to demolish the church building, still well-maintained and structurally sound, and the church grounds, which had begun to be used for cemetery purposes as the original cemetery filled, also were deeded to the Benton Township trustees. Today, only the church’s front step remains.

That left the cemetery in the form it now has. Upon the death of Burdette Smith, his family placed new fencing (replacing hitching posts that had rotted), brick gateposts and a plaque identifying Salem at the front. Some years later, hard-maple trees were planted in memory of Reefa (Miller) Myers to replace giant soft-maples that had died.

Salem Cemetery on Memorial Day

These three photographs were taken at Salem near Memorial Day 2006. The views are (from top to bottom) looking southeast, looking southwest and looking Northwest. Nearly every cemetery in Iowa once was filled with peonies, most of which bloomed near Memorial Day. Riding lawnmowers, weed-whackers and general carelessness have been hard on these, since it's always easier to cut them down rather than trim around. But Salem has been lucky, and most of those planted on graves here have survived.