The Grand Army of the Republic at New York (Iowa)

Gayle Van Dyk Photo

Back in December, on one of those frigid pre-Christmas evenings, I wasted energy complaining about the need to leave home after nightfall and drive across Chariton for an event --- a factor of advancing age and soft living.

Back in January of 1893, on another cold and stormy night, four members of Chariton's Iseminger Post No. 18, Grand Army of the Republic, piled into a bobsled and headed south across the prairie and woodlands to New York to enjoy supper with fellow Civil War veterans in northern Wayne County and to witness installation of Messenger Post. No. 288's new officers.

No complaints. Our ancestors were made of hardier stuff. Here's how one member of that party reported the trip, an account published in The Chariton Patriot of February 1:

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On last Saturday, Post Commander D. L. Hixon hitched his spirited team to the bobsled and tumbled in Comrades L. Manning, S. B. Swift and J. C.  Kitselman and drove through the storm to New York. There they found awaiting them in the G.A.R. hall, warm hearted comrades and a hot dinner. Two long tables the full length of the hall were fairly creaking under the weight of good things, prepared by the good wives and daughters of that goodly land, causing us to feel it was well to be there. It is useless to say we did justice to the dinner, after a cold drive of fifteen miles.

After the hall was cleared, Comrade Kitselman proceeded to inspect the G.A.R. post. We then adjourned to the Christian church where the officers of Messenger Post No. 288 were publicly installed by Elder S.B. Swift. We  then returned home feeling we were amply repaid for our cold drive by the warm reception we received from the  old boys of  New York. May their shadows never grow less.

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Messenger Post No. 288, with 18 charter members, had been launched at New York on Feb. 9, 1884, and remained until it vanished one of Iowa's smallest. Records collected in Des Moines as the G.A.R. was nearing the end show a total membership of 48. No one knows when meetings ceased.

The post was given the name of a family named Messenger who lived east of New York on the road to Bethlehem. Frederick Dent and Jane Marie (Johnson) Messenger had arrived in the neighborhood during the early 1850s from Ohio and had 12 children total, including four sons who enlisted for service during the Civil War.

Dennis, Samuel and Royal served in Company I, 4th Iowa Volunteer Infantry; and the youngest, Virgil, in Company H, 46th Iowa Volunteer Infantry.

All made it home, but Samuel and Virgil both had contracted diseases that would kill them in short order. Virgil enlisted as a private on May 21, 1864, but was discharged for disability at Davenport on Sept. 23, 1864. He died at home on Oct. 7, age 18, and was buried in the New York Cemetery.

Samuel was 20 when he enlisted with his brothers on Aug. 2, 1861. Taken prisoner at the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, on March 7, 1862, he was exchanged during May and continued to serve until Jan. 8, 1864, when he was discharged for disability. Returning home with his health ruined, he married Margaret Sherman that spring and they had two children in quick succession before his death at the age of 26 on Oct. 22, 1867. He, too, was buried in the New York Cemetery.

It seems likely that the G.A.R. post was named to honor Samuel or perhaps both Samuel and Virgil, but no one seems to know for sure.

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New York, in 1893, still was a small but thriving crossroads village, but by now has vanished entirely --- save the pretty hillside cemetery some distance east of town. The Christian Church, long a landmark, is now located at the Round Barn Site east of Allerton. And the shadows of those "old boys" who gathered for supper on a January night 130 years ago have vanished.