Anecdotes
A Colorful Early Settler
A. J. Millschlagel settled in the wilderness north of Indiantown as early as the winter of 1851. He was the first professional prairie breaker in Cass County. He voted in the first election held at Indiantown in 1851; his ballot was the only one cast for the Democratic ticket, the remaining 14 votes being in favor of the Whig Party. A. J. Millschlagel was famous for his enormous appetite. He would gorge himself with food and then could sustain himself for a long interval afterward without eating, as the Indians were capable of doing. It is claimed that one afternoon he shot a doe and its fawn and, with the help of one or two other men, he managed to eat the fawn and the forward half of the doe by dinner the next day. Hunters who knew him were reluctant to allow him to accompany them because he was known to eat a quarter of vension at one sitting. In the winter of 1853, Jeremiah Bradshaw, the father of the first settler in Brighton Township, was on a hunting expedition many miles north of the Indiantown settlement. Mrs. Bradshaw loaded a wagon with provisions for the members of the hunting party and sent the wagon wagon north with "Old Slagel" at the reins. The wagon was drawn by oxen, and by the time "Old Slagel" arrived at the camp, every morsel of food in the wagon had been consumed by the driver. A. J. Millschlagel later moved to Montgomery County where he purchased the wife of a man named Frank Wilson and paid him a sow, two or three pigs, and a gun for the woman. The neighbors became indignant and formed a lynch mob and surrounded the house. "Old Slagel" grabbed a gun and tried to defend his "property", killing one man and wounding another. For this he was sentenced to a fourteen year term in the Fort Madison Prison.
|
A Fine Story
Samuel H. Riddle was the District Judge in Southwest Iowa in 1857-1858, when the qualifications for the judgeship were not too high. It seems that Judge Riddle was a poker addict and spent his evenings at his favorite pastime. When holding court in Lewis, one of the Judge's poker pals was forced to pay a fine levied against him. Ross Temple paid his fine but was overheard remarking to some friends, "That's all right, boys, I'll win it all back from the Judge tonight."
|
An Indian Scare
One of the favorite Indian trails in Cass County extended from Indiantown north along the west bank of the Nishnabotna and Buck Creek into present Audubon County. A hunting party of Pottawattamie Indians passed through the county in 1855 and 1856. At Indiantown they were disturbed to find Jeremiah Bradshaw, the father of Brighton Township's first settler, descecrating the Indians' sacred burial grounds by farming them. Word spread through the county in 1857 that the Indians were hostile and the early settlers here prepared for the worst. A number of townspeople formed watches on the rooftops of Iranistan to warn of any approaching Indian raiding parties, but the year passed without incident in Southwest Iowa. 1857 was the year of the massacre of settlers at Spirit Lake by Sioux renegades.
|
Marne and the Depression of 1894
The Depression of 1894 caused great unemployment nationwide and was accompanied by a serious drought which resulted in total crop failure in the Midwest. The trains going through Marne often carried dozens of the unemployed on top of or inside the empty boxcars. "General" Kelly organized the "Industrial Army" of the unemployed in Omaha and began a march on Washington to plead for relief. This ragtag band of 500-1000 men passed through Marne. Some local farmers provided wagons to provide transportation, partly to speed these desperate men on their way. The Army's passage caused an amount of concern to the citizens of the towns through which it passed, since the Army threatened an extended stay in any town which did not feed and house the Army. Atlantic posted extra deputies that evening and the Army later attempted to seize a Rock Island train in Des Moines. A small remnant of the Army reached Washington.
|
An Incident at a Baptism
The wooded banks of Indian Creek south of Rt. 83 used to be quite the local picnic area around the turn of the century. The Methodist Protestants used to conduct their baptismal services at a swimming hole there. Wilbur Sarsfield remembers that he and several other boys hid in a large maple tree by the banks of Indian Creek to observe the dunking of some local citizens at the baptism scheduled one summer Sunday. They crowd soon gathered and the service was about to commence when the boys were spotted by John Wayne, the mayor of Marne and published of the Marne Free Press. Mr. Wayne threatened that, even though he was fat, he could still climb the tree if he had to in order to force the boys down. Whispers were heard that he might damage his pants or suffer injury. Another comment was "The old bluffer doesn't have any authority outside of Marne". Wilbur Sarsfield and his friends came down the tree, but he doesn't mention whether they suffered from the incident. Several men were required to accomplish the dunking of one extremely large man. For safety's sake, all of him was immersed except for his nose, and it was discussed whether St. Peter would take a dim view of that.
|
|
PREV <== Continue Reading ==> NEXT
Transcribed from "The First Century, A History of Marne, Iowa 1875 - 1975", published in 1975, Marne, Iowa: The Marne Centennial Historical Committee, pp. 18-19. Transcribed (2015) by Cheryl Siebrass and contributed September, 2019. |
|
