William Coulsen Davenport

DAVENPORT MAGIRL

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 4/19/2010 at 22:30:37

Woodbury County History 1984

William Coulsen Davenport
By R C Davenport

The Davenports lived in Marietta, Ohio, on the Ohio River up to the early 1880’s Conrad Shenkberg operated a wholesale Grocery house in Marietta and George Davenport (1835-1900) was one of his traveling salesman.

In the spring of 1882, Mr Shenkberg devided to move to Sioux City (which then had about 12,000 populations) and continue in the wholesale grocery business here. He did so and the Davenport family with ten children moved with him. Mr Shenkberg opened a place at 303 Pearl Street. Shortly afterward he moved to 309 Pierce Street.

In order that the Davenport family might have a location more central to his trade territory, the Davenport family moved to Norfolk, Nebraska, but William C Davenport remained in Sioux City.

In the fall of 1882, W C started a roller skating rink at 421 Fourth Street. A short time later John Pierce put up a building on the west side of Pierce Street between Third and Fourth Streets, and the rink was moved to that location. Roller skating was quite the fad and it enjoyed the patronage of Sioux City’s best people. The Early Hour Club, representating the younger social set, gave masquerade balls and other parties at the rink.

In 1883, when W C was 22 years old, he was appointed deputy sheriff. This was the beginning of a career of 32 years as a law enforcement officer. He was deputy sheriff for two years, sheriff six years, head of a private detective agency ten years and chief of police two years.

The courthouse was still a comparatively new building and was one of the city’s show places. It occupied a quarter block on the southeast corner of Sixth and Pierce Street (on the present site of Orpheum Theater). Jim Horton (board of supervisors) later prevailed on the board to buy two additional lots south of the courthouse for 4150 each. In doing so he brought down on his head the condemnation of taxpayers who considered the purchase a piece of rank extravagance.

The night of Tuesday, August 3, 1886, was hot and rainy. W C had attended a performance of Fielding’s Comedy Ideals at the Academy of Music. As he emerged from the theater after the show, a boy excitedly informed him that ‘a man had been shot at Fourth and Water Streets’. He hurried to that intersection, only tow and a half blocks away. They body of Rev George C Haddock, pastor of the First Methodist Church and active in antisaloon work, was lying in the street in a pool of blood. There was a bullet hole in the neck. W C would never forget that night or the scene of that murder. The hold frame Columbia house stood on the southwest corner. Next door to the south was Merrill’s livery barn. The clergyman had rented a horse and buggy and had returned it after having made a tour of the city, investigating alleged violation of the prohibition law. It was as he walked across Water Street form the barn that he was shot down by one of the crowd of men who intercepted him.

At the first trial of John Arensdorf for the murder of Haddock, W C was the first witness for the state. On request of the prosecuting attorneys he donned Haddock’s rain coat to indicate to the jury exactly where the shot penetrated the collar.

In the 80’s the Soudan was Sioux City’s toughest district. It was located on and near Douglas Street between Second and Third Streets. One snowy night a man knocked at Tom Mace’s door. Mace answered the knock by shooting through the panel and getting his man. W C went to the scene in response to a call and took charge of the body. He secured a two-seated sleigh at a livery barn, sat the body up on the seat beside him and started for Westcott’s undertaking establishment. The movement of the sleigh caused the victim’s head to bob forward and back. Pedestrians they passed imagined someone was nodding to them and they would not back, little suspecting theyr were exchanging nods with a corpse.

W C Davenport was a member of the Floyd Memorial Association that brought about the construction of the Floyd Monumnet. Another interesting thing in W C’s life is that in 1916, he sold the Combination Bridge in a receiver’s sale in the Federal Court, having been appointed by the Court to make the sale.

Davenport Cleaning Works was founded in 1909 at 417 Douglas. In 1913, it was moved to 618 Piere Street. In 1901, it moved to 20th and Pierce Street where it is today. Now the firm is employing two fourth-generation descendants of the founder.

William Coulsen Davenport, born January 9, 1861, in Lower Salem, Ohio, married Anna Marie Magirl on November 11, 1891. They had two chldren: Florence Marie, born October 17, 1893; and Chester Coulsen, born November 6, 1895, in Sioux City. Anna Davenport died about 1928. W C died in January 1959.