West Branch Times, West Branch, Iowa, Thursday, October 7, 1926
Transcribed by Sharon Elijah, November 9, 2018
WEST BRANCH IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES
By Albert W. Jackson
Editor Times:--My effusion of some weeks ago was received with so much favor that I attempted to come again.
A lady friend tells me that my early school teacher was Miss Lottie Kalb. She made an untiring effort to instill literary tastes in her pupils and to that end insisted that each and all should speak pieces on Friday afternoons. Three of the boys were stubborn and refused to comply. Dire penalties were prescribed for their failure to do so. A young man about town who made several attempts to escort Miss Kalb to spelling schools and the like without success heard of the matter and got busy. When the time came for the boys to make good, Bob responded with this: “There was a man who had a cow, and had no hay to give her; so this is what he said to her, ‘Consider, cow, consider.’”
Bob got by with this all right. Dick then had his inning. He said: “Man’s but a vapor and full of woes, he cuts a caper and down he goes.”
Suiting the action to the word, he fell sprawling on the floor. This was out of the ordinary but the little schoolma’am allowed it to pass.
Dan then had his day in court. With considerable lung power he recited: “Lord of love, look down from above on us poor little scholars; we have a fool to teach out school and pay her thirty dollars.”
He was taken before the head of the meeting and properly dealt with.
The summer of 1871 was a very conspicuous one in West Branch. The railroad ran two trains between Burlington and Cedar Rapids, both carrying freight and passengers. Their schedules were quite uncertain. The northbound train was the one held in chief veneration by the populace and a goodly portion of it could be depended upon to be at the depot to greet its arrival. It usually showed at 4 or 5 p.m. In case of a heavy dew it would be later. The company owned two engines. Instead of bearing numbers, they were named after distinguished men. One was called Fitz Henry Warren and the other W. W. Walker. Both men were prominent citizens of Burlington and financially interested in the road. These engines would be a great curiosity now. They were equipped with a single pair of drive wheels and carried a big smokestack, shaped like a balloon. They used wood for fuel and nearly every station maintained a stock where they had to “wood up.” Although these smokestacks were covered with a heavy screen, sparks frequently got by and set fire to adjacent meadows. Then the train would stop and the crew engaged in fighting fire until it was under control or got out of control. The track, of course, was unballasted and very poor. Frequently considerable portions of it were under water and washouts were frequent. In the summer of ’73 a big rain so enlarged the creek that it undermined the track for 40 rods between the railroad bridge and the grove and moved the rails several feet. It was several days before matters were righted.
The crews of these early-day trains had about as much trouble as some of the automobile drivers do now. There were no fences along the track and horses and cattle in quest of greener pastures persisted in brousing on the right-of-way when there were plenty of other places to go. Engineers wasted about as much steam in working their whistles to warn them of impending danger as they did in getting their trains from one place to another. But the critters were either careless of stampeded. So all hands would get off and make concerted effort to shoo them away. While rounding a curve the engineer would suddenly confront a bunch of these nomadic quadrupeds and before he could sound the call for brakes there would be several kinds of fresh meat lying around loose for which the company had to pay. In this manner several farmers of my acquaintance sold more livestock to the railroad in the course of a year than they did to Joe Albin and other buyers. It has been darkly hinted that some men with a peeve against the railroad would steer their ancient horses to the vicinity of the rails with the hope and knowledge that they would sooner or later get it in the neck or ribs. Of course that class of citizens have long since emigrated.
Within a year or so a regular passenger train was put on consisting of three cars and equipped with hand brakes. When the engineer sounded his whistle for a station a brakeman would rush out and wind up the wheel on the rear end of his car, then to the front end and treat it likewise. Each car was supposed to have a brakeman, but occasionally one or more of them would be called away to his grandmother’s funeral or a football game, in which case the survivors would have to do double duty. If the train ran by the platform it backed up until it was somewhere near it. After three or four years of this the road announced with a great flourish of trumpets that it had installed “Miller couplers and Westinghouse air brakes on all passenger trains.”
I think Geo. W. Darrow was the first agent. He was succeeded by George Barrington. The depot was in the southwest corner of the building now occupied by Mr. Moorhead’s feed grinding department. On the second floor “Tommy Townsend had a grocery store embracing about a wagon load of goods. The agent was also the telegraph operator. In those days “lightning jerkers” had not learned to take messages by sound. So incoming business was automatically punched in narrow strips of paper, much the same as the strips on an adding machine nowadays. The operator would occasionally open up the machine and read the record. The strips that were of no import to him he would pass out to a group of small boys who were always in waiting.
In passing let me say a word about J. E. Wyant, who, I believe, succeeded Mr. Barrington as agent. By this time the company had built a small depot on the opposite side of the track from where it stands now and Mr. Wyant and his wife lived in the second story. Both were quite prominent in M.E. church circles and sang in the choir. Mr. Wyant was quite a wit. On one occasion there was a Fourth of July celebration held in the little grove down the track. Mr. Wyant was on the program for a toast. All I can remember of it was an assertion that West Branch was the most patriotic town he had ever seen. As proof thereof, he said the men all looked blue, the ladies all wore white dresses, and the heads of the children were all red.
At or about the advent of the railroad, business took quite a boom in the little town. In addition to Steer’s store on the side hill, George Boone opened a furniture store and Clark Bean & Son a hardware store. J. W. Witter was one of the most enthusiastic boosters and built the nucleus of the present Savage hotel. Silas and Henry Jepson built a store room on the west corner of the block, which is now occupied by Wm. Michener’s hardware store. Here they sold groceries, while Henry was postmaster and supplied the people with mail from a little corner. Some time later Brown & Jepson, the latter a crippled son of Henry, occupied the east side of the room with a stock of drugs. Several smaller buildings in between these imposing structures at that time housed other mercantile establishments. In the building across the street from Miss Stuart’s residence, now occupied as a dwelling, Gill & Bingham conducted a general store. This firm later became Miles, Townsend & Gill—L. J. Miles and Charles Townsend I well remember but Mr. Gill has escaped me. Within a short time the firm became Miles & Townsend and the stock was moved to the east room of the hotel building. Lester “Ted” Edmundson became a partner, making the title read Townsend, Edmundson & CO. About this time Mr. Miles was made an Indian agent in Indian territory and abandoned mercantile pursuits for official life. My recollection is that this was the original stock of Joseph Steer but in this I may be wrong. However I recall that a building formerly on the side hill was moved to the corner opposite the Citizen’s bank, remodeled, and occupied for a number of years by the stock of Townsend, Emundson & Co. Mr. Townsend was mayor of the town for a number of years. After these gentlemen had made their fortunes, Hon. Elwood Macy organized a stock company and operated the People’s Store therein for some time. I think C. H. Hathaway was the next in line, gathering enough filthy lucre to support him in affluence in New York. Albin & Douglas came next in the succession.
A great event in the history of the town soon after the advent of the railroad was the erection on the east side of the track of what was spoken of as a “mammoth” store by Clarkson and William Penrose. It was one story high, 75 feet long and 20 feet wide. This store was a landmark for many years under its founders and successors until destroyed by fire some years ago. Uncle Clarkson was one of the solid and substantial citizens of the town and for many years sat as “head of the meeting” in the old Friends church. He recently passed to his reward at a ripe old age in Pasadena, Calif.
George Boone also moved his furniture store from the side hill into the flat about half way to the railroad and Bean & Son moved their hardware store to the corner where the Citizens Bank now stands, added a story and fitted it up for a public hall. Here the people were regaled with political speeches, negro minstrels and similar performances. On the second floor of the State Bank on the opposite corner was also a small hall which afforded a meeting place for public affairs. Dr. W. H. Walker, D. D.S., had a little alcove at the head of the stairs. There was another little hall on the east side of Downey street, near the creek, which I think was maintained by the I.O.G.T., where public entertainments were sometimes held. I recall that I saw the drama “Ten Nights in a Barroom” put on there on one occasion with the late M.V.B. Butler as the star.
I wonder how many people remember the “daguerreotype gallery” operated by William Miles just west of Newt Butler’s place of business on the site of the oil station. Before the days of the railroad I accompanied my grandparents thereto one day and they had their pictures taken. William anchored them in chairs, side by side and then fastened an iron contraption, similar to a radio headpiece, to the back of their heads, which was attached to an iron rod reaching to the floor. I presume this was to enable them to smile and look pleasant. It was a time exposure—fifteen minutes it seems at this late day, but they got a good picture, which I still have. William was quite the gardener and also had a bunch of bees on a plot of ground where the M.E. church now stands.
How many of my readers will recall the brick yard which existed for a time on the west side of the track near the grove? Do you remember the great excitement produced in the little town when J. W. Rummells, town butcher, announced that he was about to establish a match factory in the village and exhibited samples of his experiments? He gave it up and subsequently removed to Nichols, where he amassed a small fortune raising the succulent watermelon and cabbage for the trade. It was several years later when Dr. John I. Bailey put in the first telephone in Cedar county reaching from his office to Mather Bros. store at Springdale. It occasioned as much talk as Community Club meeting does now and some people positively pronounced it a hoax. Uncle Wm. Mather, now enjoying a serene old age in Tipton, then operating the store at Springdale, tells me it was of incalculable convenience to him, as he could call up the doctor and ascertain if there was any freight at the depot for the store.
