The
The
townships first permanent settlers came when Seneca was part of
The
first of the three, freezing deaths to occur in the township was that of 14
year old, Manning Kinney (1852-1867), son of the George W. Kinney’s who lived
in Section 14, presently known as the Verl Smith Place. 1867 had been a very severe winter and
provisions were scarce, being obtainable no nearer that Algona. The Kinneys were living principally on
potatoes and corn flour, which they ground in a coffee grinder. When the coffee grinder broke, young Manning
was sent with it to the nearest settlement (Black Cat area north of Algona) to
try to get it repaired. With the extreme
cold and deep snow, added to his under-nourished condition, he fell victim to
freezing before he reached his home. He is buried in
In
1870 Peter Eckholm came to the Seneca area on the first train into Algona and
homesteaded Section 10 E ½ of SW ¼ and W ½ of SE ¼, what we know as the old
Bollig Place, west of Jim Breese. In the
1880’s John and William Klein and Thomas Fitzimmons drove their cattle on foot
from
Charles
O. Fish (1840-1909) and wife (Lucy 1844-1935) and daughter had settled on the
southeast corner of the southwest quarter-section of Section 8. They
homesteaded there in 1868. However, in a
couple of years it was decided that the road crossing the section from east to
west would follow the half-mile line instead of the south line of Section 8,
since the crookedness of the rivers course would have necessitated building
three bridges had the section line been followed. Accordingly the Fishes moved their building
site to the north edge of the southwest quarter of section 8 and in 1870 they
deeded a tract on that quarter to be used by the township as a cemetery. There was to be no charge for lots and the
place was to be kept up by taxation. Mr.
Fishes’ only stipulation being that he be given the choice of two burial lots
for him and his family. This was done.
The
tract was surveyed by C.W.Tellier, a qualified surveyor who at one time taught
the Fish school. The first burial (1871)
was that of a young girl, Delilah Coffin, whose parents lived on Section 9 NW ¼
(presently the Elvin Godfredson place).
That plot is just inside the gate and to the right (west). Soon afterward, R.I.Brayton had the bodies of
his dead children exhumed from their first burial place just east of the river,
and they were buried near the Coffin and Fish lots. (So far as I know, no other removals from the
first site were made, and in the 1940’s, when it had been forgotten that the
place had ever been used for burials, the county opened it up as a large gravel
pit (Section 8 E ½ of NW 1/4) and it was excavated and used for road building.)
At
one time three churches served the people of
In
later years, as residents of the township decided to move to Armstrong and
Bancroft, several bodies were exhumed from the present cemetery. First was that of Rev. O.(Ozias)A.
Littlefield, a pioneer pastor and missionary who after years of work in
Wisconsin, Illinois, eastern Iowa and Winnebago County, had moved to Seneca
Township Section 16 NW ¼ (presently the William (Bill) Loss Place) in 1869,
when he was in his late 60’s. He founded
a little church at the township and no doubt conducted the funerals of the
earlier of the burials in the present cemetery.
He died in 1884 and his wife later moved to Bancroft and became
postmaster. In 1896 she died and left a
request that Rev. Littlefield’s remains be moved to
Later
exhumations were those of several members of the Carroll family, re-buried in the
Armstrong, Iowa cemetery, and of two brothers, Phillip Victor Eckholm and
Conrad, sons of the Victor Eckholm family who had settled, in 1870 in Section
10 E ½ of SE ¼ (presently west of Jim Breese; the old Bollig Place) northeast
of the later site of Seneca Village.
Their bodies were moved to
There
probably were never more than 100 burials in the
As
aforementioned, Delilah Coffin’s was the oldest grave, but that of the oldest
person is found in the far northwest corner of the tract, the stone giving the
name of Joshua Cunningham and his date of birth, 1792!! George Washington was still living when Mr.
Cunningham was born! The Cunningham family,
originated from
In
1870 and 1871, mail was brought to the settlers twice a week from Algona. Prior to this time, it was brought by
stagecoach, driven by Robert Pinkerton of Algona, who also carried passengers
to
It
is difficult for us to visualize today why this little cemetery was used by
families from what, in horse-and-buggy days, represented a journey several hours. The tombstones bear family names from the
areas that later became Bancroft, Armstrong, Fenton, Lone Rock, and Burt and
even beyond. Consider however, that in
the early years of settlement in
Bancroft
and Burt were founded in 1881,
For
those buried in the cemetery, it was sometimes necessary to supply a homemade
coffin, if the river was too high to permit going to Algona for one. Grandfather Fish made most of these, and
Grandmother acted as nurse and midwife for many a family and helped lay out the
dead. Of the twenty or so unmarked
graves, she knew the exact location of every one, and planted dwarf irises on
each. Some did have homemade wooden
markers until an over-zealous sexton got the idea of burning off the
grass…this, of course, spelled “finis” for the wooden markers. In 1878 the
Fish’s lived Section 8 SW 1/4 , in 1880 they moved to the presently vacant
place across from Mark Bollig’s and again later moved to what is known as the
Burt Place which is also vacant.
Burials
of members of earliest pioneers include those of Ormiston, Fish, Brayton,
(including those re-buried from the Section 8 SE ¼ site) also a Brayton daughter,
Mrs. Cora Kessell Drinan (Mrs. Jerry) and a Brayton grandson, Robert Campbell,
Jr., Charles O. and Lucy M. Fish, their son Walter, their daughter Edith
Tibbetts-Ranney and her son Irving Tibbetts and her infant daughter (unnamed)
Ranney. Warren Coffen was a veteran of
the Civil War who was honorably discharged after being lamed. He was an orderly to General Rosecrans and
the General’s horse stepped on Mr. Coffen’s foot. The Coffen’s lived in Section
9 NW ¼ in 1873 presently known as the
Mr. Warren D. Coffen (1883-1887), is a veteran
buried at Seneca, and Ed Paulsen (1874-1932), who served in World War I. Also the last burial, Jack Tibbetts served
in World War II. The Legion posts of the surrounding towns have never placed a
flag on these graves on Memorial Day.
As
to the existence of a cemetery plat…in the early years, there was a plat. It was kept at the home of William Kerr
(1844-1919), a township trustee who lived in Section 9 SE ¼ in 1892, north of
the
In
September of 1978 John A. Fish and Esther Smith went to the cemetery and spent
several hours mapping as many graves as they could definitely locate, using
their 1934 records. John crawled under
thick bushes, made rubbings of nearly illegible inscriptions on the stones. John tried to interest one of the trustees,
but with no success. He did, however,
place a copy in the court house, with the recorders or engineers office.
A few human interest stories concerning some
of the person buried in the
Among
the many Scandinavian immigrants who spent their first years in this country as
farm laborers was one who for weeks who had been expecting a letter from the
old country…supposedly one from his sweetheart, to let him know of her coming
to
The
last story concerns the burial of a mother of several children who died when
one of the little boys was only five or six years of age. The family was not able to afford a marker
and eventually moved out of the community.
Fifty years later, when Grandmother Fish was widowed and living in
Algona, a stranger come to the door seeking help with locating his mother’s
grave. It was the one-time little boy,
who now wished to find and mark his mother’s resting place. Grandmother Fish and her bachelor son Walter,
who at that time live on the old Fish place also known as the vacant Burt
place, went with the man to the cemetery.
Grandmother Fish pointed out the site of the grave, Uncle Walter probed
with wagon rods until it was certain, and the man purchased a nice granite
marker for the mother whom he had lost so many years before.
When
the elder Senecans get together, they usually discuss the creamery built in
1891. This creamery was destroyed by
fire a couple years later. The new on
built in 1896 was considered to be the second largest in the state. Besides the creamery, there was combination
blacksmith shop and livery stable. Seneca
being a central community meeting place, a general store was established by
D.C.
Seneca
began looking like a small village when John C. Jensen opened a second store on
the south side of the road. This store
then owned by Mike Haddy was destroyed by fire in the early 1920’s. Through the passing of the years, all of the
old landmarks have vanished.
A
total of nine schools were built throughout the township and were operated
until 1917 when Seneca Township voted to consolidate its schools. The
In
1953
The
The
consolidated school building which was erected in 1917 was torn down in
1963. The land on which the school
building stood for 46 years was sold to Gerald Voigt of Fenton. The present Robert Lynch Family home was the
home of the school faculty during those years.
The county bought the southwest corner of the school grounds where they
erected a county shed. This also served
as the
There are now six families living in the
little