Chapter 17, pages 133-139

While not strictly a ghost town since it was never platted and never laid claim to village status, the community of Peaceville just south of Malvern was once one of the county’s more active industrial centers, so deserves inclusion in a chronicle of this type. At its peak Peaceville had three prosperous industries, perhaps thirty houses and a school with sixty or more pupils enrolled. Today there is still an industry, the Kaiser Quarry, and one business enterprise, the Morgal Oil Company, and some twenty homes, mostly on small acreages.

Little is known of the start of the community. There was an outcropping of limestone along Silver Creek, near the site of the present quarry, and this furnished rock for foundations for many houses and farm buildings long before Malvern was platted. A half mile north of this Silver Creek flows over a strata of limestone, filled with fossils, suggesting that the area may have been at the bottom of a great sea. As the surface rock at the quarry site was utilized no more effort was made to remove the overburden to reach more of the material.

Paddock’s Brief History of Malvern records that in 1874 Dr. S.T. Brothers and H. McIntosh built a mill on Silver Creek at the old quarry site and some five years later sold this to F.M. Buffington. It had four run of stone and a capacity of one hundred bushels of grain a day. Evidently water power was used both to saw lumber, for which there was a great demand, and to grind wheat, corn, etc., for flour and meal.

A fire destroyed the mill a few years after Mr. Buffington purchased it, at a considerable loss to its owner and it was not rebuilt. Sometime after this the Malvern Roller Mills were established and these utilize steam power. They continue today, having survived various ownerships, and the main building is now part of the very productive Standard Chemical feed mill.

Early in the 1870’s the Malvern Brick & Tile Works were started in Peaceville by J.C. Cook and E.K. Kemple when what seemed to be an ample supply of suitable clay was discovered. The kilns and sheds and brick-making machinery were located about where the George Ross acreage now lies. A large excavation just west of the Douglas Conner farm home shows where much of the clay was mined. Production was good and in 1974 Mr. Kemple advertised in The Malvern Leader that he had 65,000 bricks for sale at $7.00 per thousand.

In 1888 Stone & Belden purchased the Works, Mr. Stone later acquiring full ownership, his son Fred taking over the business and continuing its operation until after the end of World War One. In its July 25, 1895, issue The Malvern Leader gave this account: “The Malvern Steam Brick & Tile Works used 35 carloads of coal (20 tons to a car) and 75 cords of wood to fire three immense kilns, each having a capacity of 150,000 bricks. There were 20,000 square feet of drying sheds where bricks are put after molding to dry until ready for the kiln. The machine making the bricks (stiff mud press) has a capacity of 35,000 bricks per day, operated by a 20-horsepower boiler and engine. Clay used is of excellent quality and apparently the supply is inexhaustible. The Works employes 14 men and has a weekly payroll of $150. The company plans to make 1,200,000 bricks during the year.”

The first buildings to be put up in most of the towns which sprang up along the tracks of the Burlington & Missouri River Railway in Mills County were of wood frame construction, with stone or brick foundations. Before the turn of the century many successful businesses had grown and needed larger accommodations. So there was strong demand for bricks and the Malvern Works at Peaceville had little difficulty selling all it could make.

It continued in full production until after World War One. Its original “inexhaustible” supply of clay “of excellent quality” was running out and neighboring landowners, where more might be minded, evidently weren’t willing to sell their land at a price sufficiently low to make the clay economically usable. The land boom which followed the big war sent prices sky-rocketing to $500 an acre – until the depression of 1921 quickly lowered the demand.

So while Fred Stone was managing the Brick Works the company decided to close down and another major industry was lost. But much of its product is still visible. The fine brick house on the Peaceville corner of Malvern’s Main Street, now owned by Mr. Ted McConkey and its brick barn were made of Malvern bricks. Across the street on the Duane Carlstedt acreage there used to be both a brick smoke house and a brick privy, unusual for this area despite being celebrated in folk songs and metaphors. There are two or three other brick houses in Peaceville, and the remains of the brick Foxworthy School. And most of the red brick buildings and houses in Malvern were made of brick from this source.

Nor were these the only industries in Peaceville. A fourth mile west of the Brick Works was the Malvern Nursery, located where the Frank Fay acreage now stands. This Peaceville enterprise was start by Thomas Bonham and Richard L. Hammond and they soon developed a remarkably large production, despite competition from another nursery a half mile north of Malvern on the land now owned by Mrs. Fred Colby. In 1884 The Leader reported that the Malvern Nursery had over one million tomato, sweet potato, celery and other plants for sale, as well as 47,000 apple trees (Mills County was a major fruit producing area then and had some six thousand acres of orchards) and 33,000 grape roots ready for buyers, as well as liberal supplies of currents, gooseberries, strawberries, etc.

Mr. Bonham died in 1890 and Mr. Hammond continued to operate the nursery himself until October 17, 1895, when, the newspaper reported, he “disposed of all of his saleable nursery stock to Harloust Bros. of Carson, who will make this place headquarters for the sale of the same next spring. The sale includes about 50,000 apple trees, besides a large number of cherry, plum, pear and peach trees and small fruit. This does not mean that Mr. Hammond will retire from the nursery business. On the contrary he will during the winter graft 100,000 young trees and by another season expects to engage more extensively in the business than ever.”

But eventually he did cease to engage in the nursery business although he kept an acreage in Peaceville for many years afterwards. There had been a serious drought in 1894 and this, no doubt, affected the nursery business the following year. In those days, because of wide fluctuations in prices, with good times occasionally interrupted by sharp depressions, both farming and business enterprises were particularly hazardous and owners were discouraged or even went bankrupt, with upsetting frequency. There seems to be no record of what happened to the Malvern Nursery after its early growth.

Southwest Iowa has, of course, an excellent climate and the land is rich and productive for this type of business, as is witnessed by the success of nurseries near Shenandoah and Hamburg. Perhaps better capitalization or more enterprising promotion and sales methods, such as others eventually used, would have proved successful here as well.

The Foxworthy rural district school served Peaceville until the 1940’s and, indeed, it was the central point around which the entire community grew. Among the original settlers in the vicinity were Joseph Foxworthy and Daniel Hargin. Mr. Paddock, the historian, reported that at a casual meeting of residents of the vicinity one day, some were objecting strenuously to one name that had been given to the community by an outside neighbor, perhaps derogatory to the general tranquility. Mr. John Dyson, who had a farm a few miles south, spoke up and said, “our name shall be Peaceville,” and this was thought to be appropriate for the little hamlet where harmony and goodwill had so long prevailed.

Other early-day residents of the community in addition to those named in the preceding paragraph include, John, Dick and Robert Hammond, S.W. Montgomery, John Williams, T. Hatfield, William Robinson, E.K. Kemple, Thos. Bonham, Tom Manahan, Mrs. Mary Wooding, Mr. Laing, William Van Doren and Joe Deardorff.

The Foxworthy School was established well before Malvern developed as a town and served as the school for the new village until it could arrange one for itself. In May, 1871, an election was held in Malvern to vote on the question of issuing bonds for a new school building in the amount of $3,000.00. This carried almost unanimously and the new building was ready for use by December 4, 1871, when the first session of the Malvern public school was held therein. It continued to serve the district until 1968. Prior to its construction Mr. Marshall Angel opened up a subscription school in a little shack on Fourth Avenue in Malvern, near the present Boehner Park.

But until the town’s public school was started, Foxworthy provided learning facilities for Malvern pupils as well as for Peaceville and the rest of the Foxworthy district. Even after the pupils from Malvern had their own school the Foxworthy School had a very heavy enrollment of pupils. In his Brief History of Malvern, Mr. Paddock listed the names of pupils there in 1872, the compilation having some sixty-six names. The Foxworthy district became a part of the Malvern Community School district when that was formed by reorganization in 1960. In its very early days residents were attracted to Peaceville by the availability of small acreages where persons of limited means could have almost self-sufficient home sites, raising the bulk of the food neede for their families, and perhaps obtaining fuel from woodlots on their own or nearby land. Today small acreages are again in demand and many like them for homes which combine the advantages of both town and rural living.