C. E. Eacrett of Malvern, in passing through Wall Street Friday afternoon on his way home from Silver City met the writer and began a commentory on the beauty and picturesque appearance of the place:
its wooded hills, its verdant vales and silvery streams, devoting several moments to asking questions as to its boundries, etc. Mr. Eacrett said, with a smile "Why was it called Wall Street?"
As that same query has been asked the writer several times, we feel the time has come when this question must be answered, and thereby hangs a tale.
When the writer first saw this place it was no bigger than your back yard. It had on its swaddling clothes and its christening lay far in future. Surrounded with a dense forest that covered the mile square of section six,
with here and there a few cleared acres covered with verdure, foot prints of the Mormon Exodus to Utah years before, it presented a wild tangled growth of wood, vines and bushes, with an occasional lonely wagon road or a briddle
path that led either to Patrick's Mill, the southwest corner, or the home of William G. Wiatt, near the northeast corner, and to the prairie in other directions.
As the prairie country settled up, they soon saw they needed wood, posts, etc., and they came over to section six and bought small timber tracts from two to ten acres until nearly the whole section was owned by foreign residents. As these small tracts were chopped off, the ones caring nothing for the land, sold it to any one who had the price, and as a natural consequence was bought up by men of small means and very large families, who, by the most rigid economy and wit, managed to eke out a precarious existence.
It was right here expansion had its birth. As wood lot after wood lot went down before the axe, settlers flocking in until at one time there were 17 families living on this section, and all of them had great expectations. When the conversation turned to finance or trade, they spoke in millions and thought in continents, and could demonstrate to the satisfaction of the most exacting critic the amount of money to be made in Real Estate, corn and stock - all this while there was no bread in the house and the children going barefoot.
About this time rugged old Ben Tillman of South Carolina was prodding his fork into the animals down Wall Street way, New York, with such persistent vigor as to attract the attention of the whole country, and finally it reached the ears of nearby residents of this locality who had for a long time been watching the "doins'" on Section Six were immediately struck with the incongruity of the comparison, and pointing this way, said: "Wall Street," and the name has stuck.
Filled with pride and ambition to shine, as the news of the christening reached the town, leading citizens announced an election to be held, and a mayor and aldermen were duly installed. Under the rule of these officials, a system of annexation was set up that has astonished the world. In less than two years, sections 5, 7, 8 and 9 were added to this growing prodigy. They crossed Silver Creek into Center township and swallowed Patricks Burg and the adjacent hill country at one gulp, went north to Silver City, and south as far as Centerline, and east to the Nishnabotna covering an area of territory where five hundred thousand souls might tread the walks of a great city.
Today, with no limit in their minds, these greedy products of 20th century civilization are whispering in their private council of extending their boundaries from the British possessions to Yucatan, and from Coney Island to Cape Mendacino thus demonstrating the old adage "The more a man has, the more he wants."
Social life in this town has been an interesting study - a great field for the psychologist. All the pent up emotions of the human soul with the lusts of the flesh have found vent and have been given expression held at one time and another. The crimes of White Chapel; the feuds of the tenderloin and the blood of the mining camp cry out of the ground. In the language of one who knew, "They have keerds (cards) and they played 'em, they had dogs and they fit 'em, they had guns and they shot 'em." But here and there a few human finger boards, salt of the earth, stood like pillars of rock with uplifted finger pointing to better things.
In the almost 24 years of continous residence in this place, the writer has bidden adieu to a number of old friends and neighbors who were persuaded to make their future home at Ft. Madison and Anamosa (prisons), others departed in a halo of gunpowder and lead, while not a few tender-heearted souls, who could not bear the strain of parting adieus and fond farewells, stole away in the silent watches of the night and sent for their things when it suited them best, thus leaving foot prints on the sands of time.
In order to forestall some future historian, who, with rude and unfeeling hand might reflect discredit on the character of the inhabitants during its eventful and illustrious career, we in this brief historical sketch present the chronicle of Section Six to a magnanamous and syympathetic public, trusting that they to our faults may be a little blind.
Contributed by Deb Hascall
