MUSCATINE COUNTY IOWA HISTORY

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Picture: Harry Nicolaus Birthday Party – Courtesy of Mrs. Harry Nicolaus
The party was held in the yard in front of the home of Mr. and Mrs. George Nicolaus at the corner of Cedar and Fifth Streets. In 1908 this house was moved to a lot next to the railroad tracks on Chestnut Street where it still stands. George Nicolaus built a large new home on his original lot. Harry Nicolaus is the boy in the center of the picture. Ladies in the background are Clara Holzhauer, Elizabeth Holzhauer, Mrs. George Nicolaus and (on porch) Miss McSwiggin. Among the guests are Frank Bacon, Irma Wildasin, Maude Marshall, Ella Bannick, Nellie McAully, Edna Smith and Biddy McCartney.

Recollection of Wilton and Vicinity
By Warren Wilkerson

Transcribed by Elizabeth Casillas, April 7, 2015

    Warren Wilkerson was born in the Sharon School District, Sugar Creek Township, Cedar County, Iowa on September 22, 1893. He moved to Wilton with his parents in 1908 and lived with them until 1926. After that he was in Wilton for many vacations and later had his own home there. With this background, he presents the following recollections.

     Many of the important advancements in the lives of the people of Wilton and surrounding area had their beginning in the years between 1900 and 1926. In 1900 there were no cars or paved roads. All local travel was made on foot or by horse drawn conveyance. Every rural family and many town families owned a horse or horses and some form of vehicle. In the early 1900’s, the teams of ponies owned by Harry Schafnit, Earl Whitmer and Frank Bacon and the spotted Arabian horse used by Lamp’s Store to draw the store’s delivery wagon were well known and the buggy used by Grace and Margaret Woodhouse with the front seat facing forward and the back seat facing the rear was a beautiful rig. Wagons were used for hauling farm produce and other material.

     Long distance traveling and freight hauling was done by train. There were at least three passenger trains in each direction every day on the main line and in addition there was a branch line to Muscatine which made three round trip runs per day during the week with a special evening run when there was an unusual performance in Muscatine which Wilton residents wished to attend. There were a number of freight trains every day and some through passenger trains which did not stop. There were several full time employees at the station.

     As accurately as can be remembered, the first car in the …

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Picture: Panorama view of Wilton about 1901 – Courtesy of Paul Maurer

…neighborhood was owned by Grove Hill. It was a steam engine powered car which resembled a buggy. The engine was under the seat and the wood fuel in the rear. This was about the year 1904. Dr. Mason and George Rick each owned a two cylinder gasoline engine powered car about 1906 or 1907. Frank King owned a “Winton Six” car about 1910. In 1909 or 1910, a group of Wilton men each purchased a “Velie” car from the Wacker Implement Company. Following this, there appeared in increasing numbers such cars as the Chevrolet, Ford, Oldsmobile, Overland, etc . and by 1914 there were probably one hundred cars in Wilton. The early cars had to be cranked to start the engine and the headlights were carbide lamps in all cars except the Ford which had a magneto on the flywheel which generated electricity for the lights. In the Ford, the faster the engine ran, the brighter the light and when the engine stopped the lights went out. During this period, the lead storage battery and the self starter for cars were introduced.

     The first or one of the first stretches of rural highway pavement in the state of Iowa was the half mile of pavement covering the sandy approach to the old Cedar River bridge in Moscow on the River to River road. This was probably between 1912 and 1915. A few city blocks in Wilton were paved in the twenties but paving through Wilton did not occur until the thirties. Paving, however, was going on during this time in various parts of the state and was to continue to expand.

     By 1925, many residents in Wilton owned cars, but there were a considerable number of families without cars and the wagon continued to be the chief conveyance for hauling. With rapid rate of increase in the number of cars, however, and with the introduction of trucks as a means of hauling, it was clear that there would be a continuing decrease in the use of horses and railroads.

     Telephones were first installed in rural areas around Wilton about 1902 although the town had them several years before. A group of 20 to 30 farmers formed a rural telephone company. The group set the poles and strung the wire under the direction of the telephone company with which it had a contract. The company then installed the phones. Each telephone contained batteries for power and a magneto which was cranked to ring the bell. When one telephone rang, all telephones on the line rang and it was common practice when the telephones rang to listen in on the conversation. Calling a member was by a series of long and short rings since each member was assigned a series of rings. One long ring called central when a member wanted to call someone on another line. Five long rings was a general ring alerting all members on the line for a special announcement such as a sale or meeting. Within a few years the rural companies subdivided into small groups of about twelve. From this beginning,…

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Picture: Home of J. H. Wacker – Courtesy of A. Wacker Family
Left to right: Art Wacker (on hobby horse), Mary, J. H. Wacker, Herbert Wacker and Mrs. Wacker.

…telephone service was to continually expand and improve.

     The first airplane flight was made by the Wright brothers in 1903. For the next few years, planes were improved and were used for exhibition flying. About 1911 or 1912 a pilot came to the Wilton Fair to give a demonstration of flying. Using the race track as a runway, he came down the track. As the people in the grandstand watched, it appeared he would not leave the ground. As he neared the rail around the track, the plane slowly rose from the ground, glided over the fences and sank into a cornfield outside the fairgrounds. Although the flight was a failure it was the forerunner of success. World War I gave a great impetus to the development of flying. A local young man, Clifford Bacon won his commission as a flyer during that war. Not too long after World War I, airmail service was started and Perry Nelson of Wilton was one of the early airmail pilots.

     The United States participation in World War I occurred during 1917 and 1918 and brought with it the military draft, rationing of food and other products, bond sales rallies, etc. Probably between one hundred and two hundred men from the Wilton Community served in the military forces. Following the war, the Wilton Post of the American Legion was formed. Only about one dozen World War I veterans from the Wilton area are still living.

     Wilton had its own electric plant, located on the site of the present city hall and fire station. The city water station was also located there. The plant was operated by a coal fired steam engine. There was little, if any, electric powered machinery used in the early days and the chief use of electricity was for lighting. If the author remembers correctly, street lights were turned off at 11 p.m. Rural areas depended upon kerosene lamps for lighting. Usually the lamps were set on tables, but occasionally one with a reflecting mirror back of it was mounted on a rotating bracket in a doorway so that it could be turned to reflect light in a room on either side of the doorway. Cleaning the lamp chimneys was an added chore in the household.

     Home radio was introduced in the early years of the century. The first radio was a crystal set consisting in its simplest form of a coil of wire wound on an oatmeal box with a slide to move along the coil to vary the number of turns of wire and tune in the signal; a cat whisker…

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Picture: The Barewald Harness Shop before 19000 – Courtesy of Ina Barewald
Advertisement in the 1897 Wilton fair book reads, “A.H. Barewald, Wilton Junction, Iowa. Headquarters for fur coats, blankets. Manufacture harness and sell all needed supplies for the horse. Two doors south of postoffice.”

…to adjust to a sensitive spot on a galena crystal to detect the signal, and a pair of headphones to make the signal audible. Within a few years, one to five tube battery operated sets were available. These were either factory or homemade sets. Between the years 1910 to 1925 kits and parts were readily and cheaply available. One of the interesting homemade sets was one with a glass front panel so that one could see the neat wiring, the movie variometer and condensers and the lighted tubes when in operation. A favorite activity was to see how many stations one could tune in during an evening. Forty to fifty stations was good. With the appearance of A.C. powered sets about 1925, battery powered and homemade sets rapidly disappeared.

     The first motion picture theatre was started in Wilton sometime before 1910 by Grove Hill. It was known as the Nickelodean. The show consisted of three fifteen minute reels. The theatre had only one projector so that between reels there was an intermission for rewinding one reel and threading another. During the intermissions and during the showing of the picture, a local pianist played the piano. During the picture, the pianist tried as far as possible to fit the music to the picture. The pictures were silent films since sound movies did not appear until after 1925.

     The speaker for one of the first phonographs in this area about 1906 was a five foot brass horn about twelve inches in diameter at the large end suspended beneath a tripod and set in front of the reproducer. The next sets had large cone shaped metal horns about two feet in diameter with bright flowers painted on them. Soon, however, sets were built with cabinets to house the machine, the horn and in many cases the records. The two chief makes were the Victor Victrola with…

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Picture: Wilton Young People about 1900 – Courtesy off A. Wacker Family
These young folks had taken a train trip to Davenport for a day’s vacation.
Back row (left to right) – Louise Maurer, Clara Brammeier, Ed Maurer, Clara Maurer, Alma Brammeier.
Second row – Minnie Blunk, Edna Maurer Hilda Maurer, Elizabeth Wacker, girl from Kentucky.
Front row – Marie Blunk, Amelia Grunder.

…disc records and the Edison Gramophone with cylindrical records.

     The work week in the Wilton Community between 1920 and 1925 consisted of a 10-hour day six days per week with no extra pay or overtime. Wages for labor at the first of the period were $1.00 to $1.50 per day, at the middle of the period $2.00 to $2.50 per day and at the end of the period $3.00 to $3.50 and perhaps $4.00 per day. There was little or no manufacturing in Wilton and most work was farm work, construction, maintenance and service work. A limited number of jobs in clerking, dressmaking and bookkeeping were available to women. Housework was usually available. The principal work for women was school teaching. Rural school teachers received about $20 to $40 per month in the first part of the period and by 1920 or a little later a minimum of $52.50 per month as set by a state minimum wage law for teachers with a first grade county certificate. Salaries in town were somewhat higher.

     Since money was not plentiful families used various ways to do things for themselves to save money or in some cases to make extra money. Gardens to furnish vegetable and fruit trees to furnish fruits were evident everywhere. Almost all farm families kept a cow or cows to furnish milk, cream and butter, poultry to furnish eggs and meat and hogs and cattle to furnish fresh meat in winter and cured hams in summer. To supply fresh meat in summer the butcher in Wilton sent a covered wagon with ice cooled meat out to the rural areas. The writer as a small boy obtained many a piece of bologna from the butcher as a reward for reciting poetry to him. Many farm wives raised chickens and churned butter in a hand operated churn and sold the butter and eggs to the stores in Wilton or to private parties. Families in Wilton had gardens and many kept chickens and a cow. The cow was kept in a shed at the home in winter and often in a rented pasture in summer. The owner of the bakery in Wilton kept his…

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Picture: Neighbors Help Husk Corn 1909 – Courtesy of Blanche Kelley
When Jake Lenker was ill with the typhoid fever his neighbors picked his corn.
Left to right – L.A. Grunder, Nate House, ?, James Chasteen, Alfred Marolf, John Bolley, John Hemping, Milt Lenker, Dan Dwyer, Frank L. Duffe, Peter Wacker, Milt House, George Valet, Frank Beard. Boys on wagon – Howard Lenker, Jake Duffe, Raymond Duffe, Clarence Lenker.

…milk cow for several summers in a pasture north of the Lutheran Church. He used to bring a tub of day old bread to the pasture for his cow to eat, while he milked. The author of this article always thought that his cream colored cow was a bit lighter colored and smelled like yeast as a result of eating bread every day. For a time in Wilton, some residents made a little extra money by sewing buttons on cards for the button factories in Muscatine.

     Refrigeration was a problem in those days. Basements were used to store perishable foods but they were not satisfactory because they were not cool enough. In a few localities springs were available for cooling. Ice cooled refrigerators were fairly satisfactory, but refrigeration remained a problem since the electric refrigerator had not been perfected. Canning and drying were two methods of preserving food.

     Sewers were not installed in Wilton until sometime between 1910 and 1915. Before that time, most homes had to depend upon outdoor toilets. A few homes used septic tanks for sewage disposal. After the installation of sewers and with additions to the system, outdoor toilets rapidly disappeared to be replaced with modern bathrooms.

     During most of the period between 1900 and 1925 there were five medical doctors in Wilton. They made house calls both in town and in the country. Before 1915, horse and buggy was used for making house calls and after this time, the car was used except when mud or snow prevented it. The doctor either kept his horse at the livery barn or rented a horse and buggy from the barn. The attendants cared for the horses and readied them for calls. A young man from the livery barn frequently drove so that the doctor could relax during the trip. The young man sometimes assisted the doctor with his work.

     The area surrounding Wilton was dotted with rural schools. Before 1912, the school year in many of these schools consisted of a fall term of 2 months, a winter term of 4 months and a spring term of 2 months. The younger students attended all three terms but many of the older…

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Picture: Good Neighbors 1909 – Courtesy of Blanche Kelley
The women prepared the food while the men picked the corn for their ill neighbor, Jake Lenker.
Left to right (on load of corn) Thomas Tutle, Rev. J.W. Bechtel, pastor, Henry Wildasin.
Row of women – Jane Beard, Della Martin, Delilah Lenker, Mrs. Henry Wildasin, Lucy Wildasin, Mrs. Bechtel, Mrs. George Valet, Lillie Duffe, Mrs. James Chasteen, Mrs. Thomas Tuttle holding baby, Mrs. Creitz
Children in front row – Gladys Duffe, Ava Duffe, Lillian Duffe, Howard Lenker, Jacob Duffe, Raymond Duffe, Nevin Duffe, Clarence Lenker.

…students attended only the winter term since they were needed to work on the farm in spring and fall. Few of the students attended high school and those who attended the winter term continued to study Geography, Grammar, Arithmetic and History and if the teacher was qualified, some of them studied Algebra or Bookkeeping. The teacher taught all grades. The same teacher frequently taught all terms of the year and even year after year, but in many cases the teacher was changed at the beginning of each term. The stories and poems in the readers were selected with the belief that their content would instill in the minds of students principles of honesty, punctuality, industry, right and wrong, etc. For example, the writer will not throw away a string of any length as a result of reading the story “Two Strings for Your Bow” in his grade school reader. Some of the songs sung in the rural schools were war songs of the Civil War. They were believed to develop patriotism in the minds of students. The libraries in the rural schools consisted of just a few books and it was common for a student to read his or her favorites over and over. Since relatively few students attended High School prior to about 1910, there was no method of promoting students to High School. The passport to high school from the rural school was an interview with the school superintendent at Wilton and his approval for acceptance in high school. As more and more rural students were attending high school, a plan was formulated under which the county superintendent of schools conducted 8th grade examinations and held 8th grade…

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…graduation exercise. Between 1900 and 1925 rural students attending high school provided their own transportation. Various factors later brought about consolidation of the schools and transportation of all rural students. Games played in the rural schools included hide and seek, drop the handkerchief, duck on rock, leap frog, shinny, crack the whip, dominoes, spelldowns, etc.

     In the early years of the century, the Wilton school consisted of one three story building with four rooms on each side of the first and second floors and one large room on the third floor containing a stage and a basketball floor. One of the outside walls was the out of bounds for the basketball floor. The ceiling was probably twelve feet high and there were two posts on the floor about 3 feet from the side of the floor and about twelve feet from the baskets. One of the Wilton players practiced dribbling down the floor, hooking one arm about the post and shooting for the basket with the other hand. Two of the rooms on the second floor were reserved for grades 9 to 12, freshmen and sophomores occupying one room and juniors and seniors the other room. The other six rooms were for the eight grades below high school which meant that two grades were in one room or a grade divided and each part shared with another grade. The lower grades had a 15 minute recess in the morning and a 15 minute recess in the afternoon. The high school also had these recesses. In the high school, when the freshmen and juniors were having class the sophomores and seniors had study periods in the same room and vice versa. There were eight class periods during the day and in the two rooms it was possible to have a total of sixteen classes per day. There was also a small room next to the superintendent’s office in which it was possible to hold several small classes. As nearly as can be recalled the curriculum consisted of 4 years of English, 3 years of Latin and one year each Algebra, Geometry, Ancient and Modern History, Physical and Commercial Geography, Physiology, Botany, Civics, Commercial Law, Economics, Advanced Arithmetic, Reviews, and Physics. The superintendent taught several classes and there were two other faculty members in high school. The art teacher and the music teacher from the grades spent one hour per week with the high school students in a general assembly. The student body was divided into three groups and each group sponsored three assembly programs during the year. Each student was required to appear on at least one program per year. Until 1913, the program for graduation exercises consisted of orations, written and delivered by the graduating seniors.

     The Board of Education was very conservative in spending money. As a result, teachers’ wages were low, and equipment and supplies were very meager. When the woodwork was repainted in about 1908, it was said that one member of the Board remarked that the woodwork was painted a dark maroon because that color wouldn’t show dirt so readily or need repainting so often. One older citizen once remarked that the total cost of operating the school in 1910 was much less than the cost of operating and maintaining the buses in 1975. As nearly as can be recalled, the school was reorganized in 1915 into a junior-senior high school setup. An addition was made to the building, the curriculum was greatly expanded; the faculty was increased and wages were raised. This was the beginning in the expansion and…

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…gradual improvement in the Wilton School system.

     The saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” did not apply to the Wilton Community during the first quarter of the century. The rural schools were the center of a number of activities. There was frequently a picnic at the school on the last day of the school year. Members of a school district often organized a literary society to put on programs at the school or at private homes during the winter months. Parties at homes were a common occurrence in the rural districts. The writer of these recollections remembers that he recited the poem “Seein’ Things at Night” at a Fourth of July picnic in the Park Walton timber when he was six years old. One year, a group from Moscow under the direction of Mart Slater presented the play “Saved by a Woodman” in Moscow and in several rural schools in the area. Box socials were popular as a means of raising money for community needs. The churches also contributed to the activities in this community. In addition to their regular services, they presented a program on Christmas Eve; on Easter Sunday and on Children’s Day. The Christmas program was highlighted by a large Christmas tree adorned with hundreds of lighted candles (a very dangerous procedure), and by the passing out of treats to all the children of the church. The programs were presented by the children under the direction of the Sunday School teachers. The churches had young people’s societies which might conduct ice cream socials and other activities. The women conducted Thanksgiving dinners and Easter dinners as a means of making money. One of the churches usually provided the dinner for the Junior-Senior banquet. One of the churches was the location for the baccalaureate sermon and for high school graduation exercises.

     The public school had a basketball team and in 1911, its team was selected as one of the four teams from the state to play in the state basketball tournament. The school was represented in dual, district and state track meets at various times. Its representatives did well in district and state oratorical contests. It had a baseball team which played neighboring schools during the spring months. The junior class of the high school gave a play once a year and used the proceeds to give a banquet for the senior class and to leave some gift to the school. The high school held the annual graduation exercises for its graduating class.

     Between 1900 and 1913, the town was represented by a semi-pro baseball team which carried out a schedule during the summer months. On one occasion, the team played a team of girls called the “Bloomer Girls.” Some of the older women of the town were horrified that a team of indecent girls in bloomers would be allowed to play against men. Sometime between the late teens and early twenties, Dr. Mason organized a baseball league of boys between 11 years and 15 years of age in Wilton and neighboring towns and for several years, a regular schedule of games was carried out. The boys were well trained and effectively carried out double-steals, hit and run plays, bunting, etc.

     Horseshoe pitching behind the Miller Shoe Store was a valuable activity for some of the older men. Those men were experts at horseshoe pitching and it was not uncommon to see three or four ringers on the peg at one time. One of the players held the shoe with the open end…

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…forward and tossed it so that the open end remained forward to glide onto the pin. Another tossed the shoe so that it made one horizontal turn on its way to the pin.

     Bobsled and hayrack rides were common.

     During a number of years a Chautauqua was held in a large tent on the school grounds. It was arranged by a group of interested citizens and consisted of a series of afternoon and evening programs including lectures, musical concerts, plays, magician shows, etc. It lasted for one week and usually was staged during August.

     A traveling troupe such as the “Morgan Brothers” might present a series of plays for a week in the fall. Since the actors played a different part each night, they did not always fit the part for which they were selected. It is recalled that on one occasion the part of “Topsy” in Uncle Tom’s Cabin was played by a six foot character.

     The three day Wilton Fair was held on the old fairgrounds in Northeast Wilton during September. It consisted of displays of farm machinery; showing for prizes of farm animals and farm produce, canned and baked goods, quilts and other craft work and samples of school work. Horse racing, band concerts, concession stands and special events were part of the fair.

     Wilton had a good band. It played at surrounding fairs and on one occasion gave a concert over radio station WOC. But its chief function was to give a Saturday evening concert during the summer months. On these Saturdays farm and city families gathered on the downtown streets of Wilton to shop, visit, walk up and down the streets, attend the motion picture theatre or frequent the Candy Kitchen or drug stores for sodas, sundaes, etc.

     During the years covered by these recollections, hunting and fishing were much enjoyed by many in the area.

     In the teens, an attempt was made to reopen the old Wilton College and to start a factory for manufacturing arc street lights but after two or three years, these failed and ended by the old college being converted into apartments and the arc-light factory being dismantled.

     Since most of the buying was done locally during the first quarter of the century, Wilton was favored with a plentiful supply of stores and businesses. There were four combination dry goods – grocery stores, one grocery store, three banks, a hotel, a restaurant, a pool hall, two livery barns, a cheese factory, two shoe stores, two clothing stores, two barber shops, a furniture and undertaking store, a hardware store, two lawyers, after 1913 several garages, one or two weekly newspapers, two lumber yards, a cigar factory, two plumbing and pump stores, the Candy Kitchen, a light plant, five doctors, one implement company, two veterinarians, three or four building contractors, two blacksmiths, two drug stores, two piano teachers, one night watchman, one street commissioner, etc. Some of these had disappeared by 1925 and as more and more shopping was done in neighboring cities, there was to be a gradual decrease in the number of businesses, etc. until a balance was reached and has been maintained.

     These recollections cannot be concluded without making some…

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    This page sponsored by the Edward Brown family.

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…general observations. Life in that period was relatively simple without the complexity of a multitude of taxes and regulations. The standards of conduct and discipline were high. The citizen had much less than he has in 1976, but appreciated more what he did have. Waste was the exception rather than the rule. There was loyalty to the community, trust in each other, faith in the government and its leaders and a belief that “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” The young person of the day did not realize that the community and nation was on the fringe of the greatest technical progress, commercialization and material advances that the world has ever known.

    The author of this article will close with this question: In 1976, the Bicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, would it not be well if the people and leaders of the nation were to reexamine life in the early part of the century and, if possible, take appropriate action to restore some of the virtues of those years, without giving up the advancements which have the potential of making this the happiest nation which has ever existed on this earth?

Picture: Workers at the Warner Arc Lamp Factory – 1916 – Courtesy of Melroy Thede
Back row (left to right) Rudolph Schroeder, ? , Foxy Winsell, Melroy Thede, Norman Abbott, Ernest Nolte, Roy Kelley, Art Kelley, ?.
Front row – John Latchaw, Carl Schroeder, ? Smith, Frank Weatherly, Elmer Maurer, Kenneth Stodgel, Leo Hart and George Kanoff.