Old Settlers' Stories
by W. D. Shuttleworth Family
W. D. Shuttleworth (Will) was born in Fenimore, Wisconsin, in 1869. His parents came as bride and groom from Yorkshire, England. His mother Nancy Kayley, was born in the Black Horse Inn in Hellefield. His father Craven Shuttleworth, was born on a farm named Wenneber.
As the story was told, young Will cut one of his boots while chopping wood and was punished severely by his father. Will left home the next day and took the train to Sibley, Iowa, which was as far as his money would take him. He walked across the street and got a job in the Shell Lumber Company.
Blanche Sokol was born in Monmouth, Iowa, October 12, 1869. Her father, Francis Sokol, was born in Opochno, Bohemia, in 1841, and came to eastern Iowa with his parents when he was twelve years old. Her mother Anna Bezdichek, was born in Bohemia, in 1850 or 1851, and also came to eastern Iowa as a child. They were married in Baldwin, Jackson County, Iowa, on January 3, 1869. Francis Sokol had gone to California to look for gold as a young man. Later he served as the first mayor of the town of Onslow and served two terms in the Iowa State Legislature.
Blanche attended Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and graduated from the Iowa State Normal School in Cedar Falls in 1893, and went to Sibley to teach. She had to buy wood to heat her stove in the place where she lived. She bought her wood in very small quantities so she could go to the lumber yard often, because it was there that she met Will Shuttleworth.
Will moved to Ocheyedan some time later, but returned often to Sibley, where he visited his many friends, the newspaper reported. Blanche became known as "many friends". Blanche and Will were married on June 23, 1896, at her parents' home in Onslow, Iowa. They set up housekeeping in Ocheyedan, in the house Will built for his bride. This home still stands at the corner of 3rd and Poplar. Both of their children were born in this house, Frank on February 16, 1899, and Cravin on July 10, 1900. The boys both started school in Ocheyedan, and remembered sledding on the Mound as children.
Frank Shuttleworth was on the faculty at Yale University and later at the City College of New York. His daughter, Margaret Vernallis, lives in Los Angeles, California; daughter, Nancy Rust, in Seattle, Washington; and daughter, Carol Hake, in Los Altos Hills, California. There are twelve grandchildren of Frank and Beatrice Gates Shuttleworth and six great grandchildren.
Craven Shuttleworth was a member of the law firm, Grimm, Elliott, Shuttleworth & Ingersoll in Cedar Rapids. His son, William, is a member of that same firm, now called Shuttleworth & Ingersoll, P.C. Craven's daughter, Ann, is deceased. There are four grandchildren of Craven and Frances Royce Shuttleworth.
The Shuttleworth family moved to Sibley in 1909, when Will and his brother-in-law, George Sokol, purchased the Shell Lumber Company. Will continued to do business in Ocheyedan, but the family is probably best remembered there because of its ownership of the farm on the edge of town on which Ocheyedan Mound is located. Ownership of the Mound has been a source of pride and pleasure to the family ever since.
Shortly after the Mound farm was acquired, Iowa turned its attention to digging itself out of the mud and to paving the highways of the state. The family story is that the Mound, because of its large deposits of gravel, became literally a large "gold-mine" and many contractors approached Will, willing to pay substantial sums for excavation rights. Even though Will Shuttleworth was always hard-pressed for funds during this period, he and Blanche refused to sell and insisted that the Mound remain untouched and undisturbed (the depression at the top of the Mound reflects a taking that was done before the Shuttleworth family acquired the property). That this man who had run away from home and who was virtually without formal education had the foresight sixty years ago to recognize the value of and preserve the Mound for future generations is a marvel.
In about 1960, the then State Conservation Commission approached Craven Shuttleworth, asking that the Mound be dedicated to the State (Frank Shuttleworth had passed away in 1957?). The family had always intended that this ultimately be done, but Craven insisted that any deed contain a reverter clause that is the State ever disturbed the Mound in any way title would revert to the heirs. The State would not agree to such a clause and the matter remained in abeyance for some years. Craven died in 1965, and after his death the State Preserves Act was passed which provides strong mechanisms to ensure that lands and property given to the Preserves' system will always be maintained in their natural state.
In 1984, the then family owners of the Mound site submitted it to the State Preserves' System. Many from the Ocheyedan area attended the dedication ceremony on October 10, 1984, and Governor Branstad flew in to participate in the ceremony. Legal title to the Mound site and authority and responsibility for its day to day maintenance is now in the Osceola County Conservation Board, but such title is and will be in perpetuity subject to the stipulations contained in the State Preservation Board agreement. An ironic footnote to this take is that the gravel in the Mound is apparently no longer of commercial value, being too coarse for contemporary road-building purposes.
Any mention of Ocheyedan and the Shuttleworth family would be incomplete without reference to their long association with John and Ellen Stopsack. The Stopsacks occupied the Mound farm for over 40 years. In the eyes of the law they were tenants, but in fact they loved and cared for the Mound during that time as parents would love and care for their offspring.
-Transcribed by Roseanna Zehner