Many of the post offices and villages known to the citizens of Ringgold County in the 1870's disappeared entirely or were absorbed by newer towns that sprang up along the railroad when it entered the county. Some of these names -- Bozzaris, Clipper, Ingart Grove, Marena, Union Hill, Bloomington Marshall, Riley, and Polen -- were entirely unknown to many residents.

Read more about Ringgold County's Ghost Towns

When the Western Stagecoach Company stopped its service in 1870 the county was almost as isolated as it had been during the days of early settlement. The railroad which the people of the county had expected to continue across Ringgold County soon after it reached Leon in 1871 was not built any farther until 1879. During this period the county gained 700 in population, but life moved slowly.

When Mount Ayr was incorporated in 1875 it was the largest village in the county, with a population of 422. In the summer of 1872 many townspeople followed the village's first band to Afton, where the members received $100 for playing at the Fourth of July celebration. Later that year, the Pete BROTHERS' Leader Band was organized with ten pieces. Another evidence of growth was the establishement of a second newspaper, the Mount Ayr Journal, in 1873, C. C. BARTRUFF of Creston started the paper and ran it for ten years before he sold out. In the same year George R. STEPHENS bought a half interest in the Ringgold Record.

There was growth in other sections of the county at this time. Clipper was made a post office, with Harvey WAUGH the postmaster, at a salary of $6.80 for his first year. The hamlet did not grow, however, and the post office was abandoned in the 1880's. The Cross post office at Merritt Station, one of the former stagecoach stops, was moved two miles east to a neighborhood known as New Chicago, so named for a family from Chicago, Illinois, who lived there.

During the middle 1870's several businesses were opened at Mount Ayr. Lewis B. IMUS started the first barber shop, which the men of the village quickly welcomed. They no longer had to prop the kerosene lamp beside the mirror on an early winter morning and try to scrap off the stubble of the previous day's growth with doubtfully warm water. T. E. CORKHILL started the first town dairy. The cows were milked in the lot and the milk skimmed into a 20-gallon can. At Mount Ayr the can was placed on a two-wheeled cart drawn by a horse with a bell on his hames. The jangling of the bell warned the residents that the milkman was coming, and they ran out with their cans or pails to meet him.

Although the county had needed a jail for many years, the first one was not erected until 1876. This building, 18 by 20 feet, had two cells made of half-inch boiler plate with a flat tin roof. Previously prisoners had been housed in the jury room at the courthouse, or at the Creston jail in Union County.

Circumstantial evidence almost cost Herman POTTER his life in 1876. Dave ALDRICH, who lived north of what later was the site of Redding, left home on horseback without telling anyone where he was going. When he had not returned a week later, a posse went out for him. They found some of his clothing near Herman POTTER'S home and a pool of blood in the adjoining timber, and suspected that POTTER had murdered him. POTTER explained that his hogs were so wild he had to butcher them in the timber, and the result of butchering them was all they had found. But the posse would have hanged POTTER then and there, had not John D. CARTER pursuaded the men to let the law take its course, since the evidence against POTTER was only circumstantial. A few days later, when ALDRICH returned, everyone was glad that CARTER had prevented them from a rash deed.

People were disappointed when the railroad was not extended at once beyond Leon. The delay -- eight years -- may have been partly due to the Granger law enacted by the Iowa State Legislature in 1873, giving the Legislature the right to regulate freight and passenger rates in Iowa. The law divided railroad transportation into three classes, establishing rated for each class, both in passenger and freight service.

Freight rates were worked out according to a compliance divisional scale that did not allow the railroad to pay its own operating costs. A carload of lumber brought $33.00 for a two-hundred-mile trip. Merchandise traveled the same distance third class at thirty-six cents per hundred pounds. Even the New York Herald Tribune remarked that it was little wonder that immigrants passed Iowa by when it had a bill like the Granger law on its statute books. Railroad boxcars lay idle on the tracks, and some of the rail road equipment rusted from disues until the law was repealed in 1878, and the Railroad Commission set up to adjust grievances between the farmer and the railroad.

Shortly after the Granger law was repealed, a group in the county organized a stock company to build a narrow gauge railroad from Leon to Mount Ayr. In 1877 this company published a newspaper, The Headlight, to arouse intrest in the proposed railroad. It was succeeded by Onward, which was published until 1884.

There had been no Fourth of July celebration in Mount Ayr for a number of years and the citizens decided to stage a Grand Rally of the Veterans of the Civil War on the Fourth of July 1878. Soldiers in most of the townships met on June 15 and organized their veterans. Fifers and drummers from all over the county met with D. B. MARSHALL at Mount Ayr on July 3, and assisted the Mount Ayr band, which then was rated as one of the best in the State. The Taylor County Argus commented, "If any town in southwestern Iowa will have a grand time on the Fourth, Mount Ayr will have it." No one wanted to miss the celebration, and many attended from surrounding counties.

The soldiers started the day with reveille at sunrise and carried it through to sick call at 8 o'clock, grand mount at 9 company drill at 9:30, battalion drill at 11:30, skirmish drill at 2 p.m., and dress parade at 3 p.m.

All through the forenoon, crowds arrived on foot, on horseback, in wagons, and in buggies from Taylor, Decatur, and Worth Counties even though the skies were clouded and rain threatened. More that 5,000 people joined in the festivities and listened to the speaker, Edward B. HEATON, well known to this community where he had been farmer, preacher, school teacher, writer, singing master, and soldier. A week later the veterans met again and formed a permanent organization.

A big year was 1879, when the Leon, Mount Ayr and Southwestern Railroad was built through the county from Bethany Junction to Mount Ayr, slightly more than 23 miles. In 1880 the line was continued from Mount Ayr to Grant City, Missouri. The townships voted a tax of two to five per cent to help build the line, which, like other contemporary roads, wandered through as many townships as it could for the sake of the levey. In return for the money and the right-of-way, the county and townships received railroad stock which was actually worthless. In September 1879 the road was opened for business and at once the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad too it over, operating it as lessee until 1901, and from then on as owner.

Before the new road began operation, a cyclone dipped down into Ringgold County, the night of May 29, 1879, and wrecked the DULANY homestead. The DULANYS had arrived in the county in March and built their house, but it had not yet been plastered. The cyclone lifted it up and set it down a few feet away. The DULANYS then grabbed what few clothes they could and got outside. For a few minutes they were separated, then they managed to crawl together through a ditch to the home of John ERSKINE, a neighbor. When they returned to their house in the morning, they found it fit only for kindling. Dishes were broken, the furniture smashed, and their clothing and bedding strewn all over the countryside.

Several new towns had been laid out along the route while the Leon, Mount Ayr and Southwestern Railroad was being completed. Railroad capitalists laid out Kellerton in 1879, naming it in honor of Judge [Isaac W.] KELLER of Mount Ayr. Then New Chicago, a trading post and post office a little more than a mile to the east, moved bodily to Kellerton. The new site, purchased from Samuel and John TEDROW, lay on high level ground from which both Mount Ayr and Leon could be seen on clear days. Seventy of the 240 acres in the town the site were soon laid off into lots, and Kellerton began its history. Three and a half miles to the north was an old buffalo wallow about two acres in area. This wallow, about 20 feet deep and then filled with water, was one of the old swimming holes of pioneer days.

Lesanville was a platted town before the railroad came through the county, but it never developed to more than a station on the railroad. In 1887 it had a store, a post office, and a Methodist Church, but this was the extent of its growth. There is no sign of a town there in 1942, but the place is still known as the "LESAN neighborhood."

The LESAN neighborhood, located approximately 5 miles east of Mount Ayr along Highway 2 has been built up as the Ramsey Farm and is quite a nice attraction.

During the 1880's two other railroads crossed the county: the Humeston and Shenandoah in the northern tier of townships, and the Great Western diagonally through the western part of the county. Other new towns were established along these routes and rivalry between them, when some were only a few miles apart, was the keynote of the decade. Older communities and settlements were absorbed by the newer towns.

In 1880, when the Leon and Mount Ayr was extended to Grant City [Missouri], railroad owners laid out Delphos (formerly Borneo) and Redding. There had been some settlement near the site of Delphos, and it was not long before the town had a reputation for being one of the cleanest and most circumspect villages in the county. Redding, laid out in the same year, was incorporated in 1882 with a population of 300. There had been a post office in this vicinity for some time, but it had moved at least five times before it finally arived in Redding. The Methodist erected the first church in the village in 1884. The town had great promise in its earliest years, but suffered several disastrous fires which almost wiped it out. Its buiness houses moved elsewhere and Redding never recovered.

When the Humeston and Shenandoah crossed the northern part of the county in 1881, Beaconsfield and Tingley were laid out by town companies which purchased the sites from farmers.

Tingley was probably indirectly named for a school teacher, Tingley CORNWALL. He had taught in a rural district of Union Township at the same time Union was subdivided into two parts, and the new township had been named for him. Some time later, Eugene, about five miles north of Tingley, was absorbed by it. Then Beaconsfield was platted, and had a doctor, R. G. [Major Robert G.] RIDER, before it was a year old. This little village, because of its nearness to other villages, grew slowly.

Two men, COCHRAN and LeFEVER, had a store on the site of Wirt a year before it was platted. Lots were not surveyed for several years after the railroad passed the site, but the post office was moved from Union Hill, three miles northeast, and a railroad station was established. Twelve or 15 years later, the name was changed to Ellston. In a few years there were stockyards and scales there, to meet the needs of the stock raisers in the surrounding territory. A Methodist church was erected during this period by J. E. EVANS, the town's first minister.

In 1880, when new towns springing up in the county absorbed old villages, Mount Ayr boasted a population of 1,275. There was an increase in civic activities. A four-room schoolhouse was built and classes were transferred there from their old location in the courthouse. New businesses and lodges were organized. Eighteen veterans of the Civil War started the Ellis G. MILLER Post, Grand Army of the Republic, on November 3, 1880. It was named for Lieutenant MILLER who had enlisted in Company G, Fourth Iowa Infantry, and was killed at the battle of Chickasaw Bayou at Vicksburg, Mississippi, December 29, 1862. MILLER had been the first commissioned officer from Mount Ayr to die in service. By July 1926 the post membership had reached 246.

Mount Ayr began its rather long struggle to provide adequate fire protection in 1880. In that year the town council authorized Z. T. KINSELL to buy fire fighting tools for the newly organized hook and ladder company as the first step in providing better fire protection. The memory of a disastrous fire in 1879, which had burned most of the buildings on the southeast quarter of the block on the north side of the square, was fresh in the minds of the citizens, but popular sentiment was against the hook and ladder company. Five years dragged by before any attempt was made to get the equipment the company needed. Fires still had to be fought by bucket brigades.

Until 1883 the indigent people in the county were supported in their own homes or cared for in the home of others by county funds. In that year, the county officials moved the poor into a new $5,000 county home which had been completed in the spring. The officials had purchased 240 acres from John UNDERHILL for a county home site during the fall of 1882. Here the indigent were cared for until 1922.

The towns in the country were having various growing experiences in 1882 and 1883. Mount Ayr still struggled with county fairs that had little success. When train service into Tingley was begun in 1992, that town had a population of 200. A Christian Church had been erected, George SWAIN was running the first store, and J. GETTINGER had started the Tingley News. The paper, however, was soon moved to Wirt (Ellston). Kellerton was incorporated in 1882 and the next year the Kellerton Independent was established to supersede the Kellerton Mentor, a two-year-old newspaper. Redding also became incorporated, with a population of 300. In 1883 the Baptists at Delphos erected that village's first church, and the Catholics at Kellerton built a Church.

While the county was setting up housekeeping in the new building, C. B. MORRIS, H. A. WHITE, and J. C. ASKREN sank a shaft 326 feet deep, about two and a half miles east of the depot at Mount Ayr, in the attempt to find coal. They found it, but not in a quantity that would make mining profitable, so the shaft was abandoned.

Several young men in the county experimented with bicycles in the spring of 1884, after a young man named Franklin had ridden a high bike through the streets of Mount Ayr. Jack SCOTT and Ben BRILEY, young blacksmiths, then tried their skill at making bicycles and demonstrated them at the county fair. Some of the spectators declared the high-wheeled things were a passing fad, but ten years later they were numerous in Mount Ayr. They sold for $100 and $150.

In 1875 the Chicago Great Western ran its road diagonally across the western part of the county and three ne towns -- Knowlton, Benton, and Maloy -- were established along the route. The Chicago Great Western was known as the Maple Leaf Route in the early days because its track between Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Chicago, roughly outlined a maple leaf, with these three cities as the points of the leaf.

Benton and Maloy did not have such auspicious beginings as Knowlton, but they were more fortunate in their locations, since neither town faced a competitive struggle with nearby villages. Benton was orginally located in two townships. Its main street followed the dividing line between Benton and Rice Townships. When the town was a little more than 30 years old, the county supervisors made a new township out of the large independent district which the school board had organized, and named it Waubonsie. Because one of the early storekeepers had a large red fox painted on his store front, Maloy, first called Delphi, was known to most settlers as Foxtown. This was long before the C.G.W. [Chicago Great Western] was built or Maloy platted. The town occupied a dense natural grove on the east side of the Platte River.

Knowlton was named for the president of the Chicago Great Western. Sponsored by the railroad company, the town at first had an unusual growth. It was promoted to freeze out the village of Goshen on the C.B.& Q. [Chicago, Burlington & Quincy], about two miles southwest, and to give the Great Western a monoploy on shipping. But the Great Western withdrew its support; Goshen in 1890 moved bodily to the intersection and became Diagonal, and within a few years had obliterated Knowlton. The Knowlton school, once among the foremost in the county, was by 1942 little more than a country school. Pupils there recall that Dr. LeRoy PARKINS of the Harvard Medical School, was graduated from Knowlton High School in 1905.

Newspapers mushroomed into existence about this time. The Redding Reporter, the Redding Independent, The Tingley Times, the Battle Axe, the Independent, the Wirt Wasp, and the Wirt News were all short-lived. The Ringgold County Republican was established in 1885 at Mount Ayr by Mr. F. M.[Francis Minor "Frank"] WISDOM and Robert WILLIAMS. A year later, WISDOM sold out his share to the Reverend J. H. [James Harvey] TEDFORD. WILLIAMS and TEDFORD then purchased the Ringgold Record in 1887, and combined the papers under the Record's name. A few years later TEDFORD bought out WILLIAMS and edited the paper himself until 1907, when he sold half interest to Sam SPURRIER. Then they bought the rival paper, the Twice-A-Week News combined the two, and called them the Record News. In 1910 TEDFORD sold out to Sam SPURRIER, who in 1936 still ran the only weekly newspaper in the county seat.

In 1885 Ringgold County checked up on itself and was not displeased. The county fair, held from October 14 to 16, was as good a fair as anyone could wish for. Balloon ascensions and high tight-rope walking drove chills up and dwon the spine, and the trotting, pacing, and running horse races brought excited cheering. There were 20 post offices in the county, 2,524 houses, 2550 familes, and a population of 12,530, including 523 who were foreign born. The average farm was valued at $4,135 and there were more than 1,800 farms in operation, averaging 125 acres each. Small wonder that the county, entirely agricultural, felt all was going well on its thirtieth birthday.

A set back in 1885, however, was the destructive fire at Mount Ayr on October 30. The bucket brigade could not control the flames, which destroyed several business places. After the fire, citizens and firemen again contributed to a fund to secure fire fighting tools for the hook and ladder company that had been organized, but not equipped, in 1879. The majority of the citizens at last recognized the need for the organization, and the city council allowed $50 to the firemen for their previous work. The next year the council paid them half a dollar each for their services at each fire, From this time on there was little opposition to the hook and ladder company. A group of citizens contributed $75 toward expenses incurred in sending representatives to the Firemen's State Tournament at Council Bluffss in 1889, and public sentiment in the firemen's favor continued.

The next year, a Mr. McCREARY established a new brick and tile works in the town. His factory, with its capacity for turning out 12,000 bricks daily, noticeably boosted business in the town.

Diagonal, platted about 1889 at the intersection of the Chicago Great Western and the Humeston and Shenandoah railroads, was the only town in the county through which both a north-south and and east-west railroad ran. It soon was a storm center of a struggle with Goshen and Knowlton. Two years after Knowlton was platted and Goshen had been asbsorbed by Diagonal, although a ghost of the old Knowton still clung to existence in 1942. The first building in Diagonal was moved from Goshen April 1, 1889.

A lively struggle ensued, however, between Knowlton and Diagonal. On July 9 a fire almost wiped out the town of Knowton, which then had one of the best business blocks in the county. Items that appeared in Twice-A-Week News revealed the bitter feeling. August 27, 1895, there appeared: "The exodus from Egypt to Canaan has begun. That is, the removal of the people from Knowlton to Diagonal is fairly under way. . . " September 12 the Diagonal correspondent wrote: "The commotion at Knowlton, always at fever heat, was greatly increased last week by the presence of detectives trying to ferret out the party who set fire to Knowlton some time ago. We are informed they have the guilty party spotted and, as was predicted, he is no citizen of Diagonal either."

The Knowlton correspondent remarked on September 27, 1895: "The newspaper that was stolen and taken to Diagonal has been brought back and in a few days will be running again. So with all that goes to Diagonal. . . " Another item boasted, "Men of Knowlton are highly pleased with the town's prospects. Every day business men come through Diagonal to our town to locate. There are five or six more brick buildings talked of. Our printing press soon will be sending out thousands of papers. . . The only thing we lack is men enough to do the work which is now going on. If anyone is contemplating finding a first-class locality he should come to Knowlton. We have lots of room for honest, upright business men." At this time Knowlton still had the only coaling station on the railroad between Des Mones and St. Joseph, and it was the only night station for a long distance each way. In spite of Knowlton's tenacity, however, the little town lost ground after 1910.

Back to Ringgold County History, 1942 Index

Ringgold County Iowa History The Iowa Writers' Program Of the Work Projects Administration. Pp. 37-45. 1942.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, January of 2011