Hamilton and Cline waived their right to a trial and were both sentenced to life in prison in Fort Madison. All they got in their ransacking efforts were $12 and a watch worth about $5. Fred Berry, who confessed that he conspired with Ted Clark and Roy Cline to rob Jorgenson, went to the Fort Madison penitentiary for three years.
It was noted in the paper of the verbal fights and threats that went back and forth between Hamilton and Cline while they were in jail at Nevada. It is easy to imagine that Hamilton was very irritated at Cline for getting him involved in such a stupid venture and that Cline was saying things like - you big overstrong dummy, why did you hit him so hard? Anyhow, the Story County Sheriff had to put them in isolation in different cells and delivered them to Fort Madison on 11 Dec 1920.
There were two farmsteads near the center of Sec 26. One had access from the north (200th Street) and remained a farmstead into the early 2000s. The other apparently had access from the south (210th Street) and this farmstead is reputed to have disappeared before WWII, however a map made after the war shows the farmstead was occupied. These farmsteads were probably founded and located just off the diagonal road that lead northwest across Milford Twp. By 1883, except for a half mile or so in Sec 4, this road had been replaced by the standard square pattern that is still in use today.
Fred Berry served about 25 months of his three year sentence. Kline, the spelling the penal system used for him, was imprisoned until 1 Dec 1949 after his sentence had been commuted to a 99 year sentence about a year earlier and he was paroled. Hamilton had a quite interesting experience with the penal system. He escaped prison on 27 Oct 1935 and was captured at Hannibal, Mo., and returned on 28 Oct 1935. At some time or other he was transferred to the Clarinda facility. He escaped from there and seems to have dropped out the record keeping of the penal system but obviously he was returned to the penitentiary as we know that Mr Hamilton was before the parole board in 1950. Unbelievably, no record was found of the outcome of this meeting.
Footnote: Andrew was the brother of Mrs Emma (Lewis) Rierson who had much homesteaded land in Milford Twp. Marlin Jorgensen, `54, relates that his family was not related to the branch of the Jorgenson family that included Andrew Jorgenson.
Just as it appeared in the Nevada Paper Aug 22, 1929:
“When William Samuels, Chicago colored orchestra player, secured the cash wherewith to pay his fifty dollar fine, the entire aggregation of seven colored people boarded a bus for Illinois, leaving their damaged Buick motor car in a local garage. The negroes had been held in Nevada since Wednesday following a motor crash on the Lincoln highway detour a mile east of Dayton's park, when they crashed into a car belonging to and occupied by a Nebraska family. Two of the men were fined fifty dollars each on a charge of operating a motor car not properly registered. The Nebraska people are in a hospital at Ames recovering from their injuries.”
The fine seems a little out of line to the charge, so it makes one wonder if there's more to the story than is in the paper.
This article is particularly interesting because the incident occurred in Milford Twp and it mentions that the Lincoln Highway detour came through Milford Twp. At the time the road north from the cemetery in Nevada, the six miles of Hartland Rd (190th street or E-29) and Dayton Rd back south to Lincoln Highway were all graveled. Few other roads in our area were graveled. The official detour started at State Center and went north four miles and then west to the Dayton Park Road and then south four miles to the “original” Lincoln Highway. The Lincoln Highway was being graded and paved at the time.
This detour is reported to have caused a large number of accidents at the Hartland Road and the Roland Road; 8 collisions in 2 weeks. Previous to the detour the north-south road (now S-14) had had no stop sign and folks were not used to stopping here and waiting for other traffic. During the time of the detour north-south traffic was expected to stop and yield to the traffic headed east or west (now E-29).