A. J. MILLSLAGEL
A. J. Millseagel [Millslagel], or "old Slagel, as he was almost universally called, was a distinguished character in an early day. He was the first professional prairie breaker in the county, and was known to be here as early as 1851. He was fond of hunting deer, and was a great eater, and had a reputation in that line. Hunters who knew him would not allow him to accompany them because it was so hard to fill him. Corn dodgers set before him disappeared as if by magic. A quarter of venison was hardly an appetizer for his wonderfully rapacious gastric organs. One time in the winter of 1853, Jeremiah Bradshaw was many miles north of the Indiantown settlement, on a hunting expedition, and his family started "old Slagel" up to Mr. Bradshaw with an enormous supply of provisions. He traveled with oxen and very slowly, and when he got up to Bradshaw's camp he had eaten every pound of provision with which Mr. Bradshaw was to have been refreshed. This worthy afterwards removed to Douglas township, Montgomery county, and while there the name he had made for himself as a bad character in Cass county, was not improved. While there he bought the wife of a man named Frank Wilson, paying for her a sow, two or three pigs, and a gun; his neighbors became indignant, and a company of them went to his house to mob him. Taking refuge in his house, he barricaded its doors and windows, and commenced shooting at the crowd outside. He killed John Stipe and wounded James Shores. He was arrested and tried for the killing of Stipe, and was sent to the prison at Fort Madison for fourteen years. Another story is told of "old Slagel's" prodigious eating, in which it is claimed that he shot a doe with its fawn, in the late summer, one afternoon, and with what help he could get from one or two other men, he managed to eat the fawn and the forward half of the doe, before dinner the next day. He was like an Indian, could go without eating for a long time, then would gorge himself, and on that sustain life for another long interval.
Contributed by Lisa Varnes-Rex from "History of Cass County, Iowa. Together With Sketches of its Towns, Villages and Townships, Educational, Civil, Military and Political History: Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Old Settlers and Representative Citizens." Springfield, Ill.: Continental Historical Company, 1884, pg. 246.
