Throwback Thursday: News Travels Fast

In April 1865 John D. Shaffer was just a boy, a few weeks shy of his seventh birthday. Johnny was a student at the new schoolhouse that sat on a hill next to the cemetery. From the school, the students could see the cemetery, which over the span of the recently-concluded Civil War had filled with local men who lost their lives for the Union.

Johnny and his older brothers were too young to enlist. Their father, Rev. Israel Shaffer was a farmer and circuit preacher with the United Brethren Church and didn’t see service. Still, the family knew its share of tragedy. Rev. Shaffer’s brother, Ephraim, was killed in Atlanta. Another, Cyrus, lost his life in Nashville. A third, Alfred, was killed at Memphis. His brother Cornelius was wounded and would suffer with health problems for years before his death in 1869.

General Lee surrendered April 9, 1865, and the war was more or less over. The Shaffers and the rest of West Union looked forward to a return to their normal lives. One week after the surrender, Rev. Shaffer and little Johnny were riding into town when a stagecoach came roaring past them. As soon as the coach passed their cart, one of its horses dropped from exhaustion. Rev. Shaffer pulled on his reins, expecting to stop and ask how he could help. Before he could get down from his rig, two men jumped off the coach, cut loose the lame horse, and continued the furious gallop into town.

When the Shaffers arrived in West Union they discovered what had caused the rush. The stagecoach carried news from Washington, D.C. – Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated.

Johnny and his father were among those on the city square as the news was read. As the president’s death was announced, a man cheered. His cheers were not echoed. Instead, the people gave him a choice: Leave town immediately, or suffer an unknown fate. He chose the former.

Throwback Thursday: Lydia Kerr

Lydia Kerr graduated from the Iowa State Teachers College on June 6, 1916. She was the middle child of five – four girls and a boy – and while each had attended classes at Upper Iowa University, Oelwein Business University, or the Teachers College, Lydia was the only one to complete a degree.

One month after graduation, her parents retired from farming near Elgin and moved to 116 Home Park Boulevard in Waterloo. Lydia lived there for a while, but decided to set out on her own. In the fall of 1917 she took a teaching job in Sioux City, where she would spend the next eight years.

When her father died in 1925, Lydia moved back to Waterloo and took up residence with her mother. In April of that year she was hired as a second grade teacher at Kingsley Elementary. She became active in the First Methodist Church, singing in the choir. She joined the West Waterloo Teachers Association and was an honorary member of the Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society.

After her mother’s death in 1939, Lydia remained in the house on Home Park Boulevard. She never married, but was devoted to her nieces and nephews, as well as her Kingsley Students. During World War II, she helped coordinate ration book registration from school, and was proud of her four nephews serving in the armed forces.

On January 27, 1944, she entered St. Francis Hospital for surgery. She remained there for nine weeks, dealing with complications that would cut her life short on March 23, 1944, at age 51. She was buried with her parents in the cemetery outside Illyria Community Church.

Throwback Thursday: Shaffer Drum Corps

The Shaffer Drum Corps had many members during its six decade run, but two remained constant: John D. Shaffer and Robert Peters. The men were just boys when they organized the drum and fife corps in 1871, learning much of the music from local Civil War veterans.

Martin Klingman and Marion Baldwin joined the corps in 1874, and the foursome built a reputation playing patriotic marches and traditional Civil War music. Also known as the Shaffer Martial Band, the group played GAR reunions, led Memorial Day and Independence Day parades, and headlined town festivals from Decorah to Oelwein.

“The great aim of the corps is to perpetuate the tunes and the drum beats of the Civil War period, and in all probability this is the only corps that furnishes some of the tunes with the most intricate of drum beats, known as the double drag,” said one newspaper account.

In 1930, they were invited to play at Waterloo Cattle Congress. It was the group’s 59th anniversary and Mr. Shaffer and Mr. Peters were still at the lead – Mr. Shaffer using the same teak wood drumsticks from 1871.

Later that year, Dr. Roy DeSart joined the band as a second snare drummer. They played in Lansing June 19-20, 1931, at a two-day celebration for a new bridge across the Mississippi. One week later its leader, John Shaffer, died at age 73.

The surviving members played at Mr. Shaffer’s graveside in Illyria Cemetery on June 29, 1931. Mr. Peters promised to keep the band alive, and a month later they reorganized with a new drummer, though still under the Shaffer name. Mr. Peters died March 1, 1933, and with him, the Shaffer Martial Band.

On March 9, 1933, Dr. DeSart published the following tribute in the Elgin newspaper:

THE OLD DRUM CORPS

Dedicated to John D. Shaffer and Robert Peters

Our rendezvous,
No longer here, It cannot be.
‘Tis with them in eternity.
The old double drag, the rat-a-tat-tum,
The boom boom-boom of the big bass drum,
The screaming fifes that led us on,
Are silent now. Our pals have gone.
Adieu.
With music hushed, we stand and
through
Our tears, we gaze into the blue,
And pray to Him for strength to wait,
With aching heart and burdened soul
The final call - the last long roll.
But hark! It calls! Oh precious
sound!
We of the old drum corps have found
Our rendezvous.

Throwback Thursday: Israel and Bessie (Richards) Shaffer Wedding

Before Bessie Richards could marry Israel F. Shaffer on February 22, 1905, she had to find a wedding dress. Her mother, Katie, hired a seamstress, and the whole family went to West Union to shop for fabric and trimmings. It was winter, and the roads were covered with snow. Bessie’s father, Tom, hitched up the sleigh and the whole family – Bessie, her parents, and sisters Amy and Edith – nestled into piles of blankets for the 13-mile trip across snowy fields and lanes.

The trip from Illyria Township was an all-day affair. Tom treated the family to lunch in a local hotel, then the girls got to shopping. First came fabric. Then, a dowry lace for trim that came from Salt Lake City. They spared no expense, including a pair of shoes that cost $4 – “the finest we could get” as Bessie would recall. Israel’s wedding prep was less complicated. He purchased a two-piece black suite at Berg’s Store in Elgin for $15.

Rev. Wilbur Albright, a former Chilean missionary and Bessie’s uncle, performed the ceremony. Everything went smoothly at rehearsal the day before, until Rev. Albright tossed Bessie into the sleigh to head home and she fell, hitting her knee on the gate. Everyone froze in fear, but her knee was unscathed and the next morning she was ready to walk down the aisle.

Bessie’s older sister, Amy, was her maid of honor. Israel’s brother, Jack, was his best man. Once the wedding party was dressed, they stood in the sleigh for the short trip across the road from the Richards farmhouse to Illyria Community Church. They didn’t want their clothes to wrinkle.

The ceremony occurred at noon, followed by a wedding feast back at the farm. The highlight was a gelatin dessert, a relatively new dish for the home cook. The bowl of gelatin quivered every time someone walked past the table. Israel’s uncle, Luther Shaffer, observed: “My, that gelatin is nervous!”

Israel and Bessie lived on several farms near Elgin in the years after their wedding. They would have a daughter and two sons before moving home to the Richards farm March 1, 1912, where their fourth child, J.D., was born. They would live there until their oldest son, Ralph, took over the farm in the late 1930s. Bessie and Israel would spend 64 years together before he died in 1969 at age 88. Bessie remained in her home another 11 years, passing away February 28, 1980, at age 96.

Throwback Thursday: Mary Shaffer

Mary Christena Shaffer turned 18 on February 19, 1917, with little fanfare. The celebration occurred a few days later, on February 24, though the reason was bittersweet. Mary’s friends – more than 70 in all – filled her home to play games, sing songs, and feast as they wished their dear friend farewell.

The youngest of eight children, Mary was the last of John and Susan Shaffer’s children living at home when they sold their Illyria Township farm and moved to Elgin that spring. A few months after the family settled into their new house, Mary left for Fayette, where she enrolled in summer school at Upper Iowa University. Her first job was teaching at Lime Springs, where her sister, Hazel Whitford, lived. Mary’s father took her to Lime Springs in his car, dropping his youngest child off a few days before she began her first term September 10, 1917.

At the close of the fall term Mary returned to Elgin, where she remained through the summer. On September 30, 1918, she left to enroll in a business course at Coe College. She was there only a few days before the college was forced to close – Spanish Influenza was raging in Cedar Rapids.

By fall 1918 the flu was a global pandemic that had claimed millions of lives. Newspapers carried obituaries every day with people young and old across the state succumbing to the disease. When Mary returned from Cedar Rapids complaining of a cold, her parents didn’t take it lightly. The cold quickly became pneumonia. Her parents called a physician, and her family tried to nurse her through the worst of it, but by the morning of Wednesday, October 18, 1918, there was little hope of recovery. Her parents and siblings gathered at their house in Elgin and watched as their little sister slipped away shortly before sunset. She was 19 years old.

Her death was a heavy blow to the entire family, especially her 18 nieces and nephews, who were not much younger than their aunt Mary and grew up playing with her like a big sister. The family gathered at the Shaffer home for a private service before they traveled to the Illyria Church, where the large funeral was held in the fresh air of the cemetery, where she was laid to rest.

Throwback Thursday: Hattie (Moats) Jordan

Hattie Moats was not quite three years old in 1865 when she traveled with her mother to Cleveland for a visit with family. They took the train, which was filled with soldiers returning home from the recently-concluded Civil War.

"I was just sitting there with my mother, humming a little song she taught me," Hattie recalled 96 years later, shortly before her 98th birthday. Her tune caught the attention of a Union soldier sitting nearby.

"He came over and told me he had a little girl at home just like me,” she recalled. “He asked me if I could sing a song for him. I said I can sing: ‘We'll Hang Jeff Davis by a Sour Apple Tree.’”

She was a hit.

“This officer led me all through that long train full of Union soldiers and I sang about Jeff Davis in each car,” she remembered. “I came back just loaded down with money, candy, and gum.”

The 11th of 14 children, Harriet Jenietta Moats was born February 10, 1863, in Highland Township, Clayton County, Iowa. Her father valued the importance of education, especially for children. Hattie and her siblings spent their evenings reading and studying. They read a Bible chapter every morning before breakfast.

She attended country school, then studied music, playing in church services and giving lessons. In 1879 she earned $1 a week for millinery work. By the early 1900s she was making $25 a week in Des Moines, enough to save $7,000 of her own money (about $200,000 today) before her wedding in 1904.

Hattie was a lifelong entrepreneur. After a short stint as head trimmer with a wholesale milliner in St. Louis, she opened a store in Elgin March 10, 1904, but gave it up when she married contractor Joseph Butler on September 24. Her new role, the newspaper opined, would be “homemaker.”

That didn’t set well with Hattie. Within a year she took a job trimming hats in the shop she once owned, and in 1907 she again opened her own store in Elgin. She made regular trips to Chicago and Minneapolis, learning about the latest styles and bringing back new trends to her small-town Iowa shop. After these trips her store would open for “previews,” where ladies could come see the current fashions from wide brims to ostrich feathers.

Joe died in 1917, and Hattie moved to Dubuque a few years later, where she worked for a millinery wholesaler. She met and married widower Sam Jordan there in 1927. He died in 1942. She continued working and regularly visited Elgin, where her many nieces and nephews lived. She eventually retired, but never slowed down. She still lived at home when she turned 100 in 1963. Her hearing was great, and still cooked her own meals, cleaned her house, and made her bed. At age 106 she moved into a nursing home after a fall injured her hip. Even that couldn’t slow her down. At her 109th birthday in 1972, it was becoming expected that she’d always have one more.

“It’s grand,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of birthdays. We’ll do it again next year.”

True to her word, she celebrated her 110th birthday in 1973. She was thought to be the oldest resident of Iowa when she died a few months later on May 19. Her funeral was held in Elgin May 22 and she was laid to rest in the Elgin Cemetery.

Throwback Thursday: Will Gruver

William J. Gruver turned 60 years old on February 1, 1908 – 108 years ago this week. It marked both the start of a new decade and the beginning of life as a retiree. The day before, January 31, he ended his 30-year career with the railroad, 29 of them as section foreman for the Burlington, Cedar Rapids, and Northern (BCR&N) and later the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific (CRI&P) railroads.

Will was the oldest of five brothers well known in the railroad business. His first career was a harness maker like his uncle, William B. Gruver. In 1878 he joined the BCR&N, beginning his long tenure with the railroad. He and his brother, A.J., came up together with the BCR&N, which was later absorbed by the CRI&P. They led construction of the line between West Union and Elgin, where “there are curves, double and perhaps triple, and where the waters of the whole township are confined between the rock-bound bluffs on either side.”

Brother Charles H. was section master in Decorah, and later oversaw most of the northern lines around Forest City, and Albert Lea, Minn. Another brother, U.G., was station agent at Dysart, Decorah, and Maynard, before settling in Cedar Rapids. The youngest brother, Benton C., was station agent at Clermont before leaving to take a job as bank cashier.

In 1899 the BCR&N cut a new line through north-central Iowa near Emmetsburg, creating the town of Luzon. A number of the Gruver brothers worked on the project, and their collective history with the railroad was quickly becoming well known. On April 2, 1900, a petition signed by two-thirds of Luzon residents was presented to the Emmet County Board of Supervisors, asking that their village be renamed. On May 3, 1900, the town became Gruver, Iowa.

The week after Will retired, his record, along with that of his four brothers, was tallied. Their combined service added up to 133 years, 10 months, and by the time they had all retired in the 1920s, they aggregated 167 years for the railroad.

Will retired on a full pension, and though he suffered from rheumatism, he transported mail from the depot to the post office in Elgin, and was a regular fixture at railroad employee meetings and reunions in Cedar Rapids. He and his wife, Mary, had eight children and celebrated their golden wedding anniversary October 2, 1923. The next year, their granddaughter, Leone Kerr, moved to town from the farm in Illyria Township and lived with Will and Mary while she attended Elgin High School.

His health began to fail around 1925 and by May 1927 he was seriously ill. Will died May 19, 1927, at his home in Elgin. He was 79 years old.