Author Archives: SCblogger

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: The many owners of Credit Island

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Credit Island, which took place during the War of 1812, on the fourth and fifth of September 1814. Special Collections will be participating in the city’s commemoration of this event … Continue reading

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Credit Island, which took place during the War of 1812, on the fourth and fifth of September 1814.  Special Collections will be participating in the city’s commemoration of this event … Continue reading

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Davenport Fire Department: 1928 American LeFrance Hook and Ladder

One thing we have learned in Special Collections is to always look for glimpses of history in unusual sources. We recently caught such a glimpse courtesy of a minor traffic accident that occurred at 15th And Gaines Streets on August … Continue reading

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Pop Quiz! Can you name these Davenporters?

How many well-known Davenporters can you name? Most native Quad-Citizens can name a few local celebrities off the tops of their heads—Annie Wittenmyer? Rascal the River Bandit?–and many of us can recognize the names of historical Davenporters of note—Phebe Sudlow? … Continue reading

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

A “Brilliant Home Function”: the Modest Wedding of James Lane and Sophia Shuler

Sophia Caroline Shuler was the daughter of Charles Shuler, the president of the First National Bank of Davenport and the owner of several mines. Miss Shuler was a graduate of St. Katherine’s and the National Park Seminary in Washington, D.C., … Continue reading

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Flood of Images: July 2014

We may have posted  The Flood of 1870: Bridging the gap between memories and measurements a bit too soon. Apparently, instead of celebrating no floods in 2014, we should have celebrated no spring floods. The summer flood of 2014 crested less than a week … Continue reading

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mapping Early Churches

Early Davenport had a lot of two things: bars and churches. It would be difficult to document all the places that might have offered our citizens refreshments of an alcoholic nature prior to 1880; many of them didn’t exist long enough to … Continue reading

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Soldiering On: Local Veterans of “The Great War”

June 28, 2014 marks the hundredth anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose death launched a series of political events that culminated in world-wide war.  The date of his murder … Continue reading

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

We Mustache This Question: The 1884 Davenport Police Department

As we’ve mentioned before, this year marks the 175th anniversary of the Davenport Police Department.   In previous posts, we’ve shared some of the historical information and resources in our collections about and from the Department, and even cleared up … Continue reading

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Scott County Unusual Sources Index

Back in the days of card catalogs, the Scott County Iowa Genealogical Society created a name index to a wide variety of items available in the Special Collections Center. Dubbed the Scott County Unusual Sources Index (SCUSI for short), it … Continue reading

Posted in Genealogy, Library, Local History | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment