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 ago, on July 4th.  Its final measurement was 20.94 feet, making it the new #6 in the Top 10 Recorded Floods of the Mississippi River at Lock and Dam 15. The 20.71 crest of April 22, 2011 will drop to #7.

Below are flood photos taken during the crest. We attempted to get pictures in locations near those taken for A Flood of Images: April 2013 to allow for comparison—though, due to the higher flood stage and trees with inconvenient leaves, we occasionally had to move to nearby locations.

Looking west from the Arsenal Bridge, River Drive once again looks like a real river:017.River Drive West from Arsenal

The  Hesco barrier at corner of Iowa St. and River Drive:018.Corner Iowa Street and River Drive

Another view of the Hesco barrier, taken on Iowa Street, facing River Drive near Bechtel Park:038

The Dillon Fountain on the corner of Main Street and River Drive:077

The bench against the Figge Art Museum and a hint of fire hydrant on the corner of Main St. and River Drive:075

The Levee Inn – Locally famous for the flood crest markings recorded on the corners of the building:122

The LeClaire Park and Bandshell—please note that this is our first flood photo that includes the new Ferris Wheel at Modern Woodmen Park. 107

Modern Woodmen Park, walkway in place. Baseball will go on!

149

The corner of Warren and 2nd Streets:

176

Myrtle Street was barricaded at River Drive and the skate park was closed.

242

River Drive looking east from Sturdevant Street at Davenport City Cemetery:

202

This flood even reached several of the headstones at City Cemetery:

215

One last image of our 2014 Fourth of July crest is courtesy of Davenport Public Works:

027.Closeup flag and pipe at 2nd and River Drive

As always, we hope this is the last flood for a while. We love the Mississippi River. We love it best inside its own banks!

(post and photos by Amy D.)

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 be listed in city directories—or the owners didn’t want them listed, in case the authorities came around asking about licenses—and drinking establishments weren’t often mentioned in local histories.

But churches and synagogues were listed in city directories—often for free—mentioned at length in local histories, and were likely to appear a variety of other resources.  And they often published histories of their own.

If one were to glean location information about these pre-1880 Davenport churches and synagogues from these sources and plug it into a map, it would look like this:

From a historian’s perspective, this is really cool.

From a genealogist’s perspective, this is really cool and may provide a solution to an-all-too-common problem: finding birth information for ancestors born before 1880.

Iowa first compiled birth records in 1880, so people born in our state before that year—and a little after, as the practice wasn’t enforced for several years—did not have them.  What many of them did have, however, was baptismal records, which include much of the same information, if not all, as government birth records.

Our library doesn’t have the records of all the pre-1880 churches in Davenport, but we do have the early records of a few and if you can identify the denomination of your ancestory, we may be able to help you locate where those records might be kept.

How cool is that?

 

———————————————————

Sources:

“Some of our almost forgotten churches: a few edifices which have been abandoned.” Davenport Democrat and Leader , 23November1903, p.8

Fleming & Torrey.  Directory of the City of Davenport for 1856-57. [Davenport, Iowa: A. P. Luse and Co.], 1856

Davenport, Rock Island and Moline Directory 1858 & 59. [Davenport, Iowa: 1861 Tanner, Halpin & Co.], 1858

E. Coy & Co.’s Twin Cities Directory and Business Mirror for the year 1860. [Chicago, Ill: Luse, Lane and Co.], 1859

Brigham, A. D. Twin Cities Directory for 1861-’62. [Davenport, Iowa: Luse, Lane and Co.], 1861

Power, John C. and Collins, John W. Davenport City Directory for 1863. [Davenport, Iowa: Luse, Lane and Co.], 1863

Smallfield, A. G. and Bruning, Ludwig. Davenport City Directory for 1866. [Davenport, Iowa: Luse, Griggs], 1866

Root, O. E. Root’s Davenport City Directory. [Davenport, Iowa: Luse and Griggs], December 1866

Montague, A. J. and Curtis, J. F. Montague & Curtis’ Davenport City Directory for 1870-1. [Davenport, Iowa: Griggs, Watson, & Day], 1871

Davenport City Directory. [Davenport, Iowa: Griggs, Watson, & Day], 1873

Hawley’s Davenport City Directory1874-1875. [Davenport, Iowa: D. E. Hawley], 1874

Finger and Schmidt’s Business Directory for the year 1877. [Davenport, Iowa: Day, Egbert & Fidlar], 1877

Owen’s Davenport City Directory 1878. [Davenport, Iowa: F. E. Owen], 1878

1902-03 Stone’s Davenport City Directory. [Davenport, Iowa: H. N. Stone & Co.], March 1903

Polk’s Davenport City Directory 1919. [Davenport, Iowa: R. L. Polk & Co.], 1919

Davenport, Iowa. Council Proceedings 1919. p. 12359-62

Davenport, Iowa. Council Proceedings 1912. p. 9591

_________________________________

*The map may not appear as intended in Internet Explorer.  You may wish to try another browser, such as Firefox or Chrome.

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 is officially recognized as the start of World War I.

The United States joined its allies on April 6, 1917, and, as usual, the men of Iowa answered the call of their country.

Of the many Davenport-area men who went to war, a few had their photographs taken in uniform by the Hostetler Photograph Studio:

dplx1534Harry Ward was a Captain in the Iowa National Guard when this photograph was taken.

According to the Davenport Democrat, which published his obituary on September 22, 1957, he was born June 8, 1882 in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and came to Davenport in 1907 to work at the Rock Island Arsenal.

Captain Ward had previously served in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine War.  In January 1941, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the National Guard of Iowa.

In civilian life, he was an alderman-at-large on the Davenport City Council and the Scott County representative in the state legislature. He was also elected Chief of Police from 1930 to 1934.

 ____

dplx1535dArthur M. Compton was Lieutenant Colonel in the 1st Iowa Field Artillery.

Born in Davenport, he married Gertrude Whitaker in 1913.

According to his obituary, published on March 9, 1965, in the Davenport Times-Democrat, during World War I, he was an instructor in field artillery at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.  He was later promoted to colonel, being the youngest one in the Army.

Based on information in a newspaper article published in the Davenport Democrat on January 9, 1919, Colonel Compton was for a time Davenport city engineer, though he later gave up his position to become engineer to the Levee Improvement Commission.

  ____

dplx1536Earl P. McGinley was Captain in the Field Artillery during World War I.

Based on information in his obituary, published in the Davenport Democrat on January 24, 1935, he was born November 19, 1891 in Victor, IA, but moved to Davenport when he was a young man. He married Irma Schreiber on November 18, 1916 in Davenport.

In 1917, he was sent to Beming, New Mexico to be an instructor at the training camp there.

 ____

dplx1512b

The only confirmed information we have on Earl Olsen is from his World War I Draft Registration Cards.

He was born on May 15, 1891 in Chicago, though he was living in Rock Island, Illinois when he joined the Army.  He served, at least initially, as a mechanic at Fort Sheridan, in Lake County, Illinois.

As we did not find an obituary for Mr. Olsen in our newspaper indexes, we searched for him in Soldiers of the Great War (SC 940.4 Sol), which was published by the Soldiers Record Publishing Association in 1920 and provides the names and photographs of the American soldiers who were killed in action or died of disease, wounds, or accident in World War I.

We were relieved that Earl Olsen does not appear among the Illinois soldiers who did not survive the War. If anyone knows any further details of Mr. Olsen’s life, please let us know.

 

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 a mystery or two.

But one mystery continues to elude us.

This photograph is of the 1884 Davenport police department, posed in front of the first station, which still stands at 130 West 5th Street.*

1894 Police DeptWhen we studied this beautiful image, we noticed something. All of the police officers have facial hair—most appearing to prefer mustaches of the handlebar variety—except for one.

See the third officer from the left, just past the tree?

1894 Police Dept lineupHis face is bare.

Along with this image, the photography studio—Hastings, White, and Fisher of Davenport—also did individual portraits of the officers.

It was easy to find our man:

1894 Officer 10Unfortunately, none of our resources list the badge numbers of officers, or provide physical descriptions. So we don’t know the name of the officer, nor will we ever know if his shaven state was a personal fashion choice, a physical limitation, or simply the visage of a new hire who hadn’t yet succumbed to peer pressure.

If our curiosity gets the better of us, we may do a brief search of our records for a rule about police officers being required to produce a mustache or beard within six months of employment.  But without a name, we won’t be able to search out city council minutes to see if this officer was given special dispensation.

Regardless, if anyone can help us identify this gentleman, or any of his fellow officers in the group photograph, we would be grateful for the information!

Luckily due to the advancement of the internet now you can click on and visit the instash webpage to compare and find the razor of your type. 

_________________________

*This building now houses Big Brothers, Big Sisters of the Mississippi Valley.

 

(posted by Sarah)

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 provides names pulled from a range of resources, from census schedules to Atlases, history books to sexton records, newsletters to church records—most of them off the usual research path and none of them particularly easy to search.

This index has proved invaluable to staff and patrons over the years. And now, due to the diligent efforts of volunteer Ellen Korn—who typed up drawers full of index cards—our researchers may now search SCUSI through our Center’s Free Local Database search engine!

Just type in a name and hit the “Search The Database” button”:

Free Local Database Screenshot

If you aren’t sure about middle initials or spellings, try the “Starts With” or “Contains” options to direct or broaden your search.

A list will appear of the number of times that name appears in each of our index databases (SCUSI is at the bottom):

Free Local Database Results Screenshot

SCUSI has 324 listings for “Smith”. Does that seem a little low to you?

Click the number link to pull up the results for a specific database:

SCUSI IMage

The first seven listings of 324 . . .

As you can see, the date,* source, and notes provide good information all by themselves, and the source location will assist you (or assist our staff in assisting you) in finding the source in which the surname appears.

All this, and you can search it from home, too!  Why not give it a try—and discover the kinds of Unusual Sources your ancestors got themselves into?

Thanks, Ellen!
We really appreciate your hard work!

___________________

*Psst:  If you ever see the current date in the third field (see the fourth listing?), don’t worry—that only means that there was no date available, so our system “helped” by filling in the blank. We’re currently trying to convince it to stop and we apologize for any confusion!

 

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

In Their Own Words: D-Day

In 2001, our Special Collections Center was privileged to conduct oral history interviews with several area World War II veterans and others who were personally connected to the War, both home and abroad.

On this 70th anniversary of D-Day, we wanted to share the experiences of Michael Cervantes, an Army corporal, and Iris Hetzler, a second Lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps.

____

Michael Cervantes was drafted into the Army in February of 1943 at the age of 19 and served in the European Theater until 1945.  He and his unit were fresh from training when they were sent overseas.

“From beginning to end there was always, each soldier reacted differently. There were people that were really anxious to get over there and get started, do whatever needed to be done. There were people who didn’t say a word, did not mention the war or what might happen. And then there were those that were just frightened to death.”

“ . . . when we arrived [in June of 1944] we were just told that we were going to journey on south and eventually end up in England. Of course, when you’re a non-commissioned officer of low rank you really aren’t told very much. But later we learned that we had landed in Scotland. We really didn’t know where we were. And we’re boarded on to a combination of troop transport trucks and trains to get to our next training area, which was in England.

[We] had already received all of the training that we were going to get as far as what we were going to do with the equipment that we had. The training that we receive there was more the purpose of crossing the English Channel on whatever type of boat we were going to use . . . Even then we really did not know where we were going to land . . . We really didn’t have any new information of how much of France they had invaded and where they were positioned . . .  And all we knew we were going to board a transport ship but we really didn’t know we were going.

“ . . . the invasion was a big secret and even though the invasion happened before I went across the channel, it was still part of the first days of the invasion . . .

“[For] us, war still wasn’t something that we had experienced. We had only seen documentaries of past wars. My first awakening of the war was when I saw the first German tank that had been hit and that was on fire and that there were casualties, German casualties on the tank and around the tank. We tried to escape the fire of the tank and that was when I really knew what it was going to be like.

Well, we landed and met no resistance because whoever had landed before us had at least made it safe for us to land. So for us, we did not wade through water or not much water because we really did get in close to the shoreline. And we began our advance . . . We were really a half-track unit whose primary responsibility was aircraft. We were an anti-aircraft unit. My particular unit was a half-track with four fifty-caliber machine guns on it. And our responsibility was really to position ourselves as the first outer ring of whatever we were supposed to defend be it a hospital, an ammunition dump, a food supply dump or whatever needed to be protected.

“ . . . We began in France in Normandy and then proceeded through Normandy. We went through central France. We went south of Paris. We went to, we traveled Luxembourg and then through Belgium and then we finally got to the German order. Of course, we had met resistance through a lot of that country or countries that we traveled. But when we finally reached the German border and our first experience was the Sauer River and it was near the town of Saarbrucken and then we met the heaviest resistance that we had in all of the war. We appreciated some of our engineering companies were able to put up pontoon or bailey bridges to cross the river but the Germans had that all planned and they would no sooner have the bridge up and ready to cross and they would blow it apart because they were on the other side just waiting for us to finish the job. So it was very difficult but we finally made it across and into German territory.”

For Mr. Cervantes, the Normandy invasion was only the beginning.  To read or hear more of his story, in his own words, please contact our Special Collections Center.

Iris Hetzler—the mother of Ann Hetzler, a librarian with the Davenport Public Library—graduated from St. Luke’s Hospital Training School for nursing in September of 1941. A member of the Red Cross, she joined the Army Nurse Corps in May of 1942. By 1943, she was serving in England as a second lieutenant.

“Our hospital in England was near Swindon. And Swindon was quite a railroad center, I think. It seemed like when the Germans came over to bomb London they kind of came in and made a turn over Swindon and the same was true when our fliers went out over the continent. They kind of came through there somehow. And we could tell the difference from the sounds of the engines which was which. But the night before D-Day…these missions would start maybe about dusk and end by midnight at least. And this time they went on all night. So we knew that the big day must be here.

“ . . . we knew D-Day was coming. We didn’t know when, but we knew it was coming. Everything was pointing to that. Those planes went on all night. And then, oh less than 24 hours we were receiving patients from the beaches, directly from the battlefield.  . . . Most of my patients were ambulatory until D-Day. And then we did begin to get patients. Usually not so badly injured or sick, but they weren’t ambulatory. And that made it difficult because we didn’t have the personnel to take care of them and do the KP that every ward had to do. So that was kind of tight. But each ward was a Quonset hut separate and they were connected by cement. In my area, there was a wide enough cement area for an ambulance to drive down and then walks off of that, so that they could transport patients even by stretcher there . . . Then we turned the unit over then to another hospital and began to go overseas again . . .”

“They took us off the ship just as it was getting dark and we had to walk down a ladder to this LST, I think it was, that would take us into shore. That couldn’t even get all the way in. They let the front end and we’d wade in . . . But then there was supposed to be transportation there to move us . . .  But the transportation wasn’t there. And one male officer was left in charge to take care of things like that. So he said, well, you all stay here and I’ll go see what I can do. I remember Eleanor and I, everybody had been issued these so-called raincoats. I don’t think anybody ever wore them because they were heavy, stiff sort of thing. We took out our raincoats and one of us laid it in the sand. Then we laid down all cuddled up and covered up with the other one because it gets cold at night. Slept for, I don’t know, a couple hours I guess. That was about as comfortable as we’d been for a while.

“Then they roused us up. It was dark, very dark. They hauled us around for two or three hours trying to find where we were supposed to be. I remember going through this one village. I could see it was in rubbles, but I could see a doorway with just a slit of light around it. It kind of bothered me.

“Finally our convoy stopped and the drivers all got out and conferred with each other and our driver says, “I don’t know where we are or where we’re going, but if we keep going that way we’re going to be on the front lines.” He was just really scared to death. And so was everybody else, because we could hear gunfire all the time.”

Over a hundred Nursing Corps personnel, including Mrs. Hetzler, were relocated several times for their own safety and later moved into Paris once it was freed by General Patton and worked in the hospitals there.

To read or hear more of Mrs. Hetzler’s story, in her own words, please contact our Special Collections Center.

 ____

Our Special Collections Center has many Oral Histories available—many of them have also been transcribed. 

Please ask the Special Collections Staff if you would like to learn more about the experiences of local veterans in their own words.

______________________

Sources Used:

“Oral History Interview with Iris Hetzler.” (Interviewer:  Ann Hetzler), OH31-Hetzler, 21June2001

“Oral History Interview with Michael Cervantes.” (Interviewer:  Gaye Foster), OH28-War, 19Jun2001.

 

 

 

 

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

Feathered Hats and Juliet Caps: the Glaudel – Petrik Wedding

Eugenie M. Claudel married Francis Aloysious Petrik in Sacred Heart Cathedral at 8 o’clock on June 30, 1914. According to their Scott County marriage record, Miss Glaudel was 27 years old, and Mr. Petrik was 29.

Petrik-GlaudelAccording to the wedding announcement, published in the Davenport Democrat on June 30, 1914, the attendants were Mr. and Mrs. Kerker—Mrs. Kerker was the bride’s cousin—and the ushers were Camille Lorraine, another cousin, and the groom’s brother, Fred Petrik.

The couple had their wedding photographs taken at the Hostetler Studios, and though these weren’t published in the newspaper, the article does offer a detailed description of the bride and the Matron of Honor that brings the image to further life:

dplx1105-2

“The bride was in a dress of white crepe de chine, made entraine , the deep tunic of Chantilly lace ending in a point over the train of white taffeta silk. The bodice was outlined with beaded chiffon and the long wedding veil of tulle was fashioned into a Juliet cap caught with clusters of flowers. The only ornament of the bride was a lavelierre of gold set with pearls and diamonds, the gift of the groom. She carried a bouquet in shower arrangement of white roses.”

As a lavelierre is a man’s cravat, we’re assuming that the writer of the article misspelled “lavalier“, which is a jeweled pendant that hangs from a chain or pin—if you look closely, you can see Mrs. Petrik’s necklace.

On first reading, there also seems to be an error—one hopes—in the description of the Matron of Honor’s outfit:

dplx1105-1

“Mrs. Kerker was in a gown of pale blue taffeta, the bodice of canary colored chiffon, the whole draped with white silk lace. Her hat was of white lace trimmed with a pale blue plume to match her gown and she carried a large bouquet of Shasta daisies and pink rose buds.”

Special Collections staff agrees, after searching some of our resources, that “canary” here doesn’t automatically mean yellow, as it would today, but instead canary blue, which was an expression in use at the time—and also goes much better with pale blue!

We also agree that Mrs. Kerker’s amazing plumed hat would have suited the bride much better than a Juliet cap, which to our modern sensibilities always tends to look like a shower cap with flowers stuck on, no matter who wore it.

To our relief, the article goes on to mention that the bride’s going away outfit, a “white serge suit with white lace bodice,” also included a “white panama hat trimmed in malline,” which sounds like a much better choice.

The couple went away for a month-long wedding trip, and later resided at 710 East Fifteenth Street, with the bride’s father, Peter Glaudel.

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

The Mystery of the Orphans’ Monument

Photo by Amy D., Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center

Standing like a sentinel over the headstones in the Orphans’ Section in Oakdale Memorial Gardens Cemetery is a large granite monument, surrounded by mystery.

Starting in November of 1865, Orphans from the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans Home (later renamed the Annie Wittenmyer Home) were originally buried in Section 6* at Oakdale Cemetery.

In 1883, the Oakdale Cemetery board donated an area near Section 15 for a new resting place for the orphans.** On October 3, 1883, the Davenport Weekly Gazette reported that fifty-three orphans were being removed to their new burial section.

By February 1884, the Davenport Daily Gazette and the Davenport Weekly Gazette were reporting that the Board of Trustees at the Soldiers’ Orphans Home had decided a large monument was needed for the Orphans’ Section at Oakdale.

Fortunately, they had $600 from a bequest to be used as needed and the money was used to purchase the large monument that stands today near the orphans’ graves. The  monument was installed on May 1, 1884.

Inscribed on the face of the monument are the words “To The Memory of Iowa Soldiers Orphans. Erected A.D. 1884. Through the Benevolence of William D. Berryhill of Ringold [sic.]*** Co. Iowa. Their Fathers Fought For The Union.”

And who was William D. Berryhill of Ringgold County, Iowa?

The answer is simple. We don’t know.

Even the facts about Mr. Berryhill supplied in the newspaper accounts don’t match. The Davenport Daily Gazette article from February 13, 1884 indicates the $600 was a donation from a man from Ringgold County who had sold 40 acres of land to be used as the trustees would prefer.

But the Davenport Weekly Gazette on February 27, 1884 lists the monument being paid for by a gift received through the will of a deceased former resident of Ringgold County.

While the February 13th article sounds like the bequest of a living individual, the February 27th request clearly indicates it is part of a deceased individual’s will.

A US General Land Office Records search on Ancestry.com for Ringgold County, Iowa comes up empty for a William D. Berryhill owning land there.

A Census search on Ancestry.com finds a William D. Berryhill lived in Louisa and Johnson Counties in Iowa, but not Ringgold. This Berryhill was born in 1824 Pennsylvania, but did not die until March 1907 in Louisa Co. His obituary indicates he owned land throughout Iowa.

If the February 13th article is correct with a living donor it could be this William D. Berryhill, but if the February 27th story is true, it certainly would not be him.

Sadly, at this time, we have no confirmed information about who Mr. Berryhill was or why he would single out the Orphans Home for a bequest.

If you know the answer to this mystery, please let us know!

In the meantime, and in honor of Memorial Day,  we continue to remember those who fought for our country and their families who fought their own struggles on the home front, as memorialized in the final line on the Orphan’s Monument:

“Their Fathers Fought For the Union”

____________________________

*We would like to thank Deb Williams at Oakdale Memorial Gardens for her help in providing information on the Orphans original section.

**Section 6 was located where the Hill Mausoleum is today. Not far from the Beiderbecke family lot.

***The county is correctly spelled “Ringgold”. As the newspapers of the time also spelled it “Ringgold”, we can only guess a mistake was made by the monument carver.

(post and picture by Amy D.)

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

Kids Who Love Books: Children’s Book Week 2014

May 12-18, 2014 is Children’s Book Week!

Established in 1919, Children’s Book Week is the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country.   As children were among photographer J.B. Hostetler’s favorite subjects and books one of his favorite props, we thought we would commemorate it’s 95th anniversary, by posting some photographs of both of them together.

Bertha & Edward Schmidt, jr. Photograph taken by J. B. Hostetler ca. 1917.

Edward Schmidt, Jr. puzzles out a word for his mother, Bertha.  Photograph taken by J. B. Hostetler ca. 1917.

Charles Curtis Towle, son of Charles B. and Lucy Boney Towle. Photograph taken by J. B. Hostetler ca. 1910.

Charles Curtis Towle and his mother Lucy Boney Towle, laugh over a book (c. 1910).

Catherine Marshall, daughter of W. H. Marshall. Photograph taken by J. B. Hostetler ca. 1910.

A studious-looking Catherine Marshall, daughter of W. H. Marshall, had her photograph taken around 1910.

Elizabeth A. Crossett, daughter of Edward C. and Elizabeth Crossett. Photograph taken by J. B. Hostetler ca. 1910

Elizabeth A. Crossett shows her book to Mr. Hostetler, who took her photo around 1910, while her mother (we assume) looked fondly on.  Miss Crossett is the  daughter of Edward C. and Elizabeth Crossett.

This could be either Katherine or Alice, daughter of Burton F. Peek. Photo taken by J. B. Hostetler ca. 1910.

The little girl in this circa 1910 photograph could be either Katherine or Alice, daughter of Burton F. Peek, but her friend’s name is unknown.

Mrs. Theo Hartz with daughters Hildegarde and Emma. Photo taken by J. B. Hostetler ca. 1905.

Mrs. Theo Hartz with daughters Hildegarde and Emma, only one of whom is paying attention to the story (c. 1905),

Marie Kahl, daughter of Henry C. and Elizabeth Kahl. Photo taken by J. B. Hostetler ca. 1910.

Marie Kahl, daughter of Henry C. and Elizabeth Kahl, enjoys a good book, and the shade from her hair bow (c. 1910)

All of these photos, and others, may be found in the Upper Mississippi Valley Digital Image Archive.

Happy reading!

(posted by Cristina)

Posted in Local History | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

What’s in a Map? : Post Office Department reports of site locations, 1837-1950

Our maps have proven to be popular resources with our patrons.

Whether you’re looking for visual information on your Davenport home, a glimpse of the city in 1857, your ancestral farm, the land that appears in your great-grandfather’s estate, the lot where your great-aunt is buried in Oakdale cemetery, or even current directions to the closest post office, we have maps that can help you.

Speaking of post offices and maps: did you know that before 1837, the United States Post Office didn’t have an official map maker on staff? Instead, it was dependent on the commercial or amateur maps, which didn’t always contain the information needed to efficiently deliver mail and goods or to determine whether additional post offices should be established.

This was a definite hindrance for a department that was expanding as rapidly as the population of our relatively new country was heading westward—it’s difficult to run a delivery service when you don’t know exactly where you’re going.

As you can imagine, Henry A. Burr, who was hired as the first Post Office Topographer in March of 1837, had quite the job cut out for him. So how did he prepare a comprehensive set of maps that would show locations and transportation routes and geographic obstacles without spending all his time on the road?

He depended on the reports of postmasters.

From 1837 to about 1950, postmasters regularly filled out forms that supplied the information the Post Office topographers needed for their maps—which were eventually sold for public use as well—and also the information necessary to establish new post offices, including population, legal location, and the distance of the petitioning town or settlement from established routes.

The citizens of Donohue, Iowa, in Scott County, petitioned for a Post Office.

In 1872, the 400 (or so) citizens of (not quite a village, yet) Donohue in rural Scott County, Iowa, petitioned for a Post Office.

These reports themselves aren’t maps—though they might include rough sketches like the one below—but they do contain the same wealth of information in written form.

Donohue Post Office1Our Special Collection Center has a small collection of these reports on microfilm that includes Scott County and our nearest neighbors:

#153: Randolph – Saline (Rock Island County) Illinois

#174: Bueno Vista – Cerro Gordo (Cedar County) Iowa

#175: Cherokee—Crawford (Clinton County) Iowa

#183: Monroe—Palo Alto (Muscatine County) Iowa

#185: Sac-Story (Scott County) Iowa

In addition, our library also has several copies of Abandoned towns, villages and post offices of Iowa (Mott, 1973), which can help identify and provide information on place names that have disappeared from older maps.

These lesser-known resources may not be as popular as our maps, but in our opinion, they are certainly worth a look!

 

 

Posted in Library, Local History | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments