When Fiery Crosses Burned...

Last year, when working on a story about the 1950 birth of triplets at Grinnell's St. Francis Hospital, I ran across a clipping from the September 7, 1963 Des Moines Tribune. Celebrating the Catholic hospital's history, the article quoted William Kueneman, who for some years had been business manager of the Grinnell Herald-Register. In comments directed at the reception of a Catholic institution in a primarily Protestant town, Kueneman pointed out that over the years patients of all faiths had been helped at St. Francis, and that many of the town's best-known Protestants had helped finance the hospital. He went on, however, to recall a time "when a rag-tail Ku Klux Klan outfit burned a cross on the lawn, and stood around for hours shouting insults" at the Catholic sisters and their hospital. Regrettably, Kueneman did not provide the date of this hateful moment, and, try as I might, I have not been able to find any published reference to such an event on the grounds of St. Francis hospital.

However, the lengthy search did bring me face-to-face with the Klan's success in Grinnell and in nearby towns. I have written about some of this history before, but what I report in this story is a much expanded history of the Klan's operation in central Iowa at the peak of its popularity in the 1920s. And it proves that here in Grinnell, as in many other central Iowa towns, the KKK had an active chapter of robed knights who gathered around burning crosses, allegedly in defense of patriotism and protestant Christianity.

Uniform of KKK (http://www.oelwein.lib.ia.us/archive/2014/Jan14/kkki)

***

What historians sometimes call the second wave of the Klan's success began around the time of World War I. In the American Midwest, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan fit neatly into the insecurities—economic and social—that followed the war, as Kay Johnson persuasively argued in her 1967 MA thesis ("The Ku Klux Klan in Iowa: A Study in Intolerance," University of Iowa Department of History, 1967). Consequently, Iowa's KKK was not, like its parallels in the South, a collection of lynch mobs, but instead openly advocated a conservative social agenda—supporting Prohibition; opposing immigration and "modern morals"; objecting to Catholics and Jews; and demanding of members that they be "100% American." This program, which included obviously racist elements that Klan spokesmen regularly denied, appealed to Iowans who saw their financial and social well-being challenged, and helps explain how the Klan became so popular and powerful in Iowa in the 1920s.

But the fiery crosses that served to highlight KKK gatherings were not common in central Iowa until the 1920s. In August, 1921 the Sunday Magazine of the Des Moines Register wondered, "Is the fiery cross of the Ku-Klux Klan to sear the peaceful state of Iowa?" Although overt evidence of KKK activity in central Iowa remained scarce, the newspaper thought it "an open secret that for weeks the white hooded klansmen have been quietly organizing in Iowa," and supposed that open Klan activity was on the horizon (Des Moines Register, August 21, 1921). In fact,  in September, 1922 the Register reported on a secret gathering of some 200 klansmen three miles south of Des Moines. At about the same time, the newspaper reported on "one of the biggest ceremonials the Ku Klux Klan has held in Iowa," bringing some 75 initiates to take the oath before a fiery cross near Boone (Des Moines Register, September 8, 1922, p. 1).

Des Moines Register, August 21, 1921

What the Des Moines Register called "the first burning of the fiery cross in Dallas county" occurred in mid-May, 1923 near Madrid. According to the newspaper, the brief ceremony attracted thousands who watched some 200 klansmen light a relatively small cross—"approximately 20 feet high and 10 feet wide" (Des Moines Register, May 17, 1923, p. 1). Two weeks later the same newspaper told of a KKK initiation five miles east of Des Moines where some 400 novitiates pledged their loyalty. Of course, the meeting featured a burning cross, this time much larger: forty feet high and twenty feet wide, casting "a huge flare which reached to all corners of the grounds, on which were gathered about 1,000 members of the hooded order" (Des Moines Register, May 30, 1923, p. 2).

The attractiveness of the Klan was evidently growing in central Iowa as 1923 wore on. In late July a huge rally convened near Saylorville Lake. Newspapers reported that 2100 automobiles had ferried some 8000 klansmen to the rally, called "the biggest meeting of the klan ever held in the state of Iowa." Again, a fiery cross played a central role in festivities: "One of the impressive features of the initiation was the burning of a large cross eight[y] feet high" (Des Moines Tribune, July 26, 1923). A few days later the first women recruits took the oath before some 2500 klansmen, all standing beneath a fiery cross (Des Moines Tribune, July 30, 1923).

Despite all this KKK activity around Des Moines, Grinnell and its immediate neighbors seem to have been at least temporarily immune to the appeal of the Ku Klux Klan. For most of 1922 and the first months of 1923, Grinnell newspapers found little reason to report on the KKK. Nevertheless, something must have happened in that interval, because in late April 1923, the pastors of Grinnell's two largest protestant churches delivered impassioned sermons against the Klan; the Grinnell Herald published lengthy reports on both.

The Congregational Church's Rev. E. W. Cross, perhaps sensitive to the fact that some of his parishioners might already have enrolled in the KKK, began his sermon by noting that he passed "no judgment on the character of individuals who may be members of the Klan. Doubtless many of them are good citizens who joined the organization for what seemed to them worthy purposes...." Nevertheless, quoting a critic of the Klan, Cross claimed that the KKK "has the power to drag down constitutional government in at least fifteen states. The courts of six states are already seriously injured in their functioning; the ballot box is threatened in more than a dozen states; and it has stirred up bitterness and strife that will not pass within a decade."

Grinnell Herald, May 1, 1923, p. 1

A second warning to the well-intentioned was Cross's claim that the Klan was corrupt, its membership enlarged primarily through a pyramid scheme that sucked increasing quantities of cash from the $10 required of each new member. Promoters traveled the country, luring in new members, part of whose entry fee went directly to the promoters, an even larger share going to the national Klan leadership to support a drunken and cynical lifestyle.

Cross did not wish to explain KKK success by these clever, if disreputable practices alone. "The whole world is seething with national, racial and religious prejudice," he admitted, "and the Ku Klux with its advocacy of white Protestantism found thousands of ears receptive to its propaganda." Indeed, as the country struggled with new waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe (many of whom were Catholic or Jewish), the Klan proved attractive to white Americans, most of whose ancestors had originated in protestant northern Europe.

Rev. W. C. Wasser offered a very similar analysis, directing his comments to the local Methodists. Like Cross, Wasser thought that "the motives and purposes of many who have found a place in the Klan are above criticism. Many truly American and Christian men in intention are in its ranks." But Wasser, using the biblical report from Jesus at his trial ("I have spoken openly to the world—in secret I spake nothing" [John 18:20]), urged listeners to embrace truth and avoid reliance upon force. He condemned the secrecy attaching to the KKK, and observed that "the one and only method of Jesus was the courageous public statement of truth to the world...." Reliance upon secrecy and force will only encourage the formation of still more groups with similar commitments, Rev. Wasser said, and all these extra-legal forces, having abandoned the openness of Jesus, will undermine democracy.

These spirited condemnations of the Klan from the pulpits of the two largest protestant churches in Grinnell provoke surprise, because by early 1923 there was little public evidence of the KKK being active in Grinnell. However, the fact that both Grinnell pastors began their attacks on the Klan by carefully pardoning good men who donned the white robes is indirect evidence that the Klan had already made inroads among Grinnell's Christian population.

1920s Application form to join KKK (https://www.rareamericana.com/history-of-the-kkk/)

Despite—or perhaps because of—these public rebukes, reports of Klan activity gradually began to pepper the pages of local newspapers. The Grinnell Herald of October 12, 1923 carried news of a "Fiery Cross in Poweshiek." According to the story, "a large crowd of Deep River people witnessed the burning of the red cross on the hill west of Deep River Saturday night" (= October 6); "many people were present," the brief account alleged. Within two weeks, the newspaper reported that a "Fiery Cross Is Seen in Grinnell," where on October 18th unknown persons had set off a burning cross on the grounds of the Grinnell Country Club. Locals rushed to get a good look.

Grinnell Herald, October 23, 1923, p. 1

In late November (Grinnell Herald, November 23, 1923) the Herald reported on a series of newspaper clippings from Kirksville, MO. Remarking that "the Klan movement has gained considerable headway not far from Iowa," the paper told of a "spectacular" Klan procession of more than 200 robed knights, of a red cross that towered over the local courthouse, and of an appearance by a group of Klansmen at a Kirksville Baptist church to which the Klan gave $25, adding an explanation that described the Klan as a "powerful adjunct to the Protestant church." All these themes were later to play out in central Iowa.

Evidence of Klan organization in Grinnell itself, however, emerges in clear relief only in 1924. The first hint of local KKK activity came when the Herald reported on a June 3rd gathering in nearby Gilman. Apparently a "good-sized crowd" listened to Rev. Frank P. George (1887-1928), Klan emissary from Lancaster, Ohio. The paper noted that "A delegation of knights in their robes was present and formed in a circle around the speaker's stand," and that, following the talk, those interested in joining the Klan were invited to Mooney hall, "where we understand quite a few were sworn into the order" (Grinnell Herald, June 6, 1924).

Soon thereafter the Klan presented itself in downtown Grinnell. Several issues of the Grinnell Herald in mid-June discussed the convening of Klan-sponsored meetings in town. Again it was Frank George representing the KKK, this time taking the podium in Main Street's Longshore Hall June 11th. George reportedly "called the Ku Klux Klan a religious organization which wanted to develop the proper spirit of Americanism." Admittedly organized for "white men and Gentiles," the Klan had as its principal object "the prohibition of all immigration for five years until the country assimilates the foreign material now on hand." The Herald found the speaker able and interesting; in its view, "there was little or nothing at which any one would take offense" (Grinnell Herald, June 13, 1924).

Bandstand in Grinnell's Central Park (ca. 1930)
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A10337)

The following Tuesday (June 17) the Herald reported on a gathering of a "fair-sized crowd" in Central Park the previous Friday evening. Again, Rev. George was the speaker, explaining that "the Ku Klux Klan is an organization born of God and not of man and designed to correct 'something which is wrong with America,'" an assertion that the newspaper found "impressive." Rev. George evidently complained about the "unfavorable publicity which...the Klan has received at the hands of the American press," and attributed this development to Jews who controlled the press and "who were opposed to the Klan because it accepted Christian doctrine." George "denied that the Klan was anti-Jew but said that the Jews were anti-Klan." Indeed, George maintained, "The Klan is not opposed to any man on account of his race, creed, or color."

Soon Grinnell had a more visual (and visceral) experience with the Klan. The same day that the Herald reported on the Friday meeting in Central Park, a group of some 28 Newton klansmen "invaded Grinnell at about 10 o'clock [in the evening?] in seven cars and paraded around the business district, inviting everybody out for the ceremony." According to the newspaper (June 20), some 300 Grinnell people accepted the invitation, and followed the white-robed figures to "the hill west of town." There the klansmen joined hands around a "huge cross," and, as one of the knights lit the oil-soaked cross, "the klansmen sang 'America,' then kneeled and prayed." The masked, robed knights then marched around the cross in single file, then again in double file, after which they returned to their cars and to their homes in Newton.

Within a month, the Klan was back on the pages of the Grinnell Herald (July 17, 1924), again thanks to the Newton KKK. Making use of the baseball diamond at Rock Creek, "about twenty-five hooded, visored and white-gowned figures guarded the grounds," admitting only those with invitations issued "to Grinnell residents who were thought to be interested in the Klan movements." If that sounds like a restricted group, the newspaper estimated that "probably four hundred" people were in attendance. After a "stem-winder" talk, "over half the crowd joined the order and were initiated that night in the glare of a large 'Fiery Cross.'"

Grinnell Herald, August 5, 1924, p. 1

In late August the newspaper announced that a "Klan Meeting Near Grinnell Draws Crowd" (Grinnell Register, August 25, 1924). The event took place on the farm of A. F.  Swaney (although the deed evidently bore his wife's name), where an "immense crowd" arrived in cars, all of whose headlights were directed to a wagon and straw on which speakers stood.

1914 Plat book for Poweshiek County shows the Mary Swaney farm just east of Grinnell, abutting Highway 6; Mary Swaney was the second wife of A. F. Swaney (Atlas and Plat Book of Poweshiek County, Iowa [Des Moines: Kenyon Co., [1914], p. 13)

Presumably because of all this local recruiting success, in early August the newspaper carried word that a new chapter of the Klan was being formed in Grinnell. According to Rev. George, who appeared at the newspaper offices on a Sunday afternoon for an interview, Grinnell could boast "approximately three hundred knights of the Ku Klux Klan," a level of success apparently justifying a new chapter. George promised a special program on November 15 at which time an official charter was to be issued. So far as the Grinnell Herald can confirm, however, no November 15 meeting of the new Grinnell KKK chapter took place. Was the meeting canceled? Was it held in secret? Had George been exaggerating the level of success in recruiting local members?

Whatever the institutional fate of Grinnell's KKK, klansmen continued to be active in Grinnell and elsewhere in central Iowa. The June 13th story about the KKK in Grinnell had observed that two local men—Orrie Haag and Chet Vanderveer—had "run into a fiery cross at Victor Tuesday night while on their way home from a shoe convention at Iowa City," while other Grinnell travelers reported having seen a similar meeting at Prairie City the same night. On August 3rd, klansmen from Marshalltown visited Grinnell, providing a "big program of music and speaking at Central Park." The September 6 Grinnell Herald published an announcement of "Ku Klux Klan day at the Tama County Fair" that evening, promising "a big street parade with robed horses, a public naturalization ceremony by a national lecturer, a band concert, and some special klan fireworks." The notice observed that "representatives of the hooded order" had been in Grinnell earlier in the week to distribute announcements of the event all over town.

In what may have been the Klan's most daring operation, during the night of April 22, 1925 Des Moines klansmen erected and set fire to a series of crosses across the city, including one before the central police station and another in front of the municipal court building. The mayor and chief of police quarreled publicly about what should have been done, but the main result was to get the KKK lots of public attention (Des Moines Register, April 30, 1925, p. 1). The Des Moines branch of the NAACP issued a statement condemning the incidents intended "to incite among the uneducated and unthinking a deeper suspicion and distrust between members of different races, religions and creeds." Noting that many crosses burned on public lands and before schools, the group called on the governor, mayor and city council to prevent any repetition of the action (Des Moines Register, April 24, 1925, p. 2).

Local newspapers also carried stories about KKK visits to protestant churches, usually climaxing with a gift of cash. Leonore Goodenow recalled that in 1923, when she was attending a church in Whitten (Hardin County), "a dozen robed and hooded Klansmen entered the church. They strode down the center aisle, deposited fifty dollars in the collection plate, turned without a word, and marched out of the church" ("My Encounters with the Ku Klux Klan," Palimpsest 76, no. 2 [1995];52). Church visits from the Klan proved more dramatic elsewhere. For example, in September, 1925 some fifty Klansmen and women, "arrayed in the robes of their order," attended the service of the New Christian Church in Montezuma and gave the church a communion set. According to the newspaper report (Grinnell Herald, September 29, 1925), "The service was very effective and the donation was especially pleasing to the members of the church." In its December 1, 1925 issue the Herald reported on a Klan visit to the nearby Ewart Methodist church. As the congregation sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers," about thirty "knights of the Klan marched in regular form, taking places around the sides, front and rear of the church, after which...a member of the Klan...presented a purse of forty dollars to Rev. Mr. Patterson, the pastor.... A hearty welcome and invitation to come again was given the Klansmen," the newspaper reported.

Des Moines Register, February 26, 1923, p. 1

Long before these Klan visits to Grinnell-area churches, the Des Moines Register (February 26, 1923, p. 1) reported on a Des Moines clergyman who openly defended the Klan. The Rev. N. C. Carpenter, pastor of the Capitol Hill Church of Christ, announced himself a member of the KKK at a church service, an occasion that was said to have drawn 2500 people to jam the pews. "We can say without apology," Carpenter declared, "that our forefathers founded this as a Protestant country, and we propose to reestablish and maintain it as such...." Like other Klan apologists in Iowa, Carpenter denied that the KKK bore "enmity toward the Negro." Likewise, Carpenter explained that the only reason that Jews were prohibited membership was "because they did not believe that Christ was the son of God, and this was a membership requirement."

Des Moines Register, October 12, 1925

Not all churchmen were as welcoming to the Klan as these examples indicate. In reminiscences about "Grandfather and the Ku Klux Klan," Mary Ellen Appleby Sarbaugh (1920-2006), who grew up in Iowa and graduated from Grinnell College in 1942, recalled a story her grandmother told about a time when klansmen tried to visit the southern Missouri church of which Rev. Andrew Benjamin Appleby (1862-1924) was pastor. Her account bears no date, but seems likely to describe the 1920s.

One Sunday evening the Klan appeared in my grandfather's church in full regalia. Far from introducing them as honored guests, my grandfather stood there with his hand out, pointing at them, saying, "This is blasphemy in the sight of God! Take off those robes or leave His house!" (Grinnell College Special Collections, Paul Henson Appleby Papers 1891-1963, MS/MS 01.27, Box 20, Folder 10)

Reluctantly the klansmen made their exit, but this seems to have been the rare case in which clergy decried rather than embraced Klan support.

To be sure, this was a time when the Klan loomed large in American life. Nothing illustrated the apparent ascendancy of the Klan better than the parade of klansmen in Washington, DC, first in August, 1925, then again in September, 1926. Estimates of the number of klansmen participating in the parades varied wildly, but even if one accepts the lowest number—25,000 in 1925—the demonstration in the nation's capital of Klan popularity and daring proved impressive.

Ku Klux Klan Parade, Washington, DC, September 13, 1926
(http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93513529/)

The Des Moines Register announced that 5,000 Iowans would join the Washington parade, but how accurate that number was is difficult to determine. At a minimum, many Iowans made the journey to the capital, and there marched with their fellow klansmen.

Des Moines Register, August 7, 1925, p. 1

If any Grinnell klansmen took part in the parade, the newspaper did not say. However, the Grinnell Herald did carry a lengthy article from a witness (who might well have been a local klansman) to the 1925 parade. The unnamed informant was much taken by the orderliness of the klansmen, who apparently marched down Pennsylvania Avenue for more than four hours in perfect order without a single command or word of instruction. "I have watched parades in Washington for seven years," the Herald's reporter remarked, "and I have yet to see a better disciplined and orderly parade with more military precision than this one." "There were eight men abreast, marching with a quick, alert step with all eyes front and a look of determination on those men's faces that portrayed their oaths of being 100 per cent American." The witness thought the parade "beautiful," but also "appalling." "There was," the newspaper quoted him as saying, "a peculiar sensation and feeling that came over all as they watched that mysterious body of men...."

Grinnell Herald, August 28, 1925

Again the following year the Klan marched in Washington, and again the Grinnell Herald published news of the event. A brief notice in the September 24, 1926 paper explained that "one of the enthusiastic members of the Klan has brought to the Herald a copy of the 'Fellowship Forum'" which contained a description of the latest DC demonstration. By its own report, "Forum" claimed "fully 200,000 marchers," whom the newspaper admitted admiring. "Whether you like the Klan or not," the Herald continued, "you can't help admitting that they made a big demonstration, using the national emblem as an interesting feature in the parade."

Photo of 100-foot cross burned by the Ku Klux Klan on hill overlooking the 1925 Iowa State Fair 

(Des Moines Register, September 2, 1925, p. 2)

The national attention that the DC parades generated emboldened Iowa Klansmen, who began to conduct very visible gatherings on land adjacent to the Iowa State Fairgrounds. During the 1925 state fair, the Klan set up shop on a hill north of the fairgrounds where they set fire to a one-hundred-foot cross, while overhead "an airplane with a huge illuminated red cross on the under side, alternately flashing on and off, circled back and forth over the vicinity." Although hundreds of robed and hooded klansmen circled the burning cross, generating a weird sense of awe, the KKK gathering was also something of a lark, featuring a basket dinner, band music, singing and speeches. The newspaper headline emphasized that "Crowds at Fair See Fiery Konklave" (Des Moines Register, September 2, 1925, p. 1).

In early November Des Moines was the destination of some 5500 klansmen who came for what amounted to a Klan state convention at the Coliseum. Newspapers reported that fourteen special trains brought the visitors who, once inside the Coliseum, donned their robes to prepare for the hours of official business. If at first popcorn vendors and other hucksters made the gathering seem harmless, by the evening's end klansmen were talking "darkly of important public policies klan officials intend to broadcast before long" (Des Moines Register, November 2, 1925).

KKK Marchers in Evening Rain, June 12, 1926 ("Images of the Ku Klux Klan in Iowa," Palimpsest 76, no. 2 [1995]:72)

But the heyday of the KKK in central Iowa was fast coming to a close. True, the Klan continued to convene its picnic, and in 1926 the Register published a photo of "Throngs of Klansmen...at the Fair Grounds" (Des Moines Register, June 13, 1926, p. 4).  Later that summer the Klan dedicated its first building anywhere in the state, establishing a "klavern" at Greenfield, said to be the stronghold of the KKK in Iowa. E. R. Butler, grand titan of the Iowa Klan, was among the featured speakers, alleging that "There is no foundation to the rumor that the klan strength is tottering in Iowa." He then contradicted himself, asserting that "Though we are less in numbers, the klan in Iowa is stronger than it ever was before" (Des Moines Register, August 25, 1926, p. 20).

August 24, 1926 Dedication of Adair County KKK Headquarters in Greenfield, IA
("Images of Ku Klux Klan in Iowa," Palimpsest 76, no. 2 [1995]:68-69)

Even if the Greenfield ceremonies ended with yet another fiery cross, opposition to the KKK in Iowa was growing. In early May the Rev. N. C. Carpenter, a long-time advocate of the Klan, confirmed reports that the Iowa Klan had lost 50% of its membership in the last year (Des Moines Register, May 9, 1926). The opposition was therefore emboldened, leading occasionally to violent collisions with klansmen, as happened in Corning in July, 1926. Newspapers described anti-klan sympathizers—armed with hammers, clubs and other improvised weapons—who tried to block arriving klansmen. "A serious clash was prevented only by the arrival of police officers, who ordered the demonstrators to disperse." All the same, on the way home klansmen had to dodge rocks and other missiles aimed at their automobiles (Des Moines Register, July 25, 1926, p. 2).

***

Because the Klan was a secret order, records of its activity—aside from things published in the press—are hard to come by. So far as I know, no evidence of Klan membership—no hoods or gowns, no membership rolls, no financial records—has been discovered for anyone in Grinnell. And yet the indirect evidence—the oblique nods to membership that both Rev. Cross and Rev. Wasser made while critiquing the Klan; the newspaper reports of the initiation of Grinnellians into the KKK; the unnamed informants who provided the Grinnell Herald with news; the periodic fiery crosses—indicates that Grinnell, like much of the rest of central Iowa, for a time embraced the Klan and its program of white, Protestant, "100% Americanism."

Who were these men who cast their lot with the hooded knights? Evidence from Indiana and Oregon, where KKK membership records have come to light, indicates that the Klan, far from appealing to the down-and-out or the marginalized, drew much of its 1920s membership from the local business and farming elite of small-town America. As Robert J. Neymeyer has pointed out, against the cascade of falling farm prices, bank closings, and the appearance of new waves of immigrants (many of whom were Catholic, Jewish, or Mexican), midwestern middle class men saw in the KKK a means to protest against the undermining of "traditional values" that had so long prevailed in middle America ("In the Full Light of Day: The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Iowa," Palimpsest 76, no. 2 [1995]:60). In their closets or attics these men kept white robes and hoods which they wore to stand before fiery crosses while they sang "America."

Clearly Grinnell contributed its share of loyalists to the Klan's cause in the 1920s, and we may yet one day discover their names, and whether some of them dared burn a cross on the grounds of St. Francis Hospital.

When the Liberty Bell Visited Grinnell...

Like everyone else, I first saw the Liberty Bell in person when I visited Independence Hall—in my case, on a school visit in the 1950s. Nowadays the Liberty Bell can only be viewed at Independence Mall, but it may surprise some readers to learn that it was not always this way. Several times in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the famous bell went on long journeys: to New Orleans in 1885, Chicago in 1893, Atlanta in 1895, Charleston in 1902, Boston in 1903, and to St. Louis in 1904.  In 1915 the Bell made one last journey, this time going the farthest west ever, reaching San Francisco in July, 1915 to help mark the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. When the Liberty Bell made its epic trip across the country, Grinnell was one of the lucky cities where the special train bearing the bell stopped long enough for citizens to admire—and perhaps even touch—this famous symbol of American independence. And it is that 1915 visit that forms the subject of this Grinnell Story.

The route west of the Liberty Bell, July, 1915 (http://www.ushistory.org/libertybell/photos.html)

***

Proposals to send the Liberty Bell across the continent appeared even before the Panama Exposition opened in San Francisco in February, 1915, but fears about potential damage to the cracked bell frustrated most early efforts. Only after the May 7 sinking of the liner Lusitania and the vocal support from President Woodrow Wilson and former President Theodore Roosevelt did the proposed adventure become a reality. The loss of American lives in the sinking—the United States had not yet entered the war—aroused patriotic sentiment, and made the proposed trip of the Liberty Bell across the country almost inevitable.

Once the decision was made, officials had to address the very real problem of how to transport the bell safely. Critics complained that previous journeys had harmed the bell, perhaps even enlarging its famous crack. Consequently, officials at the Pennsylvania Railroad felt pressure to provide maximum security to the independence icon. The result, rushed because of the delay in deciding on the trip, was a "Liberty Bell Special" train, which, according to Stephen Fried, "would be a private, all-steel train with luxurious Pullman cars—sleepers, a dining car and a sitting car—the very best the 'Pennsy' had to offer." The Bell itself would occupy a specially-built gondola car, upon which was constructed a wooden yoke with the inscription, "Proclaim Liberty—1776," visible atop the bell. Fears that the Bell's famous crack would open wider obliged experts to replace the clapper with a metal "spider" to improve stability. The car also included lights that would make the Bell visible even as the train continued its trek through the night-time darkness of the American land mass.

The Liberty Bell arrives at unidentified city, July, 1915 (http://belltour15.weebly.com/liberty-bell-tour-1915.html)

When word of the Bell's proposed journey went public, politicians all across the country engaged in a noisy scrum as localities and rail lines campaigned to get a place on the itinerary. Grinnell joined the conversation at the initiative of M. J. Douglas, Grinnell agent of the Rock Island Railroad. In late April Douglas circulated around Grinnell a petition addressed to the Philadelphia mayor, asking that the Rock Island line carry the bell beyond Chicago. Telegrams from the Grinnell Commercial Club, the mayor and city council, the principal and faculty of both the high school and the college, and state Senator H. W. Spaulding all urged "that the famous bell be routed through Grinnell and time allowed for a short stop here." Numerous other localities also pressed their cases, but within a month good news appeared in the Grinnell Herald: "Liberty Bell Will Stop Ten Minutes" in Grinnell, the newspaper announced. According to the Chicago Tribune, whose reporting the Herald borrowed, the Liberty Bell Special would depart Chicago early in the morning of July 7, stop at Peoria for an hour, then on to Rock Island for 15 minutes, Davenport for 30 minutes, Iowa City for 15 minutes, Marengo for 15 minutes (later reduced to 5 minutes), and reach Grinnell at 3:50 PM, stopping for ten minutes before moving on to Des Moines for a five-hour visit.

Grinnell Herald May 21, 1915

***

The weather on the appointed day was less than wonderful. According to a newspaper report, the previous day's heavy rains and the continuing damp cast an unwelcome and dim light over the town. Nevertheless, the special train arrived in Grinnell right on time (3:47 on the new schedule). The Grinnell Herald observed that "the station platform was crowded as the Liberty Bell special came thundering in. The train pulled past the station and stopped with the car bearing the bell right across the Broad Street crossing." With all Grinnell businesses closed at 3:30 PM to allow everyone to view the spectacle, the crowd that gathered around the train was impressive. The Des Moines Register reported that some 3,000 people turned out in Grinnell, which would mean most of the town's 1910 population of 5,036. Of course there were plenty of visitors from other towns, riding into Grinnell for what might amount to their only chance ever to view the famous bell; even so, no one in Grinnell on that day could have been unaware of the arrival of the Liberty Bell.

A Child Touches the Liberty Bell, Moline, IL, July 7, 1915
(http://www.ushistory.org/libertybell/photos.html)

In the original plan, direct access to the bell was supposed to be rare, intended mainly for the blind and disabled. But in Grinnell, as elsewhere, "many people clambered aboard the gondola car to look more closely upon the bell and to touch it...Many children were handed up by their parents, in order that in years to come they might be able to say that their hands had touched the Liberty Bell." Philadelphia officials had prepared a printed brochure about the Liberty Bell which was to be distributed to visitors as the train made its way westward ("compliments of the City of Philadelphia"). According to newspaper reports, in Iowa City "each child was given a pamphlet with a history of the bell, an American flag, and a card and button with a picture of the bell." Perhaps some Grinnellians received such mementoes when the train stopped in Grinnell, but the newspaper made no mention of them, nor have I found any extant examples in local archives.

Liberty Bell brochure intended to be given out as a memento of the 1915 trip
(http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/archive/time-machine/time-machine-the-liberty-bell-20150706)

Too soon the train was ready to depart, and, as the Grinnell band played, "the train moved out, and amid the waving of hats and final cheers the Liberty Bell slipped behind a box car and was lost to view" (Grinnell Herald July 9, 1915).

***

News of the Liberty Bell's journey attracted various causes that hoped to capitalize upon the publicity attaching to the event. One of the most famous appropriations of the event was the "Woman's Liberty Bell," a replica of the Liberty Bell which circulated through Pennsylvania in an effort to get women's suffrage enacted. Its clapper chained to the bell, the Woman's Liberty Bell would not ring, partisan literature proclaimed, until the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women the vote was enacted.

Circular of the Woman's Liberty Bell (http://www.nwhm.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/bell.png)

In Grinnell it was not women's suffrage but pacifism that seized on the Liberty Bell's journey. In late June, the Grinnell Herald announced that a "Peace Pageant," originally planned as part of the July 4th celebrations, would now be hitched to the Liberty Bell visit to Grinnell. An article about the pageant in the Ottumwa newspaper attributed to Mrs. H. S. Conard (Laetitia Moon Conard) responsibility for overall direction of the peace pageant. But the Grinnell Herald did not mention Conard, even though the newspaper identified some fifteen women (mostly) as organizers and directors of the pageant. Among those identified by name in the Grinnell paper were Wilma Rayburn, a local attorney; Fannie Buchanan, widely known for her songs and musical pageants; and Mrs. Joel Stewart, whose husband was a generous supporter of Grinnell.

Ottumwa Tri-Weekly Courier, July 3, 1915, p. 8

Plans called for organizers to lead a march directly from the railroad, once the Liberty Bell train departed Grinnell. "From the station everyone is requested to go direct to Ward Field [at the College] for the Liberty and Peace Pageant, which will commence immediately after the Liberty Bell leaves," the newspaper reported. As it turned out, the previous day's rain had made Ward Field a muddy mess, and organizers therefore transferred proceedings to the Colonial Theater, to which destination the parade moved as soon as the train was out of sight.

Costumed heralds led the way, followed by "James Ashing [dressed] as Uncle Sam, and Dorothy Fry and Julia Cratty as pennant bearers." The Grinnell band, the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic and its auxiliary, the Woman's Relief Corps, were next, after which a series of "symbolic groups" took their places in the march. "Children of the Nations," carrying flags of peace and national flags, were next, after which came "Peace...represented by Mrs. Homer Rivers with attendants: Joy [Miss Kate Rogers], Plenty [Miss Lillie Gove], Industry [Miss Nellie Fraser], [and] Health [Miss Helen Stewart]." The Boy Scouts, outfitted to represent William Penn (played by Roger Preston) and other Quakers, marched in the company of an "Indian Chief" (Carl Somers) and "other Indians" (Frank Almy; Donald Almy; Kenneth Ferguson; and Milton Donnelly).  Mrs. F. J. Kiesel was cast as "Liberty," surrounded by costumed representatives of America, Japan, Russia, Norway, France, Germany, Ireland and Holland. Gladys Cessna was set to the role of Columbia (a common name applied to the United States at the time), accompanied by 48 girls, each representing a state, the shield of which she carried. 

Once gathered at the theatre, the crowd witnessed the pageant program, which began with the band playing "Stars and Stripes Forever." Columbia was then crowned "Gem of the Ocean" while the children representing the 48 states sang. Each nation's representative then did reverence to Liberty, while Mrs. Kiesel sang a solo ("The Glad Land Song," according to the newspaper, but I could not find any record of such a song). The Boy Scouts then presented a series of tableaux devoted to "Signing of the Peace Treaty," featuring William Penn and Indians. The Camp Fire Girls also got into the act, singing a "Floral March," after which Mrs. Rivers sang "America the Beautiful," then still a new and relatively unknown song. A choir composed of high school students and members of the college Glee Club sang the newly-composed "Hear, Hear, Ye Nations," after which a final "March of the nations" was enacted while the audience sang "America," which was then the de facto national anthem (until the adoption of the Star Spangled Banner in 1931).

Lyrics to "Hear, hear, O ye nations," words by Frederick L. Hosmer (1913) (http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/h/e/a/r/hearhear.htm)

***

Peace pageants appeared elsewhere in the US in these years, but the available records provide no clue to the origins of the Grinnell event. Clearly the pageant aimed to keep the United States out of World War I, by this date already a bloody quagmire. And perhaps the Grinnell demonstration contributed to the reluctance with which Americans viewed the war.

Certainly, both before and after the event, the Grinnell Herald provided plenty of coverage to the pageant, devoting more column inches to it than to the Liberty Bell visit itself. Indeed, as I investigated the appearance of the Liberty Bell in Grinnell, I was struck by how little evidence of its visit survives. Unlike many other stops along the journey, the local newspaper published no photograph of the bell or the citizens gathered around it. Of the oral histories touching this period and now available, not one mentions the Liberty Bell; of the dozen scrapbooks devoted to these years that I examined, none includes a photograph or news story about the Bell. And apparently no Liberty Bell mementoes survive in local archives.

Liberty Special Arrives at Ft. Wayne, IN, July 6, 1915
Allen County-Ft. Wayne Historical Society (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/347340189982713739/)

***

After Grinnell, the Liberty Bell Special continued its somewhat circuitous journey westward. Des Moines established a blocks-long queue for visitors, who numbered 75,000, according to the Des Moines Register. The train then moved west, continuing to attract crowds, and only once apparently encountered any sign of opposition when some youths in Walla Walla, Washington were reported to have thrown stones. Finally, the Bell arrived in San Francisco, where it attracted throngs, eager to see and touch this well-known symbol of American independence.

Denison Review, August 11, 1915

As the Panama Exposition drew to a close in late November, the Liberty Bell Special train embarked on the long trip home. Pursuing a different route, the train passed through New Mexico and Arizona (new to the Union in 1912), then across Texas. At El Paso, 25,000 people gathered to catch a glimpse of the relic. The bell moved across the plains, then began the trip north, reaching its Philadelphia home November 25. Having logged thousands of miles, the Liberty Bell had shown its face to millions, the last time the famous bell would travel beneath those spacious skies and through those amber waves of grain.

The return route of the Liberty Bell, December, 1915 (http://www.ushistory.org/libertybell/photos.html)

***

PS. As I mentioned, Grinnell seems not to have any evidence of the 1915 visit of the Liberty Bell, so if readers of this blog have (or know of the existence of) any photographs of the event or any copies of the specially-prepared handout or any other memento of the visit, I hope that they will contribute that news, and perhaps make those materials available for scanning by the Poweshiek History Preservation Project. It's a moment in local history that deserves to be remembered and, if possible, better documented.

Eaten Any Rabbit Lately? Rabbit Hunts and Rabbit Suppers in Early Grinnell

In early March I was browsing that day's edition of the New York Times when I ran across an article about rabbit, and how rarely Americans, compared to the French, eat rabbit. The recipes outlined by the author sounded tempting, but my mind focused upon something else: the frequency with which I had found announcements about "rabbit suppers" in newspapers of the early twentieth century. Many fraternal organizations—for example, the Knights of Pythias, the Odd Fellows, Eagles—and many churches and other organizations throughout the Midwest sponsored rabbit suppers, often at holidays or special organization anniversaries. In other words, despite current disinterest in putting rabbit on the menu, apparently there was a time when rabbit was often served at dinner—in early Grinnell no less than elsewhere in mid-America. What was up with that? I decided to look into it, and what I found is the subject of today's story—a kind of anti-Easter bunny story.

Unattributed photograph of a rabbit hunt in Hoxie, Kansas (undated but thought to be from 1905-1915)
(Photo from Kansas Historical Society: http://www.kshs.org/km/items/view/218733)

***

Most suburban Americans today hold fairly tolerant views of rabbits—unless, like Beatrix Potter's Mr. McGregor, they are trying to protect their gardens from rabbits' own dining preferences. However, out on the plains of the Midwest where small towns like Grinnell had grown up in the last half of the nineteenth century, rabbits were less loved; indeed, rabbit populations—protected by and feeding on the prairie's bounty—were huge, making them an inviting target for sport. To many early Iowans, rabbits seemed to be everywhere, and, following the same attitudes that led them to hunt down wolves and other wild animals, settlers on the plains organized rabbit hunts whose sometimes tremendous yields decorated many early twentieth-century photographs (like the Hoxie, Kansas photograph above).

So long as the prairie offered cover, rabbits remained plentiful, explaining at least in part how rabbit hunts became part of Grinnell's social life. As early as 1890 Grinnell College President George Gates went rabbit-hunting with friends, and succeeded in taking down eighteen rabbits.

The Unit, vol. 1 (1890):99

College students also found time to catch and cook rabbit. An article in the December, 1922 Scarlet & Black reported that several students had caught fifteen rabbits that they served at a dinner for the men of Dibble Hall. But collegians might also encounter rabbit on the menu while traveling, as happened in 1924 when the College Glee Club visited Huron, South Dakota. According to an S&B report, the local alumni invited the singers to join in a "real Dakota rabbit hunt," whose yield was then made the central dish of a banquet in the Glee Club's honor.

Scarlet & Black, December 17, 1924

For reasons I don't understand, rabbit seems to have been especially important to the Knights of Pythias, not only in Grinnell but all across the country. One of many announcements of a rabbit supper came in a January, 1919 issue of the Grinnell Herald. According to this report, several Knights had bagged 57 rabbits who were served up to some 250 guests. Unlike most writings about rabbit suppers, this one detailed the preparation to which the bunnies were put. "The main article on the menu," the newspaper said, "was broiled or roasted rabbit altho[ugh] veal loaf was served to those who couldn't eat rabbit meat without being reminded of the fuzz on the outside. The rare rabbit steaks were served hot and juicy, cooked to a turn with plenty of rabbit gravy for the thoroughly mashed potatoes."

Grinnell Herald January 21, 1919

The Pythian Knights made their rabbit feed in Grinnell an annual event, for the most part without stimulating any commentary. But news of the January, 1925 rabbit supper provoked some wonder from editors at the Davenport Democrat and Leader:

We are wondering what kind of taste Grinnell folks have that they will deliberately and without compulsion eat rabbits?...Rabbits were not made to eat. They were made for the fur to be used by hat makers.

Grinnell Register January 8, 1925

Complaints like this were few, however, and were not enough to alter practice. A 1930 announcement for yet another Knights of Pythias dinner declared that hunters had killed three times as many rabbits as had fed the 1919 banquet. Perhaps each diner received a bigger plate, since the newspaper said that about the same number of guests—250—had joined in the gastronomical fun.

Grinnell Herald, January 17, 1930

The Pythians elsewhere—in Columbus and Fort Wayne, Indiana, as well as in Marion, Mansfield, and Wauseon, Ohio, as a Google search confirms—regularly held rabbit suppers which were often opened to the community. In many places it was the Eagles who served rabbit, and in other places it was the Odd Fellows; in Gilbert, Iowa it was the local gun club; in Webster City, even the Boy Scouts got into the act.

Webster City Freeman February 2, 1920

Churches also hosted rabbit suppers. For example, in January 1923 the United Brethren church in Greene, Iowa organized a rabbit banquet. In Des Moines in 1909, Rev. J. W. Abel of Wesley Methodist organized what became an annual rabbit hunt for parishioners. The Iowa Humane society protested that "the plan would foster inhumane tendencies in church members," but Abel carried on. African American churches also sponsored rabbit hunts. Davenport's Bethel African Methodist Episcopal church sponsored a rabbit hunt as early as 1901, and an October, 14, 1920 issue of the Iowa Bystander confirmed that churchmen were still hunting rabbits.

However, rabbit suppers did not require a church or any other sort of organization. For example, an Iowa City newspaper told of Mr. W. R. Griffith who ran the local yellow cab company, and in December, 1925 put on a rabbit feed for all his employees and their families. Sometimes rabbit suppers became special features of hotel restaurants, as happened in Green Castle, Indiana in 1924.

Daily Banner (Green Castle, IN),  January 5, 1924

In other places a rabbit supper was joined to holiday feasting, as happened in Alliance, Ohio where the Eagles arranged an annual rabbit supper for Thanksgiving.

Alliance Review & Leader November 24, 1920

***

Newspaper reports do not often describe the rabbit hunts themselves, but at least sometimes they were organized much like wolf hunts, systematically corralling all rabbits within a shrinking circle. The Webster City Freeman told of such a hunt organized among the men of the local machine-gun regiment. Major Lund dispatched his men

over about a mile of territory and [they] then gradually work[ed] in toward a given center, driving the rabbits in. No firearms were used, the men catching them with their hands or using clubs. Thousands of rabbits were scared up, and as they dashed past the men managed to grab about one out of every twenty-five....Out of the wild mess that looked considerably like a cattle stampede, the soldiers managed to stop about 150 (Webster City Freeman, November 5, 1917).

Among civilian organizations, however, the more common practice was to use guns, and also to create two teams that competed against one another: the side that killed more rabbits got to enjoy the dinner being served them by the losing side. This was how it played out in Hardy, up near Humboldt:

Sides had been chosen...and there were about 100 men on each side. The hunt lasted all day and ranged over many miles of country near Hardy...More than 700 rabbits were killed, about 800 pigeons, thirty jack rabbits and numerous crows. Hanson's side won the day, Earl Saxton was high man with 150 rabbits and a bagful of pigeons (Humboldt Republican, February 14, 1930).

Rabbit hunting became so common in the area that in March, 1931 a little three-year-old boy from Malcom caught the fever. When his parents noticed that the boy was missing, neighbors and friends scoured nearby fields, only discovering the boy in a cornfield after dark. Reunited with his mother, little Jack Eichhorn told her that he had been "hunting rabbits wif Buddy," his dog.

Grinnell Herald, March 24, 1931

At some point—perhaps the early 1930s—either because the supply of rabbits had fallen off or because people were looking for an easier supper, some industrious farmers began to raise domesticated rabbits. A notice in the November 11, 1930 Grinnell Herald, for instance, reported that several Grinnell-area residents were organizing a local chapter of the American Rabbit and Cavy Breeding Association. According to the newspaper, at least one food market in Grinnell—Thompson  Food Store, 918 Main Street—regularly had rabbit for sale, and "many Grinnell people think it is as good as chicken." Moreover, the newspaper asserted conclusively, "In New York City rabbit meat is eaten extensively." By December the paper could claim that "over 400 domesticated rabbits of several breeds" were being raised in Grinnell.

Grinnell Herald December 5, 1930

***

Despite the development of domesticated rabbit production, Grinnellians still hunted rabbit. In the depths of the Depression, rabbit helped supplement diets that might otherwise have been light on meat. Indeed, when being interviewed about the 1930s and 1940s, Everett Armstrong maintained that out in the country no one with a gun went hungry.

There was a lot of hunting in those days, too. You know, people were hunting for food. You could go out and shoot rabbits at night...we used to eat rabbit all the time because we got tired of beef and pork. Rabbit was kind of a treat for us and we'd go out and we'd—My dad, if he was out on the road somewhere, he always carried a gun with him, and he'd shoot rabbits and bring them home at night and we'd clean them and we'd hang them up on the clothesline and let them freeze. And when you wanted something different than beef and pork, you'd go get a rabbit.

Rabbits are still hunted in Iowa today, and each year the DNR publishes the dates for the rabbit-hunting season. Nevertheless, the huge rabbit hunts of yesteryear—like the 1919 hunt around Killduff which yielded 450 rabbits—will not be seen around Grinnell any time soon, nor are the rabbit suppers that were a regular feature of community life in early Grinnell likely to fill the town's twenty-first-century social calendar.

Kellogg Enterprise December 19, 1919

And for that, Peter Rabbit and friends are no doubt very happy.

When German POWs Canned Corn in Grinnell...

A few weeks ago I posted a story about how, during World War II, several hundred Mexicans as well as Wisconsin native Americans came to Grinnell to help harvest seed corn. The demands of warfare had drained much of the working-age population out of town, obliging the seed companies to seek temporary help.

Another page in that story concerns German prisoners of war who, like the Mexicans and Menominee native Americans, came to Grinnell to bolster the work force in war-time Iowa. However, unlike the others, the POWs did not reside in Grinnell, even temporarily; early suggestions of building a tent camp near the college campus were not received well, so planners decided to house the men at the former Sac and Fox Sanitarium in Toledo, and bus them into Grinnell each day in late summer. Some prisoners worked in the fields to complete the harvest, but most worked at the canning factory, which came to life late each summer, canning large quantities of sweet corn and other vegetables. This is the story of how Germans, far from home and the war in which they had fought, played their part in Grinnell's wartime history.

Images courtesy of Grinnell Historical Museum

***

The Grinnell Canning Company factory arose in 1912 on the land just west of the Minneapolis-St. Louis Railway line and east of Park Street (later known as 230 Park), just south of Harrison Ave. Rumors about the coming of the new business appeared in newspapers in late 1911, but by early 1912 the Herald reported that George R. Kelley (1880-1954) of Vinton, Iowa, had visited Grinnell in behalf of his business, Iowa Canning Company, whose several factories were reported to have produced 12 million cans of corn in 1911.

Kelley and his investors—the only local investor was W. T. Moyle who operated a grocery store in town—agreed to build a new canning facility in Grinnell. Property south of town (and south of the paving!) was soon acquired, and farmers were enlisted to plant and provide the corn from what Kelley hoped would be 1000 acres.

Grinnell Canning Factory (ca. 1912) (Digital Grinnell)

Plans called for a total of five buildings—four of them all brick—on the site. The process room would be 45 x 60 feet and stand three stories tall. The warehouse would be two stories high, but constitute a long rectangle—60 x 120 feet. The retort room and boiler room—both one-story—would be 24 x 100 and 30 x 60 feet, respectively. The first stop for corn deliveries would be the husking shed, a frame building measuring 44 x 160 and fitted with dumps to facilitate unloading farmers' wagons. So the entire complex—completely invisible today because of subsequent development—promised to be imposing.

By early May, 1912 the newspaper reported that R. G. Coutts had won the contract to build the factory, his low bid coming in at just over $21,000. Since the company estimated that machinery for the factory would cost another $20,000 and because the firm also had to purchase property on which to erect the facility, total costs were estimated at around $50,000. With a payout of some $17,000 to local farmers and labor costs that first year of around $10,000 (up to 250 laborers were thought necessary), the newspaper noted that "the presence of this factory means the expenditure of large sums of money each year in Grinnell and vicinity."

The plant opened its doors in late August, 1912, and set about its brief, hectic, season. One month later the newspaper declared that the first year's pack was complete, having produced 55,000 cases of corn—or, to put it another way, 1.3 million cans. Kelley and others announced their satisfaction, and Grinnell's canning industry could bask in a successful beginning and what looked like a potent contribution to the local economy.

Des Moines Register April 13, 1930

Over the next several decades the canning factory prospered. Of course, there were setbacks: more than once the factory was closed for the installation of new equipment; a drop in demand as the Depression settled into Iowa closed the factory for a time; severe drought also affected production in the early 1930s, and at least once the company had to face litigation about failure to pay obligations. For the most part, however, the factory followed an annual rhythm, opening in late summer for the harvest and the rush of canning (a time when the most on-site labor was needed), then closing off the pack a month or six weeks later, with only a small crew thereafter to complete labeling, storage, and shipping of the factory output. In 1935 Mid-State Canning took over operations without much effect upon local production.

Council Bluffs Nonpareil September 2, 1945

But, like the seed corn business, Iowa's canning factories—in 1900 there were only 17 canneries in Iowa but the number swelled in the first two decades of the twentieth century—had to confront the shortage of labor that World War II had brought to the American heartland. Their solution was to make use of German and Italian prisoners of war, who had been installed in a network of camps across the country, beginning in 1943.

***

Prisoner-of-War Camps in the United States as of June, 1944 (US Army via Wiki Commons)

By 1945 the United States housed some 425,000 prisoners of war (about three-quarters of them German) in some 175 camps. Iowa had two such camps—one at Clarinda and the other at Algona; both were designed to accommodate up to 3000 prisoners, but neither ever reached maximum capacity.

Des Moines Register August 20, 1943 (State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City)

In late summer 1943 the Des Moines Register announced a plan to locate a POW camp in Algona, but the first prisoners did not arrive there until early April, 1944. Some 500 German prisoners were brought from Nebraska to help construct camp facilities, where over the next twenty months some 10,000 prisoners spent time. Like other POW camps, Algona had its own farm, band, theater troupe, newspaper, and other forms of entertainment to help prisoners pass the time. Algona's POWs even managed to create an impressive, 20 x 40 feet nativity to mark Christmas, a memento of the camp that remains on display in Algona each December, decades after the camp closed.

A Camp Algona POW Band (http://www.traces.org/germanpows.html)

The Geneva Convention prohibited using POWs for war-related labor, but the men could volunteer for non-war-related work, and many did. Work detachments were sent to do logging in Minnesota, harvest sugar beets in the Dakotas, help localities recover from tornadoes, harvest peas in Minnesota and corn in Iowa. Each man received a credit of 80 cents per day, which was not in itself much stimulus to work, but the chance to get out of camp, to see other people and other towns proved attractive to hundreds of the POWs.

Prisoner labor was also alluring to the midwest farm economy as labor shortages became more common, especially during harvest. Communities like Tama began to agitate for installation of branch POW camps in their towns, both for the revenue stream these establishments represented as well as for the availability of agricultural laborers.

Cedar Rapids Gazette July 30, 1943

According to a 2009 interview with Larry Ellis, whose father, Percy (1904-1960), had managed Grinnell's canning factory in the 1940s, there was even talk about creating a temporary POW camp in Grinnell:

They were gonna take 'em [POWs] in the old riding academy up here at the college. ...if you go back to maybe where the baseball diamond was at, the riding academy sat right in there and it was a good-sized riding academy, and they wanted to house [the POWs] back there in tents. And the people of Grinnell didn't like that idea. They didn't feel secure to have them down in the residential area where if some of them would get loose, why...

Sac and Fox Sanitarium in Toledo, occupied by POWs in 1945

A compromise solution was to establish Branch Camp No. 27 in Toledo, making use of the former Sac and Fox Sanitarium there. The folks around Tama had entertained the idea of a branch camp for some time, and the decision to use the old sanitarium was greeted with enthusiasm. In late summer 1945 about 125 POWs (along with about a dozen guards) were transferred from Algona to the Toledo sanitarium. In the presence of an armed guard, these men worked in canning factories in Gilman, Toledo, and Reinbeck, and also worked in the fields to bring the harvest to the canneries.

Grinnell was one of the beneficiaries of Branch Camp No. 27 POW labor.  Every day in late summer 1945 buses brought some sixty German POWs from Toledo to work two shifts in Grinnell. Some worked in the fields to bring in the corn, and others worked in the canning factory. At the end of the day, the prisoners were bussed back up to Toledo.

Des Moines Register August 30, 1945

The Grinnell Herald-Register claimed that Manager Ellis thought the prisoners "good help and [they] gave no trouble." The visiting Germans must have provided some sight, however. According to the newspaper, they traveled under armed guard, and wore overalls "with P. W. stenciled on the back in big letters." Factory manager Ellis told the Herald-Register that some of the men spoke English quite well, and, aware of what their comrades on the Russian front had experienced, they were "glad to be in this country instead of in the hands of the Russians."

POW overalls with "PW" stenciled on them
Unattributed photograph in Mariah Goode, "The Harvest of 1945: German POW Camps Filled Door County Labor Shortage," Door County Pulse July 1, 2005 (https://doorcountypulse.com/the-harvest-of-1945/)

Nevertheless, evidence of contact between the German POWs and Grinnell civilians is slight. Larry Ellis maintained that the POWs worked at the very back of the canning factory,

by the cooling canal, that was a[n] open area. It was screened in, had a roof on it, came down, oh there was a screened area maybe four or five feet high from your waist up to about a foot from the top of the building. It was all screened in so you had plenty of air moving through there. They'd stay right there and that's where they guarded them at. 

Apparently in this area the POWs would box the canned corn, working in isolation from most other laborers in the factory. Given this separation and the fact that the entire POW contingent went back to Toledo each night, few were the Grinnellians who met one of these Germans, now far from their homes.

Grinnell Herald-Register September 20, 1945

The only one of the POWs at work in Grinnell whose name made it into the public record was a man whom the newspaper called Wilhelm Liesenbach. Unlike the Germans at work inside the canning factory, Liesenbach was part of the contingent put to work out in the fields. According to a brief report in the Herald-Register, the POWs had finished their day's labor, and had already boarded a truck for the drive back to the factory when Liesenbach's hat blew off. Jumping off the moving truck, Liesenbach landed on his head. The resulting fracture took him to St. Francis hospital, although how long he stayed there the paper did not say. Indeed, I could find no other record of Liesenbach at all, making me wonder if perhaps the name—better known as a place in central Germany—might have been misreported. But I could find no other evidence of contact between the POWs and townsfolk.

POWs who did similar work elsewhere seem nevertheless to have made connections with locals. As Michael Luick-Thrams reports in Signs of Life: The Correspondence of German POWs at Camp Algona, Iowa 1943-46, young Evelyn Grabow of Owatonna, Minnesota exchanged notes with POWs who worked with her at the Owatonna cannery. One German left this note of appreciation in his own creative English:

Evelyn! Last time, I was very sorry to cannot have say you good bye as I wanted to do it...The feeling, to have made the acquaintance of one person very congenious, makes me happy and I have a good knowledge of human nature. From this country I get only unagreeable experiences. This [my meeting you] is a beautiful exception....

POWs who ended up working in farmers' fields also at least occasionally established personal relations that were revived in letters after the war's end. A 1946 letter from Helmut Langenbach to a Moorhead, Minnesota farmer, Henry Peterson, is one of many examples, if exceptional in its detail. Despite the sometimes contorted spelling and grammar, the letter confirms that Peterson had made strong personal connections with the POWs who worked on his farm:

Our camp have had a good cook, a good citchen and the best Army-food-ration. And then you was coming evry Saturday with bier [sic] an cigarettes. Allway [=Always] a Hollyday [holiday] for the P.W.s of Moorhead City. Evry Sunday we drove to the Staate-park for swimming or to your sport-field...When a P.W. was sick you was helpful and has given fruits to the hospital. We have had to this time nothing for a thank [you but]...Today I will thank you again for all [the POWs you helped] through my letter.

Some Iowans also established personal relations with at least some of the POWs. For example, Chad W. Timm, writing about Iowans' encounters with POWs, quotes Gerald Haas, who was only twelve when his farmer parents employed Algona POWs. "My family hired some prisoners to pull and cut weeds on our land," Haas remembered. "....My mom always cooked and fed them their noon meal and as a result they worked very well for us." Something similar happened with the Balgemans, who had Algona POWs work on their farm. "Balgeman's father became close to two of the Germans, and kept in touch with them after they returned to Germany." Indeed, for several years after the war the Balgemans sent packages of food and clothing to their former German laborers, helping reunited families get through the worst of the post-war recovery in Germany.

Something like this may have happened in Grinnell, too, but interviews with some thirty Iowans about farm life in these years did not produce a single mention of the German POWs, let alone any evidence of on-going relationships after the prisoners returned home.

***

Algona Upper Des Moines September 6, 1945

Once the war was declared over, some newspapers reported that POWs might wish to remain in the US, rather than return to their native countries, a development that patriotic Americans found unsurprising if not altogether welcome. All the wheels of government were turning in a different direction, however. As provisions of the peace were settled, the US government started to close the POW camps. Toledo had only been a temporary branch camp, and it was abandoned soon after the 1945 harvest ended. Camp Algona survived longer, but it, too, gradually emptied out as the Americans transferred POWs to other facilities to expedite repatriation. The Algona camp officially closed in February, 1946, its buildings and property being ceded to the city.

Des Moines Register September 21, 1945

***

Back in Grinnell, the cannery continued to operate, but its future grew cloudy. In 1947 the factory managed to pack only 11,260 cases, a record low, and well below the record high of 105,000 cases packed in 1931. In 1948 output rose again to 50,000 cases, about the same number of cases that the factory had packed with the help of German POWs in 1945. However, by the time that the city of Grinnell celebrated its centennial in 1954, the canning company was gone, its factory occupied by a fertilizer enterprise.

George Kelley, who had founded and then superintended the Grinnell plant for several decades, managed his last stint at the cannery in 1934, then moved to Forth Worth, Texas where he lived with his son (who was also a cannery manager). He later moved to Los Angeles where he died in 1954. Percy Ellis, who managed the canning factory in the 1940s, also moved on, in his case to Seymour, Wisconsin, where he headed yet another cannery. Ellis died there in 1960 and was buried at St. John's Catholic cemetery in Seymour.

Gravestone for Percy Ellis, St. John's Catholic Cemetery, Seymour, Wisconsin
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=ellis&GSiman=1&GScid=88969&GRid=15360796&

What about the POWs who worked in Grinnell? I could find no trace of these folk, nor did I discover evidence of later correspondence or visits, as happened with some of the POWs in Algona. These men had appeared in Grinnell on a daily basis for a month or so in late summer 1945, making few personal contacts as they were ferried back and forth from Toledo. Then, when the packing season ended, they returned to Algona, and by the beginning of 1946 were on their way back to Europe. Did they remember Grinnell? Had they made even fleeting contact with Grinnellians at the cannery or out in the fields? We may never know....

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PS. Karen Groves originally put me on to this story, and along with Dorrie Lalonde of the Drake Community Library, helped me dig out some of the particulars. I thank them both. I hope that this post might find some folk from around Grinnell who recall the POWs working here, and can perhaps add some examples of personal connections with the German POWs.