Living (and Dying) on the Iowa River and Bear Creek
Northern Iowa County
Since European and American trappers first wrote home about their experiences in what would become Iowa County, they emphasized the length and coldness of the winter—frozen ground down to four feet—and the wetness of the spring. Melting snow and spring rains combined to make any roads impassable and streams uncrossable except by swimming. These impassable roads were still in evidence in 1924 when residents of Marengo were wading through their city streets.
Several nineteenth-century stories speak not just to the inconvenience but to the dangers that can accompany the benefits and pleasures of living near rivers and creeks.
On January 14, 1866, Anthony and Edward Morley attempted to cross a bayou of the Iowa River just north of Marengo “thinking the ice sufficiently strong…but the ice gave way and before help could reach them they were lost.” Two men, Mr. Dorr and Mr. Paine, nearly lost their own lives trying to save the Morley’s who “clung to the edge of the ice until chilled and benumbed with cold they sank to a watery grave. Two days later their bodies were recovered.”
On June 29, 1869, two young men, members of the Amana society, “left Amana in a skiff to take a ride on the Iowa River. At 4p.m. that afternoon they were seen “below the bridge on the road leading from Amana to Homestead”; at 5p.m. “they were seen about two miles further down the stream.” This was the last anyone recalled seeing them. When at nightfall they had not returned, a search was begun “but owing to the high stage of water the search was carried on for some time in vain.” A week later, on July 6, “the body of one was found in a slough with a large quantity of drift-wood packed around it. On the following day the body of the other unfortunate man was found on the south bank of the river, where it had been left by the receding flood.”
On another summer day, July 29, 1875, another group of young people set out in a skiff on Bear Creek. Melville Shaw, Douglas Westervelt, and Minia Shaw were entertaining Mary Crane of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, who was in Marengo visiting her sister.
But “Bear Creek was considerably swollen by the recent rain. [And] at the point where the boat upset in the water is very swift and there was a tree just above the water and one under the surface, neither of which were seen by reason of a quick turn in the stream.” As the occupants of the small boat leaned to one side to pass beneath the low hanging tree branch, the bow of the boat struck the submerged branch. The skiff capsized dumping all four passengers into the stream.
Melville Shaw couldn’t swim but managed to reach the shore where he caught hold of bushes and pulled himself out of the water. Douglas Westervelt was a good swimmer. He grabbed Minia Shaw and the two were carried downstream before he could assist her to the bank of the stream. While trying to climb the slippery bank, Westervelt saw Mary Crane floating by some eight feet away. He tried to reach her but with the swiftness of the current and the muddiness of the water, he failed to catch hold of her before she disappeared in the “angry, turbid waves.” When she was pulled from the creek, efforts to revive her were not successful.
Family and friends of Mary Crane in Marengo were left to report her drowning to her loved ones in Mount Pleasant.
Perhaps sadder still is the story of Susie Allman who had come to Marengo from Monticello on the Blairstown coach on a Saturday, May 5 (no precise year given). The following Tuesday, May 8, “she wended her way from the house where she had been stopping to a point on the river some distance below the woolen factory.” There she took off her hat and shawl and promptly leapt into the river. People who witnessed her leap tried to rescue her, but she resisted any assistance. Others from the city rushed to the river but could only retrieve her lifeless body.
Source: SHSI: History of Iowa County, Des Moines, 1881.