Clifford Samuels 17-Year-Old Des Moines Inventor

 

Clifford Samuels and his machine. (Des Moines Register. November 26, 1911)

Most 17-year-olds in 1911 spent their time thinking about school, baseball, or getting into trouble.

Clifford Samuels of Des Moines spent two years building a wireless telegraph machine.

The whole thing cost him seven bucks.

He became obsessed. His grades started slipping. Friends hardly saw him. Family complained he spent all his time reading, fooling with wires, and staring off into space. Sometimes he got so wrapped up in it that he forgot to eat.

And then he spent a day with a Navy officer learning about wireless communication. When he got home, he started building his own machine.

Then came the big test.

After two years of tinkering, reading, and daydreaming, Clifford fired the machine up.

It worked. On the first try.

Clifford told a reporter for the Des Moines Register that it could send messages up to fifteen miles and pick up signals from as far away as three hundred miles. Not exactly small-time stuff for a high school kid in 1911.

How Tom Vilsack Went From Small-Town Mayor To One Of America's Most Powerful Politicians

 

Tom Vilsack’s political career almost sounds fake when you line it all up.

Mayor. State senator. Governor of Iowa. Secretary of Agriculture. Then Secretary of Agriculture again under a different president.

Most politicians spend their entire careers trying to reach one of those jobs. Vilsack somehow stacked them together like old baseball cards.

The strange part is that he never looked like a political star. He looked more like an attorney explaining zoning permits at a city council meeting than somebody climbing toward national power.

Vilsack had the personality that Iowa voters trusted. He didn’t sound like he was auditioning for television. He sounded like the guy explaining school bond issues at a town hall while everybody stabbed at pie and drank weak coffee out of tiny paper cups.

Before politics, he practiced law in Mount Pleasant.

Then tragedy shoved him into public life when Ruth Harkin was murdered in Mount Pleasant in 1986. Vilsack helped organize a fundraiser for the family, and people noticed he stayed calm while everybody else looked shell-shocked.

John Culver: The Iowa Politician Who Could Never Win Today

The craziest thing about John Culver’s political career might be this — if he ran today, he probably couldn’t win. Not because he wasn’t smart, or wasn’t good at the job. Mostly because he belonged to a different kind of politics that barely exists anymore.

John Culver came from the old political world where a candidate could look like a banker, talk like a college professor, and still end up shaking every hand from Davenport to Sioux City. No screaming. No cowboy act. No cable-news circus. Just a tall guy with a calm voice, a Harvard education, and the patience to stand around Legion halls drinking weak coffee while somebody complained about soybeans for forty straight minutes.

And somehow, people liked him for it.

Culver had one of those faces that looked Midwestern. Big grin. Thinning hair combed carefully into place. Suits that always looked slightly rumpled. A politician who carried folded newspaper clippings in his coat pocket and read briefing papers on airplanes.

He wasn’t flashy enough to become a national celebrity. That probably helped him in Iowa.

Tom Harkin: The Iowa Senator Who Quietly Changed America

 

Tom Harkin when he was in the House of Representatives

If you’ve followed Iowa politics for any stretch of time, you’ve heard of Tom Harkin.

 

He wasn’t flashy. Didn’t follow headlines. More like… he was just there.

 

You’d hear his name come up—farm bill, labor fight, disability rights—and think, yeah, that tracks. That’s a Harkin thing.

 

Harkin was born in 1939 in Cumming, Iowa. His dad was a coal miner. His mom took whatever jobs she could get. They got by. That was the deal.

 

He went to Iowa State University. Studied government. Then he joined the Navy and became a pilot. That gave him an edge. He wasn’t intimidated by people just because they had titles or nicer suits.

 

After the Navy, he landed in Washington, working for congressional representative Neal Smith. That’s where things started to click—and also where things began to bother him.

 

He saw how slowly everything moved. How easy it was for something important to just… stall out. Get buried. Forgotten.

 

So he ran for office and won a seat in the House.

Chuck Grassley. The Iowa Senator Who Refused To Fade Away

 

Chuck Grassley

If you’ve followed Iowa politics for any length of time, you’ve heard of Chuck Grassley.

He’s not just part of the system—he’s part of the backdrop. Like a courthouse clock that’s always been there, ticking whether or not you notice it. You go to a town hall, a fair, some random meeting in a school gym…there’s a decent chance he’s been there or is about to walk in.

But he didn’t start out powerful.

Grassley grew up on a farm in Butler County, where he milked cows and hauled hay. Did the same chores over and over until they were just part of the day. You can see that in him now. Same rhythm. Get up early. Keep moving. Don’t complain. Don’t slow down.

He didn’t come from a political family. No connections. No uncle who knew a governor. No shortcut.

He worked his way through school, landed at the University of Northern Iowa, and paid his way however he could. Factory shifts. Teaching. Farm work. Nothing about how an early life screamed future power broker.

When he got into politics, it was small stuff.

Aviator Lieutenant E. Earle Burgess

Lieutenant E. Earle Burgess

E. Earle Burgess, a First Lieutenant in the aviation service at Ellington Field in Texas, thrilled Southerners with a display of aerial gymnastics. 

he put on a show for 6,000 Houston residents in early July 1919. A few days later, he parachuted from 6,000 feet, thrilling a crowd of onlookers. Two days later, he leaped from one plane to another at 2,5000 feet over Galveston. 

Later that week, he dropped from the landing gear of a Curtis D plane to the rounded top of a Pullman sleeping car pulled by a Southern pacific special.

Burgess was born in Allerton, Iowa, and lived in Des Moines before going into the iar service. Sources said he was leaving the service to become a barnstormer.

Iowa's Own, The Orton Brothers' Circus

 

Orton Brothers' circus tent, circa 1900

If you lived in Iowa in the late 1800s and heard a brass band coming down the street, you  grabbed your hat and headed for town.

The circus was here.

Kids came running. Shopkeepers drifted outside. Farmers tied off teams and squinted into the dust. Dogs barked, and horses rolled their eyes.

Then the parade came around the corner.

Painted wagons. Glittering harnesses. Clowns. Riders perched high on horses. Cages rumbling along. Brass horns blaring like they were trying to wake the dead.

And if the wagons said Orton Brothers Circus, people knew they were seeing one of the biggest homegrown shows Iowa ever produced.

Nile Kinnick The Iowa Football Star Who Died Too Young

 

Iowa Hawkeyes fans were stunned in June 1943 when they learned that former halfback Nile Kinnick had died in action.

Kinnick’s parents told reporters they hadn’t heard from him since May 22. They thought he was assigned to an aircraft carrier somewhere in the Atlantic, but weren’t sure where. The Navy subsequently reported Kinnick’s Grumman F4F Wildcat suffered a catastrophic oil leak shortly after takeoff from the USS Lexington. He followed protocol and ditched his aircraft in the water about four miles from the carrier. Unfortunately, his body was never found.

When Kinnick enlisted in the Naval Air Corps in September 1941, he told reporters, “I would be lacking in appreciation for all America has done for me did I not offer what little I had to her.

“And I’m going in with both fists swinging.”

Donna Reed From Iowa Farm Girl To Movie Star

 

Donna Reed was born Donna Belle Mullenger in Denison, Iowa, in 1921.

 

She had brains. Looks, too. After high school, she headed to Los Angeles City College. That’s where things tilted. A Hollywood scout spotted her and thought, yeah, that one.

 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed her, gave her a new name, and just like that Donna Mullenger became Donna Reed.

 

The early years were a grind. Small parts. Background smiles. The roles where you’re basically furniture with dialogue. She showed up. Hit her marks. Paid attention.

 

In 1946, she took a role in It’s a Wonderful Life.

 

She played Mary Hatch. Started off as the girl next door. Ended up the backbone of the story. The movie belonged to Jimmy Stewart if you were going by billing, but Reed was the one holding the emotional line.

William B. Allison Iowa Senator

William B. Allison took his Senate seat in 1873 and settled in like a man who knew he wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

Presidents cycled through. The country lurched forward. Crashes. Booms. Wars. Allison just kept showing up, year after year, doing the same thing—watching, listening, waiting for his moment.

He wasn’t built for speeches. No table pounding. No grandstanding. While other senators filled the room with noise, Allison leaned back, counted votes in his head, and worked people one at a time. Quiet conversations. Closed doors. That’s where things actually got decided.

If you wanted to know where the actual power sat, you followed the money. And Allison had his fingerprints all over it. As head of Appropriations, he helped steer federal spending wherever it needed to go—or wherever he decided it should go. Rail lines, river projects, the military—nothing moved without passing across his desk.

Herman A. Breithaupt Des Moines Expert Zither Soloist and Chef

 

(colorized photo from the Des Moines Register. April 15, 1928)

Herman A. Breithaupt, an expert Zither Soloist, was featured in the Des Moines Register in April 1928. Born in Germany in 1896, he began playing the zither when he was ten. 

Breithaupt's other passion was cooking. He worked in the kitchen at the Hotel Savery III in Des Moines, where he cooked and trained new chefs in the culinary arts. He told his students, "A meal correctly combined, scientifically prepared, and properly masticated is necessary for a healthy body."

In his spare time, he lectured at schools and clubs on food preperation, recipes, and health.

He was fifty years ahead of his time in his belief that one day, high schools would train young men to be chefs and food scientists.

Colonel John W. Rankin 17th Iowa Infantry Civil War

 

(Colorized image from Iowa Colonels and Regiments by A. A. Stuart. 1865)

John W. Rankin helped raise the 17th Iowa Infantry in 1862 and went in as one of its field officers. They got little time to settle in. By fall, they were in Mississippi. At Iuka in September, the fighting came quick in broken ground. Lines blurred. Men fired at shapes more than targets.

A few weeks later came Corinth. October 4 hit hard. Confederate attacks drove into the line and shook it. The 17th Iowa took heavy losses. Parts of the regiment gave ground. Some were captured. Still, enough held for the army to recover and push back. Rankin was there at Corinth, where the fighting broke and reformed under pressure… and at Champion’s Hill, where Grant later wrote the battle was “stubbornly contested at every point.”

In 1863, they moved with Grant into Mississippi. Jackson fell after a quick fight. Then came Champion Hill on May 16. That was the one that decided things. The ground was rough. The fight didn’t move cleanly. Units went in, stalled, shifted, and went in again. The 17th stayed in it as the line bent and pushed forward.

After that came the Big Black River and then Vicksburg. The work changed there. No charges. Just digging, holding, and waiting under fire. They spent weeks in the trenches. Heat, dirt, sickness. Rankin stayed with the regiment through it, part of the long grind that ended when Vicksburg finally gave up in July 1863.

A lot of these details—the letters, the small moments, the things soldiers actually said—rarely make it into the big histories.

 

I’ve been pulling more of them together into Iowa In The Civil War, if you want to go deeper.

 

And if you just like reading this kind of thing, there’s a donation box on the site. No pressure. Just glad you’re here.

Albert Baird Cummins Iowa Governor and Senator

 

(Watercolor drawing after photo in The Worlds Work. January 1909)

Albert Baird Cummins was born in 1850 in Pennsylvania. He studied law on his own and built a career in Des Moines.

He entered politics as a reformer, and fought railroad power and political control. He was elected governor in 1901 and served three terms.

As governor, he pushed fair railroad rates and cleaner government. He supported laws that gave voters more control. He faced strong opposition and didn’t back down.

Cummins later served in the U.S. Senate for nearly twenty years. He died in 1926.

Augustus Caesar Dodge Iowa Politician

Augustus Caesar Dodge was a delegate to Congress from Iowa Territory in 1840. After Iowa became a state in 1846, he became one of its first United States senators.

In 1855, President Franklin Pierce appointed him minister to Spain. He ran for governor when he returned to the country, and later served as mayor of Burlington.

Robert Gordon Cousins Eight Term Iowa Congressman

 

Watercolor after a photograph in the Des Moines Register. February 16, 1908.

Robert Gordon Cousins grew up on a farm near Tipton where people argued politics as seriously as they planted corn. By the time he left Cornell College in 1881 he knew two things: how to work and how to talk.

 

He started in the Iowa House in 1886, cut his teeth in an impeachment trial, and proved he could prosecute a case without blinking. In 1892, he landed a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and stayed there for eight straight terms.

 

Washington at the turn of the century was loud, partisan, and spoiling for big arguments. Cousins thrived on it. He memorized his speeches and delivered them like a man who trusted his own voice. When he stood up, people listened.

 

After the Spanish-American War, the country split over what to do with the Philippines. Cousins backed expansion and said America couldn’t grab global power and then pretend it was shy. Strength meant responsibility. Retreat meant weakness.

 

His showpiece was a speech called The Glory of the Republic. It was red meat patriotism, wrapped in constitutional language. He talked about sacrifice, duty, and the price of liberty. Newspapers picked it up. Crowds asked to hear it again. He became one of the Republican Party’s go-to voices when the subject was national pride.

 

He chaired the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, stayed firm on America’s role in the world, and then stepped away in 1909. He went back to Iowa, took to the Chautauqua circuit, and kept preaching citizenship under canvas tents.

 

Cousins died in 1933.

 

Herbert Hoover During World War I

 

Before he was president, Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer. A numbers man. A logistics wizard who’d made a fortune digging minerals out of the ground on three continents. Then, in 1914, war exploded across Europe.

Thousands of Americans were stranded with no cash and no way home.

Hoover organized emergency loans. Chartered ships. Set up offices. Within weeks, he’d helped get tens of thousands of Americans out of Europe.

He became chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium after it had been overrun by Germany. Millions of civilians faced starvation. Britain’s navy blockaded food shipments. Germany occupied the land. Hoover negotiated with both sides to move grain across oceans and through battle lines.

Under his direction, ships crossed the Atlantic loaded with wheat and flour. Warehouses rose. Distribution networks spread across occupied territories. The commission fed millions of people every day.

When America entered the war in 1917, Woodrow Wilson made Hoover the U.S. Food Administrator, a post he held from 1917 to 1919.

Hoover didn’t want heavy-handed rationing laws. He believed in voluntary cooperation. So he made food patriotic.

Charles Nigg The Maquoketa Wheelman

 

Charles Nigg of Maquoketa, Iowa, pushed a wheel barrow called the Iowa Special from Maquoketa to the American Legion convention in San Antonio, Texas in 1928. He served in the Spanish American War with his two brothers. (picture from Des Moines Tribune. October 11, 1928)

Fox War Chief Sogonapothanji

Sogonapothanji was a Meskwaki (Fox) war chief in what is now eastern Iowa. His name meant “He Slew Three Sioux,” and it wasn’t a metaphor. It was a record.

Among the Meskwaki, names like this marked what a man had done, not what he hoped to be remembered for. Sogonapothanji’s reputation came from direct conflict with the Dakota (Sioux), longtime enemies in a region where raids and counter-raids were part of daily reality. Survival depended on speed, strength, and nerve. Leaders proved themselves in action.

He was not a council chief. His authority came from warfare—planning attacks, leading fighters, and defending Meskwaki territory when violence broke out. Killing enemy warriors was dangerous, personal work. Doing it more than once mattered. Doing it three times gave him a name people remembered.

By the time Americans began building forts and pressing westward, men like Sogonapothanji were already veterans of another kind of struggle. Intertribal warfare didn’t pause for treaties or survey lines. It continued even as a new and far larger threat crept into the region.

Meskwaki Chief Taimah

Chief Taimah was a Meskwaki (Fox) leader in the early nineteenth century, known less for fighting than for dealing with Americans face to face. That alone made his job dangerous.

He was a civil chief. A negotiator, expected to sit through long councils, listen to translators stumble through his words, and answer to officials who already believed the outcome was decided. Taimah understood that once something was said, it lived on paper. And paper lasted longer than promises.

He spent years moving through that system. Treaty talks. Delegations. Repeated demands that the Meskwaki give up land and move west. Saying no often brought soldiers. Saying yes brought regret. Taimah chose his words carefully because there were no good options left—only less immediate disasters.

He wasn’t naïve. When he signed treaties, it wasn’t trust. It was calculation. Delay could mean another season on familiar ground. Another year to plant corn. Another chance to keep families together before removal became unavoidable.

George Catlin said he was calm, dignified, and deliberate. He noticed how carefully Taimah dressed and carried himself. That wasn’t vanity. It was strategy. Appearance spoke before words did.

Lewis Worthington Smith Drake University Poet

Lewis Worthington Smith was an English professor at Drake University from 1906 to 1940. He believed writing mattered. Style wasn’t decoration. Ideas should stand up to pressure.

He belonged to the Poetry Society of America and the Authors’ Club of London, alongside writers who shaped modern literature. Locally, he was active in Des Moines intellectual circles like the University Club and the Prairie Club. That mix—Midwest roots with international reach—defined him. He was proof that you didn’t have to live on the coasts to think seriously about culture.

 

Smith wrote eighteen books, ranging from criticism to broader reflections on language and civilization. Ships in the Port used metaphor and reflection to explore stillness, waiting, and transition. The Mechanism of English Style broke writing to its moving parts, treating prose like a machine that had to work cleanly and efficiently. The Skyline in English Literature examined how writers used cities, horizons, and modern landscapes to express ambition, anxiety, and change.

 

He didn’t chase trends. He asked how English actually worked—and what it revealed about the people using it.