Charles Grilk Davenport Lawyer Iowa Attorney General

Charles Grilk (from The Daily Times. 
April 4, 1924)

When Charles Grilk ran for Congress in 1906 as a young Republican lawyer out of Davenport, the party brought in its heaviest weapon to carry him across the line: Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt arrived like the weather. Loud. Electric. Unavoidable.

That morning, he took breakfast at the Davenport home of novelist Alice French—known to readers as Octave Thanet—one of the most powerful literary and political voices in the state. The table was crowded with influence. Words were chosen carefully. Futures were weighed between coffee cups.

Then, Roosevelt and Grilk went to Central Park.

Thousands packed into Central Park in Davenport. Roosevelt spoke. The crowd surged. Grilk stood beside him, absorbing the force of borrowed gravity. It was a public anointing. A signal that this young Davenport lawyer had entered the bloodstream of national power.

He lost that race, but the door never closed again.

Book Review: Murder & Mayhem in Scott County

You pick up Murder & Mayhem in Scott County, Iowa expecting a tidy little history lesson—maybe some musty courthouse trivia, a harmless stroll through the polite past. Instead, the thing hits you like a warm Schlitz can lobbed from a moving pickup. Scott County isn’t the wholesome Midwest postcard you were promised. It’s a long, low scream under the polite small-talk.

Grace Reed on Utica Ridge Road? That story crawls under your skin and refuses to pay rent. Margaretha Nehlsen poisoning her own kids with chocolate—chocolate, of all things—makes you want to interrogate every candy dish you’ve ever seen at a church potluck. And Harry Hamilton, the ex-cop who decided law enforcement was more exciting when you were shooting at it—he’s the kind of character you expect to find at 2 a.m. in a tavern that claims it closes at midnight.

The book doesn’t guide you so much as shove you down a gravel road at high speed, shouting facts at you through the open window. There’s a feverish energy to it, the sense that the author has been living on gas-station coffee and county-archive dust for far too long. Each chapter feels like it was pulled from a file drawer that local officials swore didn’t exist.

New Masonic Temple in Davenport Iowa

John Soller & Sons landed the contract to build Davenport’s new Masonic Temple in June 1921. The papers said it would be the finest Masonic building in the entire country, and with a price tag of a million dollars, nobody argued.

The project was huge for the Tri-Cities — the biggest construction job anyone around here had taken on. The new temple was planned to be 150 feet wide, 160 feet long, and 100 feet high. Trinity Church had to come down to make room, and its stone was crushed and packed into the new foundation.

Construction was supposed to take a year and a half. John Soller said it would be ready for the Shrine and Consistory classes in the fall of 1922.

The dining room was expected to seat 1,200 people, and there’d be a billiard room, game room, and even a soda fountain.

Speed Boat Races at Campbell's Island Davenport 1921

 

This advertisement for Campbell's Island appeared in the Davenport Democrat and Leader on August 10, 1921.

Italian Boxer Primo Carnera in the Tri-Cities

Primo Carnera (left), Al Singer (right)

Primo Carnera hit the Tri-Cities like a runaway circus elephant that suddenly decided to walk upright and take questions. People had whispered about him for months—the giant from Italy. He was built like a locomotive—six-foot-eight, two-eighty-five, wearing size-23 shoes that looked less like footwear and more like state-issued pontoons.

The papers printed a photo of Carnera looming over Al Singer, the Bronx firecracker who usually strutted into a ring like he owned the joint. Next to Carnera, he looked like some doomed newsboy drafted into mythology by mistake. Singer was coiled and ready. Carnera looked like he was debating whether to punch, or simply let gravity do the job.

He wasn’t here to fight. Just an exhibition match on July 10, 1930, at the Palmer School’s open-air arena. A chance for the locals to gawk at something their brains refused to classify as normal. Crowds swarmed him. They wanted to touch the hands, measure the shoulders, stare at the monstrous shoes and swear they weren’t hallucinating.

For a few days that summer, the Tri-Cities felt wired with electricity—like the whole place had been plugged into some great brutal engine. Carnera wandered through town, enormous and unhurried, and people followed him just to make sure the giant was real and not something conjured out of heat, rumor, and American hunger for spectacle.

Davenport Iowa Train Wreck November 1919

Two trains on the Rock Island line collided five miles west of Davenport just after dawn on November 20, 1919.

When help reached the site, the wreck looked unreal. Seven cars were thrown off the tracks—some half-buried in the dirt, others twisted into crooked piles. A cattle car had exploded into splinters. Thirty head of cattle lay dead or dying, their moans drifting across the fields. The Davenport Democrat and Leader said the pitiful sounds could be heard for blocks.

 

How the three-man crew lived through it was a mystery.

 

Engine No. 2529, run by engineer Thorpe, had been crushed into a tangle of iron. The fireman crawled out first on his hands and knees, shaking and scraped raw but alive. A witness said he looked like a man clawing his way out of the jaws of something that meant to kill him.

Russell Farnham Explorer Indian Trader

Russell Farnham

George Davenport partnered with Russell Farnham in 1824. He couldn’t have chosen a more qualified person for his growing enterprise. 

John Jacob Astor was the first to capitalize on the Lewis and Clark’s western explorations. He sent two expeditions to the Pacific coast in the summer of 1807. Captain Jonathan Thorn sailed around Cape Horn to the Pacific coast. Astor selected 23-year-old Russell Farnham to lead the cross-country expedition, following Lewis and Clark’s footsteps. Farnham handpicked a crew of seventy frontiersmen and started up the Missouri River to its headwaters. 

 

The expedition wintered at the mouth of the Milk River. When spring came, they pushed on to the Columbia River. By the time Farnham reached his objective in October 1808, just seven men remained of the seventy who started. 

 

Unfortunately, Farnham arrived at the designated meeting place just in time to see the ships sail away. He waited three weeks, hoping they would return for him, then set off on foot across the country to make the return journey. By the time he reached his previous wintering spot on the Milk River, Farnham was the only man left. 

Naming Davenport Iowa

George Davenport

After the Black Hawk War ended, George Davenport turned most of his attention to land speculation. Davenport was part of a party that laid out the town of Stephenson (formerly Farnhamsburg) in 1834.

The following year, nine men gathered around the fireplace of Colonel William Davenport to lie out a new city on the Iowa side of the river. They included Colonel William Davenport, Commander of Fort Armstrong; Major William Gordon, a United States surveyor; Antoine Le Claire, Indian interpreter; Colonel George Davenport, Major Thomas Smith, Alexander McGregor, Levi S. Colton, Philip Hambaugh, and Captain James May.

The men purchased a quarter section of land, comprising thirty-six blocks from Antoine Le Claire, for $2,000. Each man put up $250, except Colonel William Davenport.

Academy of the Immaculate Conception at Davenport, Iowa

The Academy of the Immaculate Conception sat on a Davenport hill like it owned the place—which, in a way, it did. Built in 1859 and run by the Sisters of Charity, it was where Iowa girls went to learn how to outthink the world. The sisters taught science, music, math, and probably a little bit of rebellion, whether they meant to or not.

For nearly a hundred years, it buzzed with piano music, ink stains, and dreams too big to fit in a classroom. In 1958, the Academy merged with St. Ambrose to become Assumption High. The building didn’t disappear. These days it’s part of Palmer College of Chiropractic.

SantaCon Holiday Mayhem on Main Street

SantaCon Davenport isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for people who wake up in December, pull on a $20 Santa suit, and say, “Let’s do this.”

December 13th, 2025. Seven years running. Seven years of red polyester flooding 2nd Street like a Yuletide riot. Santas with fake beards, Santas with real ones, Santas already drunk by noon and swearing eternal love for Rudolf and the Grinch. They come from Bettendorf, Rock Island, Moline, the cornfields— with a thirst and a costume.

 

It started back in 2018. A handful of locals turned downtown Davenport into a North Pole fever dream. Now it’s a full-scale invasion. They move in herds, chanting, ho-ho-hoing, clinking glasses, leaving behind trails of glitter, beer foam, and unanswered questions.

 

Rules? There are rules. Wear the suit. A hat’s not good enough. Don’t die. Don’t ruin it for the rest of the Santas. Be nice to the bartenders—they control the flow of Christmas. Beyond that, you’re on your own.

Trading One Hell For Another St. Elizabeth's Hospital Fire Davenport

Firefighters responded at just after 2 a.m.

January 7, 1950, began quietly at Mercy Hospital’s St. Elizabeth’s psychiatric ward in Davenport, Iowa. One nurse was away in Des Moines, leaving Anna Neal in charge of nearly seventy patients. Another aide, Josephine O’Toole, was off duty and asleep upstairs.

Shortly after 2 a.m., Nurse Ellen Hildebrand spotted flames rising from St. Elizabeth’s and alerted her supervisor. Within minutes, smoke filled the halls.

Hospital worker Murray Francis, fifty-seven, saw the fire from the main building. He kicked in the door, carried patients to safety, and then helped firefighters man a hose. Merchant police officer Bill Stagen arrived as crews battled to break through barred windows. He saw women clinging to the iron bars, screaming for help, then disappearing into the smoke.

Patrolman Richard Fee was the first police officer on the scene. Flames poured from the upper windows. Firefighters doused him with water before he climbed into a bucket, ax in hand. Breaking through a window, he found six women huddled together “like bewildered animals.” He pulled them out, describing the bitter cold outside as “trading one hell for another.”

They Caught Him With His Pants Falling Down

Whynak Johann

Every murder story starts with a question. This one has three: Where does love end? Where does insanity begin? And why do they always live in a rented room above someone named Bessie?

 In 1910, Whynak Johann married Marie in Vienna, Austria. He was built like a bull—five-nine, 190 pounds, all muscle. She was tiny, ninety-five pounds soaking wet, with a face that said, I could survive anything except this marriage.

 

Two weeks in, he marched off with the Austrian Army. Marie got sick and went home to her parents. When Whynak returned, she was living with her ex-boyfriend, Franzl Hervieu. Most people would take the hint. Whynak didn’t.

 

In 1913, moved to Davenport, Iowa, and got a job at Kohl’s Packing Company, making $2.50 a day turning animals into dinner. He sent for Marie. To his shock—she came.

 

They rented a two-room apartment at 1226½ Harrison Street for a dollar a month from Bessie Estess. Marie took in boarders; Whynack brought home paychecks. Love in the immigrant slums—cheap beer, sausage smells, and dreams of not freezing to death.

 

Then Franzl showed up. Again.

Murder in Davenport's Fairmount Cemetery

Kate Ryan

They found her at dawn in Fairmount Cemetery. A workman on his way to the gate saw a horse first—head down, reins slack. Then a buggy smashed against a tree. Then, farther down a ravine, a woman in black.

She was face-down, her hat in the grass. A hatpin was still in her hand. When the police rolled her over, they found a bullet hole between her eyes.

Her name was Kate Ryan, though in Bucktown she went by Rose Earl. She worked at Babe Foreman’s house, one of the licensed brothels in Davenport’s red-light district.

Since 1893, the city had made vice official business. The police collected monthly fines from the madams, and the girls worked without fear of raids. It was cleaner that way, they said. Predictable. Kate’s boss paid twenty-five dollars for the house license and ten more for each girl. Kate Ryan was legal. Until she wasn’t.

The man everyone blamed was Peter Shardis, known to the streets as Pete Sardine. He was thirty-five, short, with a limp and a bottle habit. He’d come from Greece eight years earlier, drifted between Moline and Davenport, working in foundries until he drank his way out of them.

Murder at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home Davenport

George Foulk ate a piece of chocolate, a moment later he was
on the floor fighting for his life

Sunday, October 1, 1905. The mail came to the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in Davenport. Bills, church bulletins, a few letters, and one small brown-paper parcel tied with string.

 Nobody panicked. Nobody ever does at first. Packages showed up all the time—mostly socks and Bibles. This one had toys. A ball. A picture book. A doll with yellow yarn hair. And a little sack of chocolate creams. Children love chocolate. Adults love to think of children loving chocolate. That’s how you end up with stories like this.

 

After supper, the matron passed them around. George Foulk, age seven, went first. He said the candy tasted bitter. Nobody listened. A minute later, he was rolling on the floor.

 

Somebody screamed. The doctor ran in, hands shaking, smelling of liniment and coffee. The boy’s body arched like a drawn bow. “Strychnine,” the doctor said. 

 

By morning, the boy was gone, and the entire town was chewing on rumors.

Bix Beiderbecke An Iowa Original

Bix Beiderbecke

Bix Beiderbecke grew up in Davenport, Iowa, a river town that smelled of corn and coal smoke. He listened to the steamboats at night, and played piano by ear when he was five. His parents wanted him to stop. He didn’t. Ragtime was dying. Jazz was being born. He was there at the baptism.

The local papers called him the Davenport wonder. They liked him because he was theirs. They didn’t understand him. One early review said his tone “seems to drift from another world.” It did. Eddie Condon said, “He put the cornet to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying yes.”

He joined the Wolverines when he was nineteen. They drove from town to town in a beat-up car, sleeping in barns, playing dance halls. Bandmate Jimmy Hartwell, said, “We didn’t make much money, but when Bix played, it felt like we were rich.” Another remembered him sitting up all night, rewriting a tune until it sounded like water.

By 1924 he was recording. “Fidgety Feet.” “Jazz Me Blues.” His solos were short and sharp, like postcards from a different planet. Then came “Singin’ the Blues.” That one stuck. “Beiderbecke doesn’t play—he converses,” wrote a Chicago critic. Melody Maker called it “the loveliest tone ever captured on record.” Louis Armstrong listened and said, “A lot of cats tried to play like Bix. Ain’t none of them play like him yet.”

The Wickedest City on the Mississippi

 

A typical street scene in a Mississippi River town at
the turn of the century.

In the early 1900s, Davenport was known as the “Wickedest Town on the Mississippi,” and for good reason. On the east side of town, in the two-block stretch they call Bucktown, forty or more houses of ill repute were clustered like vultures in a roost. This is not rumor but record: city directories, police logs, and criminal dockets all confirm that Bucktown was the nerve center of the city’s sex trade.

Davenport made vice official in 1893. That year the city began licensing brothels — not to punish them, but to collect their dues and, officials claimed, to control disease. From that moment, the underworld of Bucktown became part of the municipal ledger.

The city required each brothel and woman to register. They had to pay a monthly fine—in advance—so authorities would largely look the other way. The logic: “If men are going to visit these houses, then we may as well regulate them, test for disease, and take their money.”

Police matron Sarah “Sadie” Hill became one of the few regular presences inside that shadow world. Appointed in 1893 to succeed Annie Davis, Hill served until 1920 as Davenport’s matron, living inside the House of Detention (the so-called Bridewell) at Fifth and Main. She was paid around $55 a month in 1900—and was on duty day and night.

Davenport Coliseum Fire 1913

The Davenport Coliseum caught fire late Tuesday night, October 21, 1913. It started in the boiler room and spread fast. Paint, lumber, and varnish fed the flames until the whole block glowed red.

The Daily Times called it “one of the most spectacular blazes ever seen in Davenport.”

When the first crews arrived, the heat was already buckling the walls. The first floor, home to a woodworking and two paint shops, was a furnace. Upstairs, where the city once held dances and conventions, the ceiling gave way as flames broke through the roof.

Fire Chief Dengler said the fight was made worse by failed telephones. “We tried to reach Number Four Company at Mississippi and Fulton,” he said. “Couldn’t get through. I don’t say we could’ve saved it, but we could’ve used more help.”

Engines came from all over the city, but the fire moved too fast. By midnight the building was gone—timbers collapsing, glass breaking, sparks falling toward the river.

The loss was set at $35,000. The chief called the Coliseum “a big fire menace.” When morning came, only the brick shell stood. Crowds gawked at the twisted ruins.