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| Des Moines Tribune. August 29, 1925 |
Langford, age 22, had a batting average of .350 and was the leading scorer in the league. The Des Moines Tribune said he was a long-distance hitter and averaged a home run in every games as well as several doubles and triples.
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| (colorized photo from the Des Moines Register. April 15, 1928) |
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.
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| The Davenport Democrat and Leader. February 5, 1911. |
Here's another great advertisement featuring early automobiles from 1911. Do you think every car they built was a convertible? or did they just look good in the ad?
Klemme Auto Company was located on Brady Street in Davenport, Iowa, and carried Buick and Oldsmobile vehicles.
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| The Daily Times. May 31, 1917. |
And you can be sure the cars were hand-crafted. They produced just fifteen cars a day. That's 450 cars a month if they worked seven days a week, or roughly 5,000 cars per year.
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| (The Daily Times. June 24, 1905) |
Free admission. Free movies. Free concerts. And a roller coaster to compete with the new one at Suburban Park in Davenport. I didn't see a price listed here, but from what I've seen elsewhere, rides were 25 cents and the lines were out of this world.
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| (Davenport Democrat and Leader. April 9, 1905) |
The coaster was seventy feet high and ninety feet wide, and had a total length of nearly 300 feet. The paper said readers could view three cities from the top of the roller coaster.
It was to be erected north and west of the pavillion and was expected to be in operation by June 1.
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The show was big and fast, with over 500 horses
and riders from different countries. Native American performers, Mexican
riders, and Russian Cossacks all took part. Most people in the crowd had seen
nothing like it.
The shooting act led the show.
Annie Oakley stepped out and hit target after
target. Small targets. Moving targets. She worked quick and clean. The crowd
stayed quiet while she shot, then broke into applause.
Johnny Baker followed. He fired from the back of a
horse running at full speed. Shots came in rhythm with the horse’s stride. It
was one of the show’s most talked-about acts.
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| (Colorized image from Iowa Colonels and Regiments by A. A. Stuart. 1865) |
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.
Colonel Samuel Rice
The 5th Iowa Infantry formed at Burlington
in July 1861. Most of the men had never seen combat. Within a year, they would.
Early on, the regiment was led by Colonel Samuel A. Rice, a Burlington lawyer
who brought order to a green command. By the fall of 1862, they were in
Mississippi with Rosecrans, facing Confederate forces at Iuka and Corinth.
At Iuka, the fight came fast and close. Thick timber broke the lines. Units lost contact. Reports from the field describe heavy fire and confusion. Grant later wrote that “the enemy made a stubborn resistance.” The 5th Iowa held its ground and took its first hard losses.
Corinth followed weeks later. On October 4, Confederate attacks hit the Union line hard. The 5th Iowa went forward in the counterattack. They helped drive the enemy back. In the advance, they captured the colors of the 40th Mississippi and took prisoners. Rosecrans reported that the Union forces “drove the enemy from every position.” Rice had the regiment in hand during the fight, keeping it steady as the line bent and then pushed forward.
In 1863, the regiment moved with Grant into Mississippi. At Raymond, the fight stretched across fields and woods. The Confederates held at first, then gave way under pressure. Grant again noted the resistance, calling it “stubborn.” Two days later, the army took Jackson after a quick fight.
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| (colorized image of a photo published in The World's Work in 1920) |
They called them Hoovervilles, and the name
stuck. Not funny. Not clever. Just mean and dead-on. The country was broke,
jobs gone, banks shuttered, and people were out there hammering together shacks
from junk like it might hold the world together one more night.
They spread like a bad rumor on riverbanks, rail
yards, and empty lots on the edge of town. No water. No heat. Breadlines
curling around the block like a slow funeral. People standing there with hollow
eyes, waiting for a handout that might run out three bodies ahead of them.
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| Des Moines Register. September 15, 1912. |
Team members:
Upper row: (left to right) M. J. Locker, William Coffin, and H. G. Stiles.
Bottom row: (left to right) Walter Balkema, P. W. Hedlund, and O. J. Bartos.
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| Des Moines Register. July 7, 1912. |
Clement T. Wilson, head of the Coe College track team qualified for the 1912 Olympics held in Stockholm, Sweden. He won a place on the American Olympic Team by equaling the world's record in the 100-yard dash in the tryouts held at the Northwestern University field in Evanston, Illinois.
He was eliminated in the semi-finals of the 100-meter competition, and the Americanrelay team was disqualified because of a fault while passing the first baton.
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| (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.
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| Des Moines Register. June 3, 1906. |
Martin "Farmer" Burns was born in Cedar County, Iowa, in 1861, and grew into one of the toughest wrestlers of his time. He studied the sport, figuring out holds and techniques that gave him an edge. By the late 1800s, he’d worked his way up to the American Heavyweight Championship.
Burns helped turn Frank Gotch into a world champion. His workouts were brutal—neck bridges, long runs, endless drills—but they worked. He turned wrestling into something smarter, tougher, and a lot more dangerous.
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| Des Moines Register. July 16, 1905. |
