Mrs. Kenneth Bowman Saved Her Children From A Barn Fire

Mrs Kenneth Brown and her children

Maquoketa, Iowa. July 9, 1930. It started like any other morning. Mrs. Kenneth Bowman was doing her chores when she realized her three boys and her little sister, Cora Beth—had climbed into the hayloft to see a baby pigeon.

Then the loft burst into flames. No warning, no time for panic. She just ran—pulled Warren Lee, Owen, little Neale, and Cora Beth out of the smoke one by one, moving on instinct while the heat snapped behind her.

People tried to make sense of it afterward. Investigators said someone had used dynamite to break apart the tightly packed hay so it would burn faster. It sounded impossible until you saw how fast the fire moved.

By the time the flames died, seven buildings were gone. Only the farmhouse, the separator shed, and a barn across the road were still standing.

Neighbors called Mrs. Bowman a hero. She probably didn’t feel like one, but those kids are alive because she didn’t stop to think.

Elsie Swender Pushed for the Death Penalty

Elsie Swender

In the fall of 1920-something, when most people did everything short of faking typhoid to avoid jury duty, 24-year-old Elsie Swender marched into the courthouse like it was opening night on Broadway. She told the Register she “wouldn’t have missed jury duty for the world.” Not even for a date, a promotion, or the promise of free chocolates at Younkers.

She got the Joe Williams murder trial—one of the most closely watched cases of the year. It was her first time on a jury, and she took to it with a kind of fervor usually reserved for revival tent preachers and championship wrestling fans. From the moment the jurors filed into the deliberation room, Elsie planted her feet and fired her opening salvo: death penalty.

According to the paper, she wasn’t just in favor of it. She was one of the most aggressive jurors pushing for it. She preached. She argued. She held the floor like she had been waiting her whole life for this exact moment. “Our first vote was for the death penalty,” she told the reporter, half proud, half disappointed. “I sure did a lot of preaching.”

Eight jurors strongly favored first-degree murder. Elsie was among them, doing everything she could to swing the remaining four to her side. She tried logic. She tried emotion. She tried whatever it is a 24-year-old uses when she’s suddenly the most forceful person in a room full of grown adults deciding a man’s fate.

How Santa Claus Came to Des Moines in 1923

Santa Claus on his way to the Younker 
Brother store, with acting mayor,
Mrs. C. H. Morris

Santa blew into Des Moines on November 17, 1923, long before anyone expected him. Kids weren’t ready. Parents weren’t ready. Even the weather wasn’t ready. Yet there he was, swooping in like Christmas couldn’t wait another minute.

By sunrise, thousands of children were already downtown, crowding the sidewalks and pressing their noses to the toy-land windows of the big stores. One reporter joked the shelves held enough toys “to fill the bags of 10,000 Saint Nicks,” and judging by the wide-eyed faces in the crowds, most kids believed that was true.

 

The Des Moines Tribune swore that “never in the history of Des Moines has Christmas spirit gotten off to an earlier start than this year,” and they weren’t kidding. There was a Christmas parade, free taxi rides, and chocolate teddy bears—real chocolate teddy bears—dropping out of the sky.

 

Santa made his grand entrance a little after nine o’clock at the Harris-Emery store. He didn’t sneak down a chimney or clomp in with reindeer hooves. He went big. He flew over Des Moines in a high-powered airplane, circling the city like a jolly red barnstormer. Kids pointed at the sky. Mothers shaded their eyes. Fathers muttered things like, “Good grief, he’s actually doing it.”

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. 

How Davenport Iowa Got It's Name

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.

Unstoppable: Iowa's Duke Slater And The Game He Changed

Duke Slater came out of Clinton, Iowa, like a walking thunderclap. Big shoulders, bigger presence, a man who made coaches straighten their backs when he walked past. Reporters called him “a human barricade.” Players called him worse. None of it slowed him down.

He grew up in a world that didn’t expect a Black kid to go anywhere. Slater ignored the script. He pushed through it the way he pushed through defensive lines—head down, legs driving, no apologies.

 

His high school couldn’t afford helmets. Most players hesitated. Slater didn’t. He played bare-headed and kept doing it for the rest of his life. A rival said, “Hitting him was like running into a stone wall.” Another said, “I hit him once. That was enough.”

 

When he got to the University of Iowa, everything changed. The Hawkeyes already had a team. Slater gave them a force of nature.