Mary Allen Talbert: Remembering Slavery

Mary Allen Talbert of Ottumwa, Iowa, was featured in the Des Moines Register on July 5, 1924. Born on Christmas Day in 1799, she was believed to be 115 years old. She had been born into slavery in Garrett County, Kentucky.

Talbert said long life ran in her family. Her mother lived to be 120.

 

She’d been sold three times in her 66 years as a slave. Her second owner, a man named Alford, sold Talbert and one of her daughters to John Bird Hamilton of La Grange, Missouri. Hamilton paid $1,000 for Talbert and $500 for her daughter. The sale separated her from her other children.

 

When Hamilton moved west, he sold Talbert to a man named Price, who also owned her husband. Hamilton kept four of her children—two sons and a daughter.

 

One of her sons joined the army and was killed. Another son, John Hays, also served in the army and later fought with Custer in the Big Horn. By 1924, Hays was 90 years old. One of Talbert’s daughters, then 87, was living in Kentucky. She did not know what had become of her other daughter.

Photo Ackley High School Baseball Team 1913

The Des Moines Register printed this picture of the Ackley High School baseball team. They won seven out of eight games played in the season. The only team that defeated them was Union high school.

Top row: Fakers, Snater, DeNul
Middle row: Reinhardt, Bolender, R. Leach, Bleeks.
Bottom row: Penning, G. Leach.

The Bomb Was Only The Beginning

Howard Drenter

Howard Drenter lived at home with his parents.

He was twenty-eight years old, a Scott County farmer, and he’d never lived anywhere else. He worked the fields during the day and came back to the same house every night. People described him as reliable. A man who didn’t waste words or draw attention. He didn’t drink, fight, or have a record. If anything, he blended in.

For a while, he kept company with Edna Smith, a teacher at the Argo School. She was young, attractive, and well liked. Parents trusted her their children. She and Drenter had been seeing each other since the spring of 1925. Things appeared good. They talked, danced, and went to the movies.

Over time, the questions started. At first, they sounded casual, almost playful. Until they didn’t. Drenter wanted details. Names. He watched her every move, wanted to know who she spoke to, who walked her home, and who sat near her at school functions. Edna noticed it. So did her friends.

By January 1926, she’d had enough. She broke things off, but Drenter didn’t let go. He kept asking her out. He showed up. Sent messages through others. She kept refusing. Each time, the refusals seemed to harden him. He stopped sounding disappointed and started sounding offended. At some point, the requests turned into warnings.

Photograph of Schools in Amana Colonies 1922

 

School building in the Amana Colonies, circa 1922. (Des Moines Register. October 22, 1922)

Photograph of Chariton Iowa in 1871

The Des Moines Register (October 22, 1922) printed this picture of downtown Chariton, Iowa in 1871. They said the picket fence around the courthouse yard had a stile around it to prevent the cattle from getting in. When farmers came to town, they unhitched their horses and fed them from the wagons.

Iowa Poet Edwin Ford Piper

Edwin Ford Piper joined the faculty at the University of Iowa in 1905 and stayed there for decades, writing and teaching until his death in 1939.

He wrote about the Midwest the way it really felt. Dirt roads. Wind. Work. And long days that didn’t care if you were tired.

 

Barbed Wire was published in 1917. The Land of the Aiouwas followed in 1922. Then came Paintrock Road in 1927.

 

People compared him to Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg. Maybe. But Piper had his own style. He favored simple words, sharp images, and no fake drama.

 

And here’s the wild part. He didn’t just write poems. He collected Americana—828 folk songs, work songs, ballads, and little rhymes people sang without thinking.

 

Edwin Ford Piper wasn’t just writing Iowa’s story. He was recording its voice.

Dance Troupe of Miss Elizabeth Werblosky

Miss Elizabeth Werblosky

Miss Elizabeth Werblosky brought her ballet troupe to the stage of the President Theater in Des Moines on June 1, 1930, for a full evening dance recital that aimed to show just how many directions the art form could go.

The program featured thirty-three numbers, each one designed to illustrate a different phase of dance. Werblosky shaped the show from top to bottom, conceiving all but five of the pieces herself.

One of the evening’s most striking moments came in “Death and the Maiden,” with Julius Goldensen appearing as Death, wearing a mask that gave the number its eerie edge. The mask was designed by Clara Jane Goddard of Drake University, adding a strong visual punch to a performance built around movement, mood, and storytelling. (colorized pictures from the Des Moines Register. May 25, 1930)

Dancers (from left to right) Dorothy Abramson, Margaret
Ann Chambers, and Jean Schneider