Ruby Hall, Queen of the Clear Lake Winter Carnival (1929)

Ruby Hall, 18, winner of the bathing beauty contest at Clear Lake, Iowa. The contest was part of the city's Water Carnival and she was named "Queen of the Carnival." As winner, she got to ride in the Queen's Float in the Venetian parade.

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.

No Justice For Evelyn Lee

Evelyn Lee

Nine-year-old Evelyn Lee was playing near her Des Moines home on Saturday afternoon, May 10, 1930, when she disappeared in the woods along Four Mile Creek. 

Two days later, E.M. Wessels stumbled upon Evelyn’s battered body while digging up shrubs in the same woods, just south of the Youngstown Bridge on Scott Street. Investigators quickly determined she had been choked to death by a left-handed attacker. Footprints found at the scene matched Evelyn’s shoes, and showed her attacker might have been a man with a crippled right foot. 

Detectives wasted no time in narrowing their search to two suspects—Carl McCune, 34, and Elmer Gibson, 35—scrappers who had been spotted driving a beat-up 1926 Ford roadster loaded with barrels and scavenged items. Witnesses recalled seeing the pair in South Des Moines that Saturday, drinking heavily and behaving erratically. 

The manhunt ended on May 15 when police apprehended McCune and Gibson at McCune’s mother’s house in Des Moines.

Evelyn’s parents were devastated. Her stepmother learned of Evelyn’s death when Agnes Arney, a reporter for the Des Moines Register, showed up at her door.

Carlisle Straw Stack Murder

Man running from straw stack
murder scene

The straw stack murder mystery broke in Des Moines in early August 1925. A red-haired woman was clubbed her to death and then burned in a straw stack on the George Patterson farm near Carlisle.

Investigators had little evidence to go on—a pile of bones, an expensive brooch, a string of pearls, and a tuft of red hair.

Earl Leverich and Harlan Cain found the charred skeleton at the top of Watts Hill. Leverich was driving home when he saw a skull in a pile of ashes in the field.

“Harlan thought I was seeing things,” said Leverich. He stopped the truck a couple of hundred feet down the road and walked back to investigate. “As we got closer to the skull, we could make out the rest of the body, which was badly burned.

“It looked to me as if someone was having a party that ended in murder.” He saw a partial bottle of ginger ale, alcohol, and some sandwiches nearby.

He said He Was Going To Kill Me And My Baby

Katherine and Paul Eberle

Paul Eberle was crazy. No one questioned that.

His chauffeur, Harry Schultz, heard Eberle tell his wife, “I don’t see why I don’t kill you, Katherine.”

Schultz watched Paul Eberle threaten the lives of his wife and child again and again. Once, he saw Eberle on the edge of killing himself. Another time, he said, “I’m going down in the basement to cut my arteries.”

Schultz and Katherine followed Eberle downstairs and watched him sit in a chair next to the furnace with a razor blade pressed to his wrist.

Eberle had many strange obsessions and addictions. He was a cigarette fiend, buying them in boxes by the tens of thousands. He drank coffee constantly and used drugs. His moods swung so fast, you never knew how he’d act.

Others noticed it too. John McDonnell said Eberle acted like a man with a permanent chip on his shoulder, ready to do battle at any time.

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.