|
Friday, December 2, 1898
We understand that the Grand Jury at Orange City indicted Mrs. Blood. It was not possible for the jury to do otherwise. We did not learn in what degre the bill was returned. The Grand Jury also indicted Dr. Mosher, of Ireton for alleged abortion.
[Transcriber's note: this is Alice Amelia (Cross) Blood; 1855-1948]
Friday, February 10, 1899
Roy Lang and Manus Steinberg were in the vicinity of Hudson, S.D. this week engaged in dehorning cattle.
Jim Walters received another letter from Geo. Worster at Manilla the other day. George, since the letter was written has had a chance to know what the Filipanos do when it comes to fighting.
A letter from Ben Goss at Inwood reports that he is barely able to get around with the assistancy of crutches. Ben's life at Chicamauga left him in worse shape than if he had been wounded by a Mauser bullet at Santiago. The one place was nearly as fatal as the other.
Mr. and Mrs. John Jansma, through the INDEX wish to express their appreciation of the many kindness of friends during the burial of their little son, Johnnie.
Mrs. Kershaw leaves next week for her parental home in the east. Rev. Kershaw will follow her when he ceases his work at the Congregational church here. We understand that he is to remain permanently in that portion of the United States.
Miss Lena Owens expects to leave next Thursday for Philadelphia where she expects to take a year or more in the study of music. Miss Owens is already one of the best, if not the best performer on a piano in Hull and her work at Philadelphia will only make better what is now excellent.
The state auditor has assigned territory to the several state bank examiners. Robert Raines, brother to Geo. Raines, of our town, has been assigned to the river counties and southeastern Iowa.
Friday, February 24, 1899
The school election is a couple of weeks off. There are two directors to be chosen this year. The term of F.E. May expires and one will have to be elected to fill vacancy caused by the death of F.C. Beckman.
Harold Odle and Grant Vickers are to be mustered into Co. E at Des Moines. Both of the boys are attending school at the capitol city and need not come home to be admitted into the service.
Misses Greer and Barton and Messrs. Schoneman and Raak, all of Sioux Center, spent Sabbath at the Robt. Schoneman home.
E.A. Ballard will leave tomorrow or the first of next week for Des Moines. Of course we all know why Eb is going to the capitol city. He will return in such a way, that one can figure that one and one make one.
Jake Bralsma has decided he will not join Co. E just yet. He sent his papers down to Orange City for his father to write his consent and the papers came back without the old gentlemen's endorsement. There seems to be a lurking fear in the minds of some parents that joining the company means war. A mistaken idea.
Isaac Claerbout left for Chicago Monday via Perkins with a car load of fat steers. He returned yesterday. Isaac is one of the young farmers who started out along the lines pursued by his father, that is, combining stock raising with farming and he is making a success of it.
Oil inspector Welch, of Sioux City, was in Hull Saturday inspecting a car of oil for Dr. Coad. He found it all O.K.
Dr. Coad was an important witness in the Mosher trial and is spending a few days vacation at Orange City this week.
Grandmother Holmes, who lives at the home of her son north east of town died yesterday morning. Her son John and wife, who had been in Arkansas for the past few weeks were summoned by wire and arrived to-day noon. Mrs. Holmes was well known in this comunity, especially by the old settlers. Her death was not unexpected for she has been ailing for some time past.
The Mengelkamp sale takes place next Monday.
Johnie Roe, as usual spent Sunday in Hull. It is reported that one of these days, soon to come, he will remove the attraction from among us to a cottage of his own.
Friday, September 1, 1899
The Day We Left Chickamauga
--Sioux city Journal, Aug. 27--
"Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the day," said a member of
the late Fifty-second Iowa Infantry volunteers, "that we left Chickamauga park,
and if I should live to be 100 years old I never could forget that day.
"If you have ever had a long and tedious wait for a train you
can appreciate something of our feelings and experiences, but if you add to that
the fact we had been at Chickamauga for three months, that we were coming home,
the war with Spain being over and the trouble with the Filipinos not yet begun,
and to that the fact that we were a sick and disappointed regiment, perhaps you
will know better how we felt.
"28th of August, 1898, fell on a Sunday. For three days we had
had our traveling orders to go back to Des Moines and all we had been waiting
for was railway transportation. It had come and we were to pull out of the park
whenever the train was ready for us.
"We practically broke camp on Saturday. We had to turn in our
transportation, that is, our escort wagons and mules, and this necessitated the
borrowing of wagons from other regiments to move our last baggage. The heaviest
of the company baggage was taken over to Ringgold, Ga., with a detail of men on
Saturday. This even included all the canvas that could be spared and we slept in
the remaining tents on Saturday night. Ringgold was sixteen miles from our camp
in the park and the teams which took the stuff over there were driven back and
turned over to the depot quartermaster. Twelfth New York undertook to move us in
consideration of our lumber, cots and whatever else of camp impediments we were
obliged to leave behind. This stuff was of considerable value to any regiment
which remained, but of no more use to us than is a dying man's gold when he is
about to cross the dark river. We had invested thousands of dollars in various
comforts, but could not take them with us, for the effects of the enlisted men
were confined to what they could carry on their backs and even the weight of the
officers baggage was strictly limited.
HEAT, HUNGER AND THIRST
"Sunday morning dawned 'soon,' as the southerners say: that is,
the sun got up early and began doing business from the very first yawn. In other
words, it was hot -- fearfully hot. We had some sort of a breakfast, the best we
could get, the tents were promptly taken down and tied, and the tent floors were
piled and gradually carted away by the wagons of the Twelfth New York. Our
wagons being gone, it was impossible to get water without going a long way for
it, and there was nothing to eat except the travel rations for the men and the
officers had to go to some primitive restaurants near the lines of the provost
guard at the limits of the park.
"The rest was all waiting. We sat around in the sun all the day,
from 5 o'clock in the morning until 4 o'clock in the afternoon, most of us
literally doing nothing. The actual work of breaking camp was soon done and the
men had their blanket rolls and their kits packed. We had two or three hospital
tents full of sick men whom we were to take with us. the worst of the sick had
already been sent home, or were in the Second division, general and Leiter
hospitals, too ill to be moved.
MAN WHO MOVED THE SICK
"There was a man in our regiment named Sophus Richards, and he
was a character. He was a Norwegian, I think, and had been an officer in the
Norwegian army. At any rate he had military genius of a high order, which was
soon recognized after he was detailed in the hospital corps, and he was made a
sergeant of the ambulance corps. In the afternoon Sophus came around with his
ambulance train to take our sick to the cars. It was a hard and heart breaking
job, but Sophus was equal to the occasion, and we all blessed him that day, even
to the chaplain, who had missed his alcohol on several occasions after Sophus
had been seen around his tent. The chaplain used the alcohol for his little
stove, to make gruel, but the men said that Sophus could make a superior article
of white line. Nobody could swear that Sophus knew where the alcohol went, but
he was always in a certain state of exhilaration. He was exhilarated on this
Sunday to the state of superior executive capacity, combined with the tenderness
of a woman. He was everywhere at once, swearing in picturesque dialect at the
mules, giving terse orders to his men and caring for the sick the same as if
they had been his own children. We never saw Sophus again, for he left us to
enter the hospital corps of the regular army, but all of us will hold him in
grateful remembrance.
CAMP IN RETROSPECT
"My, oh my, how hot is was, and what a long day. The colonel was
determined we should not start for Lytle until the cars were ready for us, and
he sent the adjutant down to learn the exact hour. We were encamped then on the
open field in front of the Viniard house, and during the wait a few of us, more
sentimental perhaps, than the rest, walked or rode over to our old camp in the
woods, where we had lain for three months, where the fever visited us, and
whence so many of our men were taken to the hospitals or sent home, to be seen
no more by us on this earth. The old camp looked strange and desolate. It was
easy enough to find, for here was where our toiling, sweating men had dug the
sinks and afterward covered them up again, here were the paved streets the
"Chickamauga Land and Improvement company" had made, here was the old mule
corral. Here was the tall pine tree in front of my tent, which had been a sort
of companion to me for so long, and which I had wished I could bring home with
me. As I returned from the desolate place I picked up a piece of shell, which,
perhaps, had furnished some soldier his quietus on September 19, 1862, and
nearby I saw a square yard or two of maggots on the ground, a wriggling,
crawling, seething mass, a mysterious, but not inexplicable, symbol of the
typhoid fever. What brought those flies there I never knew, perhaps some bacon
had once laid a few minutes on the spot, or a cook might have spilled some
grease, but they were a loathsome reminder of what we had been through and what
we were getting away from.
GROUND WAS LEFT BEHIND
"A corps inspector visited us and faithfully stayed all day. He
understood his business and performed it. He was the most puntilious and
relentless man I ever saw. Orders required that the camping ground of each
regiment should be left in exactly the same condition as it was found. Not only
must each sink be filled but if a stake had been driven in the ground it must be
pulled up and removed and the hole filled up. No ashes were to be left and every
bit of paper as big as a postage stamp had to be picked up and taken away. We
left that ground as bald as a desert, and without a scrap of litter or waste
upon it but we left it with not much regret.
FAREWELL OF OTHER REGIMENTS
"At 4 o'clock the adjutant returned from Lytle and reported to
the colonel that the agent had said that were ready for them or would be as soon
as they could get to them. Within five minutes we were in heavy marching order
and plodding to the train. Our neighbors were very kind to us and the 1st
Mississippi lent us wagons to carry the travel rations to the cars. They cheered
us as we went out. They were fond of us, those Mississippians, for our band
would play their dress parades never forgetting to give "Dixie" as they were
marching off. It was on those occasions that we first learned by experience what
the rebel yell is like. Our boys all have it now and they will now and do set it
up at the first words of Dixie. They did at Clear Lake and always will, I
suppose. who says the bloody shirt was buried with the war with Spain in which
so many men enlisted and never saw a shot fired?
"As I said we marched to the cars at 4 o'clock in the afternoon
but we did not get out of Lytle until 10 o'clock that night. The ways and
methods of southern railroading are past understanding. Those train crews bacyed
and shunted and manouvered around those yards in a way which evidently puzzled
even themselves but they finally got our train together and we pulled out for
Chatanooga and God's world beyond that.
"It was great to smell the pure and fresh air and to see the
familiar country when we got as far north as Missouri. It was glorious when we
entered Iowa. that was a year ago but if I should live to be 100 years old I
never would forget the day we left Chickamauga Park."
|
