Iowa Heritage Illustrated

Swaim, Ginalie

/
ALL ITEMS SHSI (IOWA CITY)
Above, in silent anticipation, the stage is set for graduation 
in 1910 in Silver City, Iowa. Five chairs await graduates, 
and dozens more on the floor await proud guests. Gradua­
tion has long been a traditional rite of passage for Iowans, 
and will surely continue to be for a very long time, for 
Iowa is a state that places great value on education, and 
graduation is celebrated as a major step into adulthood.
How we celebrate and commemorate graduation, of 
course, changes slightly with each graduating class, as new 
traditions take hold and old ones are discarded. What 
hasn't changed, however, is the importance of formal acknowl­
edgement of the event, through photographs, announce­
ments, and programs (the one on the left is from Alden, 
Iowa; on the right, unknown). Here on the following pages, 
for your pleasure, are a few such items from the collections 
of the State Historical Societv of Iowa. //s
graduating exekgises
OF THE
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ALL ITEMS: SHSI (IOWA CfTY)
IGH 5 6H00Li>
(goMMENGEMEN'P, 1889.
Belozo: The high school graduating class 
of Washington, Iowa, in 1890.
190 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
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English

Graduation

Olson, Lisa L

October Echoes: The 1929 Wall Street Crash in Iowa

Silag, Bill

Glory Enough for One Day!

Sayre, Ruth Buxton

Craking up and Flapping off

Hoehnle, Peter

Iowa Clubwomen Rise to World Stage: Dorothy Houghton and Ruth Sayre

Natte, Roger B

I
Iowa in 1855
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Iowa in 1855

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HOUSF PHOTO COURTESY WEBSTER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY (FORT DOOGE) PORTRA/T FROM A BOOK O f  DAYS. BY WILLIAM SAYLES DOAN (FORT DOCGE 1991) WITH AUTHOR’S PERMISSION
E pilogue
John Duncombe, 
After the Diary
by Roger B. Natte
really wonder if I was born to live and die 
without leaving a name," John Duncombe 
wrote in his diary in the spring of 1857. "Is it 
possible that more than one third of my probable 
life has passed without my doing one single act 
that will mark my memory, after the present race is 
dead?"
He need not have worried.
Duncombe became arguably Fort Dodge's most 
prominent citizen, achieving great success in both 
public and private realms. His legal training and 
natural ability brought him respect and recognition 
as one of Iowa's foremost attorneys. During a 
period in which the railroads played a powerful 
role in the state's economic and political life, he 
was the attorney for the Iowa Division of the 
Illinois Central for 37 years. He also represented the 
Mason City & Fort Dodge, the Fort Dodge & Fort 
Ridgely, the Des Moines & Fort Dodge, and the 
Cherokee & Dakota Railroads for shorter periods. 
Between 1881 and 1889 he lectured on railroad law 
for the University of Iowa's law school. He also 
served as president of the Iowa Bar Association.
As a member of what at times was a powerless 
political minority, he nevertheless wielded consid­
erable personal influence. In 1860 he attended the 
Democratic National Convention as a delegate 
supporting James Breckenridge, and he chaired the 
Iowa delegation to the Democratic conventions in 
1872 and 1892. He served in the Iowa state legisla­
ture for eight years — in the Senate, from 1859 to 
1862, and in the House, for 1871-1872 and 1879-1880. 
He chaired the commission to revise the Iowa Code 
in 1860, served as a member of the Board of Regents
for the University of Iowa for 18 years, and in 1893 
was appointed to the Iowa Commission for the 
Columbian Exposition (the Chicago World's Fair). 
In later years, he was chosen as the first president 
of the Iowa Pioneer Law Makers Association, 
indicating bipartisan recognition of his leadership.
Duncombe's success carried over into the 
business world. His early fortune was the result of 
his success as a land agent and land speculator. The 
wealth he acquired was immediately invested in 
other enterprises. An incorporator of the Iowa Falls 
& Sioux City (Illinois Central), the Mason City & 
Fort Dodge (Chicago Great Western), and the Fort 
Dodge & Fort Ridgely (Minneapolis & St. Louis) 
Railroads, he was the first to invest in coal mining 
in north central Iowa, finding a ready market with 
the railroads he was tied to financially. His coal 
investments later extended to the new fields of 
Wyoming. Duncombe was also one of the original 
financiers of the Fort Dodge gypsum industry, 
organizing in 1889 the Duncombe Stucco Mills and 
building the fourth mill in the area. One of the first 
local mill owners to recognize the benefits of 
consolidation in the industry, he sold his company 
eventually to the newly formed U.S. Gypsum 
Company.
The final area in which Duncombe left his mark 
was in journalism, first as co-owner and co-editor 
of the Fort Dodge Sentinel. He later was the editor of 
the Fort Dodge Democrat, and in later years he 
established the Fort Dodge Chronicle (which eventu­
ally merged with the Fort Dodge Messenger.)
John Francis Duncombe died in Fort Dodge, 
Iowa, on August 2,1902, at the age of 70.
Roger B. Natte, who transcribed the John 
Duncombe diaries, taught history at Iowa Central Com­
munity College for many years and also served on the 
board of the State Historical Society of Iowa. Natte has 
been involved in numerous local history projects in Fort 
Dodge and Webster County and has written many 
articles and monographs on local history.
ttS^Bill Silag is guest associate editor of this issue of 
Iowa Heritage Illustrated. As author of the contextual 
sidebars, he drew upon his historical expertise in early 
town development in Iowa, the subject of his Ph.D. dis­
sertation at the University of Iowa in 1979. A former 
editor of The Palimpsest Silag has taught history, worked 
in program evaluation and organizational development, 
served as managing editor and editor-in-chief of Iowa 
State University Press, and, most recently, edited Out­
side In: African-American History in Iowa, 1838-2000. He 
is now at work on a history of Des Moines.
NOTE ON SOURCES
The main source of information used in preparing the sidebars 
was Roger Natte’s Frontier Foundations: Creating an Iowa County 
(Fort Dodge: Webster County Historical Society, 2000), which 
includes discussions of the founding of Webster County, its 
frontier political institutions,and its county courthouse,along 
with excerpts from the Duncombe journals. Background ma­
terial about Fort Dodge political traditions can also be found 
in Thomas Richard Ross .Jonathan Prentiss Dolliver.A Study in 
Political Integrity and Independence (Iowa City: State Historical 
Society of Iowa, 1958), and Leland L. Sage, William Boyd Allison: 
A Study in Practical Politics (Iowa City: State Historical Society 
of Iowa, 1956).
JackT. Johnson, “Jesse Williams,” Palimpsest 2 1 (June 1940), 
184-96, which contains as much information about Bernhart 
Henn as about Jesse Williams, seems to be the only source 
available on the careers of these two important Iowa land 
speculators. Roscoe L. Lokken, Iowa Public Land Disposal (Iowa 
City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1942), and Malcolm J. 
Rohrbough, The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Ad­
ministration of American Public Lands, 1789-1837 (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1968), are essential to understand­
ing the context in which entrepreneurs like Henn and W ill­
iams operated.
John C. Parish, George Wallace Jones (Iowa City: State His­
torical Society of Iowa, 1912), is a standard political biogra­
phy. A profile of Senator Jones appears also in Franklin T. O ldt 
et al„ eds. History of Dubuque County, Iowa (Chicago: Goodspeed 
Historical Association, [1911 ?]), 865-66. For information about 
the Dubuque & Pacific Railroad, and Senator Jones’s role in it, 
see H. Roger Grant, ed., Iowa Railroads.The Essays of Frank P 
Donovan,Jr. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000), espe­
cially 102-25. George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolu­
tion, 1815-1860 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1951; 
repr. New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 345-51, explains the 
railroad land grants.
Allan G. Bogue, “ Iowa Claim Clubs: Symbol and Sub­
stance,” MississippiValley Historical Review 45 (June 1958), 23 I - 
53, disputes the democratic motivations attributed to club 
members by previous historians, highlighting instead the clubs’
dubious legality and the extortionist instincts of the member­
ship. County seat wars are a major theme in Jacob A. Swisher, 
“ The Location of County Seats in Iowa,” Iowa Journal of His­
tory and Politics 22 (January, April, July 1924): 89-128, 217-94, 
323-62. Webster County’s wrestling-match legend is told by 
Harold Andrews,“ Wrestling Match Sealed the Fate of Pioneer 
Iowa Town,” Des Mo/nes Register, Nov. 19, 1922. Judge C. J. 
McFarland’s years on the bench are recalled in L. F. Andrews, 
Pioneers of Polk County, Iowa, and Reminiscences of the Early Days, 
vol. I (Des Moines: Baker-Trisler Company, 1908), 449-56.
The material on Governor Carpenter’s early career in 
Fort Dodge is drawn from Mildred Throne, Cyrus Clay Carpen­
ter and Iowa Politics, 1854-1898 (Iowa City: State Historical 
Society of Iowa, 1974), which also contains an account of the 
Spirit Lake rescue mission. For a discussion of the events at 
Spirit Lake in 1857 and their aftermath, see Greg Olson,“ Trag- 
edy,Tourism, and the Log Cabin: How Abbie Gardner Sharp 
and Charlotte Kirchner Butler Preserved and Promoted the 
Past,” Iowa Heritage Illustrated 82 (Summer 2001), 56-77.
Leland L. Sage, A History of Iowa (Ames: Iowa State Uni­
versity Press, 1974), traces Iowa’s political evolution from ter­
ritoria l days through the 1850s with mounting suspense. 
Morton M. Rosenberg, Iowa on the Eve of the Civil War: A De­
cade of Frontier Politics (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 
1972), analyzes key aspects of the Republican ascendancy in 
Iowa in the 1850s. And James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Free­
dom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 
1988) is excellent on the national context in the 1850s, espe­
cially about Bleeding Kansas (145-69) and the Black Republi­
cans (143—44).
Ellen K. Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship 
in America (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 3-1 3, 87-143, sug­
gests that a man like young John Duncombe was probably not 
alone among 19th-century American men in his sometimes 
obsessive quest to find a soul mate. Maj.William Williams, who 
became John Duncombe’s father-in-law in May 1859, looked 
back on the frontier years in “ History of Webster County, 
Iowa,” Annals of Iowa ( I st series) 7 (July 1869), 286-93
—  by Bill Silag
144 Iowa Heritage Illustrated


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Graduation

October Echoes: The 1929 Wall Street Crash in Iowa

Glory Enough for One Day!

Craking up and Flapping off

Iowa Clubwomen Rise to World Stage: Dorothy Houghton and Ruth Sayre

Iowa in 1855

John Duncombe, After the Diary

Yearly Index, Iowa Heritage Illustrated, v.83 2002

We Have Beaten Homer'-County Seat Wars

Albert Hirsch: From Frankfort to Storm Lake

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