A look back 150 years to Christmas in Newton of yesteryear
By LARRY HURTO Special to Daily News
They say that history repeats itself, and, in this holiday season, I am reminded of the Newton of a century-and-a-half ago, when times were tough and there was widespread dissatisfaction with the administration in Washington.
In 1858, Newton had a population of about 1,000. It had voted to incorporate in April 1857, by a vote of 121 to 34. Hugh Newell, a former Know Nothing, was mayor. He came to Newton from Jackson County in 1855, and was admitted to the bar on Sept. 12 of that year.
The “splendid” new Jasper County courthouse was completed in October 1858 at a cost to the taxpayers of $26,600. Located where the present courthouse is situated, the oblong, 50x62, three-story high structure was built “in the most substan[tial] manner, after the Ionic order of architecture,” by John Hyde and J. P. Huskins, of Des Moines. “There were no porches on the new court house, no fences, and no walks to the building,” one pioneer remembered.
David Edmundson was county judge; Joseph Bond Hough, whose son, Emerson, was born in Newton in 1857, clerk of the district court; Elisha Hammer, county treasurer and recorder; I. T. Hull, sheriff; Albert Lufkin, county superintendent of schools; S. W. Foreman, county surveyor; and Hugh Rodgers, county coroner. There was no county attorney, county auditor, or board of supervisors.
Jasper County was part of the Sixth Judicial District. In the October elections, Republican candidates in the district were elected by “overwhelming majorities.” These included Judge William M. “Bill” Stone, G. D. Woodin for district attorney, and S. F. Cooper for member of the Board of Education. The Republican State Ticket, headed by Secretary of State Elijah Sells, was also elected by a healthy majority. Col. Samuel R. Curtis and William Vandever were elected to the Thirty-sixth Congress, a strong repudiation of President Buchanan’s policies.
Outside the county seat, the prominent villages in Jasper County were Monroe, Vandalia (formerly Quincy), Greencastle, and Linnville (Lynnville). Other towns, villages, and post offices were Parkersburg, Elk Creek, North Skunk River, Galesburg, Morristown, Palmyra, Brooks Tavern, Wittemberg, Rushville, Pleasant View, Prairie City (formerly Elliott), Clyde, and Bush. Baxter, Colfax, Ira, Kellogg, Killduff, Lambs Grove, Metz, Mingo, Newburg, Reasnor, Sully, and Valeria did not exist. One-hundred and fifty years ago, Des Moines was only about twice the size of Newton.
Newton was a frontier town, as was the newly designated capital city. Angus Kephart Campbell, who came here in August of 1858 to work on his brother Frank’s newspaper, the Jasper Free Press, years later recalled settlers were “scattered over some sections of the state,” although “Indians were plenty.”
“Most of the state was treeless,” Campbell remembered in 1915. “There were fringes of trees along the rivers,” and “occasional groves” like Vowell’s small grove west of town. Jasper County also had Adamson Grove, Hixson Grove, and Wild Cat Grove, “but most of the counties had no groves.”
“Millions of prairie chickens covered the state,” Campbell recalled, and deer “were known to pass through the town at times.” He remembered one occasion, after a fresh snow, when he and William Vaughan, John Vaughan, and A. K. Emerson went to Vowell’s Grove to coral a herd they had seen browsing there. “We saw tracks that said there might be fifty in the herd, but had been frightened and moved west down Cherry Creek.”
Read more about Christmas 1858 in Tuesday’s Newotn Daily News.
