Stories
Stories From the Past
PATRIOTIC ORDER BEING ORGANIZED IN DES MOINES

Camp of Sons of Veterans is Assured Large Membership Here

     A camp of Sons of Veterans is being organized in Des Moines. George Bauserman is in charge of the work of organization and the movement is being encourage by Mrs. Dawn Tullis, the state patriotic instructor for the Woman's Relief Corps.
     About forty men have signed the roll, after of canvass of only a few days, and it is thought that man score will join.
     Gen. Grenville M. Dodge, in response to a letter requesting the privilege of using his name for the camp, wrote a cordial letter saying that it would give him great pleasure to have the camp adopt his name.
     The letter is highly prized by Mr. Bauserman and will be one of the valued assets of the organization.
     Sons and grandsons of the union veterans of the civil war are eligible to membership.
     One of the men who signed the rolls is the son of a confederate soldier but is the grandson of a union soldier. His mother's father was on the northern side.
The Des Moines Register
November 16, 1915
Page 2

Milton Howard

Private
Company F, 60th USCT
Mr. Milton Howard, an African-American, was a man with a unique story.

        He was born as a free person in Muscatine, Iowa about 1844. As a child, he and his family were kidnapped and taken south and sold as slaves.
       When the Civil War erupted he and several others escaped their enslavement in Alabama.  He made his way north, with the help of the Underground Railroad, to Clayton County, Iowa, where he enlisted on January 21, 1864, at McGregor, Iowa into the 60th USCT and bravely fought in the Battle of Big Creek, where he received several injuries while defending an artillery piece, and carried a bullet in his knee the rest of his life. He was mustered out on October 15, 1865, at Devall's Bluff, Arkansas.
        He came to Davenport to live. In 1866. After the war he applied for work as a laborer at Rock Island Arsenal, where he worked for most of the rest of his life, fifty-two years.The Rock Island Arsenal named one of it's streets after Milton in 2018.
        According to an article published in the Davenport Democrat on April 18, 1915, Mr. Howard could speak both French and German. He learned French while he was a slave, and when he came to Davenport he studied German, a language spoken by many who lived here. He was often asked to give guest sermons whenever a pastor in one of the city’s African-American churches was not available, earning him the nickname “Deacon.”
        One day while he was out, he came upon General Flagler, the commandant of the Arsenal. The general had been walking on some ice near the dam and had fallen through. Mr. Howard came to his rescue and saved his life.
        In 1921, Mr. Howard was sent with three other men who had worked at the Arsenal for half a century to Aberdeen, Maryland, in recognition of their years of service. They received gold medals. He worked at the Arsenal for 2 more years before retiring
        On March 18, 1928, as he was entering church, Mr. Howard had a fainting spell. He was taken into the church where he died a short time later.

          A great-great granddaughter, Karen Orozco Gutierrez, said her family had many stories about Milton, including that he sometimes used his cane to drag one of his sons from beneath a bed he hid beneath. She said Howard was active in many civic organizations and served as a councilman on the Davenport City Council, even though he was not formally educated and couldn't read.

        She said several of his descendants followed in his footsteps. His son, Sgt. Leroy Smith, served in France during the First World War and was a training officer at Camp Dodge, Iowa, his grandson, Howard Perkins, was the first Equal Employment Opportunity Officer at Rock Island Arsenal. Another grandson, Glenn Perkins, worked as a plating foreman and was the Arsenal's first African-American supervisor.

"I think what he left behind to young people, is he never gave up. He had a very positive attitude" Orozco Gutierrez said.
 "He just kept trying and built a life here."

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VETERAN DROPS DEAD
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Samuel M. Atkins, of Soldiers’ Home, 
Stricken in Cedar Rapids

       Samuel M. Atkins, who entered the soldiers’ home from Des Moines, Oct 21, 1920, died of heart disease on the street in Cedar Rapids this morning, while on his way to Iowa City where he was going to receive treatment at the university hospital.
      Mr. Atkins was born in Niles, Mich., Sept 9, 1846, and enlisted in Company E, Fourth Iowa Infantry, March 30, 1864 in Des Moines. He was discharged July 23, 1865, in Louisville Ky. One sone, Samuel Atkins, of Chico, Calif. Survives him.
     
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Evening Times-Republican (Marshalltown, Iowa)
Monday, November 15, 1920
Page 8



May Bury Soldier Here

      The Body of Samuel Atkins, the old soldier who dropped dead in front of the Lyman building yesterday, will probably be buried here, as a result of information received today by Coroner David W. King from Iowa Soldiers home at Marshalltown. Atkins came to the home from Ft. Leavenworth., the first of this month. He has a son in California, it has been learned, but he cannot be found.

The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette
November 16, 1920


Elliott Parr, Company K, 35th Iowa Infantry
Elliott Parr. Age 19, Residence Lowden, nativity Ohio. Enlisted Aug. 12, 1862. Mustered Sept. 4, 1862. 
Wounded severely April 9, 1864. Pleasant Hill, La. 
Mustered out Aug. 10, 1865, Davenport, Iowa. 
Died May 29, 1870, Lowden, Iowa.
     Beside a windswept portion of the blacktop Hoover highway, about three miles southwest of Lowden, a United States flag flutters in the breeze above a lone grave.
     The tiny cemetery carved from the corner of a farm field is certainly one of Iowa's smallest burial places and the reason for it is surprising to people who hear of it today.
     A government headstone marks the final resting place of Elliott Parr, a veteran of the Civil War and member of a pioneer Lowden family. No date of birth or death is inscribed on the simple marker.
     Elliott Parr was a son of old Billy Parr, as he was known back in Ohio and later in Cedar County where he and his family settled with the earliest pioneers in this area.
     A caravan of 13 covered wagons housing Ohio immigrants, who were seeking a home in the new west, crossed the Mississippi river on Nov. 9, 1848. After two days of hard work the travelers, wagons and horses had been ferried across into the new country.
     Under darkening November skies the sturdy band of pioneers continued north and west about 40 miles, finally stopping near what is now Lowden. They transferred the wilderness into a small settlement of log houses and took up life in the new west.
     It was in this setting that young Elliott Parr grew to manhood. When the country became embroiled in the Civil War, Elliott, with four of his brothers joined others to march away.
    Elliott came back to Billy unscratched. But the smallpox epidemic struck Cedar County and Elliott Parr died of the then dread disease.
     Residents in the area were terrified and refused to allow burial of smallpox victims in Van Horne cemetery, the only burial ground in the vicinity. Billy Parr said, “I have enough land of my own. My son was a good soldier. He can have a cemetery of his own.”
     And so it was that old Billy set aside a quarter acre of his farm beside the road and deeded it to Cedar county. There he buried his son.
     Many years ago the government placed the headstone at the grave. Each year on Memorial Day members of the Lillis Deerberg Post of the American Legion place a new U.S. Flag at the gravesite – and pause to remember Elliott Parr.
     The tiny cemetery is enclosed with a high wire fence and the government stone is inscribed simply “Elliott Parr, Company K, 35th Iowa Infantry”.
     Some of the burial customs of the earlier pioneers seem hard for us to understand today. Since death and life go together the pioneer had barely established his home when oftentimes he had to make arrangements to dispose of his dead. No funeral homes, hearses or caskets existed so a few sympathetic neighbors would gather and prepare the body for burial. In early days a kindly neighbor would undertake to make funeral arrangements and thus the phrase “undertaker” came into use.
     Many were laid in the bare ground but later on crude coffins were sometimes made to the size of the deceased by the neighborhood cabinet maker. This accounts for the fact that selling furniture and funeral directing became linked together and remains so in many communities today.
     Lowden's Van Horne cemetery in which Elliott Parr was refused burial is on land a quarter mile down the road from this tiny cemetery.
Transcribed by Sharon Elijah, November 20, 2015, Lowden Historical Society
thanks to: Jeff Buesing‎-The Forgotten Iowa Historical Society (Facebook)   
Civil War Fought by Boys
Page County Democrat, Clarinda, Iowa
Friday May 22, 1925

 

          The Veterans of the Civil War are still fondly spoken of as “boys”, “boys in blue.”  Year after year for sixty years still “boys.”  It has become almost as specialized as a designation of the soldiers of the Civil War, as senator, as alderman.  As age was to mean wisdom, the highest legislative body of old was at first actually and later theoretically, at least, composed of old men.  Senator, alderman, means simply, old man.

            So the boys in blue, who were only boys when in that blue, have stayed boys in affectionate address ever since, says the Manchester Union.  No succeeding war has carried that entitlement.  In current conversation we hear the soldiers of the World War spoken of as “soldiers”, “legionnaires”, even as “veterans”.  But seldom indeed as “boys”.  Just why is this? How did the soldiers of the Civil War gain and keep the name “boys”?

            Because they were boys, boys as the soldiers of none of our other wars were.  That war was fought by boys.  When the officer addressed them as “boys” he spoke a literal fact.  When the general before a charge cried “boys” he addressed a body that might have been assembled from school and college yards, and were so assembled.  There were majors and colonels under twenty. Charles Stoughton was colonel of a Vermont cavalry regiment at seventeen!  Boys they were and boys they remained in name and spirit and are still.
            There has always been a strange unaccountableness in the buoyancy of spirit of the soldier of the Civil War. It was the last great war that was also a great spectacle, fought over an immense territory, with imposing marches, immense rides, and it caught the imagination as modern wars do not. The dash of cavalry, the charge with the colors, has gone. The Civil War was a great sporting event, fought by boys with the high spirits that they would fought a football game.
Robert Stewart McGeehon "Uncle Mac"
   With the assistance of Dan Rittel, the Iowan in the “Mary Bowditch Forbes” video has been identified as Robert Stewart McGeehon. McGeehon was a member of the Sam Rice Post #6, Atlantic, Iowa, and can be seen at 3:30, 5:24 and 6:15 through 8:22 during the video.
          McGeehon was born May 18, 1839, near Enon Valley in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, the second of nine children. He enlisted as a Private in Company “I”, 134th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in July of 1862 and mustered into service on August 19. They were taken to Harrisburg where they were given their uniforms and then sent to Washington for their first meal, two slices of dry bread and a pint cup of black coffee. They laid in camp at Arlington Heights for some time and then forced marched to Antietam, arriving after the battle had ended. From there they went to Fredericksburg, then Chancellorsville. At Fredericksburg while in support of a battery, they were ordered to charge the enemy. They were told to lie down until the battery had fired and then charge. Theirs was the last charge of the battle; he did not hear the order to fall back. When he “did” turn, a bullet struck his bayonet, knocking the rifle from his hand. Running, he grabbed it and returned to the ranks. He was wounded at Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863, hastily brought into the line of battle, and under attack, while loading his rifle, he ran his ramrod through his right hand. Reluctantly going, he was ordered to the hospital for two weeks. Company “I”s term of enlistment expired and they were discharged at Harrisburg on May 26.  
          His service records lists him as Stewart Robert McGeehon. In his G.A.R. file is a card upon which he states: “My real name is Robert Stewart McGeehon, but when the officers made out the pay roll they got my name wrong and I went through the service as Stewart R. McGeehon”.  
           He came to Atlantic, Iowa in 1868 and became a carpenter, a trade which he had learned from his father. McGeehon built many of the first homes in Atlantic. In 1883, he open a grocery store, retiring in 1904, residing at 801 Poplar Street.  
          He was a member of the Iowa Division of the National Association of Civil War Musicians, playing the bass drum. They performed at the Iowa State Fair for many years and at several National Encampments of the Grand Army. Just before the Parade at the 1935 Department Encampment at Waterloo, McGeehon suffered a foot injury at the hotel, which hampered his marching ability. He was 96, and the oldest musician in the nation in 1935....While there have been many who were musicians during the war a goodly number of soldiers took up the fife and drum after being mustered out. A drummer quite familiar in Iowa for many years was "Uncle Mac" McGeehon, of Atlantic, who fell in love with the big bass drum after the close of the war. He was a prominent business man, but at the Iowa State fairs he was prominent with his "Old Soldiers Drum Corps." On account of his age and his long white beard he was a real feature. In 1936, on May 18, he passed his 97th year, but in June he played his bass drum at the encampment in Des Moines with all his old time vigor and enthusiasm. He answered the final roll call on August 10 of that year. We all knew how much "Uncle Mac" loved his bass drum; and in 1924 the national encampment was to be held in Boston the same week as the Iowa State fair. The drum corps had agreed to play at the fair but "Uncle Mac" wanted to go to Boston so he could visit his old home near by, so it was arranged for him to go but leave his drum. But he said if he went the old bass drum had to go along, and the drum went along. The National Drum Corps, with sixty-five members, marched in the Boston parade and there was but one from Iowa. He was placed on the outside of the line and on his big drum was the inscription, "Iowa Dept. G. A. R." The Boston papers in their account stated "what a fine drum corps Iowa had in the parade." "Uncle Mac" had the laugh on his comrades when he returned and told how much Iowa would have missed had he not taken his drum along....
          Robert McGeehon died August 10, 1936, and is buried at the Atlantic Cemetery, Atlantic, Iowa. His funeral was conducted by the local American Legion Post under the direction of the WRC and the LGAR. He was 97 years, 2 months and 2 days.
“There was something infinitely grand about this 97 year old veteran, who until the last few weeks went about his daily rounds of the city and was a familiar figure. He was a living example of how fine a thing it is to grow old gracefully. He was philosophical in his views of life and death and disposed to accept what the fates dealt out to him without complaint….We of the present generation have had a privilege generations to come will not enjoy, in that we have been permitted to personally know many of the men who laid down their future upon the altar of their county in 1861 and carried to a victorious close the most sanguinary struggle in the history of the world.”
Keep Alive Love for Flag

        As each year rolls around some patriotic city is asked to welcome the G.A.R. in a grand reunion, striving to outdo some other city, which with out stretched arms has welcomed the G.A.R. in a grand reunion, striving to out to a dormant spirit of devotion to the old flag and a resolve that this union of states will never be dissolved. 
        Without the G.A.R. to refresh the memory of the people of this country they would be apt to forget the great sacrifice this nation suffered that this union should not be dissolved.
        Again there is another wing to the G. A. R., the Sons of Veterans, organized to go hand In hand with the G.A.R. to perpetuate their memory for generations to come, to keep alive the love for the old flag, as the strength of the nation depends on the love of its people to defend it in time of danger.

The Daily Freeman Tribune, Webster City, May 31,1906
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