The Van Buren Historical Society Compiled by Clem Topping, Lester Lindsay, and Beulah
Scott
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The government surveyors of 1837 set out in their notes
that they found this town in the northwestern part of
section 17, Union Township, which would be about one mile
southeast of the present town of Birmingham.
Winchester, about three miles southeast, was at one time
a rival of Birmingham but in the days of the coming of the
railroads most of its leading citizens opposed having a
railroad and the town soon after started to decline. In
stage-coach days it had a population of probably two tothree
hundred people for it had forty dwellings. There were
several stores one was a drugstore, a hotel, and four
churches. One of Winchester’s most famous organizations
was the Anti-Horse Thief Association. It was founded April
11, 1848 and lasted until April 3, 1937 when it was
disbanded. Today the only evidences of early Winchester are
its well kept cemetery and the fallen rubble of the
Anti-Horse Thief building and the Methodist Church. Kilbourne is about five miles south and a little west of
Birmingham. It never exceeded Winchester in size but there
is more evidence today of its past than at Winchester. It
was established as Philadelphia in 1839. The Van Buren
county history of 1878 states-”Nothing ever became of
the place outside of a “paper town.” However, this
history calls it Kilbourne. One of its claims to fame is
that in 1832 two early hunters or explorers, William Phelps
and Peter Avery, camped for the winter at the confluence of
Lick Creek and the Des Moines river, which place is very
close to the present village. One of the characters of Phil
Stong’s novel “State Fair” is said to be
based on “Peck” Stong, an early storekeeper of the
place. Collet, one mile and a few feet north of the Van Buren
county line in Jefferson county, deserves to be mentioned as
a nearby town because it was at this place, about four miles
northwest of Birmingham, that the first railroad into our
town ended. The story is told that there was a roundtable
there on a switch-line where the engine was turned around so
that it might be placed at the head of the train for the
return trip to Ft. Madison and that this roundtable was
pushed around by volunteer manpower which would come in from
the surrounding community when the train arrived. The town
never got beyond one or two houses and today it is open
farmland and all but forgotten.
PARKERSBURG
C.L.
MOSS Charles Lloyd Moss was born in Cheshire, New Haven
County, Connecticut, May 7, 1821. He was a son of Titus and
Bedie (Dolittle) Moss. The family is of Scottish origin and
came to Connecticut prior to the Revolution. The name is
spelled in no less than four ways-Moss, Moose, Mors and
Morse. The grandfather Joel Morse, was a lumberman and
woolen manufacturer of Cheshire at which place Titus Morse
was born in 1799. Titus Moss married and moved to Wayne
County, New York in 1827, where he farmed. There his wife
died at the age of 26. He remarried Almira Sanders and the
family then moved to Kalamazoo County, Michigan in 1833.
in1837 they moved to Iowa and bought a 320 acre farm,
three-fourths of a mile southwest of Birmingham from James G
. Ritchie and as soon as the land came into market, secured
a patent from the government. They found only four families
within five miles of where they settled. Until he came of age, C.L. Moss worked for his father. In
1843 he married Miss Hannah Barnes who had come with her
parents from Ohio to Iowa. After farming for a short time,
he engaged in merchandising in Birmingham, from which
business he turned to buying and selling livestock. In 1850 he drove a team and wagon to California, reaching
his destination in four months. For a year and a half he
sold miner’s supplies at “Rough and Ready”
Nevada County, California. Returning by way of Panama, and
the Mississippi river, he reached Birmingham in 1851, some
$5000.00 better off than when he started. In 1853 Mr. Moss and E. Pitkin bought the saw mill and
then built a large grist and flour mill adjoining. Later Mr.
Moss became sole owner. In 1871 he added a cheese factory to
his enterprises. His saw mill furnished a vast amount of
timber for the Des Moines Railroads, whereby employment was
furnished to thirty-five hands. Mr. Moss was the first man to ship hogs from west of the
Mississippi River. In December 1856, he shipped from Rome,
Iowa, then the terminus of the Chicago, Burlington, and
Quincy Railroad, a full trainload of hogs (1837 hogs) and
drawn to Chicago by two locomotives. He unloaded at Chicago,
could not sell at a profit, so fed and watered and reloaded
to go to Cleveland. There he had the same experiences at
Chicago, so reloaded them and went on to Buffalo where he
unloaded, fed, and rested before proceeding to New York.
Themarket was good and he sold out, making $2000.00 clear
profit. The event caused quite a stir among the stock
dealers of that city, and at the opening of the Miles House
( a drover’s hotel) Mr. Moss was invited and made the
honored guest of the occasion. Horace Greeley sent Mr.
Robinson, a reporter for the Tribune to interview Mr. Moss
and published an account of the man, his journey and
enterprise. Mr. Moss was still operating the mills at the time of his
death in 1892. Mr. and Mrs. Moss had eight children. One of them, Abbie,
married E.J. Hoenshel, President of Holton College(1890) in
Holton, Kansas. Their son, Wendell, went to live with his
uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Moss, while he was quite
young. With the help and advice of his Uncle Tom, Wendell
entered the logging and sawmill business. He operated all
over southeast Iowa, northeast Missouri and along the
Mississippi river and had as many as three saw mills cutting
lumber for him at one time. Wendell is now retired (1971)
and is the last descendant of the Moss family living in
Birmingham.
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THE OLD
MILL In the year 1851 Abel Bott and John Gwinn built a saw
mill on the northwest corner at the present junction of Main
Street and Highway No. 1. A huge chimney eighty-five feet
high and containing 85,000 brick was built adjoining the saw
mill. The brick for the chimney were burned at a kiln on the
Glotfelty farm, just northwest of town. The chimney was
built by a man named Berry, and it is said that on the day
he finished the chimney, he stood on top of it on one leg
and drank a pint of whiskey. In 1853 C.L.Moss and E.L. Pitkin bought Mr. Bott’s
share in the mill. In 1854 a grist mill was built in
addition to the saw mill and in 1855 they were both burned
to the ground. Within twenty-four hours the owners had men
hired to rebuild both the saw mill and grist mill. It was a
comparatively short time until both mills were running day
and night and doing a better business than before the fire.
In the new grist mill a carding machine was placed for the
making of rolls and it was operated in connection with the
other business from 1855 to 1860. In 1857-1858 a large
addition was built to the grist mill and in 1860 C.L. Moss
became the proprietor of all the mill property. In 1862,
D.C. Cramer, a clothier, was taken into partnership by Mr.
Moss, and they used the new addition to the mill for a
woolen factory. The second floor was used for the work
withthe looms, jack and 350 spindles being used. Mr. Cramer
did the spinning and making of fine woolen blankets and
other articles out of the raw wool. He was assisted by
Roswell Beach of Fairfield from 1857 to 1861. Mr. Beach did
all the carding of the wool. The woolen factory was not a
success and Mr. Cramer sold out to Mr. Moss. The addition to
the mills was now used for various purposes by Mr. Moss and
finally it was converted into a sort of wagon factory or
machine shop. Here wagon felloes, all kinds of wagon
accessories-axles, tongues, spokes, lath chair seats and
many other articles were made. The saw mill was running
early and late getting out all kinds of lumber, frames,
timbers, and bridge plank. Moss was shipping his products to
all parts of the state by the car load and sold millions of
feet of lumber. For years he kept sixteen yoke of oxen and
eight or ten teams ofhorses in his business. About the year
1877 the chimney was leaning toward the west and a man by
the name of Hickory Davis constructed a ladder on the inside
of the chimney and took about twenty feet off the top. On
Saturday, November 30, 1878, shortly after 1:00 p.m. the
people of Birmingham were terrified by a cannon-like
explosion and hurried from their homes to find that the
boilers at the mills had exploded. The engineer, J.I.
Withrow and James Morse, D.C.Cramer, Marshall Harbaugh, Al
Dell(colored), Lewis Bonnet, CL Moss and S.B. Shott were in
or near the mill at the time of the explosion but none was
seriously injured. James Morse, who lives west of this city
with his son Frank Morse, was a witness to the explosion and
was standing only six feet from the boiler when it exploded.
Mr.. Morse was bookkeeper in the mill for thirty years. When
the mills were repaired new tenfoot boilers were made to
order. The mills caught fire about 1880 and were
considerably damaged. The damage was soon repaired and the
mills continued to flourish. After the death of C.L. Moss in
1892 the mils were bought by Sam Arbough and John Parson.
They operated as partners until the death of John Parson in
1907. After the Parson’s estate was settled, Sam
Arbough became the sole owner and about 1920 razed both the
chimney and building. Thus came and end to a business that
had a big part in the development of the area.
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FAITH OF OUR
FATHERS No history of a town could be complete without a search
through the available records for the first evidences of the
religious faith that sustained the founding fathers as they
carved their community out of the wilderness. Five different
religious denominations had leading roles throughout the
years in the development of Birmingham. Today the bells
still toll in three active churches each Sunday morning
extending an invitation to worship. In 1837, through the efforts of Titus Moss, a Methodist
congregation was organized. His log cabin home of peeled
hickory logs served as the first church, with Rev. Robert
Hawke, as minister. The Sunday School was first organized in
1841 and the sum of $10.00 was collected and spent for
books. The Birmingham Circuit of Methodist Churches was formed
in 1842 with Joel Arrington and Moses Shinn as pastors. It
consisted of Birmingham, Robertsons, Dustins, Colony, Widow
James Winsells, Philadelphia(Kilbourne), Carrots, Keosauqua,
Bentonsport, Bonaparte, Scotts, Utica, Washington, Widow
Anderson’s, Newman’s, Winchester, and
Busic’s. With protracted meetings the memberships in
the circuits grew. The first church building of the
congregation was completed in 1847 on a site east of the
present school house. This is substantiated by the Methodist
cemetery which is in evidence today. The church building was
later purchased by the school district and used for a school
for a number of years. In 1865 the second church was erected at a cost of
$700.00. This building burned April 3, 1893. The insurance
of over $1400.00 furnished the beginning for another church
which was dedicated January 21, 1894 at a cost of $3800.00
On Sunday, November 30, 1919, following the morning service,
the church was again destroyed by fire, with only a few
dishes and the silverware, property of the Ladies Aid
Society, being saved. With an insurance settlement of
$3300.00, the congregation again set to work to get a church
building, but the days following the war saw high prices for
everything and construction was postponed. The congregation
for three years held services in the opera house which was
owned by Orange Calhoun, who furnished not only the building
but the care, lights, and fuel free. The cornerpost of the
present edifice was laid June 11, 1922 and the church was
dedicatedDecember 31, 1922 at a cost of $27,000.00. In 1944, due to the shortage of pastors in the
conference, the Birmingham and Stockport charges were
combined. The Birmingham church in spite of its periods of
stress, trial and tribulation has gone steadily forward and
has for well over a hundred years, filled its place in the
community life of Birmingham. The Congregation of the United Presbyterian Church was
organized as far back as 1839 at the town of Philadelphia
(since called Kilbourne) by the Rev. George C. Vincent of
Washington, Iowa. In 1841, Rev. David Lindsay moved from
Reynoldsburg, Ohio and settled near there, becoming pastor.
He was the great-grandfather of Alma and Lester Lindsay who
live near Birmingham at the present time. Rev. Lindsay moved
to Birmingham in 1844 and as the majority of the members
resided there, by mutual consent the place of preaching was
changedto Birmingham. It was organized with two Elders, Mr.
Leech, and Doctor Miller; afterwards Mr. S. Gould and Mr.
William Collier were elected. The members numbered about
thirty. Meetings were held during the summer months in
Miller’s grove and during the winter services were
conducted in different homes but this manner of worshipping
was not very convenient or satisfactory either and the
people awoke by saying we will build a church. In 1850 they
succeeded in building a church in North Birmingham directly
north of the public school building. This is also evidenced
by the cemetery which is still there today. The structure
was forty feet square, facing the south with two entrances.
On the interior four large pine pillars reaching from the
floor to the ceiling were placed in the middle of the
church. It was heated by four boxstoves, two in the front
and two in the back part of thechurch. There, on a cold
breezy day, one could sing very appropriately, “From
Greenland’s Icy Mountains”, and fully appreciate
the line of thought. The seating capacity of the church was
600. Mr. Lindsay was an energetic worker, often walking many
miles to fill appointments. He was known to walk to Keokuk
to attend Presbytery. The salary was a mere pittance,
accepting what the congregation saw fit to contribute. He
remained until 1854. The congregation remained vacant until
1856 when the Rev. Samuel McArthur became pastor. A
prayer-meeting and Sabbath School were started. Mr. McArthur
did much for the cause of education as he was the founder of
the College, called the Birmingham Academy. It was during
Rev. McArthur’s pastorate that the union was effected
between the Associate and the Associate Reformed Churches,
then becoming the United Presbyterian Church. After twenty-four years of worshipping in the church in
North Birmingham, the people decided they needed something
more modern to worship in. After due consideration the old
building was sold to Mr. Newman, east of town, for a barn. A
lot was then purchased in South Birmingham for the new
church, and in 1874 the church was erected. It had a seating
capacity of three hundred and was built at a cost of
$2300.00 In 1893 a parsonage was erected and at the present
time is the home of Clarence Crafton family. In 1882 the pastor was Rev. George Warrington. He was the
founder and editor of the Birmingham “Free Press”
and was an earnest opposer of secret societies taking an
active part in all measures to expose or overthrow their
evil designs. Copies of his publication are on file inthe
present Birmingham Public Library. In 1916 the United Presbyterian Church was merged with
the Presbyterian Church in Birmingham and the old United
Presbyterian church building was razed. Source materials for
a history of the earliest years of the Presbyterian church
in the community are somewhat lacking. Unfortunately, the
record book of the first few years has been lost. Some dates
and other information are available from the minutes of
Presbytery of that far-off date. At the spring meeting of Presbytery in the year 1842 the
church was received and entered on the roll as the Union
Church of Winchester. An early history of Iowa
Presbyterianism states that the church was organized by L.G.
Bell, that famous pioneer of southern Iowa Presbyterianism
who is credited with organizing a Presbyterian church in
every county seat from Burlington to the Missouri river.
From a manuscript volume containing the autobiographies of
several early Iowa ministers of this denomination, we learn
that L.G. Bell came to the Union church of Winchester partly
because several families in the congregation had migrated
from his former church in Zanesville, Ohio. Here, according
to his own account, he was in charge of Winchester and
Shiloh churches and received a salary of $300.00 per year,
one-half from his congregations and one-half from the Board
of Domestic Missions. The first church building at Winchester of which we have
record was of brick and was located between the Methodist
Church building and the cemetery. In later years when this
building was torn down, the material was sold and used to
construct a brick dwelling northeast of Winchester. Later
the growing population of Birmingham and some shift
inmembership caused the Presbytery to divide the church into
two, one at Winchester and the other at Birmingham. In 1856
the Winchester organization at their own request was
dissolved and all the members and the records transferred to
the Birmingham church. In 1853 the Birmingham portion of the
congregation consisted of 38 members who were joined by
seven new adherents at the time of their separate
organization. When the Birmingham church was organized in
1853, the members worshipped for some time in a building
which belonged to the Associate Presbyterian congregation.
This church was located across the street from the present
school building (Note-no longer used).. In 1855 two lots were purchased in North Birmingham
Addition, the site of the present church, and a new church
erected which served the congregation down through the years
until 1915 when the present church was built. The present
church cost $11,500.00 and was dedicated debt free.
(Note-This church was struck bylightening June 22, 1986
& a new one was built). Just prior to the construction
of the present church, the old church was sold and removed
from the lots to another location. Some years ago it was
destroyed by fire. The Birmingham Free Methodist Society was organized in
1871 with the Rev. B.F. Doughty serving as pastor. Services
were first held in the old brick Academy and in 1873, a
church building was erected. A number of years later an
addition was built to the church to accommodate the
increasing crowds. This buildingserved the congregation
until August of 1948 when the old building was torn down and
a beautiful new building was erected on the same site. The
opening service was held in the new auditorium on Sunday,
April 24, 1949. In 1963 an addition was built to the church
almost doubling the seating capacity in the auditorium and
the basement facilities. The parsonage of the Free Methodist Church is located at
the entrance to a beautiful fifteen acre camp ground at the
west edge of Birmingham. This camp ground was known for
years as the “Huffman Grove” and has been used by
the Fairfield District for Camp Meeting purposes off and on
since at least 1887. In the District Conference Minutes of
1897, it was spoken of as the “Old Camp Ground at
Birmingham,” suggesting that it may have been used
earlier than 1887. After much discussion and
considerationgiven to a permanent camp ground it was decided
to purchase the Huffman Grove at Birmingham at a cost of
$1125.00 J.Graham, who represented the Birmingham site,
secured pledges amounting to $440.00 of the purchase price
from citizens of Birmingham. Lewis Mendenhall, A.S. Doughty
and S.S. Stewart were appointed as the committee to draw up
the articles of incorporation necessary to make the
purchase, which articles were executed December 24,
1898. The old well at the East of the tabernacle was dug by
J.S. Booten and his brother, G.G. Booten, in August 1901 to
save having to haul all of the water to supply the large
crowds who attended the camp. The present tabernacle was
built about 1905. Evidently, the crowds on Sundays were
massive for an action was taken by the District Quarterly
Conference, August 10, 1901 to “petition the Burlington
Railroad Company not to run Sunday excursion trains to the
Birmingham Camp Meeting, for the reason that it brings such
a rowdy element to the camp ground.” The Fairfield
Ledger published an account of the camp meeting in the horse
and buggy days, stating that the trains and hacks were
chartered to take the crowds to the camp meeting which
numbered on Sundays, around 7000 people. An attendant at the
camp stated that the horses and wagons lined the highway
north of town for two miles. The camp ground was not used
for a few years and the Fairfield District Conference
decided in 1942 to deed the camp ground to the Iowa
Conference as permanent conference camp ground on the
condition that the conference would gradually improve the
property. In compliance with this agreement, the tabernacle
was completely repaired and the grounds landscaped. The
present dining hall was built in 1944 and the Missionary
Chapel in 1946. Rest rooms were provided in the basement of
the dining hall and new wells bored in 1949 to increase the
water supply. Some additional land was purchased in 1967. A
yearly program of improvement is planned by the camp
trustees which is making the camp one of the outstanding
camp grounds in the middle west. In 1880, a company of Sabbath (Seventh Day) Keepers in
the vicinity of the Union Church and Douds met at Brother Ed
Morrow’s for the purpose of organizing a church. These
people had been diligently searching the scriptures. They
were thoroughly convinced that the Ten Commandment should be
their guide and that the fourth commandment was in equal
importance with the other nine. There were fourteen men and
women in attendance at this meeting among whom were William
and Esther Greenfield, grandparents of Ruth McKee Canadaywho
lives near Birmingham at the present time. At this meeting
it was decided to build a church in Birmingham. In 1884 a
lot was purchased from Mr. Hoagland for $200.00. The head
carpenter for the new church was George Countryman and he
was paid $625.00 to erect the structure. Ed Morrow assisted
as well as several others and the building was completed and
dedicatedon December 14, 1884. There was a good attendance
for many years at this little church, but by 1963 the
membership became small and the decision was made to close
the church and unite with the Fairfield Church. The old
church building has been turned into the Dorcas Welfare
Center for the distribution of clothing and supplies.
(Note-That building was torn down & a new church was
built between Birmingham & Fairfield).
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THE RUTLEDGE
FAMILY It is gratifying to any community to be able to tie
itself in some way to national history. One of Van Buren
County’s ties is with the life of Abraham Lincoln, and
Birmingham is the community that claims this tie. Historians
make much of the romance between Lincoln and Ann
Rutledge. Lincoln lived and boarded with the Rutledge family for a
time when he clerked in the New Salem, Illinois store and it
was in the Rutledge home that the romance between him and
Ann (or Annie) began. In the summer of 1835 Ann contracted
an illness (typhoid fever) which proved fatal and she died
August 25th of that year. A few months later her father also
died of the same disease. They moved from New Salem to a nearby farm where the
family lived for a year or so. In 1837 they came to Iowa-the
mother and six living children. They settled on a farm next
to the Jefferson-Van Buren county line, in Lick Creek
Township, Van Buren county, about two and one-half miles due
northwest of where the town of Birmingham was to be laid out
two years after their arrival. In “The Gate City”, a Keokuk newspaper dated
January 16, 1898 an article entitled “Early Days in
Iowa” relates the following: These Rutledge children named above were sisters and
brothers of Ann Rutledge. The other two children were Jane,
the eldest child and John, the eldest son. Two families living nearby came to be intertwined with
the Rutledge family. Anthony T. Prewitt and family came to
the area about 1843 from Lee county. On November 9, 1845 his
wife died and the next year, October 14, 1846, Anthony
married Nancy Rutledge. Mr. Prewitt died in 1864, and
shortly after Nancy Prewitt and her children moved to
Birmingham where she lived until after the death of her
mother. The Plaskets came to the Rutledge neighborhood about
1838 and Robert married their daughter Sarah,
probablysometime between 1843 and 1845 for Sarah died young
in 1847. The Rutledge family was active in both church and civil
life. They were Cumberland Presbyterians and the church they
attended was at the crossroads about a mile south of their
homestead. The remains of this church with sheds added to it
for farm uses still stands in the northeast corner of this
crossroads on Woodrow land. A parsonage for its minister was
across the road west from the church but it has been long
gone. No one now living remembers when this church was
active. An article on Rutledge family history appearing in the
October 13, 1921 issue of the Fairfield Ledger-Journal has
these statements which attest to the civic activities. When Mrs. Rutledge in her declining years moved to
Birmingham to live with her daughter Nancy, the son John
came into possession of the old homestead and lived there
until his death in 1879. Mrs. Rutledge, who was blind the
last twelve years of her life lived to be past 91. She died
at her daughter’s home in Birmingham on December 26,
1878. A few years after this Nancy Prewitt moved toFairfield
that her sons might attend Parsons College. One of her sons
became a Presbyterian minister in California. It would be interesting to know where in Birmingham Nancy
and Mrs. Rutledge lived but the writer has found no local
resident who knows or remembers this fact. There has been no
descendants with the Rutledge name living in the area since
probably the mid 1890’s. Today the Rutledge farm is owned by Mace Clarridge and
has been for many years. The Rutledge dwelling is completely
gone. During the course of the fifty to sixty years that the
Rutledges lived here, family burials were made in the Bethel
cemetery one mile west of the farmstead. There are six
marked Rutledge graves all in the eastern half of the
cemetery. One of these is the gravesite of Mary Ann
Rutledge, mother of the young manhood sweetheart of Abraham
Lincoln, Ann Rutledge. There, under a bit of the Iowa
prairie that she came to know so well, Mother Rutledge rests
from the long and often harsh pioneer life that earned her a
niche in history. The grave, in the northeast section, is
marked by a slender marble shaft and ninety years of time
and weathering have already softened its sharp lines and
began to dim its inscriptions which read:
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Birmingham has had the honor of furnishing Iowa one of
its governors. He was William Beardsley, better known
locally as Bill. Beardsley was born at Beacon, Iowa in
Mahaska county near Oskaloosa. When he was two years old his
parents moved to Birmingham where Mr. Beardsley, the father,
engaged in merchandising, buying the drug store that had
formerly been owned by J.S. Ragsdale. This store was located
in the building which is now used and owned by the local
Lions Club. Bill received his elementary and secondary
education in the local school, graduating with the class
of1919. There were nine members in his class and three--Vada
Anderson (Mrs. Ralph Shott), Loren Lazenby and AnnetteNelson
still live in Birmingham. Prophetic of his later role he was
president of his class in its senior year. As a school boy
Bill clerked in his father’s drug store. When his
father retired and closed out the store Bill also worked in
Lee Ruggles drug store. Between his work and his school
activities he became well and widely known in the community.
He married Charlotte Manning (who by the way was a
granddaughter of Dr. J.B. Spees, the early resident of the
town who was its second doctor). In 1922 Bill and his wife
moved to New Virginia, Iowa where he soon became the owner
of his own drug store. Through industry and acumen he later
became the owner of farm land in the area also. In the
thirties he entered the political arena serving several
sessions in theIowa legislature. He was state senator form
his district prior to the governship. In 1949 he became
governor of Iowa. He was serving his third term as governor
when he lost his life in an automobile accident on November
21, 1954.
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