Good afternoon readers!
I hope that you are ready to hear more about the Smith Conspiracy, because there is much more to come! Today we are looking at the headlines from the March 21st Perry Chief. The headline for this paper is “Smith Escapes Officers and Wife.” According to the paper, Mrs. Smith received a phone call from DeSoto at 6 p.m., in which a man identifying himself as a salesman of the Disintone company and asked her to meet him at 7 p.m. at the junction of highway 169 and 7. This intersection was more commonly known as Black’s corners, and is about 14 miles south of here. Mrs. Smith, thinking this was information concerning her husband, immediately notified local police asking for an escort. This opened an opportunity for the arrest of John Smith. Unfortunately, things were not going to go their way. Shortly before 7 p.m. Mrs. Smith left Perry. A car driven by Deputy Sheriff McCarthy, who was accompanied by Deputy Sheriff Chase and Perry night officer Grant Herrold, followed her. Deputy Burger of Adel was also notified, and was accompanied by Dutch Baldwin, the Adel marshal. These two officers reached the point first and took up a vantage point where they could see the entire intersection. As they watched, a yellow-wheeled Chevrolet coupe arrived, but they were unaware of who was in the car. Mrs. Smith came from the north, maintaining a quarter mile ahead of McCarthy’s car. When she finally came to the intersection, the yellow-wheeled car met her. Mr. Smith was driving this car and as he approached Mrs. Smith’s car, he slowed down so that he could talk to her. Upon identifying him, Mrs. Smith yelled to the officers, and the chase began. Smith took off, and Mrs. Smith and McCarthy turned to follow his car. Smith stopped his car just east of the end of the wide east turn, and Mrs. Smith stopped behind him. McCarthy stopped at the corner and picked up Deputy Burger, and Baldwin drove past both cars to stop in front of Mr. Smith. Noticing he was trapped, Smith again started east. McCarthy turned back in the road to head him off, and Officer Herrold got out of his car, but knocked a shotgun to the ground. As he bent to pick it up, Smith’s car blew past him, missing his head by about 8 inches and running over the gun breaking it at the stock. Because of this, McCarthy halted his car to avoid Herrold, and Smith was given the necessary room to make his escape to the north. Baldwin then got into Mrs. Smith’s car, and she started to give chase. When asked if she could drive, she replied, “I’ll drive it as fast as it will go to catch him.” Unfortunately, a driver in a passing Ford thought that the officers were chasing Mrs. Smith’s car, and so he blocked her car, causing her to go into the ditch. Mr. Smith then got away, and was still at large upon the printing of the paper. What happens next? Do the police find and capture Smith? Find out next week, when the headline is “Smith Must Face Trial in Dallas”!
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Happy Wednesday Readers!
Last week I told you all the beginnings of the Smith Conspiracy, which was a big event here in Perry in 1931. Today, we will be continuing that story, looking at the next big headline in the March 13th Perry Chief, which read “County Attorney Sackett to Ask Complete State Inquiry In Smith Case”. The County Attorney at the time, George Sackett, formally requested that the State Department of Criminal Investigation in Des Moines inquire into the mystery of the John M. Smith Case. Now, many of you may be asking why such an inquiry was needed. Well, if you remember from last time, there was also an article in this paper titled “Body Exhumed Here Was Not That of John M. Smith Thought Killed in Accident.” This happened because of an inquiry carried out be three insurance companies: Traveler’s of Hartford, Massachusetts Mutual and Minnesota Mutual. Primarily, Mr. Smith had bought a $5000 Travelers policy in Omaha good for only 12 days, and his supposed death occurred 7 days later. There were also other details about John’s death that aroused suspicion, such as how the car had not been wrecked but merely driven off the road at an angle and then burned. Both of these suspicions lead to the exhuming of the body at the C. D. Bemmar funeral home. Dr. D. J. Glomset and Dr. C. B. Luginbuhl performed an autopsy, along with many other doctors and dentists who attended. What they found was startling: the body that was buried there was not that of John M. Smith. There was much to back up this discovery. First, the doctors found that the body was embalmed before it had been burned. They found that the body had an incision under the right arm, arteries had been drawn and drained, and then had been tied off. In addition, they found that the dental work did not match Mr. Smith’s dental records. The doctors also examined the skull of the body for a fracture that Mr. Smith had received while living in Nebraska that they believed had left an indentation. They did not find any such marking on the skull of the body. Clearly, the body buried in the cemetery was not that of John M. Smith. So, the all-consuming question became “Where was John M. Smith?” Further details only made the case more interesting. To start, friends of Mr. Smith presented the theory that foul play might be involved. Where the body was secured also became a mystery, and mutilation of that body was determined to be a charge placed against anyone found to have taken part in the incident. Mrs. Smith also gave a statement, saying she would not collect any of the insurance money as long as there was doubt that her husband was alive. However, it was reported that Mr. Smith had approximately $50,000 in insurance, which was all payable to either his estate or Mrs. Smith. Many factors about the Smith Case were coming to light, and each one only brought with it more questions. What happened next? Find out next week as the story unfolds with the headline “Smith Escapes Officers and Wife”! Happy Wednesday readers!
I have a little update for all of you before we get to today’s topic. Do you all remember the photo of Rich Saemisch presenting couples at the 1976 prom? Well, thanks to some help from Kathy Lenz, we have figured out who they are! Two people in the front closest to Rich are Janice Godwin and David Wempe, and the couple in the back are David Hanson and Lynn Paulsen. Therefore, for those of you who were wondering, now you know! Now for today’s topic. If you look around Perry today, many of you may think that it is a quiet little town. You may think that nothing much of national importance ever happens here. However, that has not always been the case. For instance, here is one story that got Perry quite a lot of national attention: the death of a Bonnie and Clyde gang member! The year was 1933, and Perry had a hospital called the Kings Daughters Hospital. On July 24, Marvin Barrow was admitted with four wounds: One .45 caliber bullet in the shoulder, two in the hip, and one in the forehead. He was in serious condition, and near death. He received these injuries during a gunfight near Dexfield Park, an area between Dexter and Redfield. During the escape after the gunfight, the gang had to ditch their cars. Unable to continue on foot due to his injuries, Marvin had to stay behind and his wife stayed with him. Bonnie and Clyde, along with another member got away from Iowa police. On July 25th, police question Marvin about a recent murder, and he apparently responded “unconcernedly.” Many officers from around the country came on the 25th, attempting to identify him for various crimes. On the 26th, Barrow’s mother came to the hospital, and Barrow, who had slipped into a coma, awakened briefly and was able to see his mother. It was discovered from his mother that his nickname was “Buck.” Unfortunately, Marvin “Buck” Barrow was to die on July 29th at the age of 31. As you can see, Perry has had some interesting brushes with criminals. There are also stories about a man who faked his death for insurance money, someone who owned a bank and took all the money to flee to the Bahamas, and of course the KKK march that happened here. If you wish to know more about Marvin’s story, or about any of the other interesting stories, please do not hesitate to stop by! Hello again readers, Have you ever looked back on a picture, and realized that you have no idea who is actually in the picture? Perhaps you took it to capture a moment that you liked, perhaps it was at a social gathering where you did not know everyone, or maybe you just have forgotten some people that you once knew. Whatever the case maybe, you have somehow gotten a picture of people that you do not know any more. I hope that you have wrote down on the back the names of the people so that you could remember them. If you are less lucky, you might have the kind of situation that we have right now at Hometown Heritage. Recently someone came in and asked us to identify two people in a picture that we have on rotation in the commons of the high school. The picture, as you can see below, is of Rich Saemisch introducing couples at the 1976 prom. However, there is little more information than that about this picture. We know that Rich is wearing a blue, red, and white suit (I will leave the decision about how fashionable that is to you), and that this was a 1976 prom. The couple were wearing very similar clothes too. Unfortunately, that is all we know about this photo. Little other description is given, aside from the fact that Mr. Saemisch is introducing couples. This is where you come in, readers. Please take a careful look at this photo, and see if you can recognize either of the couples. If you do, please tell us! We searched high and low to see if we could find an answer. We checked the old newspapers, our database, and even the old Eclipse yearbooks, but could not find any more information. So please, if you recognize any of the couples in the picture, contact us with the information! We would greatly appreciate, and it would allow us to grow our database, be more informative, and answer the question of the person who came in asking. Hello readers,
Today we are going to talk about some of the items that I have accessioned into our system recently. Unfortunately, most of it appears to be junk, and for good reason. People found all of these items in the bottom of the dumbwaiter shaft during the renovation of Hotel Pattee in the mid ninetees! If you look at the pictures below, you may understand why I think a lot of this appears to be junk. There are things such as a smashed up pumpkin Halloween decoration, blocks of wood, lids to various cans and even a ball of twine. Some of the objects even look nasty. For instance, one bottle has what looks like some tar along the inside. Another bottle has a small amount of orange liquid, probably just some rusty water or something. In case you are worried, both bottles are sealed and neither of them were dangerous. They just look disgusting. However, the renovators also found some interesting items in the bottom of that dumb waiter. There is a gavel from the International Rotary club, which is of some interest to us as it is a piece of Rotary Club history. The renovators also found two keys in the bottom of the shaft. These keys are very interesting: they have no labels, and are unmarked, so I have no idea what doors they open. Maybe they open some secret rooms in the Hotel! Most likely, however, they belong to doors that no longer exist due to the renovation. Two final remarks about these items. First, if you seem anything in the pictures that you think has value, please let me know! Many of these items are a mystery, so I would greatly appreciate any help identifying them and their value. Finally, and perhaps the biggest mystery of all, is how these items got to the bottom of a dumbwaiter shaft in the first place. Who was putting these things into a dumbwaiter? I am fairly certain knobs for drawers and other things should not go into a dumb waiter, but I could be wrong. Since it has been awhile since the Hotel renovation, we may never know the answer. Hello Readers!
Maybe some of you thought this day would never come, but here it is: The Return of the Chicken! (Dramatic music plays in the background) Do you all remember when we discussed the Shoulder Chicken? Well, it seems that taking pictures with a chicken was more than just a fluke; it may be a trend. To illustrate, I have found two more pictures from around the time of the Shoulder Chicken, which is about 1918. First is a picture of George Dickey (Brickey), taken in 1908, with what is technically a rooster, but a rooster still counts as a chicken. As you can see, somehow they have gotten not only George, a young child, to stand still for the camera, but also the rooster! In addition, George is either a small boy or that is a big rooster, since the rooster comes up almost to his chin. Correct me if I am wrong, but I did not think that rooster and chickens could get that big. Either way, the real question of this photo is why they are putting a rooster in it in the first place. Is it a prize-winning rooster? Does George just really like this rooster? We may never know, since system has no description of the picture aside from the title. The next picture is a picture of a Knee Chicken, or at least, that is what I’m calling it. The title of the photo, which dates to around 1915, is “E. L. Towne with Rooster”, but again a rooster counts as a chicken, and Knee Chicken sounds much more interesting. As you can see, this photo is highly similar to the Shoulder Chicken, except the rooster is obviously on his knee. However, we know a little bit more about this rooster than about the others. There are a few words on the back of the picture: “Tru Type S.C. Red Ck'l Bred and Owned by E.L. Towne Jamaica, IA”. From what I can understand, this means that E. L. Towne was from Jamaica, and his rooster is a true type red cockle bred, but I have no idea what that means. Perhaps one of you readers could enlighten me? Still, as you can see there is more than just one picture of someone posing with his or her rooster/chicken. It seems more and more likely that this was some kind of trend. Perhaps we should all start taking pictures with our chickens! Hello Readers! First, I must apologize for the lateness of this blog post. We were having a few hiccups with our website yesterday, but everything is fixed now. Please enjoy the rest of the post! There are many cool and interesting things here at Hometown Heritage, ranging from pictures to clothes, and even to weapons. All of these things are different in their own unique way, but they also share something: their home (see slide show below this post!) Here on the lower level of the Town Craft Building, all of our items are stored in our vault, and it is quite the interesting vault. “Why is it interesting?” you may be asking yourself. Well, I will tell you! To start, our vault is very old. It was originally the vault of the First National Bank (as you can see from the words above the door), and was made by Diebold Safe and Lock Company. According to what I have researched, this dates the vault back to sometime between 1876 and 1943. Since First National Bank was first established around 1913, that means this vault is probably at least one hundred years old! Now most of you have probably not heard of Diebold Safe and Lock Company. This is because they changed their name in 1943 to Diebold, Incorporated. Currently, people know them more for their production of ATMs. Anyway, back to our vault. As you can see in the pictures, the vault has seen a lot of use. It is worn, and even missing a few screw caps on the hinges. Fortunately, it has not rusted, and still opens and closes perfectly fine (even if it is quite heavy). It even has a double set of doors, which I only found out recently. They are behind the main vault door, and have bars that extend up and down to keep them in place if the vault needs to be completely sealed. Of course, this brings me to the one rule that we have with our vault: always bring your phone in with you! Even though there are not many people down here, we always make sure to bring our phone with us into the vault, since it is impossible to open the vault from the inside. The inside of the vault is actually not as interesting as the outside is. Mostly it is just a bunch of shelves, tightly packed together, with tons of boxes on them. In fact, it is almost impossible to retrieve things from the shelves efficiently. There is even a pole in the middle of where a row is! It really needs a good reorganization, but that will be a project for a different day. Aside from all of this, there is one curious thing about our vault. On the front, it has the name of Diebold, but it also has another name lower on the door. This part reads “David Blair, AG’T., Chicago, Ill.” For all my research, I am unable to find out what this means or who David Blair is. I do not think there is documentation about the vault that remains either, so this will remain a mystery. However, if any of you want to come and see our vault for yourself, we always welcome visitors, so please stop by! Hello once again readers!
Today it is time for another mystery object. This object is a little different from the other mystery objects I have talked about before, however. I have actually done some research trying to figure out what today’s object is, but came up rather empty handed, with more questions than answers. Therefore, without further ado, here is today’s object: a metal rod with a handle! As you can see in the photo, the object in question is just a long, metal rod with a handle. There is slight chipping at the end, presumably from frequent use. The question, however, it what this rod was used for. According to our system, this object is a “butter tool”, and that James E. Hart donated it, but there is not any more information. Specifically, it does not indicate how on Earth someone would use this rod in association with butter. It is slightly curved, so perhaps it was used to scrape butter off the inside of a butter churn? Upon further inspection of the rod, one detail could help to reveal what this object really is. On the inside of the curve, near the handle, someone inscribed the word “Burrell”. When I found this, I did some digging on the internet to see what I could find about “Burrell”. According to what I could find, D. H. Burrell was an inventor who invented many contraptions that people used in the dairy industry. Unfortunately, my research did not find many details about his actual inventions. This is why I ended up with more questions than answers. Is this metal rod part of a larger machine? Should someone use the rod by itself? Is it actually even something that D. H. Burrell created, or is the “Burrell” inscription just a red herring? If any of you have any idea, please tell us! It will help me get some sleep at night finally knowing what the purpose of this strange rod is. I believe an answer could be readily available here in Perry, since there are quite a few dairy farms around. For instance, Picket Fence Creamery is nearby, and they clearly would have some knowledge about “butter tools”. If any of you readers have your interests truly piqued by this metal rod, perhaps Picket Fence Creamery, or any dairy farmer around town for that matter, could shed some light on the matter! Before I leave you today, there is one final thing to mention. The answer to the game we played last week! A few of you did guess, and they were good guesses! However, the correct answer is nothing. HPI Box 40 has nothing at all inside of it! This is why I do not see the need to keep this item in our collection. Good afternoon readers! Today we have another interesting, but ultimately useless, item from our collection. What makes this item truly useless is what is inside of it. In order to make this a little more fun, we are going to play a simple game. Here is how it works: I am going to describe everything that I can about this item, and I want all of you to try to guess what is inside it. To guess, all you have to do it comment on this post! I will reveal the answer in the next blog post. So, let us play “What’s in the box”! Here at Hometown Heritage, we call the box in question “HPI Box 40”. As you can see in the picture, it is a wooden box. There are a multitude of scratches on the top of the box, indicating that is has been used a fair amount. The front of the box has a lightly metal decorated clasp to hold the box shut. It does not work very well, as the clasp does not stay completely down. The hinges on the back of the box have a similar design to the latch on the front, with the light flourishes. Both seem to be made of iron or some other gray colored metal. The bottom is just like the top: it has quite a few scratches, most likely indicating frequent use. The box is approximately 12 inches wide, 19 inches long and 3 inches high. Here are a few final clues that may help you guess what is inside. The box is part of a group of items donated to us from the estate of Beulah Bentley Schluter. There are all kinds of items in this collection, ranging from Christmas letters to travel documents to various pictures. Beulah appeared to be someone interested in art, as included in the collection are also various drawings of hers. She was also a well-traveled woman, having been to Germany, Hawaii, New Zealand, and South America. As you can see, this box is very odd. In my opinion, it should not be in our collection. These are all the clues I can give you, readers. Partly because I do not want to make it too easy to guess what is in this box, and partly because Beulah Bentley Schluter is somewhat of a mystery woman. What I have told you about her is almost all that I know of her. It would be great if, in addition to guessing what is in the box, any of you who knew her could tell more about her! Salvēte (that is Latin for welcome!) readers!
Today, we are going to start a new kind of series of blog posts about something different. Normally, we would be talking about something that is interesting, or has some kind of mysterious story behind it. Starting with this post, however, we are going to be talking about some of the more ridiculous items in the collection here at Hometown Heritage. Now without sounding too offensive, these are the kinds of items that, when I first saw them, I questioned why they were actually in our collection. If you do not agree with what I think is questionable, please leave a comment and explain why! First up on the list of not-so-interesting items is a blank piece of paper. Upon first glance, this single piece of paper seems like it has no business being in our collection at all. It has nothing written on it, and there appears to be no historical value in keeping it. In fact, it looks like the kind of thing that one would toss into the trash without a second thought. However, something may make this piece of paper worth keeping: the header. Printed at the top of this piece of paper is “Hoagland Grocery Co.” and a few other things, such as the names Clyde R. Hoagland and Harry T. Hoagland. The reason this may make this piece of paper worth keeping is that Hoagland Grocery was an early grocery in Perry. It would be worthwhile to keep important documents and information about this early part of Perry’s history. That said, however, a blank charge slip from the grocery is not really an important document, nor does it reveal any important information. This comes back to something that we have talked about before on this blog: it is important to tell the younger generations the stories behind the things that you keep. For all I know, this blank piece of paper could actually be the last charge slip ever made for Hoagland Grocery. Or it could be the first one that was ever made! If this piece of paper had retained its story, it could be an amazing piece of history worth keeping in our collection. Now, however, people of my generation simply see it as something that we can toss into the trash, even if it should not be. To prevent this from happening, if any of you have information regarding this piece of paper or even Hoagland Grocery Co., plus come forward and tell us! We would be more than happy to record it so that others can remember it too. Before I go, since this is going to be an ongoing group of blog posts, I have decided to give them the title "Scraps of the Past". This is due to most of them being "scraps" of things that may have been worth keeping at one point in time, but appear to have no value now. |
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