DAY ONE The Perfect Getaway: The Five Concords of Iowa “Hey Lizzy, let’s go away for the MLK weekend,” I said. “Sure, how about visiting your sister in Florida?” “Ah..., how about Iowa instead?” The idea of this trip had been percolating ever since I discovered that there are five Concord Townships scattered across the state of Iowa. Iowa looks like a small manageable state nestled in the middle of to its much bigger neighbors of Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri. But it turns out to be seven times bigger than my home state of Massachusetts. It would be a challenge to hit all five Concord in one weekend, but the difficulty was part of the adventure. The state itself is fairly symmetrical at approximately 300 miles from east to west and 200 miles from north to south. There are 99 mostly rectangular counties in Iowa, and each county has between 12 and 25 largely square “townships.” It looks to me like the early map makers used a ruler to create the counties. Perhaps they were sentimental about the east, but I suspect that these mapmakers were equally unimaginative when it came to naming these grids inside each county. So of the 1599 townships in Iowa, five of them are named “Concord.”
The Concord of Iowa in the Land of the 2020 Primaries I’ve always been a bit of a political junkie. As a kid I liked numbers, and elections are all about numbers: poll numbers, electrical college numbers, the vote tally, the number of dollars raised, and the ever-diminishing number of candidates. Eventually, all of these numbers along with all of the hopes and promises are boiled down to the number 1 - the winner. Since a paperwork error in 1972, thrust the Iowa caucus to the front of the election season, Iowans have taken their role as the first tally of the presidential primaries quite seriously. The excitement created by the number of politicians crisscrossing the state was addictive, and Iowans passed a law requiring their caucus to be the first election every four years. This project remains steadfastly apolitical. It is important to me that when I refer fellow Concordians from around the country to my website that the stories I tell and my observations about the places I visit and the people I meet are not overtly tainted with my personal biases. This being said, I looked forward to this weekend in the boiling cauldron of politics, two weeks before their caucus. With 1000 miles of driving to complete in three days, I couldn’t afford to become distracted, but I hoped to get just a taste of the hoopla surrounding the Iowa caucus.
The First Challenge to the Iowa Odyssey Our carefully plotted plans for zooming around Iowa were almost canceled from the start. A fierce blizzard was whipping across the Midwest and heading toward New England. When we arrived at Logan Airport, I was not optimistic. Almost all of the flights to Chicago had been canceled. American still had our flight to Chicago and our evening connection to Cedar Rapids Iowa on the board, but conditions were deteriorating rapidly in Boston, and the storm threatened to close Logan for 24 hours, and that would squash our trip. I was surprised when we were called to board, and after an hour’s delay waiting to use the one operational runway we took off for a bumpy ride to O’Hare. As we landed, my phone flashed a message that our flight to Cedar Rapids was canceled. We managed to get on a flight to Waterloo, the last flight into Iowa. A Not-So Warm Midwest Greeting Exhausted and relieved, we waited for our gate-checked bags in the frigid Iowa night. Now to find a hotel and a bed. Hmmm. No hotels within two miles. The internet showed no Uber drivers, no Lift drivers. I headed outside and searched in vain for a taxi or hotel minivan; it was -3 degrees (that’s -19 degrees Celsius, my English friends!) The internet showed that the car rental counters closed at 10 PM and it was well after midnight. We walked around the largely deserted terminal, and I started to look for a bench we could sleep on. There was a glow coming from around the corner, and lo and behold, there was the Avis Rental Car counter attended with a line of four customers. We were saved! We ended up getting the last car they had to rent - a beat-up VW Jetta. It took another 15 minutes to get the coat of ice off it. Darren, the Avis guy’s last words to us were, “I wouldn’t drive far out there if I were you.”
DAY TWO I grew up in the cold winters of New England. I learned to drive on snow and ice. The Plan Day two of our trip to Iowa challenged all of my experience in dealing with inclement weather. We had an ambitious day scheduled. It was a two-hour drive up to the northwest to the town of Garner in Concord Township, Hancock County. We would have time for a quick reconnoiter and lunch before a three-hour drive to Holy Cross, Concord Township in Dubuque Co, where we were scheduled to attend mass at the Holy Cross Church and meet with some parishioners. We would finish the day with another long drive to central Iowa to prepare for a sprint to the western edge of the state the next morning.
I LATER FOUND OUT THAT THE GOVERNOR HAD CLOSED ALL THE ROADS The weather determined there wasn’t going to be much sprinting. While the temperatures had warmed to 4 degrees overnight, the winds had picked up to a steady 30 mph. Even the snow seemed to shriek in pain as it crunched under my boots. We cautiously left our hotel and were relieved to find that route 218 had been at least partially plowed. Two tracks of pavement generally were visible on the right-hand lane of the highway. I just had to keep the car in between the white dotted line on my left and the solid yellow line on my right and stay safely behind the red taillights ahead of us. For much of the 50-mile trip it was just us and a few tractor-trailers being buffeted by the wind. The wind varied depending on the landscape. If there were trees or any kind of winter vegetation on either side of the road, we were somewhat protected, but in the areas where the highway crossed open fields, snow screamed across the highway, building up small dunes on the edges of the pavement. The worst was when we crossed over a culvert or under a bridge for these channeled the wind and the sudden gusts rocked the car and sent rear of the 18-wheelers skidding sideways. Twice when the road turned from north to south to east to west we hit open patches in the farmland and we were engulfed by total whiteout conditions. Gone were the white and yellow lines and the red taillights. I gripped the steering wheel harder and hoped that the road remained straight.
CONCORD TOWNSHIP, HANCOCK COUNTY Exhausted we arrived in Garner behind schedule. Fortunately, our host from Holy Cross canceled our 3:30 PM meeting, so we could relax in the knowledge that we only had a two-hour return trip rather than the five hours of driving that I had scheduled. Main Street in Garner was largely deserted. There were a couple of pick up trucks at each of the two bars in town, but otherwise, the wide avenue was quiet. We drove through town scouting out a place to stop to talk and to find lunch. There had once been a town named “Concord.” In 1865 it had just four streets, but Concord was Hancock County’s first county seat. By 1867 a larger courthouse was needed, and the town voted 55 yeas and 18 nos, so there were probably around 100 families living in town by then.
A few years later, the Chicago and MacGregor Railroad was laid and its tracks passed about a mile north of Concord, so by 1870 the population started shifting from Concord to the new town of Garner, but the vestiges of the old town remain in the form of the “Concord Park” and “Concord Cemetery,” along with a couple of Concord roads.
I dashed out of the car to take some pictures. To use my phone I had to take my right glove off, Within a minute my skin was blue and I suffered for those few pictures for the rest of the day. Two days later, the top layers of skin on my cheeks and nose all flaked off.
With 50 mph gusts and temperatures hovering around zero, Liz soon learned to take pictures from the car!
We retreated to the most lively looking bar “Mat’s Place” and ordered burgers from Chantelle. She likes Concord because its a great place to raise her mixed-race child. In response to my standard question “How has it changed since you came here?” Chantelle said, “It has become friendlier!” “When I first came up here from Waterloo, I was an outcast, but now that everyone has gotten to know me, they’ve become much more friendly.”
THE STANDING ROCK PIPELINE PROTESTER I complimented Brandon on the burger he grilled up for us. He enjoys the community and the small-town living. “Big cities are getting kinda crazy these days.” When he heard I was a history teacher, Brandon said cryptically “I’ve been making my history teachers proud.” He smiled, so I asked, “How?” Brandon had spent the past year at the Standing Rock pipeline protests in North Dakota. “We were protesting Big Money and Big Oil Corporations having the right to take away the rights of the people. It opened my eyes to the truth about the relationship between the US Government and Corporations even to their own people whether it is pushing a pipeline through, or fracking or anything in your local communities. Big Money will always have power over the voice of the people. I witnessed that firsthand. They brought out the National Guard. They had private security teams from Iraq and Afghanistan that were out there. They were the ones doing the injuries. They were shooting us, gassing us, locking us up in cages, setting attack dogs on us, and this is on US soil. Once again the US government violated treaties with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. So the indigenous people were being stepped on once again. The corporations are doing whatever they want to whomever, and worst of all to the land and to our environment. I went out there because we the people, my generation, the younger generation need to understand what ‘We the people’ really means. We need to value that and protect that. Corporations own the Constitution now. That’s what this opened my eyes to. I hope people my age will wake and take the lead of the nation because it’s our future. If we are not careful, we will be able to take this nation in a better direction, for what is equal and what is right for all. For me, that’s what is, The American Dream. To make a free and equal land for everybody.”
Brandon went on to say he had been mostly lucky when he was shot at. He was hit once did get a big welt on his side from a rubber bullet, but he had seen people lose an eye and worse. The psychological warfare was unrelenting. Two helicopters fly overhead constantly. Drones hovered 24/7. Music blasted their tents at night; security teams made raids and unleashed attack dogs. But the worst was the water cannons that soaked them dousing their meager fires on nights when the temperatures dropped to -60. “On November 20th they came out with a water truck. They mixed the water with bear mace, and sprayed women, children, elders - all unarmed. They took one of the grenade canisters and when it hits it’s supposed to disperse a bunch of BB’s everywhere, but they duck taped the bags so the pellets wouldn’t scatter, and it nearly blew a young woman’s forearm off.” Brandon spent a year on the front lines, and suffered greatly. “But in the end the tribal elders and the pipeline corporations made a deal. Big money won in the end.” “Tell your students my story and good luck with your Concord thing.”
DAY THREE We beat Andrew Yang out of the hotel In Waterloo Iowa and hit the road again before 8 AM. We hurried to catch the 10 o’clock service at The Stavanger Free Lutheran Church in Garden City, Iowa, the one population center of Concord Township in Hardin County.
The day was clear and colder, but thankfully the wind had decreased considerably. We passed a dozen cars and SUVs plunged off the side of the road. There was a rather impressive 18- wheeler jack-knifed up against an embankment. These were the trophies of two days of blizzards. The roads were once again largely empty, and we made good time. We drove past the hollowed shells of magnificent old barns. Through the swirling snow, the wind turbines emerged like haunted aliens whirling their limbs. We stopped off for gas outside of town, and the clerk wondered what brought us out in the storm. She informed us that the reason we saw so many stuck cars was because the governor of Iowa had declared a state of emergency and had banned all police and tow trucks from the roads. That explained the lack of traffic and the vehicles littering the road. The conditions were too dangerous for tow-trucks! Someone forgot to tell us, and we were not listening to the radio. “Didn’t they cancel church? ” The clerk asked as we headed out.
Concord Township, Hardin County The Stavanger Luther Church parking lot was well-plowed but otherwise empty, so we drove the perimeter of Garden City. I had been in erratic contact with Pastor Eric, but he had not responded to my overnight e-mail. Church service or not, we had a Concord to explore. According to Pastor Eric, Garden City consisted of a post office, an auto repair shop, a grain elevator and his church. Luckily I had a Plan B. I had contacted the Hardin County supervisor’s office, and I had received five addresses of people who lived in Garden City. I had no phone numbers or email addresses so I just sent them a letter and hoped they wouldn’t sic their dogs on me when I knocked on the door.
As I worked up my courage to cold call (literally) on the first house, I roamed the town to take some pictures of the “Concord Co-op Creamery” building and the massive grain elevator that towered over the town separated by a railroad crossing.
Is anybody home???
I found Richard shoveling out the entrance to the Post Office. He didn’t want his picture taken, but he told me a bit how life had changed, mostly for the worst, but he also pointed out where everyone on my list lived. Two of them were down roads that probably weren’t passable, but he pointed out Dave’s house one block away.
Dave greeted me with a quizzical look. Yes, he had received my letter and he went to the kitchen to pull it out to review. Fortunately, his pit bull was caged. “She’s none too friendly.” We sat for a spell. Dave was born in Garden City “It used to be a thriving community. My great-grandfather built the first house in town.” “We had a nice grocery store and a (meat) locker, and a bank and a bar and a cafe, a post office, hardware store, lumberyard, gas station, a car wash. The big co-op (grain elevator) and the church is all we have left really.” It was the big box stores that led to the end of the businesses in town. “There used to be many small farms holdings. There are a few left, but we have a lot of hog confinements around here. There are no real small live animal farms around anymore.” Dave had recently retired from the telephone company, and he was rightfully proud that Garden City had fiber-optic high-speed internet. Dave enjoys knowing everyone in town, “I’ve got a brother who lives in town.” “One of the people on your list you want to meet is Denny Neubauer. He’s across the street.”
The walkway to the Neubauers' front door was not yet shoveled, so I knocked at the side door by the garage. After a few seconds in the howling wind, I heard a voice shouting from across the street. “YOU HAVE TO GO TO THE FRONT.” Dave waved me in the right direction. I trudged through the snow and knocked. “Well, I have five minutes before we have to go.” It wasn’t the most promising start to the conversation, but my first impression couldn’t have been more off-target. Denny was a tremendous host. He sat me down, introduced his wife, Carla. Her family can be traced to the original 1864 settlers from Norway. They still own the farm. Denny and Carla grew up in Concord Township a mile apart from each other, and they have known each other for nearly 70 years. The Neubauers have lived here in the town of Garden City for 46 years. “The sad part is the population went down - big time. We have very few small children getting on the school bus anymore. When our kids were growing up there were 35 kids taking the bus out of a population of 110. Now there are only a couple of kids and we are down to 80 or so. We can go up and down the country roads and remember ‘That’s where so-and-so’s house was,’ but it’s been all bulldozed down and the farm ground sold off…. We are proud that we still have our family homes.” Their younger son works Denny’s family farm, and their older son owns ⅓ of Carla’s family farm. About 20 minutes into our chat, Denny looked back at his watch. “I wish I could take you down to the Community Center; we have a history of the town down there, but we have to head to Ames, but have you spoken with Gary Nelson yet? Dave’s brother? If you can go up to Gary’s house, he can take you to the community center. He should have a key. Do you want me to give him a call for you?”
Gary was a little hesitant to let me in. After standing in his laundry room for a minute, I looked around the room trying to think of something to say, when I saw a coin worn so smooth that it looked like a polished slug of metal. “1972 Ike dollar. Got it the day I was married and I’ve carried it with me ever since.” He fetched a folding chair, and Gary sat down. “I have a hard time standing; I fell off the top of a grain car - about 20 something feet off the ground. I didn’t walk for six months. I fought it for two or three years, and then a doctor said, well that’s it, we ain’t going to do any more; you are going on long-term disability.” And then a year ago I came down with bone cancer.” “Multiple myeloma.”? I asked. “Yep.” Gary replied. “That’s it.” I let the moment linger, before describing in broad strokes my father’s three-year journey from wellness to death’s door due to bone cancer and back to nearly a full recovery three years later. Gary’s face lit up. “Well, that’s encouraging news…. The doctor doesn’t want to see me for six months. I feel good, but I worry with every ache and pain that the cancer is coming back.” We shared a few more pleasantries, I returned to the reason for the visit. “I hear you have the key to the community center.”
We drove down the center of town and turned one block down to a low brick building. We stepped carefully over the two-foot drifts that had been hurled by the wind against the door. The hall was bare. It had an elevated stage at one end and a small kitchen. The walls had a dozen framed exhibits: old plat maps of Garden City, yellowing newspaper articles, black and white class pictures, and faded color photos of parades. “In 1971 we started our Fourth of July celebration. We just went to Sioux Fall South Dakota and bought fireworks. We went from having 300-400 people to having several thousand. We beat out Ames and big places like that because we had the biggest firework show in the area.”
“Gary, Denny told me to ask you about the bank robbery.” I prodded. “I was involved with that, I’ll show you a picture of that if I can find it.” Denny walked to the corner where a frame contained multiple newspaper articles. “Here’s the bank robbery I was involved in on June 1975. I was working at the Co-op loading grain, when I heard someone yell - ‘hey look out, he’s got a gun.’ So we go find out about this, kinda dumb-like“ Gary laughed. “So we went over and there was a guy standing there dressed in a nurse’s uniform holding a gun. That was kinda suspicious to begin with.” Gary jumped in a company truck and went off as a one-man posse. “So I chased them out of town, and I’d drive right up on ‘em and one guy would crawl to the back of the station wagon and point his gun at me, so I’d slow down, and he’d crawl back to the front seat, so I’d chase back up to them and finally someone else would catch up with them. They caught them. One guy was crying by the time it was all over with. I think that was the third bank robbery we’ve had in this town. These things happen in a small community.” As we departed, we thanked Gary for his hospitality. He smiled and said, “thanks for telling me about your father. I really appreciate that.” While many of these visits consist of me gathering stories and collecting images, on occasions, it is a two-way, mutually beneficial encounter.
Concord Township, Woodbury County Day 3 Continued - Lost Fellowship Many of these small Concords have no presence on the internet. They have the briefest of mentions on Wikipedia. I can find them on Google maps if I know where I’m looking, but beyond that, I am often left struggling. I did find mention of Concord Township in the History of Woodbury and Plymouth Iowa, published in 1890. The township was created in 1873 and was originally named “Joy Township,” but the citizens petitioned to change the name to Concord the following year. Even in its heyday, the township had “no post office, no church, no store, no tavern, no mill, and no railroad.” “Only the fields of waving corn diversify the surface. The wonderful depth of the soil is marvelous and its richness beyond the concept of the ordinary eastern farmer. The soil reaches a depth of over 100 feet before bedrock is reached…. The chief advantage of this soil, however, lies not in its exceptional fertility, but its capacity to resist both drought and rainfall.” Its soil is naturally underdrained and can absorb any amount of rainfall.” That was a promising start, but after 1890, nothing has been written about Concord Township. I ended up scanning Google Maps “Street View” for any sign of businesses. In Concord Township in Woodbury Co., is nestled up against Sioux Falls Iowa, but there were no towns in the township. In a search for any kind of contact, I did uncover two promising leads. The first was a radio station, KTFC, but unfortunately, it turns out the radio station was now just a transmitter for prepackaged national Christian Radio shows. Then I found the one business in Concord Township - The Buchanan Avenue Baptist Church. They had no website, but I found a Facebook page and a phone number to call. I never like talking on the phone, but with no other options, I gave them a call. The recorded message on the answering machine led me to another number and a guy I’ll call "George." I gave George a call and gave him my spiel. “We are in Sioux City. I never heard of Concord.” George replied I explained that the church was the only business in Concord Township, except the radio transmitter. “Who do you know here?” George questioned. Like many others before him, he questioned what I was doing and so I explained again that I was interested in attending the Sunday service, and since I was arriving late in the day, I wanted to confirm that there was an evening mass as scheduled on the FaceBook page.. “We are a very closed community. We don’t take to strangers,” George responded. Thinking that his objection was based on being a closed Baptist community, I gave him a rather rosy picture of my Christian upbringing and said “I’m not a Baptist, but I’ve been attending Baptist services across the country over the past years and talking to people and taking a few pictures.“ “You can’t take pictures here.” So I gave him the full charm offensive. I explained that I was gathering stories in different Concords in America. "I'm sorry, but I don't think people will want to talk to you. I told him I’d just meet with some people after the service and talk with them. “I don’t feel comfortable with that. I don’t think you should come.”
I had never been flat out rejected before. Sure there were times when someone was busy and didn’t want to talk, but this was the first time I had been prohibited from meeting Concordians. Then it dawned on me. It had been less than a month since a shooting in a church in Texas. There have been about 20 church shootings since 2000. George was protecting his own from the intrusion of a stranger. So I thanked him for his time. As I was about to hang up, George responded by saying that there was a local radio show in Sioux City that might be able to help me. “They like stories like this.” Well, I had to knock this one off the list, so after a heartwarming visit to Garden City, Concord Township in Harden County, Lizzy and I drove three hours west and arrived in Concord Township Woodward Co. just before sunset. We drove around. We stopped to take a few pictures, but this was a perfunctory visit, so I could knock this Concord off my list. I figured I didn’t need to go anywhere I wasn’t welcome. This project is about making folks feel listened to and respected, and not about making them feel nervous. I might give Concord township, Woodward County Iowa a second chance this summer if I can find the phone number of that radio station.
DAY FOUR - Concord Township, Louisa County
It’s 325 miles from Sioux Falls on the western edge of Iowa to Louisa Co. in the southeastern corner of the state. That’s a little further than Boston to Philadelphia. Lizzy and I split the driving. While the temperatures were hovering in the single digits, the driving conditions had much improved, so we made the trip in about five hours.
Is there a term for a doppelganger who doesn’t look like you? Through a series of emails, I had made contact with a local historian and retired teacher, Verl Lekwa. I Googled “Verl Lekwa” as Liz drove through central Iowa. It turns out he is the only Verl Lekwa in America. He was a baseball player and diehard fan, teacher, local historian, a Lincoln impersonator, actor, and he too had a strange geographical quest. Verl has visited every town in Iowa, over 1300 places and had rated each on a scale of 1-10. He is also 6’4” tall. So we had a lot to talk about throughout the afternoon. We met in his hometown of Columbus City and crossed Iowa River over to Concord Township.
Can towns have doppelgangers? As the Sudbury and Assabet rivers flow together at Egg Rock to form the Concord River in my hometown, The Cedar and Iowa rivers flow together at the little town of Fredonia in Concord Township, about 10 miles before the Iowa flows into the Mississippi. The junction of rivers were important meeting places for Native Americans, and in both Concords, native people moved with the patterns of the season and gathered to fish and to hold ceremonies.
This section of the Midwest was fairly late to be settled. Before pioneers could purchase land, surveyors needed to map out the area, and before the surveyors could work, the native peoples had to be removed.
Even before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, disease had cleared off most of the native people of Concord, MA. Concord MA was an outpost for colonists during King Philip’s War (1674-1678). 200 years later, the area around that was later named Louisa County was occupied by the Saux and Fox tribes. These Native Americans had been relocated west of the Mississippi River after The Black Hawk War. Eventually, they were relocated again in the 1870s to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. A wave of "pioneer settlers" moved in and established the town of Fredonia.
One difference between the towns is in the pronunciation; it's Con'-erd MA home of Louisa "Loo-ee -sah" May Alcott, but alas, in Iowa is pronounced "Con-Cord' " Township in “Loo-EYE-sah." County.
The Convict Road Fredonia in Concord Township would serve a key role in facilitating westward expansion throughout Southern Iowa. Fredonia was the northern-most spot where a single river could be crossed so a bridge spanned the Iowa and a network of dirt roads converged on either side of the bridge.
Fredonia had a problem. Their soil was so sandy that traditional road-building techniques failed. Roads washed away or became a quagmire. Teams of horses could navigate through, but after the turn of the century with the advent of the bicycle and the automobile, something had to be done about the deeply rutted road from the bridge, through town, and west of Fredonia. In 1914, the local taxpayers raised money for a paved road - one of the first paved roads in rural Iowa. Convict labor from The Anamosa Reformatory, 60 miles north, was contracted. Prison labor was not supposed to be used outside the prison grounds, but no one seemed to mind. The men enjoyed being out of the prison walls, and they were paid 40 cents an hour - a sum so attractive that many local men joined the work crew. Prisoners were camped near the worksite, but they came into town six at a time to buy food and supplies. The road itself was made by mixing Portland cement with local stone and pouring the slurry into segments - 30’ long by16’ wide and 6 to 8” thick. They were separated by expansion joints. The 1-½ mile road was completed in six short weeks at the then astronomical cost of $60,000. Upon completion, Fredonia was proud of its road, but some folks thought it would “probably be the last piece of concrete in Louisa County because of cost.” (Sands of Time, 2018, compiled by Tom Woodruff)
The road greatly aided the flow of goods into southern Iowa, but there was one unintended consequence of building the finest road in the county. The concrete road had its first fatality in 1915. People would test and race their new cars and motorcycles on this, the best stretch of paved road in the county. It became such a problem that in 1922, Fredonia had to incorporate as a town in order to hire a police officer to control the speeders on The Convict Road.
Over 100 years after completion the original concrete paved road is still in fine working order.
The Six Littleton Brothers Memorial Verl gave us the grand tour of Louisa County. Most memorable was the stop at the Littleton Brothers Memorial. All six brothers enlisted soon after The Civil War broke out. In December 1862 John (32) and Kendall (20) were mortally wounded at The Battle of Praire Grove Arkansas. Noah (17) the youngest survived, but drowned in a ferry boat accident. George (35), the eldest, was captured at Harpers Ferry, paroled due to illness, but died soon after. William (26) fought at Shiloh, Jackson, and Vicksburg, but succumbed to disease in December of 1863. Thomas (28) survived numerous battles but did not survive the horrors of Andersonville Prison in Georgia. He was the last to die in June of 1864. Perhaps the only blessing was that their parents had died before the war, but the four remaining sisters must have been crushed by wave after wave of tragedy. Their story was largely lost, until through the efforts of local historians, a memorial was built that honors the greatest loss of life to any American family in any American War. I couldn’t help but think of my favorite memorial in Concord MA, The Melvin Memorial, dedicated in honor of three sons of Concord who died in the Civil War. The last also dying in Andersonville.
A final thank you present to Verl for a wonderful day in Louisa County Iowa
Day Five - the bonus Concord Whenever I can, I try to book an Airbnb room instead of a national hotel chain. They are generally cheaper, but more importantly, an Airbnb allows me to connect with a local person who by their very profession enjoys chatting with strangers and is often an expert about local history. For our visit to Concord Township in Louisa County, I didn’t have much of a choice. The Buckman’s Guesthouse in Morning Sun was about 15 miles from Concord Township; it came recommended from a couple of sources and on-line it looked perfect, but it was also the only B&B in a 20-mile radius. When I booked my stay, Paula asked what brought us to Iowa, so I explained our Concord project and left it at that. Two weeks later, after Verl gave us the tour of Concord Township, we drove the 15 miles out to Morning Sun. After Paula showed us our handsome room, she asked, “Did you find the Concord Cemetery?” “No” I replied. We had a full tour of the Convict Road and other sites in Concord township, but we hadn’t made it out to the cemetery. “We didn’t think you’d be able to find it.” These pioneer graveyards are maintained by the county, but Concord Cemetery is hard to find. I can take you - it’s only about 3 miles away.” Something didn’t make sense. The nearest edge of Concord Township was over 10 miles away. I had a picture of the Concord Cemetery, but it was right next to a main road - not hidden at all. All through our excellent dinner in yet another Mexican restaurant (the first time I had seen a "Corona Margarita" hey I am learning new things every day! Coronitas were made for margaritas), this puzzle danced in my head. When we returned to our room Liz collapsed in bed, and I again googled the history of Louisa County, Iowa.
The evidence was scant and hard to find, but History of Louisa County, Iowa, from Its Earliest Settlement, published in 1912. Was the following paragraph: In the sixties, (1860’s) an organization was formed at what was known as Concord, about two and a half miles northwest of Morning Sun. Here a union house was built, owned jointly by the Methodists, Church of God and the Christians. For many years the work was fairly prosperous, but the shifting of country population and the building up of churches in the towns left the work to languish and die. For a number of years the old Concord stone church stood practically unused. The "Concord Qualification Committee" adds another to the list. Paula drove us in her four-wheel-drive SUV and turned off the plowed road. About halfway down the last of the car tracks turned to the left, and we crunched through the ice-crusted snow to a dead end. Of the 85 Concords of America, there were a few others like this one: no town, no church, just a graveyard. It was a pretty little graveyard on an uneven rise above a creek. Old trees stood sentinel. The stories of this Concord will most likely remain buried. But there once had been a town with a school here. The oldest grave was 1863, and the most recent burial was 1926.
It turned out that my brief description of my project over the phone while booking our stay had sent Paula and Bob scrambling. They had spoken to a wide selection of old-timers in town, but no one knew anything about a town connected to the Concord Cemetery. Paula and Bob had even scouted out the area before the storm had hit. “I’m not sure where the church was, someone thought it might have been down by the river, but we couldn’t find any sign of it” said Bob. I asked him how long he’d been such an avid local historian. “Well, your Concord project started it. It’s real neat. I need a project like yours.” This was a perfect capstone to our adventure. We had planned to visit five Concords in five days in Iowa. The storm had prevented a return visit to Concord Township in Dubuque County, but we had been satisfied with visiting the other four Concords, but suddenly due to the efforts of our hosts Paula and Bob, we had discovered a new Concord, and symmetry was restored to our "Five Concords in Five Days" Iowa trip.