The 70 or so people who attended the Greene County Historical Society’s cemetery walk at the Jefferson municipal cemetery last Sunday heard a lot of Greene County history, told in first person – “I” – by the people who lived it.
Standing near the graves of prominent people in the early days of Jefferson were volunteers telling their life stories. Rob and Emily Hoyt portrayed Azor and Miranda Mills, Darren Jackson and Nicole Friess Schilling portrayed Mr and Mrs David (Addie) Milligan, Dick Bardole portrayed Robert M. Rippey, and Alan Robinson portrayed Captain Albert Head.
Their stories went beyond a recitation of genealogy and events, thanks to meticulous research and skilled writing of volunteer Mikki Schwarzkopf of Jefferson. She wrote the scripts that were the starting point for the storytellers. Schwarzkopf wouldn’t/couldn’t say how many hours she spent doing research, but she said the writing was fairly easy.
Schwarzkopf found challenges in the project, particularly in researching the women who were suggested to her by the Historical Society. She found that some of the women who played important roles had left the community after their husbands died and were buried not in Jefferson, but where their adult children lived. There were also women’s obituaries that never listed their first name, but referred to her as “Mrs. _____.” Addie Milligan was almost always referred to as “Mrs David Milligan.”
She used E.B. Stillman’s Past and Present of Greene County, Iowa, published in 1907, as a source, and filled in details of the military experiences of Capt Head, Mills and Rippey using online resources as well as their obituaries. In first person, via Schwarzkopf’s scripts, they tell their stories about the War Between the States, about rebels and injuries. Head tells of marching to Savannah and seizing food, clothes and weapons along the way. Mills tells of being shot in the arm and being afraid and lying helpless on the ground. Rippey tells of his last days in the war. “We fought in Kentucky and Tennessee before heading to Corinth, Mississippi. That was a hard-fought battle and went on a long time. I don’t know if the Union or the Confederates came out ahead in that one, because I died on that battlefield, far from home.”
The Historical Society had requested the story of the Friday Club’s controversial 1896 fountain. Schwarzkopf scripted Mrs David Milligan to tell the story, as she was a member of the Friday Club. The Friday Club kept meticulous records from the time it was formed in 1888, and the Jefferson Herald printed a detailed article about the club on an anniversary year. The official records didn’t tell of the beautiful fountain that ultimately ended up stored in a barn and was never installed for public display. Schwarzkopf found that story in a separate document marked as “the unpublished version” written by a Friday Club member and saved in the vertical file at the Jefferson public library.
Scharzkopf was true to the information she unearthed, and used her own craft as a storyteller to keep the information from being only dry facts. She was pleased with how the volunteers presented the information. “Bringing history to life is a lot of fun,” she said.
Her next research project – Jefferson and Greene County during World War Two.
