If Michael Morain were everyone’s high school history teacher, a lot more people would love history. Morain, communications manager of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, which includes the State Historical Society of Iowa, helped the Greene County Historical Society mark the 175th anniversary of Iowa’s statehood Tuesday, Dec. 28. Local historical society member Chuck Offenburger called Morain a “masterful storyteller” and “a fun, fun guy” during his introduction. Morain did not disappoint.
Morain began his presentation noting that President James Polk, who on Dec. 28, 1846, signed the legislation making Iowa the nation’s 29th state, wrote in his diary that day, “nothing of much interest occurred today.”
Morain gave a quick run down of things Polk likely didn’t imagine about Iowans: that they would lead the charge for women’s suffrage; introduce Amelia Earhart to flying; develop hybrid crops that have save at least 1 billion lives; “dreamed up Nancy Drew”; sung in opera houses around the world (Simon Estes); sometimes successfully select the president; and invented the tractor, a machine to slice bread, Rice Krispies, and Eskimo Pies.
Earlier in his career Morain wrote for The Des Moines Register, and he used his time with the 40 or so who attended the program to describe seven stories or events in Iowa’s history that he wishes he had covered for the Register.
The first was the story of Maria Pearson, or Running Moccasins, a member of the Yankton Sioux tribe and the wife of John Pearson, an engineer for the Iowa Department of Transportation. In 1971 John told his wife that the remains of 28 persons had been discovered while doing road construction at Glenwood. Of the 28, 26 belonged to early American pioneers and were reburied. The remains of a Native American woman and her baby were sent to the state archeologist’s office in Iowa City.
Pearson protested to Gov Robert Ray, and persisted until eventually, in 1976, the Iowa legislature passed a law to protect Native American gravesites and established four Native American cemeteries around the state. The legislation was the first of its kind in the county and became a model for federal legislation. Pearson was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on Native American rights.
He told of the work of Richard Thomas of Des Moines, who was working at the Pentagon when a typhoon destroyed much of Yamanashi prefecture (state) in Japan in 1959. Thomas arranged to airlift 36 hogs and 100,000 bushels of corn from Iowa to Japan. It took 40 hours to get the hogs to Japan, as the trip required island hopping and unloading the hogs to hose them down periodically. One hog overheated and died en route.
Hogs were new to Japan, and Iowans taught them how to raise hogs. Nine years later, when the last of the original 35 hogs died, their offspring numbered more than 500,000 hogs.
That led to the establishment of a Sister State partnership with Yamanashi Prefecture that still exists.
Also in 1959, Nikita Khrushev visited the farm of Roswell and Elizabeth Garst in Coon Rapids. Morain said the event was very well covered by the news media, but he wished he could have been there when “the leader of the Evil Empire comes to Iowa and visits a farm, the neighbors down the road. I can’t imagine what that was like.”
Morain told the story of the Cherry Sisters of Cedar Rapids, and said if he could only choose one story to cover, it would be that of the Cherry Sisters. In 1896, Oscar Hammerstein was losing money and needed a hit on Broadway. “He had tried his best to find good shows, so he tried something else. He invited the Cherry Sisters of Cedar Rapids. They could not sing. They could not dance. They could not tell jokes. They were awful,” Morain said.
The trick worked for Hammerstein, as New Yorkers paid to see if the entertainment was really as bad as the reviews claimed. The names of Effie, Addie, Jessie, Lizzy and Ellie Cherry “live in infamy in Iowa history,” Morain said.
Hammerstein took the show on tour and ended up in Iowa for a “victory lap.” Iowa reviewers were also harsh. The Cherry Sisters sued reviewers; the suit was thrown out, but the Cherry Sisters appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court. That court also ruled against them what turned out to be a “landmark victory for freedom of the press,” Morain said. “The gist of the ruling was that there’s no such thing as a false opinion… The Cherry Sisters became accidental champions of press freedom.”
On Aug. 7, 1869, a solar eclipse put Iowa in the “sweet spot” for best viewing. People came to Iowa from Montreal and London to see the eclipse. It was the first solar eclipse to be photographed.
Morain named the May 10, 1869 ceremony connecting the Transcontinental Railroad in Promontory Point, UT. He highlighted the work of railroad surveyor Grenville Dodge of Council Bluffs. “Iowa has produces lots of geniuses, lot of really smart people. If he’s not at the top of the list he’s right up there with the Smarty Pants of all time,” Morain said.
Dodge was a railroad surveyor, and it was It was he who persuaded President Lincoln to route the railroad through Council Bluffs. More than a century before the terms “online” and “offline” were used with computer networks, they referred to being on or off a rail line. Being on a rail line was huge for a city.
Dodge went on to work on the Trans Siberian rail way.
Morain went back to 1838, before Iowa achieved statehood, for the final story he wishes he had covered as a journalist, the case of a Ralph, a slave from Missouri. Ralph’s owner allowed him to move to Iowa and to work to purchase his freedom for $550, with interest. Ralph worked in lead mines in Dubuque but was unable to earn enough money. Bounty hunters went looking for him.
Iowa farmer Alexander Butterworth saw the bounty hunters seize Ralph and petitioned a judge to prevent him from being taken back to Missouri. The judge filed the order and Ralph was brought back to the Iowa Territorial Supreme Court in Dubuque.
In the Matter of Ralph was the first decision rendered by the Supreme Court of Iowa; it was dated July 4, 1839. The ruling found that although Ralph should repay the money to his former owner, he was a free man. Since he had been allowed to relocate to Iowa, a territory without slavery, he was completely emancipated by law. The ruling also set the precedent that no individual could ever be held in servitude in the territory of Iowa.
In his conclusion, Morain said, “the value of Iowa history is learning about earlier Iowans who rose to the challenge of their own time. In most cases, these earlier Iowans didn’t set out to do extraordinary things, but they did the best they could with what they had…. We are living through a turning point in history. Usually we don’t recognize it… but over the last year-and-a-half or so, most of us realize that one way or another, this chapter of our time is going to land in history books. We’ve made mistakes, and we’re muddling through. There will be good stories and there will be bad stories from this time… Times have changed and we’ve changed with it.
“There are challenges today and what we can learn from history is examples of ordinary people, other Iowans like ourselves, who have risen to the challenge of their times…. We can do it if we stand up against injustice like Maria Pearson, if we share our abundance like Richard Thomas and the Garst family, if we act with courage like the Cherry Sisters, if we follow our curiosity like the people who watched the eclipse, if we persevere and rely on teamwork like Grenville Dodge, if we help our neighbors like Alexander Butterworth.”
