This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
When Bailey Davenport won the race for mayor of Rock Island in 1861, he already had several unofficial titles. Some Rock Islanders called him the "Baron of Rock Island." To others, he was the "hermit prince." To everyone, he was a puzzle.
Bailey was the son of Colonel George Davenport, the first white settler on Rock Island, and one of the founders of both Rock Island, and the city across the Mississippi, Davenport. From his father, Bailey had inherited much of Rock Island, about 2,500 acres—most of the Rock Island bluff and the prairie up above. Here he lived in princely splendor in a forty-room castle surrounded by a lawn—a Garden of Eden, people called it—that extended from Seventh to Tenth Avenues and from fifteenth to seventeenth streets. Bailey's lawn was covered with roses, peonies, and other flowers.
From here, Bailey ruled his kingdom, refusing to let his land be developed. Meanwhile, he amassed a fortune. He organized a bank in Rock Island and another in Davenport. He founded the Rock Island and Milan Street Railway Company and developed an amusement park at Black Hawk's famous Watch Tower—which Bailey owned. He branched into stone quarries and coal mines.
In 1861, Bailey came down from his castle to run for mayor, running as a Democrat, on a platform of "economy, progress, and friendship for the poor man." He could, of course, see the poor at the edges of his lawn from his front porch. They would have been hard to miss: Bailey's porch ran for an entire block.
As it turned out, Bailey was a good mayor for Rock Island, and carried out most of his campaign promises, serving for five years during the Civil War, and again in 1873 to ‘75. He put Rock Island's economy on a steady course and was instrumental in founding the Rock Island Public Library—the first such library in Illinois.
Bailey died on January 10th, 1890. Within five years, the baron's front lawn was home, not to roses and peonies, but to one hundred and one modest working-class houses—the last campaign promise to befriend the poor carried out without his permission.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
