This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
If you are old enough, you may remember the good old days when the 4th of July was still called "The Glorious Fourth"—those days when it was still possible to set off rockets and cherry bombs and make some real noise. Sparklers and cones that give off six seconds of green smoke are hardly glorious.
Come back with me for a minute or two to and old-fashioned Fourth, one of Rock Island's most patriotic. To 1872. A home guard group, the Rock Island Light Artillery Company, owned six real cannons, whose big noise capability was much in demand as the 4th of July approached that summer of '72. Twenty members of the group took two cannons to Davenport. Several other members took cannons to Galva and Cleveland in Henry County, and still others went to Stuart, Iowa, and Racine, Wisconsin.
Glorious Fourths always started early. Just before six a.m., company member William Gahagen was busy ramming a cartridge down one of the Davenport cannons when it fired prematurely. A doctor was called, who amputated Mr. Gahagen's shattered arm and, said the news reporter, "made him as comfortable as possible."
A moment later, the second Davenport cannon discharged in the same way, severely burning John H. Anderson and taking out one of his eyes. The second eye was problematic.
The news from Galva was not much better. Wallie Wright had to be sent home from his post there on the 11:30 train, his right arm shattered. By noon, John Beck had been burned badly by the gun the Rock Islanders had brought to Cleveland.
The Rock Island Argus was happy to be able to report that the Racine contingent had come through without a single casualty, while the group at Stuart, Iowa, had not been heard from at all—a sign of good news there, too.
History does not record what happened to the Rock Island Light Infantry Company. Perhaps as it grew lighter and lighter, an arm here and an eye there, the members found it more and more difficult to load and fire their cannons, until they were forced to disband.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
