Rock Island Lines

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Henry C. Kahl was born poor in a cottage in northwest Davenport, Iowa. He was never a Boy Scout, he was not in school long enough for the deportment side of the report card to instill in him the Protestant work ethic, and there's no indication that he ever read Ben Franklin. It's almost as if Henry knew instinctively that the American dream of "rags to riches" required something more than dreaming.

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"Chippiannock" is a Sauk Indian word meaning "city of the dead," a fit name for the city of Rock Island's first cemetery, ninety-five acres lying on a plateau not far from Saukenuk, where the war chief Black Hawk grew up. The place was originally called Manitou Ridge because of the Indians' belief that here the Great Spirit spread his wings among the hills to keep floods away.

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When Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1826 to study its new citizens, he was amazed at their restlessness—moving an average of once every five years—an average that still holds true today.

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In the Western Cemetery in Orion, Illinois, just south of here, there is a tombstone with the names of Jessie Colton and Bert Richardson.

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The Mississippi is one of those rivers that takes on all comers. Children are easy marks. Just standing them along the shore with a stick to wrinkle the water is all it takes. Fishermen are easy, too. All fishing poles have hooks at both ends, and who pulls in whom is an open question.

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My wife, Margaret, made me promise never ever to use her in these Lines. Of course, I took that to mean she was hoping I would. She's hard to figure out.

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It is hard in our cynical age to imagine the kind of patriotism which made George W. Kinkaid of rural Muscatine, Iowa, leave his wife and plow and march off to the Civil War in 1862.

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Here's a short course on the history of work in America. In about 1884, John F. Boepple immigrated from Germany to Muscatine, Iowa. One day he stopped along the Mississippi to watch a dredge boat in operation. The clam shells in the dredged material excited him. He had been a button maker in Germany, and these Mississippi shells were perfect for pearl buttons.

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In August of 1863, Union troops arrived on Rock Island to build a prison camp for Confederate prisoners. Beginning with 468 prisoners captured in the Battle of Lookout Mountain, who arrived in December of 1863, the Rock Island Barracks eventually housed more than twelve thousand Confederates. In Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell called it "the Andersonville of the North."

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Muscatine, Iowa, a few miles down the Mississippi from here, must have made an impact on George Grey Barnard. Barnard lived there briefly as a teenager from 1877 to 1885 before going on to become an internationally acclaimed sculptor. Late in life, with his work in many museums, Barnard claimed that his inspiration came from Muscatine.