Algona High School - Bulldog Yearbook (Algona, IA)

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--Qu - The Senior Magazine - '41 ,pf-A Ilomc 014' 'rim l 1l:s'1' Suuool. IN A1.1:0N.x B1:x'.xN'1' Ilmu Suuool, 192911------'f-' Page Eight

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- The Senior Magazine - leave only after he had obtained some bullets by a trade. After this visitor had left, Mr. Call with several others visited the Barney Holland place. There was some trouble going on there for the Indians had turned their ponies into the Holland fields and had taken a grindstone to the middle of the village and set Holland to turning it in order that they might sharpen their knives and tomahawks. The villagers decided that if they wished to keep the situation under their control 11ow was the time to take a hand in the alfair. The settlers immediately demanded that tl1e ponies be turned out of the corn and that Holland stop turning the grindstone. The Indians were stubborn but just as an open break seemed inevitable, they yielded. The next day the Indians visited every cabin in the settlement. The defenseless cabins they plundered, and at the others they merely begged for food. The evening of the second day Mr. Maxwell came to the Call cabin stating that the Indians had just left his cabin and that he was alarmed because they seemed very sullen and saucy. They had taken what they wanted since he was unable to resist them on account of the woman and children. Mr. Call, knowing that Mr. Maxwell had recently received a large load of supplies which would further tempt the Indians, promised to go over the next morning as the Indians conducted all the raids in daylight. Although he rose early the next morning and left for the Maxwell cabin, Mr. Call found eleven husky young Indians armed to the teeth swarming into the house. By the time he arrived, the house had been literally turned inside out. Soon one of the braves began to drag out a two-bushel bag of flour and to take it to the door. The men thought things had gone far enough so Mr. Call jumped forward, caught hold of the sack and ordered the Indian to stop, but he was defiant and jerked the sack out of Mr. Call's hands. Mr. Call seized the bag again with his left hand and with his right caught the young Indian under tl1e chin. The Indian fell over backwards, striking his head o11 the door as he fell. Mr. Maxwell a11d Mr. Call set the sack up against the wall and took their stand beside it, revolvers ill hand. For a moment the cabin was silent and then the spokesman for the invaders came forward and asked Mr. Call to feel the edge of his tomahawk. Mr. Call took the tomahawk and stuck it back in the Indian's belt. In a loud voice the Indian then said that they would nepo squaw and papooses Qkill woman and childrenj. Call replied that if they did they would nepo every Indian in the cabin. The Indians scoied at the idea of two white men killing many Sioux, but at the same time they backed away. Maxwell became alarmed for the safety of his wife and children and began at once to plan some way to get them out of the cabin. Giving the Indians something to eat he distracted their attention enough to allow Mrs. Maxwell and the children to escape. She ran to the Brown cabin about a mile away and several men immediately started for the harassed cabin when notified as to conditions by Mrs. Maxwell. When the Indians saw reinforcements coming, they got their guns and backed away, but they were made to take 0E their blankets and retur11 stolen articles. Thus another great crisis in the lives of the pioneers was passed. There were numerous other encounters with the Indians and the bravery of the settlers was maintained in every case. The new community passed through a severe term of probation when even the weather itself seemed to unite with other forces to test the tenacity, courage and virtue of the settlers. Eighteen hundred fifty-six is remembered as the notably wet year. Continued rains made the highlands as well as the lowlands impassable. It began to rain early in tl1e spring and kept up until late fall. The river overflowed in April and covered the valley between the two bluffs. The crops that year were poor and very scanty over the entire state. As this came at a time of financial depression, it was doubly felt by the settlers. Another discouraging feature about this territory was the prairie fires. These usually occurred in the fall when the frosts had deadened the prairie grass. Hundreds of acres of grass were often swept away i11 o11e fire. ' During the last years of the '60's, the great annual fires lost their power. The redtop and blue grass which began growing around the farms kept green after the frost came and therefore checked the fires. The great economic struggle did not occupy the minds and lives of the pioneer to the exclusion of all else. They were both a congenial and an intellectual group. The first social center was also a religious center, although there was no preacher available. Elder Marks, described as an eccentric, religious enthusiast, used to preach around at the dilferent cabins. He was addicted to the use of big words, but he was uneducated and sadly confused their meaning, much to the amusement of his audience. Ambrose Call records him as saying, My dear hearers when you are wriggling over the mouth of hell you will remember what old Marks told yon. Why just a few days ago I read of the body of a woman whom her friends undertook to move several years after her death, but they couldn't do it. It had become ver battum, it had petrified, in plain English, my dear hearers, it had turned to stone and weighed 600 ounds. P Algona's first church, the Congregational church, was founded in 1856 by Father Taylor, who served as its pa tor for 16 years. He was aifectionately called Father Taylor by the whole community which, regardle s of creed or denomination, admired and respected the sterling qualities of the man. -all 1929 ll.- Paae Seven

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- The Senior Magazine -------+P Algona's Schools OME rambling recollections on education in Algona from its beginning down to the present time. By FLORENCE CALL Cowmzs Education has always been emphasized in Algona as in all places in the west settled by descendants of Puritan stock. Had conditions and circumstances been but slightly diEerent, Algona might have fulfilled the dreams of a group of its early settlers and today be the seat of a 70-year-old Congregational College. Or, had the vision of another group materialized, thc campus of a flourishing Methodist school would be spreading across the oak-covered hills overlooking the river south of town. And later, there were those in Algona who held fond hopes of a State Teachers College crowning the hills to the north. Each of these dreams and visions dominated the minds and hearts of various of Algona's pioneers and the beginning of each scheme was realized for a longer or shorter time. However, an unkind fate ruled Algona. These worthy pioneers, except in the' matter of warding off Indians and of conquering the wilderness, did not always possess the art of visioning together. So many splendid generals and so few fighting privatcs made up the community. As it is, Algeria must be content with having what she does possess-one of the best public schools in the State of Iowa. This being Jubilee year, when we are all looking backward for a moment to see how far we have come, let us peer back far enough to catch a glimpse of our very tirst school of any kind. Mary Schenck Winter, daughter of Horace Schenck Qwho came to Kossuth County in 18565 and sister of Myron Sehenek of Union Township, wrote a few years ago: I went to school in the first schoolhouse in the county, which will be remembered by a few as 'Gopher College.' It was a place dug out in the side of a bluff on the west side of thc road on the north side of the creek CBlack Catj between the Thompson and Riebhof places. Four teachers taught there at different times. The 'College' burned down after two years and school was held in part of Mr. Riebhoff's house until another schoolhouse was built. Just how much of this seat of learning was made of wood and was infiannnable, and how much of clay, Mrs. Winter does not tell us. In 1856 the little group of settlers in Algona began the erection of a frame building on State Street called the Town Hall. For over ten years this building was used for church and Sunday school, for singing-schools, dances, public school, caucuses and meetings of any and all sorts. This is the building around which the stockadc was built at the time of the Spirit Lake massacre when all the settlers of Northwest Iowa were thrown into such a panic by the Indian scare. In this unplastered little building, Flavia Fleming taught the first school in Algona in the summer of 1857. I have heard my mother, Mrs. Ambrose A. Call, who was one of the pupils, describe this little school and the one also taught in the Town Hall by Mr. J. E. Stney. Before the Hall was abandoned as a schoolhouse, I, too, began my education in the same historic building, Miss Lucy Leonard of New England being the teacher. My most vivid recollection of Miss Leonard 's school is of being in a geography class of two six-year-olds-Minnie Ingham Know Mrs. C. M. Doxsee of Californiaj and I standing up in front of Teacher, our copper-toed shoes in line on a crack in the floor, reciting from our little, square, thin book, in high, piping voices, Perhaps where your house now stands the Indians have chased the wild buifalo. Alla no doubt they had! That winter the new schoolhouse was built. It was located where Central School now stands. It boasted of three rooms-Primary and Intermediate on the first floor, and a large room above which was simply called Up-stairs. The building was crowned with a cupola and a bell which was rung, calmly though insistently at school time, and rapidly and excitedly in case of a fire. I remember yet its astonishing clangor early one March morning when our own house burned to the ground. Miss Leonard and Miss Lizzie Reed taunt of Miss Lucia Wallacej were the first teachers. The schools were not graded at that time but the pupils were assorted for various reasons W Page N me - 1929 lt- e