Corn Silk Days: Iowa, 1862

by Linda Pendleton

  Today was a very nice day. It is what we call spring weather in Iowa. The trees are beginning to pop forth with new leaves and wild flowers are blooming.

  Next time I write I will send my likeness. They cost me a dollar a piece. I will send one to mother. You will see me with my whiskers off and with my fat. I am so fat now that my belly nearly drags the ground. My belly sticks out so far, far, that I can not see my feet. I am fatter now than I ever have been in my life but there is nothing wrong with that. If I could be so while in the army I would be very thankful.

  Well, my darling I would like to see you once more and kiss those sweet lips that I used to kiss and enjoy the pleasure that we once enjoyed together. Those pleasures seem sweet to me and it gives me a great deal of pleasure to think of the past. I long to see the day that we need not to talk to each other with pen but that we can converse face to face—but that will not be until the time these Southern Rebels are subdued. Janie, it is late and I have to go on guard tomorrow. While there, I will think of the loved ones at home. Your loving husband,

  Silas

  Thursday, the 12th day of March 1863

  My dear wife,

  I did not have the opportunity to post my previous letter to you. We left Iron Mountain on the 9th and landed here at Camp High, Ste. Genevieve, Missouri yesterday, the 11th. We have traveled over Missouri a great deal but we have never come across such roads as we did on this last march. The road was plank and gravel and lay through the richest of Missouri that I have seen.

  I have seen very good farms for a timbered county. It is settled principally by the Dutch and French and you have an idea of the kind of farmers they are. It has been good soil to make money. Everything they raise can be sold for cash and at a good price.

  We lay at the river awaiting orders. I cannot say how long we will remain here but probably not long. The reports are that we are to reinforce General Rosecrans in Tennessee. Without a doubt we will go down the river soon and it will be hard to tell what our destiny will be. This brigade is said to be the strongest one in the field. We have the Iowa 23rd, 21st and 22nd and the First Missouri Battery and they are wholesome boys.

  If our Colonel comes out clear we will have a man that we can depend on to lead us. Now I suppose you would like to know what is the matter with him. While at Alton, Missouri, two companies of our regiment were sent back to Van Buren and General Davidson ordered him to go with them. It is the rule for the Colonel to stay with the majority of the regiment so he ordered the Lieutenant Colonel to go with them contrary to the General’s orders. He was arrested for disobeying orders and is now in St. Louis to be tried. I live in hopes that he will come out of it all right. The reason I did not write such news before was that while down in Missouri our letters were opened by the head commanders of our division so I would not write much of anything. We had pretty hard times there but I will not write anything concerning it and when I come home I will tell you all about it.

  Soldiers now have thirty days furlough. Five out of a hundred can go home at once. I do not know whether I will go home or not. I would like to see you all but it costs money and staying such a short time I would then hate to leave and return to battle.

  You said Pap wanted me to write concerning Negroism. I will write what I know about it soon. So no more at this present time.

  I remain your affectionate, loving husband,

  Silas

  Chapter Four: Alexander

  The shimmer of light bouncing off the knife blade into his eyes caused Denny to shift his feet and move slightly. He watched with continued fascination as the skin began to fall away from the meat in a spiral course until it fell free onto the wood plank.

  He asked, “How do you do that, Pap?” He leaned down and picked up the apple peel from the porch floor and examined it.

  Denny’s great-grandfather held the knife upright in his right hand. “You start with a good blade, Denny, like this one, and then you practice and practice. Toss me another apple,” he said. He sliced a piece of the peeled apple he held in his left hand and popped the slice into his mouth as Denny retrieved an apple from the basket that sat on a small table on the front porch.

  Denny handed him the apple and inquired, “How long you been practicing, Pap?”

  Alexander Johan Storm chuckled, accentuating wrinkles around his humorous steely gray eyes, as he took the apple from his great-grandson. “A long time, since I was about your age,” he replied.

  “How long’s that?”

  Alexander, in thoughtfulness, twisted the end of his gray moustache between his long bony fingers then replied, “Going on nearly seventy years, I’d say.”

  Denny’s eyes widened, “Gosh, will it take me that long to learn?”

  “Nah, by this time next planting season I think you’ll be pretty good at it.”

  “But I’ve never even tried it.”

  “Your Mama brought those apples up from the cellar and wants them peeled so she can make some sauce, so let’s get to it. You got the whole basket full to practice on.”

  “You mean it!” Denny exclaimed.

  “Bring a chair over next to mine and we’ll see how fast a learner you are,” he said. “If you’re good at them apples, I’ll teach you to whittle wood. Then when your Daddy comes home from the war you’ll have something to show um.”

  Alexander recalled the fall day that he sat on a downed tree at the edge of the woods in New Jersey and watched as his father had peeled an apple. Even after all these years, the memory was vivid in his mind. It had been their last harvest time in Hunterdon County. His father, Henry, sold his one hundred acre farm after harvest that year and the family set out for what his father called the “goodly land afar off.”

  Henry Storm had emigrated from Schifferestadt, Pfalz, Germany arriving in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, aboard the ship Mortonhouse which had sailed from Rotterdam. He took the oath of Allegiance in 1772 and settled in Hunterdon County, buying one hundred acres of rich farm land. He raised wheat and supplied Washington’s Colonial Army. Soon after the Revolutionary War broke wide open, Henry joined the Pennsylvania Army. When his wartime service ended, he married Anna Bray. Alexander was their fifth-born son.

  Henry petitioned for bounty land in the Ohio territory and received two hundred fifty acres for his war service and another two hundred acres for supplying the army with wheat.

  The year was 1802, and as Alexander would tell the story many times over the next years, even though he was young, he understood the motives which impelled his father to move on. So with his wife and six children, Henry Storm and family set out for Ross County, Ohio, accompanied for a distance the first day by a small group of neighbors who feared they might run into Indian attacks before reaching the Ohio River. The neighbors camped out with the family the first night before turning back the next morning, convinced that they would never see the Storms alive again. Once the Storms reached the river and boarded a barge, they were escorted by river scouts, which at least gave them a sense of security, albeit a false one.

  When they reached land after several days, they laid in needed supplies such as bread, corn, and oats for themselves and their horses and milch cows. Henry was an excellent hunter and rifled a few wild turkeys along the way. They also had the good fortune of falling in company with some teams freighting merchandise to market and on several occasions their wagon would become bogged down in the mud. Rocks in the roadway would be so large that in order to pass on, the wagon wheels would have to be lifted by brute strength and the teamsters would assist. The trip took many days, but able to withstand any hardship they encountered they safely reached their destination.

  With five strong and robust boys to help out, Henry fell trees, cleared the land, and built a house. By spring, planting began.

  At maturity, the Storm men were stout of physical stature—six feet in height and two hundred pounds and all possessed a determined spirit as did their mother, Anna, and their sister, Margaret. The Storm boys, as they were known
to many, had a reputation of being good men, but men that others did not want to cross. They had eagerly and earnestly earned the reputation they carried. Be honest and above board and there would be no trouble, be less than that, and they made life difficult.

  When Alexander was about twenty-five he had encountered a small group of White men in the roadway just outside of the town of Chillicothe who were savagely beating a Negro man. He dismounted his wagon with rifle in hand and took a brave stand against the group, demanding that they stop the beating.

  The reaction from the men was one of outrage and anger. As Alexander told it, the man who appeared to be the leader, a big, burley man of about forty, turned to him, shaking the stick he held, and shouted, “You get the hell outta here!”

  Alexander dug his boot heels into the ground and kept his stance with the rifle butt tight into his shoulder. “You stop now! Hear!” he demanded.

  One of the other men, a scrawny, balding man, closer to fifty years of age, sauntered toward him and said, “This ol’ nigger talked to my wife. He’s gonna pay.”

  Alexander stood his ground, “Not if I can help it!”

  “Who the hell you think you are? You get your goddamned nose out of our business!”

  “You made this my business,” Alexander said calmly, yet sternly.

  The remaining man with looks of a person who had fought his way through life, began to taunt him. “Hey John, we got a nigger lover here. He don’t wanna go coon huntin’!”

  The Negro, a heavy-bodied man, who appeared to have spent a lifetime of hard physical labor, lay in the dirt, rolling back and forth, moaning. Alexander saw pain in his eyes but he also saw there, terror.

  The burley leader turned away from Alexander and began kicking at the Negro.

  “Stop now or I shoot!” Alexander yelled out. The man ignored his warning and swung the stick downward at the Negro’s head. Alexander knew he had to make his shot count. He took careful aim and pulled the trigger. The bullet impacted the man in the shoulder, dislodging the stick from his hand, knocking him off his feet and to the ground almost before the crack of the gunshot echoed through the trees.

  Alexander quickly reloaded his rifle. “You move away!” he told the two remaining standing White men. He moved in toward the Negro, all the while keeping his rifle trained on the two men. They stepped several feet back, now apparently more concerned about their friend than their bloodied victim.

  Alexander told the injured Negro man, “Come on, you’re coming with me.” He helped the terrified man into his wagon. Alexander’s last words to the two men left standing were, “You two get your friend to the doctor.” He moved the horse and wagon on down the road and did not look back.

  That action was the beginning of a long friendship with Joel Morgan, a free Negro. Alexander learned that Joel had been freed from slavery after saving his owner’s children from an Indian attack in Kentucky. Joel went to work as a farmhand for Alexander and remained with him until his death some twenty years later.

  The incident with the three men caused much distress for Alexander. Two weeks following the event his barn was burned to the ground in the pre-dawn hours. Days later he discovered one of his cattle dead in the pasture from an apparent gunshot wound. Not long after, Alexander sold his farm and moved to Iowa. He had told his friends that he was not running out of fear, as some believed, but because he wanted new opportunity. They were to soon discover that the real reason Alexander left Ohio was his love for a woman named Sally Day who lived in Iowa.

  Sally Day was a young woman of twenty-one and a seamstress by trade. When Alexander laid eyes on her it was not “love at first sight.” It had been a confrontational meeting. Sally was at a livestock auction selling off a lot of cattle that she had inherited from her father. Alexander had bid on her cattle but did not buy them. He had told another man that her herd was not of good stock and too lean for the price.

  Alexander’s statement was overheard by Sally. Apparently insulted by Alexander’s words, she had confronted him directly. Slender of build, wearing pantaloons tucked into high leather boots, a plaid shirt belted into the pants, and auburn hair neatly pulled up and concealed under a hat usually seen on a man’s head, she lashed out at the stranger whose comments she had overheard. She walked up behind Alexander and said, “Mister, you don’t know what you’re talking of. Those cattle are fine. Maybe you need to buy some spectacles so you can see what you’re looking at.”

  When Alexander turned to face his accuser his first thought was that it was an adolescent boy. Then he noticed the two slight bulges in the shirt front and the slim waist and rounded hips. But it was also her face that gave her away. Her eyes were a cool blue gray with lush dark lashes encircling them and soft lips pursed into a pout. She stood with hands on her waist and stared at him awaiting a response.

  Alexander nodded to the man he was standing with and excused himself as he reached out and gently took Sally by the elbow and moved her to a distance away from others. “Ma’am, I apologize if I have offended your sensitivity but I must say that I have seen more desirable cattle than your bunch,” he told her.

  “Mister, I will not accept your lame apology. You just look around and you will see that mine are as good as the next—and maybe even better.”

  He couldn’t resist smiling at her and he did so. “Maybe they’re not too bad,” he admitted.

  “Darn right, they’re not too bad.”

  He asked, “What else you auctioning off?”

  “One of the best geldings you’ve seen in the country,” she answered with resoluteness.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Obviously she was determined and outspoken and Alexander discovered, much to his own surprise, that he was drawn to that. She could give any man a challenge, that was for sure, and he was enjoying it.

  He told her, “Let me see this horse of yours.” He walked behind, admiring the way she moved as he followed to the corral. She had been right. The horse was one fine specimen.

  “Where did you get him?” Alexander asked.

  “My Daddy brought him back from Kentucky two years ago.”

  “Forget the auction. I’ll buy him.”

  She gave him a suspicious look. “How much?” Her hand returned to her hip.

  “I’ll give you sixty-five dollars for him on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you’ll have supper with me.” He watched her eyes as he waited for her response.

  A slight smile moved across her lips and her eyes softened. “I don’t even know your name, Mister.”

  He removed his hat and swung it across the front of him as he bowed. “Alexander Storm. May I have the honor of escorting you to a light supper this afternoon, Miss ...?”

  She pulled off her hat and in one shake of her head, her hair fell down to her shoulders, framing her face with the rich auburn color. She extended her hand and said, “Miss Sally Day. I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Storm.” She smiled and added, “I will accept both your offers.”

  Having no desire to bring a new wife into any dangerous situation that might arise on his Ohio farm he made the decision to move to Iowa. He married Sally Day shortly after buying eight hundred acres in Story County, Iowa and building a farmhouse that she would be proud to live in.

  Alexander’s reputation as a man who would not put up with injustice followed him and he had the respect of everyone who knew him, or knew of him, except for a few who thought him wrong for taking the stand that he took on that Ohio road. But Alexander cared little about the opinion of those who opposed him. He was a man who believed in doing something about man’s inhumanity to man, no matter the color of skin, and he did so at every opportunity. That firm belief often would become a challenge for him as he was pressured to convince others that his position was the righteous one.

  And now, at seventy-three years of age, he was greatly troubled by the war of the states.

  Elizabeth Jane’s kitchen sme
lled strongly of bread baking and apple and cinnamon spice. She stood at the stove and stirred the simmering kettle of apples. She glanced over her shoulder at Alexander who sat at the table sipping a cup of hot coffee.

  “Pap, I can’t believe Mrs. Bennet had the nerve to call Silas a traitor to his country,” she said. She put down the wooden spoon and wiped her hands on her apron as she turned toward Alexander and continued, “Look at her husband! Mr. Bennet’s as lazy as an old coon dog on a hot August afternoon.”

  Alexander chuckled. “You might say as lazy as an old coon dog as drunk as a skunk.”

  She laughed. “You’re right. Who’d want the drunk in their army anyway? Maybe the Rebels would take him but the Union sure wouldn’t want him. Mrs. Bennet calls him a Patriot because he stays at home to protect his family.”

  Alexander tapped fresh tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, put a match to it and puffed on the stem until he had a satisfying burn. He then said, “Some people’s politics are different, Janie. Not everyone agrees with Mr. Lincoln.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t either in all ways, but you got to support our Union boys. They’re fighting an ugly war and they’re fighting it for every one of us. If I wasn’t such a lady I would have slapped her,” she said. “Maybe next time she says something I will forget I am a lady.”

  Alexander pulled the pipe from between his lips and laughed.

  She said, “When I wrote to Silas and told him what Mrs. Bennet said and how some others think he is a traitor and he only volunteered because he was scared into it, he wrote me that he read my letter with pleasure. He said it gave him pleasure to know the friends he left behind thought he was a traitor. He said he thinks such people have little sympathy for soldiers and soldier’s wives and such folks who fear going to war should be glad that somebody was scared into it.”