Grace was only in her middle teens, while Harry was in his thirties. Besides the age difference, Grace had been raised alongside his nieces and nephews and probably, like them, looked at Harry as an uncle. Although she might have loved him as a child would a beloved uncle, she did not want to marry him or bear his children.
Disappointed but not entirely deterred, Harry approached his brother about his predicament. Talking with Ora and Nellie, Harry asked them to intervene on his behalf. He wanted them to persuade Grace to take a chance with him, to tell her that Harry would make a good husband for her. And if that did not work, they should force her to do it. But they agreed with Grace. Ora and Nellie saw absolutely no reason that they should talk her into marrying Harry, and they most certainly would not force her into doing something that she was so dead set against.
What had been disappointment turned quickly to anger. Harry raged at his brother, but Ora stood his ground. Harry despised Ora for his decision, and their once friendly relationship turned bitter and hostile. Harry sat on his farm, nursing his wounded heart. But soon, those wounds began to fester. His anger and rage slowly condensed into hatred. He even told some people that one day he would murder both Ora and Grace, the girl who had spurned his love. For the next year, Harry sat and nursed his hatred, but made no more threats.
During that time, Grace began to see a local boy, a teenager named Sam Moore. He was close to her in age and had grown up only about four miles away from the Drenter farm. When Sam came over to see Grace, he would sometimes talk with Harry on his farm across the road. He had heard that the older man had made threats against Grace, but Harry never said anything like that to Sam. Rather, he was always cordial and friendly.
But inside his house, Harry allowed his true feelings to show through. His housekeeper, Hattie Goldsmith, often heard him make threats against his family across the road. Harry blamed his inability to win Grace’s heart on them. Somehow, they were preventing him from marrying her. Hattie heard him say that after he had killed Ora and his wife, he would commit suicide.
One Sunday, Sam asked Grace to attend evening services with him at Summit. She readily agreed, and they soon set out together in Sam’s horse and buggy. For whatever reason, this pushed Harry over the edge. His inner hatred and rage toward Grace finally boiled over. She had rejected him. She had spurned him. She would not have him for a husband. That was fine, he thought as he took down his Winchester-model shotgun. If Grace Reed would not have him, then she would not have anyone. Ever.
As he started to walk out of his house, he stopped to talk with Hattie, shotgun in hand. He told her that if she told anyone what he was going to do or tried to interfere in any way, he would kill her, too. With that, he left.
Hattie was terrified. She did not want to get in Harry’s way, so she waited. After a while, when she felt it was safe, Hattie exited the house through a side door and made her way to Ora Drenter’s farm.
While all this transpired, Sam and Grace were at Summit Church, enjoying evening services. For decades, the gospel message had been preached underneath that hallowed roof, and that night it was heard by the young couple, as it had been many times before. After the minister had finished, they filed out of the building with the rest of the congregation, got into Sam’s buggy and began their trek toward home.
As they drove down the old dirt road, they must have talked and enjoyed the pleasure of each other’s company. Listening to the steady beat of the horse’s hooves on the ground and the soothing sound of the buggy wheels turning must have been relaxing. And underneath it all, the teenagers might have been growing more comfortable with each other, enjoying the fruition of their relationship into something closer to being in love.
Soon, the teenagers came within sight of the Ora Drenter farm. How right life must have seemed to them. Nothing could be better in the world. It must have taken their minds a moment to understand what was happening when Harry Drenter stepped out from behind a tree alongside the road.
Reality snapped rapidly back into focus as Harry raised his shotgun. Sam Moore screamed at him not to shoot and instinctively ducked his head away from the imminent attack. Harry aimed at Grace and pulled the trigger. The shotgun found its deadly mark, striking Grace full in the head. Half of her face was torn away as she slumped over, dead. Some of the stray scattering of shot also hit Sam, who cried out in pain.
Sam Moore took Grace Reed to Summit Church in a buggy probably very similar to this one. Courtesy of Davenport Public Library.
Harry Drenter brutally murdered Grace Reed along this road in 1906, blowing half her face away with a shotgun. Author’s collection.
The horse, frightened by the loud noise of the shotgun blast, bolted forward toward a ditch alongside the road. The buggy overturned, and Sam half fell, half jumped clear, breaking some of his ribs in the process. Afraid for his life, Sam got to his feet as quickly as he could and made his way to Ora Drenter’s farm.
Harry did not chase after the young boy, nor did he shoot at Sam as he ran away. Evidently in his mind, his job was done. Still holding his shotgun, Harry walked back home, around the house and into the backyard.
Ora Drenter had been sleeping when the sound of the shotgun blast woke him up. He probably was still trying to figure out what to make of it when he heard someone banging on his front door. Quickly, he got out of bed and went to see who it was. He opened the door and found Sam Moore there, nursing his wounded arm. Ora brought the young man inside.
Sam must have been scared half out of his mind. The adrenaline rush that kicked in when Harry had shot him was probably close to wearing off, and the pain that it had helped to suppress was rapidly starting to register. While Ora began to tend to Sam’s wounds, he probably heard the shotgun go off a second time.
The authorities were called. Ora stayed in the house, looking after Sam until the Scott County sheriff and one of his deputies arrived. The policemen were filled in on what had happened up to that point. Ora, satisfied that Sam was in a good condition, left with the two policemen to find Harry.
They crossed the road, wary of the murderous Harry. They walked through the front yard and found nothing. The side yards were also empty. Finally, the search party found the body of Harrison Drenter in the backyard, lying in the grass a short distance behind the house. He was dead, the top of his head blown off. The second shotgun blast had been the sound of Harry Drenter committing suicide.
The community was stunned. What had driven such a successful man to murder an attractive young woman who was still so full of promise? Both Ora and Nellie agreed that Harry was not in his right mind. But was it living with the fact that the woman he loved would never love him in return that drove him to madness, or was it something else? With his death, the question would remain forever unanswered.
Elsewhere, the world continued on. Harry was buried in the cemetery just on the south side of Summit Church. Grace’s body was sent back to her remaining family in Toledo, Iowa, and buried there. Sam Moore would recover from the wounds he suffered that day. Ora and Nellie lived on for several more decades, until they both died and were buried in Summit Cemetery near Harry.
The final resting place of Harrison Drenter at Summit Cemetery in rural Scott County. Author’s collection.
Eventually, the dirt road that saw the murder of Grace Reed was covered in gravel, making it much easier to travel on. Utica Ridge Road was paved with asphalt and concrete. And Summit Church still had service every Sunday until 1972, when it was decommissioned as a Presbyterian church. But the building still stands, preserved and watched over by the Scott County Historical Society, the last witness to a long-ago chain of events that ended in tragedy.
CHAPTER 3
MADNESS, SUICIDE AND CHOCOLATE
Starting in about 1820 and ending at the turn of the twentieth century, cultural norms in Western Europe began to shift. At the same time, things were also changing in the United States. America began to experience an enormous influx of immigrants from the wester
n portion of the European continent and the United Kingdom. All the immigrants and their families had their own reasons for coming to America. Sometimes, it was a single factor that drove them, while for others it was a combination of several.
For some, the unchecked religious freedom that could be found in the United States was an enormous draw, just as it had been for groups such as the Puritans before them. Others were fed up simply with having to deal with renting a small tract of land in Europe and were tempted by the promise of having a large farm of their own, carved from the enormous tracts of land becoming available in the slow crush of American expansion toward the west.
In Germany, one such man was Nicolaus Nehlsen. Nehlsen was a family man. He had a young wife, Margaretha, and three small children: Mary, Emma and John. They were happy living in the old country, and they were proud of their German heritage. But, like many of his fellow countrymen, his eyes turned toward the west and the United States of America.
There were opportunities for a man who worked hard in America. And there was plenty of land. A man could have as much good land as he wanted there, to work and make something of. It would not be the easiest thing in the world to do, but it would not be the hardest, either.
Nicolaus knew that money would be tight at first. But money was always tight when you had to spread it between a wife and three young children. And with all that land, they could grow as much food as they needed. As a matter of fact, they would probably have more than enough land left over to grow crops specifically for profit. They would even have extra room to raise livestock.
Nicolaus could have gotten these ideas from anywhere. There were various accounts flooding into Europe extoling the various virtues of the United States. Some of this information came from family letters, sent from immigrants who had already traveled to America back to their families in the old country. Others were published accounts from settlers and travelers, writing about what they had seen and experienced. All of these were designed to bring people to the New World.
Wherever he had heard about it, Nicolaus was starting to think about making the move. He knew they would have to leave their family and friends behind in Germany and the life that they had made there. But America had a large German population already, so he was sure that he could find some fellow German immigrants to fit in with. Besides, even if they did not find any, the opportunity was just too much to pass up.
For Nicolaus, or Nick, as he later became known, America must have truly seemed like the land of golden opportunity. After going through a brief period of discussion and deliberation with Margaretha, they made the decision to cross the Atlantic and settle in the United States.
Making the passage across the Atlantic could be a dangerous proposition. For prospective immigrants, the problems started as soon as they stepped out of their homes. Whether they were traveling by themselves, in pairs or in family groups, there were still dangerous stumbling blocks on the road to America that could end your trip before it began. At the harbor, con men ran scams on unwary travelers. Some of them sold fake boarding tickets for ships or tickets with incorrect departure dates. If an innocent family bought one of these latter tickets, they might be stranded in a harbor town indefinitely until their ticket date was valid and would be accepted. Once on the ship, sea travel could be perilous. In addition to the various dangers presented by the tumultuous ocean, conditions on the ship could present just as much of a danger. On some ships, passengers were packed in as tightly as possible. The cramped, unsanitary conditions allowed sickness and disease to run rampant. There were many who did not survive these ocean voyages.
If an immigrant did make it across, as many of them did, they might have found that the American experience was a little different from what they were expecting. In Europe, farming and community life revolved around the village. The village defined a person socially and culturally and provided all the needs of its residents. Everyone was obligated to one another in some way, binding them all together. American farming and community, on the other hand, was much more solitary. There was no system of obligations. Everyone was much more isolated, each farm almost functioning as its own self-contained business. Instead of seeing one another every day in the common fields of the village, American farmers would often spend long hours alone or with only their family members for company. And underlying all of this was the fact that an immigrant may not have enough money to buy or rent his own farm.
Despite all the dangers and hardships, Nicolaus and Margaretha had made up their minds. Saying goodbye to their family and friends in Germany, the young couple packed up their children and set out. All of them survived the journey and set off across America to Scott County, Iowa, and their new home.
In many ways, Scott County was an ideal place for German immigrants to settle. In 1848, a group of individuals from a place in northern Germany called Schleswig-Holstein had taken part in a revolution against the country of Denmark. Unfortunately for them, they lost. Knowing that things would get very bad for them if they remained in Schleswig-Holstein, many of them boarded ships and came to the United States, where they ended up in Scott County. Many of these individuals—later called “Forty-Eighters,” after the year they launched their failed revolution—were extremely well educated and very liberal in their political views. They were opinionated, intelligent and well spoken. They were proud of their German heritage, and they brought it with them. The Forty-Eighters helped found German-language newspapers, in addition to various cultural societies and institutions.
For those who had made the treacherous journey from Germany to Davenport in those years, it must have been almost like coming back home. There were several German-speaking people both in the city and outside of it. Newcomers were often taken into the community and welcomed. New immigrants had a support system consisting of people with a similar cultural background and mindset. The German community was strong, and they worked hard to create a sense of community among their fellow immigrants from the old country.
It was this environment into which the Nehlsens moved. Nick and Margaretha probably felt a sense of belonging. For people who had left everything that they had known behind them, it gave them a real sense of stability in their lives to come into such a welcoming community. As they learned the English language better and adjusted to American culture, the Nehlsens always had a place to go that seemed comfortable and familiar.
The Nehlsens quickly found a farm along Utica Ridge Road, a rural road northeast of Davenport. It was about 160 acres of rich Iowa soil, ready to be turned and planted by people with a will to do so. Nick had been dreaming of this opportunity since he and Margaretha had first discussed coming to America. And now they were here, ready to bring their dream to life in the farmlands of Scott County.
Over the next several years, the Nehlsens became very successful. The land was bountiful and provided not only food for their family but plenty to sell as well. They bought livestock and began raising that, too. And it was not only the farm that grew.
Margaretha and Nick had six more children in Scott County: Jacob, Otto, Peter, Louis, Dora and Meta. The boys worked in the fields, learning farming and other skills from their father. The girls, on the other hand, learned cooking, keeping house, sewing and several other skills that were mastered by farm wives of that day and age. Together, the men and women of the family divided the essential labor of the farm and worked together toward its overall success.
The Nehlsen farm was located along Utica Ridge Road, pictured here. Author’s collection.
By 1910, Mary, the eldest child, had moved to Galesburg, Illinois. Their five sons were living at home, helping to tend to the crops, livestock and various chores that go along with running a farm. Young Meta and Dora probably followed their mother around the house, taking care of things as they were able.
Young Emma, now nineteen, decided to go to a nearby farm to work as a housekeeper for a man named Glen Port. He lived only a short distance away from her family, so Emma was neve
r far from home. While she was employed there, Emma had no issues with Glen or his family, and they were satisfied with her work.
During her employment there, Emma met Glen’s father, John Port. He was a fifty-year-old widower, and he apparently enjoyed Emma’s company. He would take her for buggy rides, where they would talk and become better friends.
Eventually, John Port left the immediate area and took up residence in nearby LeClaire, Iowa. About the same time, Emma quit working for Glen Port and became the housekeeper of another local man named Claus Willer.
Willer was in his mid-forties. Like the Nehlsens, he had also emigrated from Germany. Similarly, he had also settled down in Scott County and quickly turned his hand to farming. Eventually, Willer married Amelia Oetzmann and settled into the comfortable routine of rural life. The couple never had any children, and Amelia passed away in 1908.
With no wife or children to help, Willer had to take care of all the household duties in addition to his regular farm chores. In a time when many things had to be done by hand, it might have been difficult for Willer to take care of everything himself. So, he hired Emma Nehlsen to come to the farm and take care of all the cleaning, cooking and washing.
Rural life could oftentimes be lonely. While there were neighbors who were relatively close by, there were several hours of the day when Willer would have been alone, toiling in the fields. Finishing his work, he would have come back to an empty house. Having a housekeeper would give him someone to talk to and interact with.
One night, Emma came to talk with Willer shortly after they had eaten dinner. She told him that she was quitting her position as housekeeper that very night and asked Willer to pay the rest of her wages. At first, Willer thought that Emma was joking, but the younger woman insisted that she was not and, once again, asked for her money. He was surprised, almost shocked, and asked her why. Emma informed Willer that she was going to go work for John Port in LeClaire and that he was waiting for her at the end of the lane.
Murder & Mayhem in Scott County, Iowa Page 4
