Willer collected himself and then paid Emma the wages that he owed her. As he did, he asked Emma why she had not given him due notice and allowed him sufficient time to find a new housekeeper. Emma told Willer that she did not want him to tell her parents about her new arrangement with John Port. Her wages collected, Emma left the employ of Claus Willer and moved to LeClaire.
While this might have normally been an acceptable arrangement, there was a general inclination toward the idea that Emma and Port were much more than employer and employee. If people asked, John would tell them that there was nothing happening. Emma was simply his housekeeper and nothing more. But still the idea persisted.
Whether he was or not, the family was scandalized, causing severe friction among the Nehlsens. Nick even threatened Port, telling him in no uncertain terms that Port must release Emma from his employ and return her home as soon as possible. If he did not, then Nehlsen would kill Port.
Claus Willer felt just as strongly. He had developed feelings for Emma. Maybe he had fallen in love with her, or maybe he was just lending support to the Nehlsen family, looking out for Emma as if she were his own daughter. Or, perhaps, Willer just wanted someone to talk to again after coming in from the fields to keep the loneliness at bay. Whatever the reason, Willer’s feelings for Emma, whatever they actually were, spurred him forward into action.
Purchasing a handgun, Willer brought it home to his farm and began to practice with it. When he thought he had practiced enough, he rode to LeClaire to find Port. The older man must have been warned or somehow found out about it because he wasn’t there. Dejected, Willer left town, still determined to bring Emma back. He returned to LeClaire several times, loaded pistol with him, but every trip ended fruitlessly.
After the last time, Willer was distraught. Emma was not going to come home. The man to blame, John Port, could not be found. Willer, who wanted so desperately to succeed in his task, could not win. So he went back to his farm, where nothing awaited him. No wife, no children and no Emma Nehlsen, housekeeper.
People stopped seeing Willer soon after that. He did not come into town to socialize or buy needed goods. No one saw him in the yard doing chores. No one saw him in the fields tending to his crops. Perhaps, after watching what the man had been through, people decided that he needed some time to nurse his losses and recover his inner balance.
But after several days without seeing him, some of his neighbors began to grow concerned. On April 21, 1910, some of them went to the Willer farm and began searching for him. The silence when they opened the door must have been oppressive. It was deep, only broken by the sound of summer insects and the livestock. The good-hearted neighbor found Willer in his bedroom, dead. Apparently, after coming home for what would be the last time, Willer could not handle the stark reality of his life anymore. The loneliness and the quiet had finally taken their toll. Willer had tried his best to fight them but had lost. He had gone into his bedroom with a vial of laudanum and drank it down, ending his life.
Everyone was shocked at this turn of events. Nobody expected his outlook to turn so sour that he felt the only recourse available to him was suicide. The county coroner was consulted, and an inquest was held. The official result was that while it was clear Willer died from laudanum poisoning, officials were not sure why he had done it.
A few months later, in July, John Port decided to make an honest woman out of Emma, and he asked her to elope with him. Emma agreed, probably eager to shed her “housekeeper” role and take on a new one—that of Mrs. John Port. Plans were made, and the two apparent lovers moved to North Dakota, leaving all the drama and scandal of the past year behind them.
The Nehlsens were stunned. With nothing left behind, the only thing they that had of their dear Emma was the memory of their daughter. Obviously, they did not approve of the relationship. Nick was very open about his opinion, and it is very likely that Margaretha shared it as well. Perhaps knowing this, and knowing that they would never gain the approval of the family, the elder John and young Emma chose to move away rather than face years of disapproving looks and attitudes.
Losing a daughter to a man whom they did not see as suitable for her was bad enough. But with the added pain of Claus Willer’s suicide and all the drama that had transpired before that, it must have left a stinging pain in the family. While it can be said with almost certainty that the elopement left a hollow ache among all the older family members, no one seemed to feel it more than Margaretha.
After Emma had left with John Port to go to the Dakotas, Margaretha’s mood darkened. She would sit and think about the whole situation endlessly. She had even begun to dream about what had happened, talking in her sleep. Margaretha’s obsession with Emma and Port had seeped down into her subconscious, and now even her innermost mind strived to talk sense into her wayward daughter.
And then, like the sun emerging from heavy clouds on a gray sky, her mood suddenly brightened.
On the morning of August 3, Nick had to go to nearby Eldridge, Iowa, to sell some of his hogs. Good cheer had seemingly returned to the home, and Margaretha seemed to be in good spirits. She was so happy that morning, carrying out her daily chores and tending to her youngest daughters. As her mood was brightened, the moods of Nick and the children probably were as well. At about two o’clock that morning, Nick took his livestock and started driving them toward Eldridge.
Nick returned home about mid-morning. Given the improvement in Margaretha’s mood and a successful sale, he was probably smiling, finally glad to have a little happiness in his life after the events of the past few months. One can only imagine and speculate what happened next. Perhaps he was like many other fathers who expect their small children to greet them at the door so they could embrace them with welcoming and loving arms. No matter what he expected, he was met only with a cold, stony silence.
Nick must have wondered where everyone was as he wandered into the kitchen from outside, looking for his family. Next, he entered the bedroom and found them.
They were lying on a white sheet that had been spread out on the floor. The children were unnaturally still and composed. The two young girls did not move. Their mother lay near them. A grim fear must have come to Nick’s mind as he moved forward and laid his hand on them. As his bare hand touched their cold flesh, his fear became stark reality as he realized that his wife and two youngest children were dead.
The horror that Nicolaus Nehlsen probably felt in that moment must have been overwhelming. As his mind reeled, he might have noticed that Meta’s and Dora’s clothing had been laid out for them to wear. Coming suddenly to his senses, he ran out of the house and did not stop until he reached a neighbor’s house a half mile away. He tried his best to tell his neighbor H.E. Sawyer what he had seen in his bedroom, but he could not. Nick’s tongue was frozen by shock and fear. Sawyer poured cold water on Nehlsen, trying his best to bring his friend back to his senses. Finally, Nick described what he had seen.
Sawyer immediately took Nick back home so that he could verify the story for himself. He was horrified at the sight that awaited him in his neighbor’s bedroom.
The authorities were called and the bodies removed to the funeral home. After a short investigation and autopsy, strychnine was found in the stomach of one of the children, and three empty vials of the poison were found in the outhouse by the family home.
The conclusion was that sometime after Nick had left for Eldridge and the boys were all out of the house, Margaretha had gone into the bedroom and laid out the white sheet and the children’s good clothes, presumably for them to wear at their funeral. Then, taking chocolate that she had laced with some of the strychnine, she fed the poison candies to her innocent daughters.
Once they had succumbed to the vile combination, Margaretha carefully laid out their tiny bodies on the sheet. When she was finished, she consumed some of the same deadly sweets as she lay down next to the still forms of the girls so that she, too, could die.
In the aftermath, Nick and h
is sons finally took the time to speculate over what had caused their beloved mother to commit such a horrible act. At some point, their thoughts turned to Emma, John Port and Claus Willer.
First there had been Margaretha’s deep depression. Her mood soured, and she dwelled on Emma’s behavior. Sometime along her dark inner journey, she must have made the decision to end her own life. But that still left the children, Meta and Dora.
There was some idea that, somehow, in her troubled mind, Margaretha was afraid that her wayward daughter Emma would come back and take them away. Or maybe, Margaretha just could not stand the thought of being away from her beloved little ones. Perhaps then, once she had made her decision, her mood shifted back and she was happy, knowing that her suffering would soon be over.
The entrance to Pine Hill Cemetery, where Margaretha Nehlsen and her daughters Meta and Dora were buried in 1910. Author’s collection.
But while her inner torment may have come to an end, Nick’s had just begun. His wife of over twenty years was dead. His youngest two children were also gone, killed by their own mother. And he had no answers. Even though Nick was asked so many times, he was never able to give a definitive answer to that burning question—why? All he had were ideas, speculation and three loved ones to bury.
The funeral was held at the Nehlsen home along Utica Ridge Road. Being successful farmers and having lived in the area for nearly two decades, the Nehlsens had many friends and associates. They began to arrive around mid-morning, around the time the funeral services for the family were supposed to begin. More and more people kept filing in, not stopping until several hundred were present. The house was full almost to bursting that August morning from the number of people who had come to pay their final respects to Margaretha and her two daughters. Margaretha may have committed a horrible crime, but she had still been a good friend and neighbor to many of them.
After the funeral was finished at the home, the coffins of the deceased were carried out into three waiting carriages. Flowers from all the various guests covered the three coffins. There were so many that they had begun to mound against the front side of the caskets like a colorful snowdrift.
First one girl and then the other was loaded into her own pure white carriage, each one pulled by two snowy white horses. Margaretha was loaded into a black carriage attached to two coal-black horses. Once the coffins were secure, the funeral procession was begun.
Margaretha and her daughters were to be interred at Pine Hill Cemetery, north of the main part of Davenport. From the Nehlsen farm to their final resting place, the deceased mother and her two children served as the centerpiece for a somber procession.
Once at the graveyard, the minister said some comforting words to those present. Then, one at a time, each coffin was lowered into the ground by the pallbearers. Both girls had one of their brothers as a pallbearer, but none of the family helped lower Margaretha.
Soon, all was finished, and the vast crowd departed.
In the end, it will probably never be known what tortured reasoning drove Margaretha Nehlsen to kill first her two youngest daughters and then herself. Perhaps it had to do with her beloved daughter Emma, who was linked to one man’s suicide and had caused such bitter disappointment by moving away with another man whom they did not approve of.
Three hearses, one black and two white, carried the remains of Margaretha Nehlsen and her daughters to their final resting place along this road. Author’s collection.
The graves of Claus Willer and his wife. Willer’s suicide contributed to Margaretha Nehlsen’s mental instability. Author’s collection.
The graves of Margaretha Nehlsen and her two young daughters, Meta and Dora. Author’s collection.
Or perhaps her decision had nothing to do with that at all. Maybe Margaretha, for whatever reason, just broke down inside one day and began to conclude that suicide was the only way she could find peace.
No matter what the underlying cause, the cold, hard fact is that Margaretha Nehlsen fed her two young daughters chocolate candies laced with strychnine, cutting their young lives cruelly short. Their souls, full of the untapped and undetermined potential of life, were ripped shockingly away from the material world.
Maybe Margaretha, her poor soul tortured by unknown demons, finally found rest and peace under the well-kept lawns of Pine Hill Cemetery.
CHAPTER 4
THE POSTMISTRESS, THE MAILMAN AND HIS WIFE
It was a day like most any other on June 11, 1916. The sun was shining, warming the town of McCausland, Iowa, far beneath it. All about town, people went about their daily routines. Some conducted their business at the bank or mercantile, while others took care of their daily chores of washing clothes, cleaning houses and tending to crops or livestock.
However, on one street in town, things were anything but quiet. As some watched, two women fought. One had two children with her and was defending herself against the other, who was raving and cursing. During the scuffle, the mother fell in the dirt and started to scramble for a tangle of packages and stamps that had fallen nearby. The one left standing started to advance toward the fallen one.
The mother reached the pile of packages and quickly started rummaging through it. She found what she was looking for: a handgun. She brought it up and leveled it at her assailant. In the most commanding voice she could muster at that moment, the mother yelled at the other to stop.
Fearless, the angry woman started forward again.
What happened next would leave a scar on an otherwise quiet midwestern town.
BUTLER TOWNSHIP IS LOCATED in northeastern Scott County. It is made of rolling hills that glide and swell across the landscape like waves on the ocean. The Wapsipinicon River flows through the northernmost portion of the township and forms its border on that side. Like the rest of the county, the soil is rich and black and yields good crops more often than not. Because of this, agriculture was prominent there, with only the river bottomland directly around the river still untouched by the plow and harrow.
In 1836, a man named Henry Harvey Pease, along with his partner, John D. Grafford, bought five hundred acres of land in the region. Pease had been born in Massachusetts in 1794. From that time until he was fifteen years old, he assisted his father, a farmer, in the various tasks and chores of that trade. At fifteen, he entered into the fuller and dyer’s profession, apprenticing in it for six years.
Moving from Massachusetts, he went to New York, where his brother Daniel lived. He kept working as a fuller and dyer for a few years but took the opportunity to travel throughout the area during that time. During that phase of his life, Pease seemingly had a restless spirit, liking to travel and see new things.
He eventually grew bored living in New York and moved west to Ohio, where he worked various jobs, including one as a teacher in a rural school. Still restless, Pease continued moving west to Indiana, where he started a school and began to teach there.
Unfortunately for him, Pease fell gravely ill for several months, leaving him bedridden much of the time. After he recovered, he moved back to Ohio and taught there for a few years before moving back to Indiana and teaching there.
Selina Street in McCausland, Iowa, where Olive Adkins was shot to death in 1916. Author’s collection.
Ready for another career change, Pease moved in 1827 to Galena, Illinois, where he mined lead for the next five years. In 1832, he moved again, this time to the thriving city of Dubuque, Iowa. Dubuque was very much a mining town in those days, providing the region and the nation with lead. Like many such towns, it could be a rough and dangerous place. Stepping up to the challenge of preserving law and order, or at least keeping the noise levels to a dull roar, Pease became a deputy sheriff. However, like many men of that era, he was not satisfied to wear only one hat. In addition to his various duties as a sheriff ’s deputy, he also ran a general store with his partner, Warner Lewis.
In 1837, he returned briefly to Indiana to marry Nancy Britton, a young woman he had met several years
before while living there.
By 1838, Pease had grown tired of living in Dubuque and longed to move once more. So he packed up his worldly goods and moved south to a piece of land that he had purchased in Butler Township. Once there, he built the first cabin in that area.
Presbyterian services were held in the little cabin that same year, given by James and Alexander Brownlie, who were founders of the nearby town of Long Grove. Like many pioneer locations, the cabin would host traveling ministers and preachers of other Christian denominations as well, including Catholics and Methodists.
The cabin also became the first post office in the township, and Henry Pease became its first postmaster. At this time, the postal service in the state of Iowa was almost brand new, having started in Dubuque in 1833. Individuals and families who came here from other places wanted a way to communicate with their families and friends back home. Various business owners also had a desire to communicate with their associates in distant locales.
In the early days of the post office, travel was, as it was in most other pioneer endeavors, difficult. There were no railroads and hardly any roads to speak of. Rivers had to be forded or a ferry taken across them. Mail did not come regularly but, rather, at random intervals. As travel depended so much on the weather conditions, it could take some time before any mail was received—if it ever arrived at all.
The postmaster handled the mail, both shipping and receiving. The pioneer post office was usually some kind of store or even a house owned by the postmaster, and all mail was initially delivered to it. In pioneer times, people would travel great distances to collect their mail, as there was no delivery service directly to their homes at that time.
Murder & Mayhem in Scott County, Iowa Page 5
