50+ Lifestyles

Just Saying…

By Q.C. Jones

Walking with the Ghosts Downtown Davenport

Do you believe in ghosts? According to a Harris poll dated 2014, the majority of folks in Jolly Old England believe.  Their American cousins are just a bit more skeptical. It seems only 42 percent of us believe in ghosts. A more recent Pew survey states 29 percent of Americans have had some kind of experience with those who have moved on from this life. We are not going to explore this phenomenon or things paranormal in general. Instead, we are going to explore my own haunting.

Over the past six months or so, I have been haunted by a need to explore the history of the Quad-Cities. Actually, I have been working with my friend Al Jarosz down at Artisan Grains Distillery to develop a historical walking tour of downtown Davenport.  His distillery is located in a historically significant spot in what would have once been referred to as Davenport’s Latin Quarter and recently as “Bucktown.”

Bucktown was the place respectable folks forgot to share with their friends back in the 1800s. The place where river roughnecks and lumberjacks mingled with rail roaders and ne’er-do-well individuals of all kinds. There was a thriving business of saloons, risqué theatres, livery stables, cigar shops and run down rooming houses.  It extended in a triangle from the foot of the government bridge down Front Street (now River Drive) and along Second and Third Streets to Brady.  Looking back at old postcards and drawings from the turn of the 19th century, all the pictures from Brady Street faced west so the view did not include the “bad side of town.” But research into the area has brought me face to face with many long dead individuals whose memories haunt me.

I know many of our readers hail from the Illinois side and I promise to someday create a backward look at the Rock Island and Moline history.  But today we are going to bring to life a few of the characters who wondered the streets of 1800s Davenport.  Ladies before gentlemen….

The Quad-Cities was quite progressive for the times. Our area had some ground breaking women. Women who, even before granted the right to vote were out there earning their way into male dominated fields.  Davenport had a female doctor before lots of places had a real doctor and the community had the first female Superintendent of Schools; and she was spunky.

Jennie McCowen was born in Ohio in 1845.  She taught school at age 16 and following her father’s death in 1864 left Ohio to be near her mother’s sister in western Iowa. She saved up her money to go to the Medical School at Iowa University and graduated in 1874.  A few years late she moved to Davenport where she was nearly immediately elected to the Board of Directors for the Scott County Medical Society.  She founded the organization “Lend a Hand” which grew to a large organization dedicated to assisting women and helping them move forward in Society. A published author and nationally noted speaker, much of what we have healthcare-wise on the Iowa side has been touched by Dr. McCowen.

    Phebe Sudlow was born in New York in 1831. Her family moved to Ohio where she launched into a position of schoolmarm at age 15. After her father’s death, she moved to live with her brother’s family in Rockford Illinois, and when her brother’s clan moved to Round Grove in Scott County (a spot about 5 miles NW of Maysville) she moved to our area.  Sudlow moved up the food chain in the Davenport School system and in 1860 became the first female principle on record in the US.  In June 1874, the Davenport Board of Education chose her as superintendent of its schools, the first woman in the United States to hold such an administrative position.  Graduates of Sudlow Middle School applause here.

It takes a while for the paper to get to my neighborhood.  I first discovered Davenport’s “Boy Mayor” while reading through the April 23, 1893 edition of the Chicago Tribune.  Henry Vollmer was elected mayor of Davenport before he reached his 25th birthday. The Tribune made this statement, “Vollmer was selected by the Scott County Democratic Party and won with the usual majority.”  Our young Henry was a quite a prodigy.  He graduated from the already prestigious Iowa Law School before reaching age 21 and had to bide his time for a year before he could practice law. Vollmer, like about 50 percent of Davenport, was from German-American stock and spoke English, German and French.  He too put his stamp on the Quad-Cities.

Finally, we’ll switch to the “wrong side of the tracks” and head down East Second Street, past the one time home of Dred Scott, to the 300 block of East Third.  On the corner of Iowa and Second stood a saloon/theater combination run by a fellow named Wm. W. Hovey.  During my research, I stumbled onto one of his business cards.  It bore the inscription The Bijou Saloon, 329 E. Second, featuring “Aged and Smooth Conversational Fluids” and “Fragrant and Soothing Narcotic Weeds.”

Speaking of Conversational Fluids, the Artisan Grain Distillery does tours.  Al Jarosz is quite conversational.  And, in case you are cleaning out great-grandpa’s house and you see the number 944 written on the wall where the phone used to hang, 944 was the phone number for the Bijou.  I tried calling but the phone stayed ghostly silent… Just saying.
Editor’s note: To read more about Jennie McCowen, go to University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine; and to read more about Phebe Sudlow check out Davenport School Museum, 1806 Brady St, Davenport. Hours: Monday 9-11 and Friday 1- 4 or by appointment.