Thursday 13th August 2009 – Bringing History to Life

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) entry for Glasgow, Blackhawk County, Iowa, describes it as "historical", and classes it as a Railroad Station.  The Railroad Station bit wasn't there when I looked last year.  But it proved to be the lever which prised the whole edifice loose.

Blackhawk County real estate records are available on-line now, probably for purposes of tax, etc.  Looking at the empty spot the USGS points at for Glasgow reveals a long thin strip of land.  Given the Railroad clue, I followed this strip south, and found it curved down to the next section of the township, where a number of plots appeared together.  Looking at the details of these plots revealed that they were all called "Glasgow" in their legal definitions.

The computer system permitted quite substantial enlargement, so it was possible to investigate the details of this curving strip of land on it's own.  And in places, it turned out to be owned by the Canadian National Railway.  Canadian: how did Canada get in to it?  I guess they bought some local Railroad, and acquired its lands: but which Railroad?  More likely the local railroad was taken over by another one, and so on, until it ended up as part of CNR.

It is possible to see, fairly clearly, from these on-line records, that there was, or was going to be, a small town here, with the station in the south-east corner (nowhere near where the USGS has it).

It was almost a whim that brought me here.  I was within an ace of heading off straight to Illinois.  "No", I thought, "don't cut corners.  Take a quick trip up there and take a picture of this field, just for the record.  It won't take too long".  And here I find a proper, legal entity.

I have to go back and look at the other spot.  But I don't want to waste time.  It's Thursday, and I need to go to the Library and the Courthouse.  So another visit will have to wait till Saturday.  Come to think of it, people are more likely to be home on Saturday anyway.

 

The Library was very helpful.  I thought I wanted to look at local Railroad histories, but the problem with Railroads in America is that there are so many of them.  Without some idea of the date, it was just too difficult.

Anyway, people who write histories of old railways really only want to show pictures of locomotives and bridges.  Unfortunately, I like to read things like that, so I spent far too much time looking at irrelevant glossy pictures, and enjoying it.

But the "Local History" shelves did offer up a lot of material.  The most useful was one showing township maps of the original land patents issued by the United States Government.  And there, just where I expected to see it, was a big parcel of land bought by one William Glasgow in 1855.  Interestingly, the same book also had road and historical maps, and these (on the two pages immediately following the patent map) showed Glasgow exactly where the USGS had placed it.

 

Later that night, as I was enjoying a beer or two with some CNR workers (no, they had no idea, they had never been here before), what I can only describe as a herd (they were all clinging on to each other) of extremely grown-up ladies came thundering into the bar.  They looked quite distraught.  "Have you any ice cream", they cried, "she needs ice cream".

Well-brought-up gentlemen always defer to extremely grown-up ladies, but this seemed a test too far.  We all looked anxiously at the barmaid, mentally crossing our fingers: surely there was no ice cream available here?  "No, no", said the barmaid, "try the restaurant on the corner".  The herd turned abruptly and did a speed-shuffle out the door.

Now I know diabetics sometimes get there medication wrong and need urgent ingestions of sugar, but is there a condition, perhaps specific to extremely grown-up ladies, which requires urgent consumption of ice cream?