THE 1880’S IMMIGRATION AND OUTLAWS

The Rainsbarger’s, seemed to be highly intelligent and respected citizens. No member of the family had ever had even a minor scrape with the law until 1866, when Finley Rainsbarger was charged with murder. Herbert Quick describes, the incident in his book, One Man’s Life, with a particularly interesting recollection of events that had happened to Finley Rainsbarger prior to his encounter with Charles Voiles.

“One of my earliest memories still rings in my ears in one wild scream after another–a woman’s shrieks of agony. These outcries related to midwest history which has been admitted into the books–my own novels among others. It is of value, for it illuminates the picture which is fast growing dim as we recede from it on our
voyage down the stream of time.”

“There lived among us a veteran of the California and Colorado gold rushes named Rhodes, Peachy Rhodes, who had two excellent daughters; also a family named Rainsbarger who afterward became notorious as outlaws. One of them called Finn–I suppose his name was Finely–was accused of having made derogatory remarks as to the character of the Rhodes girls. Our old gold hunter, taking the law and a rawhide whip in his own hands, gave young Rainsbarger, a boy of eighteen or so, a flogging which filled his boots with blood from his back. Finn swore vengeance, and secretly armed himself with a sharp butcher knife with which to kill Peachy Rhodes.”

“Our neighbor, Mrs. Millsalgle… had a daughter, Julia, who at the age of sixteen was married to a young fellow named Charlie Voiles. One day Charlie met Finn Rainsbarger and his knife, and had a quarrel with him. Finn stabbed Voiles through the heart. The fate of Peachy Rhodes was diverted, and Julia Millslage Voiles was a
widow. My parents had me with them in the village (Steamboat Rock) that day. My mother was called to Julia when the body of her husband was brought home. I have no memory of anything which I saw; but I have
always remembered the screams of the poor girl, one shriek after another.”

“This was the first of the known crimes of the Rainsbarger, whose misdoing followed one after the other, however, until all of the brothers but William–who lived the life of a respectable farmer until his death–were either sent to the states prison or put to death by lynch law. For killing Voiles, Finn Rainsbarger was sent to prison for a year, which was a severe enough sentence for a boy of his years who had used a knife in a fight into which he seemed to have been forced by a quarrelsome bully. His language, when he returned, however,
did not seem an utterance meant for repentance.”

“’I sent Charlie Voiles to hell,’ he was quoted as saying, ‘and the state sent me to the penitentiary. That makes it even. The one’s as bad as the other.’”

“He seems to have ignored the comparative length of the sentences, or our theology was erroneous.”

Finley Rainsbarger, was not a large man and it has been said that he was not considered to be a trouble maker unless you consider the story Quick relates with regard to Finn and Peachy Rhodes.

On the evening Charles Voiles, and Finley Rainsbarger, met in a Steamboat Rock saloon, an argument arose and tension between the two mounted. The tension continued to grow through the evening and Voiles followed Rainsbarger from one place to another, pressing a fight. It finally came to a head in the local drug store, the very
building that now houses the local library, where Voiles, heavily influenced by liquor, threatened to whip Finley Rainsbarger, shaking his finger in his face and making other violent gestures.

Some said Finley Rainsbarger drew his own knife others say he picked it up from a counter, and stabbed Voils in the chest killing him.

Finley Rainsbarger was arrested and bound over to a grand jury. The grand jury found that there was a case against him, and he was bound over for trial. He asked and was granted a change of venue to Marshall county, where he was tried, convicted and sentenced to eight years in the penitentiary.

About a year and a half later he was pardoned by the Governor, who had been convinced that Finley had acted more in self defense and had been driven to his action by the drunken Voiles.

Herbert Quick also gave an account his father and the family dog had with someone as he put it, “Outlaws who lived within fifteen miles of us, and who subsequently terrorized the whole countryside.” Not mentioning the
Rainsbarger name can leave some doubt, but the story bears repeating.

“After my father’s wheat on the Hagen place had grown so that it stood tall and green and rippling like a lake, a German immigrant offered him a price for his land which seemed too good to be true. He had paid something like five to seven dollars and acre for it in 1866. He was now offered something like twenty–I think it was twenty–for the land and crops as they stood, with the stable made of crotches with hay for a roof, and the little house boarded up and down.”

“This was when the great German immigration reached central Iowa…

Herbert Quick’s writing’s indicate that this happened in the latter part of the 1870’s.

Quick continued. “Mr. Hagen paid my father his first payment and father never thought of putting it in a bank. I do not believe he had ever had a credit account at a bank, though he often had notes there. He brought the money home to the up-anddown-boarded cabin which we had not yet vacated and gave it to my sister Kate for
safe keeping”

“And that day we had an adventure. All through the afternoon, a solitary man was seen wandering through the grass of a wide slough to the west of us. It was no the hunting season, and those of the family who noticed him wondered what he could be doing. As darkness shut down over the lonely house, a man–we had no doubt it
was the wanderer of the marsh– came to the house, or rather approached it.”

“Now we had a big black dog, called, from his coat, Curley; a perfectly amiable dog that never felt at liberty to
assail any one, and was never allowed to do so. This night wanderer came up the slope toward the house and turned in at the track leading to it. He was wet to his waist, bedraggled with mud and seemed very weary. In his hand he carried a small bundle. Curley walked toward him with the bristles standing up on his neck, a fierce
growl rumbling in his throat. The man thrust out the bundle toward him and Curley sprang at his throat. Missing the clutch, the dog found himself in the grasp of my father, who was also enraged. He seemed enraged with as small a reason as that which animated the dog. Poor old Curley became the victim of my father’s anger because he had violated the rule that he must not molest strangers. Picking up a pair of old fashioned tongs which had come down to us from fireplace times, father belabored Curley until the tongs were actually bent.
Curley yielded, still growling, and the man asked in language which seemed to be very broken German if he might stay all night.”

“’No!’ said father curtly; and this seemed a terrible thing to me. It was a breach of our habitual hospitality.”

“Our would-be guest protested, still in broken speech, about being tired and hungry. Father told him that a mile or so farther north he would find the home of a German with whom he would be more comfortable. The man protested still more emphatically. He would stay! Father stepped up to him, holding aloft the bent tongs.”

“’Did you see what I did to the dog?’ he asked. ‘Now you git or I’ll wind these tongs right around you!’”

“He got; and my sister Kate reported that as he passed the corner of the house he was filling the summer air of Iowa with curses in as fluent English–of a colloquial nature, of course–as one had ever heard. Evidently our visitor was not German. Evidently, too, he was pretending to be something he was not. We found out afterward the he had not asked for shelter at any house in the region. The episode looked suspicious; and I still believe that poor old Curley, the companion of my boyhood, as worthless a dog as ever lived under ordinary farm conditions, instinctively felt in the man’s presence something evil and threatening. I believe that our caller belonged to a gang of outlaws who lived within fifteen miles of us, and who subsequently terrorized the whole countryside. I suspect that Curley made an issue which gave my father the resolution to pull the latch string in with a gesture that intimidated a man with robbery in his mind.”

Early in the ‘80’s the railroad station agent disappeared. At the time the area between the station and the business part of town was heavily wooded.

It was thought that perhaps he had been ambushed and robbed on his way into town late one night after the arrival of the evening train.

Since his body was never found, no crime could be proven, and no one was ever accused in the incident.

In 1846, when some excavation was being done under the old Congregational church for a basement of the then Presbyterian church, some human bones were found along the side of the building. Dr. J.W. Caldwell, the town’s doctor at the time examined the bones and determined that they were not Indian bones and offered
the conclusion that they might be the long missing depot agent.

If the depot agents disappearance is related to the other events of the early 80’s is a mystery, but the incident does indicate the climate of the times.

Herbert Quick had a successful career as an author and had written a number of novels. The State Historical
Society of Iowa, in its publication The Palimpsest, for August 1923, featured an article on the Rainsbargers entitled “An Iowa Doone Band,” by Jocelyn Wallace. An editor’s note mentions the novel The Hawkeye by author Herbert Quick saying, “The terrific climax of the book, describing the lynching of Pitt and Bowie Bushyager,
is a remarkably accurate account of what actually happened to Manse and Finn Rainsbarger in Eldora on the night of June 4th, 1885. The Bushyagers of The Hawkeye are unmistakably the Rainsbargers of reality whose true history may be read in the study of ‘An Iowa Doone Band.’ The Hawkeye is epochal.”

Herbert Quick, wrote many novels, and in two, The Hawkeye, and Vandemarks Folly, Quick draws from his experiences in the area, and relates many truths in fiction form. With the names of people and places changed it is somewhat difficult yet possible to draw much true history from these books.