THE 1880’S IMMIGRATION AND OUTLAWS

In the early days of Steamboat Rock, and Hardin county, there were some citizens of questionable character. Looking back on some of the incidences of the area’s first fifty years, and particularly the 1880’s we get the strange feeling that maybe the stories we saw in those TV westerns had some basis in fact. Horse thieves, gun
fights, murder, lynching, cattle rustling and vigilantes were all part of the Steamboat Rock story in the early 1880’s.

In some cases those guilty of those early crimes were never brought to justice; some were acquitted by the courts, and others served time in the penitentiaries some for a term of years and some for life. Not all the crimes committed were by the men and women arrested and tried, and not all the persons charged were in fact guilty.

The justice system was not perfect and often very imperfect. In the mid 1880’s a very famous case developed that took nearly one hundred years to prove that justice was terribly blind.

In the 1880’s Steamboat Rock, and Hardin county began to gain a reputation in the state and even as far away as Chicago as a community plagued with lawlessness and even murder.

This reputation by no means started with, but much of it became centered around one family. The Rainsbarger.

It began back in the 1870’s and perhaps even earlier when certain men of low character found it easy to steal horses and all forms of livestock and turn a quick profit by selling the same in another county. Back then there was little that could be done to trace stolen goods and livestock, and even worse little could be done to protect
ones property save standing guard on it 24 hours a day.

By the 1880’s some individual horse thieves had joined others to form a network that became quite sophisticated in the theft and disposal of livestock, and particularly horses. It was even rumored that horses
stolen in Hardin county, were being driven to a meeting place on the Missouri border where other horses stolen in that state were exchanged. The Missouri horses were then brought back to Hardin county and sold. Often to an unsuspecting farmer who had his horse stolen earlier.

There were many names that became identified with the theft of horses in the area, one of the most notorious was that of Jack Reed.

There were two centers where the horse thieves gathered and hid the stolen animals until they could be disposed of. One was south of Eldora, and the other north of Steamboat Rock. Both were on the Iowa River, in areas where there were deep ravines covered with a dense growth of trees, underbrush and vines. There were
also rumored to be caves large enough to hide a number of horse.

A particular area north of Steamboat was then known as “the big woods.” It was in this area that a family by the name of Rainsbarger lived and seemed to be little different from other families in the area.

George and Katherine Rainsbarger had ten children, five sons and five daughters. Martha, William, Finley,
Nathan, Emanuel, Frank, Charity, Delia, Livina, and Elizabeth.

The children grew and took their place in the community. Six of the children would be directly affected by what was to happen in the 80’s, and the rest would be traumatized by the events until their deaths.

William, the oldest son, was born in Tuscarawas county Ohio, in 1839, and came to Hardin county with his parents in 1853. In 1860, he bought a farm of 120 acres near that of his parents and began a large family
of his own. He was respected by his neighbors, and elected to and served on the Steamboat Rock school board.

Second to the youngest Rainsbarger brothers was Emanuel M. (Manse) Rainsbarger. About 1881, Manse, began working for Henry Dinges in his blacksmith shop in Steamboat Rock. He soon purchased Dinges’ share of the business and ran it on his own. He was well liked and is said to have let the local boys come into the shop and make sleds.

Frank the youngest of the brothers, and Nathan (Nate), who was nine years older remained on the family’s forty-acre farm when their parents died. In the fall each year they ran a threshing crew. A citizen later recalled, “The Rainsbarger boys had a thrasher when I was a child and we had them do our threshing. They were nice men when they threshed for us and even stayed all night at our place several times.”

They weren’t perfect, the Rainsbarger boys were known to take a drink, and sometimes associate with a few
low lives, and were even described as “no Sunday school boys”, but with exception of one son, Finley, it would seem that nothing they became involved in was considered a crime.

The second oldest son, Finley (Finn), was of the five brothers the only one to ever be considered dangerous. He had killed a man with a knife during a drugstore scuffle. He also had a reputation of being involved with the horse thieves operating in his neighborhood. His reputation may well have been one of the factors that made what happened so easy for the people of the county to believe.

A great deal of controversy still surrounds the story of the Rainsbarger though much has been cleared up in recent years. While the Rainsbarger were indeed innocent of the major crimes they came to be accused of, they were perhaps guilty of enough mischief to make some of the allegations believable.

The Eldora Herald was probably most responsible for the attitude that the general public had regarding the incidents.

The four Rainsbarger brothers were completely innocent of the two murders that they were accused of. If they were completely innocent of associating with some of the horse thieves and other lawbreakers of the times may still be questioned.

The writings of Herbert Quick, and the stories that were retold by men of good character that lived through the turbulent times. One, Henry Eilers, recounted the reputation of the Rainsbarger as horse thieves and general mischief makers.

The four Rainsbarger brothers of reputation may not have been collectively guilty of some of the lessor crimes that they were accused of but one or two of them may have been. For that reason, they were easy targets for the counterfeiters to shift the blame for their murderous deeds.

Despite the fact that many admitted later, that they had done deeds that the brothers were blamed for, there had to be a thread of guilt in the fabric of their lives for the story to be so convincing