November is the month for thanks:

Thank you, Sons and Daughters of Italy, and all who purchased a spaghetti dinner! See you next year!!

Thank you, Dogwood Circle Garden Club and Sue Boland, for work in the Heisey’s garden beds.

We thank John and Joyce Gummo as we dedicate the “Yard Jockey” engine at the Castanea Railroad Station at 3 p.m. on Nov. 2. The latest donation from John and Joyce Gummo, this little engine was important in the train yards.

Looking ahead to December, put Dec. 14 on your calendar for the Holiday Homes Tour and Holiday Open House at the Heisey House Museum! After that, the Heisey House will be closed to the public Dec. 15 through January, but we will be monitoring email and phone messages.

As Thanksgiving rolls around at the end of the month, many families share stories of long ago. If you’d like to share any oral history, contact us and we’ll help you with the process.

From the Collection

By Kathy Arndt

As promised, here is the rest of the story about Jerry Church’s life after he left Clinton County. Much of the information comes from 10 pages of his writings sent to the CCHS by Mrs. W.H. Casady, his great-granddaughter, after the reprint of the original journal in 1929 by the historical society. These pages covering the period of 1845 to 1857 were included in the 4th edition of the journal printed in 1983 for the city’s Sesquicentennial celebration. (Some copies of this reprint are available for sale at the Ross Library.)

In the new pages, Jerry Church explained his reason for leaving Lock Haven in 1845. At that time, he realized that he “had lived too fast for his pocket.” He wrote that his financial position was comparable to what it was when he left Jerico, N.Y., as a teenager. After leaving Lock Haven, he spent a short time in St. Louis but soon decided to go west to live with the Indians. He felt that his “living like a white man was coming to a stopping place in a short time for the want of the root of all evil, as some folks call it.” In the earlier pages of his journal, Church warned about the dangers of over-consumption of alcohol but also admitted that he did enjoy his daily drinks.

He and his red blanket joined the Sac and Fox Indians, who originally were from the Great Lakes region, primarily Lakes Huron and Michigan. Jerry settled near a garrison at the Raccoon fork of the Des Moines River in northern Iowa.

The arrival of more white settlers soon after forced the Indian tribe to move out. The U.S. government took over ownership of the Indian lands in the spring of 1846. The government allowed the settlers to claim up to 320 acres per family until a survey of the land was completed. Upon completion of the survey, the land claimed would be available to the claimants for $1.25 per acre. Jerry Church and an army surgeon claimed 640 acres ten miles below the fort and he began to lay out lots to be sold to the new arrivals in 1846. Two years later, as happened in Lock Haven, his financial partner pulled out of the deal when the time came to pay for the land. By selling the timber on his land and goods from the store he had established, Jerry Church managed to buy the land and establish the town of Dudley, Iowa. Church described Dudley as having “two stores, one grocery, two doctors, one black smith shop, and one shoemaker, and no churches except Jerry Church.”

In 1851, a flood described by Jerry as a “young Noah’s flood for it rained for forty days and nights” hit Dudley. The Des Moines River became 2-5 miles wide and the town remained flooded for two weeks. Almost everybody abandoned the town during the flood but two men in a skiff passing through Dudley reported seeing Jerry Church sitting in the fork of a cottonwood tree playing the Arkansas Traveler on his fiddle. (His fiddle survived the 1851 flood in Dudley but not the 1972 flood in Lock Haven.)

Because the people of Dudley felt nervous about rebuilding their town so close to the river, Jerry Church established a new town two additional miles away from Dudley. He named the new town Carlisle after a town of the same name in Pennsylvania.

Wanderlust struck Jerry again and he left Iowa. He settled in Kansas on Nov. 1, 1854 and started laying out the town of Franklin on Nov. 10. Although the end of his journal was in 1857, it is unknown what he did between establishing Franklin and deciding to move back to Franklin “to live myself this year, 1857, let the laws be pro or con.” It is known that he did return to Lock Haven in 1861 where he was hosted to a dinner at the Irvin House hotel.

According to Mrs. Casady, nothing is known of Jerry’s travels until 1870 when he bought 160 acres northeast of Lincoln, Neb., which he worked during the summers and lived with his daughter, Mrs. S.W. Hull (born in Lock Haven), during the winter. In the summer of 1874, his daughter’s husband, Dr. S.W. Hull went to bring Church back to Carlisle after he became ill. Jerry Church died 151 years ago on Nov. 1, 1874 at the age of 78.

Jerry Church traveled this country for over 60 years. At various times, he worked as a cattle drover, a boatman, a peddler, a shopkeeper, a farmer, a town planner, and a seller of real estate. He still took time to dance, play his fiddle, and enjoy the company of those around him. Sounds like a good life to me.