Riverbend Journal

With the people of Ottumwa offering a $500 reward for the capture of the men who murdered Laura Harvey, the Governor of Iowa offering another $500 and later on the Wapello County Board of Supervisors offering up a $500 reward, it is not surprising that false sightings and innocent people got swept up in the fervor to find the killers. The first person swept up happened in Omaha, Nebraska where a man was arrested and charges with larceny for stealing a purse containing $160. The larceny was said to have occurred just across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa and the lawmen who had tracked him across the river to Omaha, soon thought the captured man bore an uncanny resemblance to Lant McComb. A Nebraska judge headed the case but wouldn't release the man into Iowa custody until a formal requisition was made by Iowa Governor Kirkwood.  The man who was only identified by the last name of Tubbs, of course protested that he was from Kentucky and feared that is he were taken back to Ottumwa...

  I have to ask myself, why did I plant to many tomato plants again this year? I did cut back considerably from last year in which I ended up planting over 70 tomato plants. Two dozen of those were due to my mother-in-law getting carried away and planting a whole packet of seeds. The rest were due to a friend of ours who plants a community garden who over ordered and was having a hard time finding homes for all of them. Flash forward to this year, I planted an entire package of seeds and planned on giving away most of the extras. I did give away quite a bit but ended up with 16 plants remaining, 13 which I stuck in the garden and three which my MIL adopted. One of those adopted three were stuck in the dirt outside the greenhouse and quickly died and two more were stuck in small pots on the deck where they have been starved and have produced only two or three fifty cent sized fruits. I tried to impart that tomatoes don't like small containers that get their roots warm and dry out qu...

Over the years, I have been to the above Abbey a few times as a stop with guests. It is a place about three hours drive from home and a great chance to stretch your legs. The grounds are beautiful and has been a picnic spot for us. They also have a chapel that one can visit as well as a gift shop. One of their amenities is that you can stay there for a retreat to get away from your hectic life and live life as a monk, at least until you get back in your car and drive off. So recently on a spur of the moment decision, fresh from shipping our eldest off to college, my wife and I headed there for an overnight stay. We got there about 9:30 in the morning and checked in at the front desk. This is a picture of our actual room. Lest you think two people shared that small bed, I'm actually standing just inside the door and right next to the second bed. There were no queen beds with plush mattresses, which I guess I didn't expect living the life of a monk. The mattresses were really thi...

 Laura Jane Harvey Laura Jane Harvey was the oldest daughter of Rufus J. and Sarah R. Harvey. She was one of eight children with two older brothers, two younger brothers and three younger sisters. Her father Rufus has come from New Hampshire/Maine area as a child and lived in various places in Wisconsin where Laura had been born around 1845 and Illinois. He started off as a Methodist preacher but at some point became an attorney and at the time of Laura's death, was a respected lawyer for the firm Barnap & Harvey in Rockford.  Mr. Harvey had done some professional business for George Lawrence which is how he came to know Laura and her family. It seems that whenever he was in town, George used the opportunity to stop in to see the Harvey family and to court Laura however her parents weren't too keen on this due to her young age.  Laura's parents forbid George from coming into their house but they still found time to meet clandestinely for buggy rides or to meet up "...

It is hard to believe this picture is a little over 18 years ago. It was posted on this very blog along with a lot of posts of a very wet behind the ears father rambling about this and that without really knowing what he was doing. It certainly wasn't very good writing about something that turned out to be one of two masterpieces I created. One of my most vivid memories of that time was the drive home from the hospital after ten days spent mostly in the NICU due to a tough delivery that ended up with a sick baby and mother. As we made the 20 mile drive home, we had to stop several times to prop our daughter's head up to make sure she wasn't choking off her airflow as she slept in her car seat. Of course she wasn't but we were that new to parenting, she meant the world to us and we weren't prepared to take the chance. Funny how of all the stories of my life I've written on this blog, I've never written that one. Now, seemingly weeks later, we are dropping her...

  With the tomatoes ripening nicely, peppers in abundance and plenty of onions to use up, salsa making time came to our house. The last time I made salsa was during Covid in 2020 and we still have a few jars of that batch left over but probably not enough to last for the rest of the year. So I picked a bunch of tomatoes over several days and got the large stock pot out from the basement. Above you see about half the tomatoes stemmed and cut into chunks, ready to begin cooking down. After they had cooked down a bit, I ran them through my mill to remove the skin and seeds and then returned them to the pot along with a large amount of onions and two different kinds of peppers. After getting them hot, I added a bit of sugar, vinegar, salt and prepped my jars for canning. Once I ladled the boiling salsa into hot sterilized jars, I added the lids, bands and processed them in a hot water bath. Once sterilized and heated through, I lined them up on the counter to cool and seal. In my child...

 During the weeks afterwards Two of the search parties for the killers returned from the west and the south empty handed. The party heading south toward St. Joseph had actually found the party they were after but only to find that they didn't match the description of the ones they were looking for.  Finally on April 7, the first clues to the identity of the murdered girl and her killers emerged in the form of a letter from F.O. Harvey who lived in Rockford, Iowa. Rockford, April 7 th , 1860 Mr. Bradbury, Sir: - Having seen a letter of yours to your father, and understanding from it that you reside at, or near the place where there was a young lady murdered, I write you: I had a sister that left this place three weeks ago, with a man by the name of Lawrence. She had been receiving his attentions for some time, contrary to the wishes of her friends, and it seems that ten days before they left this place, they were clandestinely married at Beloit, in Wisconsin. She exhibited ...

  The garden at this time of the year is nearly a full time job. Above was the bounty from a single day of picking along with a basketful of dry shell beans below. For some reason, the end plants of each row of dry beans had very green pods still on them while all the plants in the middle were dry to the point some where starting to sprout or rot. So I picked everything for two of the three different varieties I planted this year. First, I turned the tomatoes into tomato soup, something we enjoy all winter long with grilled cheese sandwiches whenever a light meal is desired. It is also popular among friends and family and so we give a fair amount of it away too. I also took the time to quickly blanch some extra green beans, soak them in an ice bath and then vacuum bag and freeze them. They become a quick side dish for meals coming up. We mostly ate them as they were being produced so we won't be eating them all year long unfortunately. As it turned out, the Olympics were on right a...

  For my second attempt at videoing critters behind my house, I moved the trail camera to a lower height hoping to see more critters like the raccoon and more of the deer bodies. The last camera had only caught the tops of them for the most part. While my change in height worked on the deer, they were all I captured this time around. I think next time I will move the camera to behind the garden up next to the woods to see if I might capture something different. In this video you will see a closeup of mama deer and one of her twins, then you will see one of her twins get scared by some unseen thing, another twin will have an itch and finally you will see the twin fawns with their spots together presumably being called by their parents. I tried to add music but for some reason, my speakers weren't playing sound so it will be interesting to see if it shows up on this video. 

Friday, March 30, 1960 and the following days The girls body was brought to a nearby vacant store belonging to Charles Lawrence on the corner of Court and Main streets and laid out on the counter. The Coroner, Mr. C.G. Packard was sent for and jury members for an inquest were quickly found, James Hawley, D.F. Gaylord and Erastus Washburn. Two doctors were also called to examine the body for good measure, Drs. Thrall and Williamson.  An examination of the body was held and the jurors came to the conclusion that the girl had been murdered due to blows inflicted upon her head by persons unknown. There was a crack in the base of her skull some seven to nine inches in length with several more cracks radiating out from the primary crack. Beneath the cracks, her brain had ruptured. She had also been choked as evidence by the deeply indented marks around her neck. The doctors examined her lungs, windpipe and stomach and determined that she had been dead before she had been thrown in the ri...

  Getting rid of unneeded objects has always been a thing of frustration for me. It takes way more effort and time than it should. With every object I get rid of, I would like to think I have learned from past experiences and gotten a little smarter but life has a way of lashing back and saying, "Not so fast!" At the end of my last ad in which I was selling a twin bed and mattress for a measly $20 just so it didn't end up in the landfill and I'm not messaged by everyone looking to make money off something offered for free, I appended a list of rules to save me from some of the frustrations. If you are reading this ad, it is still available so don't ask. - Marketplace provides a button shortcut to ask the seller, "Is this still available?" This requires me to respond to dozens of inquiries with the same, "yes it is" and if I don't respond in a timely manner, people will repeatedly message me or get upset that I didn't respond immediately...

  Door County, Wisconsin has crossed my radar a few times and I knew it was pretty scenic but thought it was mostly a tourist trap. Some friends of ours recently went there and affirmed that it was but that one could easily get off the beaten path and do other things so it bumped up on our list. Not two weeks later, my wife got a few days off from work, besides her normal three day weekend and we decided to plan a spur of the moment vacation. Not wanting to spend four nights in a motel in Green Bay and then drive everyday to Door County, because everything in Door County has long since been booked, I looked into AirBnBs in Door County and found one that we liked. It was more expensive than I would normally pay for a night in a motel by a considerable amount, but the location of it off the beaten path and right on the shore of Lake Michigan, seemed exactly like what we were looking for and it happened to be available in two days time so I booked it. We spent four nights there and ca...

 Tuesday, March 27 thru Thursday, March 29, 1860 The pea green wagon with red running gears pulled by two horses entered the east end of town on the main road. It was pulled by a dark bay with one hind foot that was white and a dark brown with pointed ears. Tied to the back was a third horse, a heavy set, brown bay with harness marks etched into its hide. Riding on the wagon seat were three people. The first was a slim built short man who had a several days black stubble of a beard and wearing light gray clothing. The other was a heavy chested man with brown hair, a ruddy red face, black clothes, and a low crowned silk hat. Between the two men sat a young girl of about 15 years of age, light skinned and with shoulder length auburn hair, blue eyes. She was wearing a dark red plaid dress, trimmed with braid around the next and sleeves. The trio checked into the Jefferson House and lodged their horses at Blodget's Livery Stable. When registering for the night, the thin short man cla...