Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Russell, prepare to meet your maker
Well, not exactly. But there is a
long-standing misunderstanding about Russell's namesake, Henry Sturgis Russell,
and the role he played in creation of the town that bears his name along
newly-built Burlington & Missouri River Railroad tracks during October of
1867.
Much of this can be traced to Lucas
County's 1881 history in which newspaper editor turned historian Dan Baker
wrote, "The original town was platted by Mr. H.S. Russell, trustee for the
owners of the land, on the 9th day of October, 1867, and contained 209
lots."
That account calls to mind images of
a dusty pioneer civil engineer armed with surveying equipment encamped on the
town site and transferring onto paper in the form of a plat the streets, alleys
and lots of the new town he had just envisioned --- then named for himself.
Well, not exactly.
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Russell, just 29 when the town of
Russell came into being, was a Massachusetts native, born June 21, 1838, at
Savin Hill, then a seaside resort. His father, Robert Russell, was a
successful merchant and financier; young Henry, an 1860 graduate of Harvard
College.
During 1861, as the Civil War began,
Henry volunteered and began his service as 1st lieutenant in the 2nd
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. He concluded an exemplary military career in
1864 with the rank of colonel, breveted at war's end to brigadier general.
On May 6, 1864, he married Mary
Hathaway Forbes, daughter of John Murray Forbes, a major mover and shaker in
Boston-based financial endeavors nationwide. Quite naturally, he went to work for
his father-in-law.
Forbes and his associate, Boston
banker Nathaniel Thayer, were principals in financing construction of both the
Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad and the Burlington & Missouri
River Railroad. Forbes was Burlington & Missouri River president at the
time it expanded across southern Iowa.
The partners also formed a company
to buy and sell land (and establish towns) along the Burlington & Missouri
route. The company was organized formally as the Russell Trust, named after Mr.
Forbes' new son-in-law, and legal title to the land was placed in Henry's name
as trustee.
John M. Forbes' point man in Iowa
was his nephew, Charles Elliott Perkins, who lived in Burlington and went on to
serve for many years as a highly respected president of the C.B.&Q. At the
time the town of Russell was formed, he was superintendent of the B.&M.R.
and responsible, too, for supervising operations of the Russell Trust.
Any business he conducted for the
trust was done in the name of Henry S. Russell, trustee, but Mr. Russell
remained in Boston with Mr. Perkins at the helm in Iowa. It was Perkins
who employed the engineers, surveyors, draftsmen and clerks who planned,
platted and developed new towns like Russell, then Lucas, along the route. And
it most likely was Charles who decided to name one of those new towns Russell
in honor of his cousin by marriage, Henry S.
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Henry Russell seems to have had no
particular interest in commercial pursuits --- and with plenty of family money
didn't need to develop one. He retired from his father-in-law's firm after
three years and retreated to his farms where he specialized in trotting horses
and, later, Jersey cattle. But he did remain as titular head of the Russell
Trust and also served on the C.B.&Q. Railroad board.
Henry also was civic minded and
served in a number of positions of public trust --- Milton selectman, Boston
police commissioner and Boston fire commissioner, a position he still held at
the time of his death on Feb. 16, 1905, at the age of 66. A Unitarian, he was
buried with neither pomp nor circumstance in the Milton Cemetery, survived by
two sons and three daughters.
So did Henry ever visit his namesake
town along the tracks in southern Iowa? If he did so, there's no record of it,
but he did travel widely to and through Iowa pursuing his interests in
livestock as the years passed. And since the C.B.&Q. was kind of a family
business, it's entirely possible that he at least passed through.
