How Russell got its name

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.