New this year at the Steam & Power Show

Mitchell County Iowa Stories of Heroism

 Wallace McKinney: A freed slave who brought a soldier home to Mitchell County 

 by Deb Nicklay

As our re-enactors will portray, the Civil War was a deadly time for anyone caught up in battle – and that reminds us of the story of Capt. Seymour McKinley who but for the grace of God and slave Wallace McKinney, would have died during that terrible struggle. 

Seymour McKinley, from the now-ghost town of Newburg, was one of four brothers to join the Union cause. Squire, Cornelius and Randolph were the others and together, had come to Mitchell County with their parents in the fall of 1855. Seymour and Squire were the oldest and they quickly joined in 1861. Cornelius and Randolph soon followed, according to a history written by Squire’s great-nephew, the late Keith McKinley of Osage. 

Seymour, with the 24th Iowa, was wounded seven times during his tenure and the last wounds were received at the Battle of Fisher’s Hill, part of Major Philip Sheridan’s drive to rob the Confederate of the Shenandoah Valley’s agricultural abundance. Seymour was left for dead among other corpses in an abandoned cabin, according to the family history. 

How exactly McKinney found Seymour is lost to history, but shortly after Seymour’s near-fatal injury, Wallace – he was only known by “Wallace” at that time – brought Seymour home to Newburg. 

Wallace McKinney came to the Union side after an escape from a plantation in Mississippi – reportedly owned by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He was scheduled to be shot after he refused, at the age of 12, to join the Confederates, but an unidentified white woman helped him to escape and make his way to the Union lines. 

With Seymour in bad shape, Wallace – a black, illiterate slave – found the wherewithal to bring Seymour home, a trip of over 1,000 miles. If there was any question about what Wallace would do once he reached Newburg, Keith McKinley wrote that “my great-grandmother had answers” to any question regarding Wallace. He was given a job on the first day after his arrival, he added. 

Wallace McKinney went on to work for the railroad and then purchased a small farm just on the other side of the Mitchell County line, in Worth County. He married and gained the respect of all who knew him, history says. 

The Manly Signal said upon his death in 1927 that he was a highly-respected citizen who – the Signal erroneously reported – had been brought to Iowa by Seymour McKinley, not the other way around. 

Wallace McKinney was one of three noted black Civil War soldiers who found their way to North Iowa. William Wright, who served with a Union regiment from Kentucky, settled in Worth County; and Solomon Stratton of Virginia. Stratton during the war took care of the horse of Lt. 

Henry Verbeck, who owned land in Pottawattamie and Worth counties. Solomon, who married of William Wright’s daughters, eventually purchased land in Worth County, where he farmed. 

Civil War Vets in Stacyville

by Cheryl Mullenbach

Civil War Vets in Stacyville

by Cheryl Mullenbach

On a summer morning in 1913 The Monitor newspaper office in Stacyville, Iowa, welcomed “an old soldier who fought at Vicksburg and marched through Jackson.” Cyrus Edward Smith regaled editor Harry McGlashan with stories of his war-time experiences and used a map to trace the route he and his fellow Union soldiers trekked through the South.

Cyrus had responded to the government’s call for soldiers in August 1862. He was 27 years old and lived in Fairbank, Iowa, with his wife Nancy and two daughters. Cyrus and other men from the area formed Company C in Iowa’s 27th Infantry Regiment under the leadership of an Independence business owner, Captain Joseph Noble.  

The locals depended on the Buchanan County newspaper, The Guardian, to keep them informed about their boys. And it didn’t disappoint. As the men started training in Dubuque to their days on the southern battlefields, The Guardian offered readers detailed scenarios of life as a soldier. In Dubuque as the recruits marched to a park, the local families cheered. A speaker assured the men that their contributions to history would “live long after this generation shall have been forgotten.” 

The Guardian reported from Jackson, Tennessee, in May 1863. Here the boys from Iowa were treated to clean water and feasted on eggs. Citizens welcomed the men of the 27th Regiment, according to the paper. In late May 1864, the paper reported that Cyrus’ Company C had experienced their share of the fight but all were in the best of spirits at Grand Ecore, Louisiana. By the end of the war, around 200 men from the 27th Regiment had been lost to battle and disease. 

Cyrus was mustered out of the army on August 8, 1865, at Clinton, Iowa. He returned home to Fairbank, where he and Nancy raised a family. Nancy died in 1893. 

In 1913 when Cyrus visited the Stacyville newspaper office to reminisce about his war experiences, he was living and working in the area. The 1915 Iowa Census includes him as a resident of Stacyville. His occupation was listed as a “pontoonare.” (Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a “pontonier” as “an individual engaged in constructing a pontoon bridge.”)

A death certificate signed by long-time Stacyville physician, Dr. William Brown, on November 18, 1915, listed Cyrus’ address as Stacyville and his cause of death as “Old age.” He was 81 and his occupation was “farmer.” He was buried in Fairbank. One of Cyrus’ four daughters, Bertha Abelene Smith Young, lived in Mitchell and Stacyville, Iowa, in 1925 and 1930. She lived in St. Ansgar later and was buried there in 1961.

Ten years after Cyrus Smith died, residents of Stacyville gathered to say goodbye to another Civil War vet. In November 1925, 82-year-old Balthasar “Baltes” Schaffer’s funeral was held at Visitation Church. Prominent businessmen served as honorary pallbearers. Although Baltes wasn’t a native of Stacyville, he had become a well-known and respected fellow. 

Baltes was born in Germany in 1844 and emigrated to the United States with his family when he was seven years old. The family settled in Johnsburg, Illinois, a small community started by German immigrants in 1841. In October 1864 Baltes volunteered with the 13th Regiment Illinois Cavalry Company K, seeing action in Mississippi and Arkansas. Overall, the 13th lost nearly 400 men to wounds and disease. Baltes was mustered out in August 1865 at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and returned to Johnsburg to farm. In 1875 Baltes and a couple of brothers, Hubert and Joseph Hackenmiller, hitched a team to a wagon and set out for Stacyville, Iowa, to engage in farming. The 300 mile trip had to be grueling; but Baltes met a girl, married, and spent the rest of his days in Stacyville.  

Baltes married Katherina “Katie” Durben in 1878. The couple adopted a brother and sister from one of the Orphan Trains in 1889. Freddie and Mary came from New York and took the Schaffer name as their own. 

Baltes and Katie farmed and owned a rental house. (The house is at 101 South Albion in Stacyville.) Baltes also received a pension from the US government related to his service in the war. 

The Des Moines Register reported that Baltes’ death “leaves that township without a surviving veteran of the civil war.” The Stacyville newspaper reported that at Visitation Church on the day of his funeral, “friends and family filled the church to full capacity.”