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MARCH 2005: Election Days in Old Hampton
The village election takes place in another month. Thought I would take advantage of the election being on everyone’s mind and provide a bit of history, courtesy of Morris Heagy’s “Recolections”. Heagy and his father were very interested and involved in local politics. Lets take a a step back into the Post Civil War Era and see how they elected their village government.
At general elections in those days, all of Hampton Township voted in the village of Hampton—Carbon Cliff, Rapids City, Barstow, and Watertown. Notice no mention is made of Silvis or East Moline. Where Silvis is today is where George Crawford raised watermelons. Where East Moline is today was a place called Port Byron Junction with two depots, one house and a frog pond.
Heagy’s first memories are of the voting taking place in what was called the old Town House that stood just south of the school house. It was a one story brick building which had originally been a school house. It had solid board blinds at the windows to keep the kids out. It needed them because the kids played around the place when not in school. It was a great place to play “Andy Over”. How many readers have ever played that game? It required a low building and you would roll a ball over the roof yelling “Andy Aye Over” and the kids on the other side would try to catch it. If they did they would run around the building and throw the ball at one of the kids on the other side. If they hit him (or her), that player would have to be on their side. Good game. In my day (1930s and 40s) we played at Eden Center School over the coal shed. But I digress. Let’s get back to elections.
Men (no women allowed to vote) would go to the polls to vote but they didn’t hurry back to work. They made a holiday of it and stuck around all day long. Heagy said his mother was prepared to have visitors for dinner. Some of them would include Shop and Ship Silvis, George Church from Carbon Cliff, Sam Wainwright from the Bluff, R M Mitchell from Rapids City and usually others.
This was before secret ballots. The political parties printed their own ballots and distributed them to their voters. Everybody knew what ballot everybody else took and what party they belonged to. Straight ticket voting along party lines. Independent voters were rare and there was no provision made for them. There was a floating vote that went the way it got most out of it whether it be money or beer. Political arguments were many and spirited. The Civil War had not been over very long and feelings from it were a factor. In township elections the voting was more for the man rather than the party, and for school directors, it was every man for himself.
Heagy describes in some detail an election held in 1890 or 91. It seems that H O Norton had been Village President (mayor) for many years and had run the village pretty much as he pleased. Some of the young men (Heagy among them) got tired of the one man rule. The night before the election some of them gathered in Heagy’s Store complaining that Norton would probably win the election. Somebody thought it might be possible to defeat him. They looked at the list of eligible voters. There were only about 90 of them. After a careful canvas of the list it was detected that there were about 50 who could possibly persuaded to vote for someone else. They decided to run Morris Heagy for mayor and Henry Nichols for clerk, with three others of there group for trustees. They cut up some paper and made ballots with their names on them. The scheme was that the ballots would be distributed to those they were pretty sure would vote their way. By now it was the middle of the night. The voter list was divided up and they went around to get the prospective voters out of bed, give them a ballot, and made them swear to keep it secret.
When Heagy went to vote in the morning he asked the election judge, Bill Edleman, how the election was going. Bill said “somebody is elected but I don’t know who”, meaning there were enough voters to make the election legal. When the ballot box was opened it was found that the conspirators had been elected—to a man. Not a single one of the midnight contacted voters had spilled the beans.
So Heagy was mayor and the council split 3 on his side and 3 against. For the first 3 meetings every vote was 3-3 with Heagy the tie-breaker. Then, at the next meeting Bill Mohr, one of the holdovers said: “That’s enough of this damn foolishness, lets attend to business.” From then on they got along fine. Norton never forgave Heagy for the chicanery, but it was all strictly legal.
With that, be sure to vote in the April election.