By Ann Petersen, SBA Columnist | 9/11/25
(SBA) - In Aliene Baker Lindgren’s 1954 book, she writes that in early Sergeant Bluff history, “The young man who didn’t have a saddle horse at his disposal was rather the exception.” (p.16) Horse racing was the sport of the day. A few young men were fortunate to possess a one-horse, two-wheeled cart for summer use and a home-made jumper sleigh for the winter season. In his early account of the country, Albert Holman wrote of the next preacher in the community, Daniel Lamont, whom he termed “a very different type of man from any of those who preceded him. Very genial, a handshake and cordial greeting to everyone; a good mixer with the young people and he had us thinking him the finest man in the world. Mrs. Lamont also a delightful woman and had a bunch of young people at the parsonage. They had quite a good library and Mrs. Lamont was a great reader and would delight us all in telling stories she had been reader.” (p. 5)
Albert Holman wrote about a time when he took advantage of Rev. Lamont’s kindness. He said, ”Mr. Lamont had a two-horse platform spring wagon, with an improvised top of white canvas which he himself had placed upon it. Jeff Brassfield and I wanted to borrow that spring wagon to go to a dance in Onawa. We felt delicate about asking him for it, but finally I summoned up the courage and asked for the loan of the wagon. We did not tell him where we were going with it. Very willingly, he let us have it. When we got back from the dance the next day, we felt quite guilty about what we had done. Finally, I went to him and confessed up where we gone with his buggy. He laughed and thought it a good joke and said, ‘All right boys, if going to that dance has not hurt you, it won’t hurt the buggy.” (p.6)
Albert Holman completed the final paragraph of his informal essay, “Then came the Rev. Mr. Ingham, just the date I do not recollect. He married Mrs. Ann Bates, here in Sergeant Bluff. Mr. Ingham’s pastorate was very successful and he was very much liked by all.” This is the last passage in Holman’s hand, although he reappears in later history of the town. He concludes, “This brings the time up to about the summer of 1864 and the four years after that I was away from home (presumably at college) and know very little about the ministers in that interim.” (p.6)
In a packet of information about the history of the town and its first church, but no indication of where this material is published, I found the following information, “On December 8, 1860, the church was incorporated under the laws of the state of Iowa. Rev. S.U. Ingham was pastor at that time. Here are some of the original Articles of Incorporation. Article #1 The name of this incorporation shall be the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Woodbury, Woodbury County, Iowa. Article #2 The object of this society shall be the promotion of religion in our midst and the spread of scriptural holiness throughout the world. Article #3 The following named persons shall constitute the Board of Trustees of said Association for the first year of its existence and until their successors are elected: Luther Woodford, John Householder, T.E Clark, Wm. Esty and W.P Holman. In 1863, the Woodbury Township purchased the land in the hills overlooking the town as its cemetery. A roadway to this cemetery was never owned by the township and consequently there has been constant strife between the owners of the cemetery plots and the owners of the brickyards to its south. When Holman bought the brickyards in 1866, he gave the right-of-way for a road, but the present owners abuse the road to the point of hardly being able to call what is there a road.” (no page) Mr. Holman’s first wife was relocated to the cemetery, the first white woman to be buried there.
On July 23, 1864,, the area was hit with a plague of grasshoppers. One woman wrote at the time, “So thick were the clouds of these invaders that the sun was at times darkened—houses, fences, trees were literally covered with the little pests… Where it fell in piles one to two feet in depth…Fields and gardens looked promising, but in three hours-time, not a vestige of growing plant was left and the fields were trimmed down to half-inch stubble. Squash vines were the only green things left, which for some reason the hoppers did not touch. Hundreds of acres of luxuriant corn, whose rustling leaves inspired the poor settlers with hope, were in a few hours swept away.” (no page) Families who joined the community in 1864 included the Hurlburt Brothers, Lafayette Foster, Irvine Dewey, Milton Swartz, William Carter, Aaron Olson, Squire Haviland and Oliver Bryan.
In that year, L.M. Brown, who operated the first dairy business in the area, bought land along the Missouri River in Liberty Township and erected a second sawmill. In the spring of 1867, a June flood changed the course of the Missouri River. Brown’s homestead was cut off from the main channel, leaving Brown with an ox-bow, to this day known as “Brown’s Lake. In that same year, “swamp land” south of town was sold to the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad in exchange for the building of a stockyard and grain outlet on the new railroad land at Sergeant Bluff.
