THE PRESS-NEWS, Osage, Iowa, February 1, 1973
(Remembrances of Otranto – Jesse James – Cole Younger)
Otranto! When my mother, Mrs. George B. Schrader of Osage, sent me the Dec. 14th, 1972, issue of the Mitchell County Press-News, it lifted a misty veil from almost a half century of time and brought back distant childhood memories.
When I first saw picturesque little Otranto it boasted two grocery stores, an restaurant, a mill, an elevator, village smith, hotel and hardware store, but the Volstead Act hand closed down its saloon.There was a depot and half a dozen trains a day thundered through without slowing. When one stopped, it was an event. There wasn’t a foot of paved highway in all of Mitchell County and the old “Red Ball” road which ran south from Lyle, Minn., was deeply rutted. Farmers worked out their poll tax smoothing its surface or digging out clogged ditches.In the 1920’s the most distinguished citizen of Otranto was Miss Kathryn von Ewertson, who wore high collars and had entertained the royal courts of Europe. She taught Voice at Mitchell Consolidated School, dividing all pupils into “singers” and “listeners” – I was the latter.C.R. Hemphill was superintendent of Otranto schools and my first grade teacher was Miss Velma Karl, but my favorite teacher in four years at Otranto was Rena Jean Nelson Tesch, later County Superintendent and now an Osage resident.
A senior citizen named Mr. Galt helped me catch my first fish, a 3-inch sunfish, near Otranto dam. When the river froze over, ice cutters moved in, sawing huge blocks for the Otranto icehouse. There wasn’t a refrigerator in every kitchen in those days.
On school days following a blizzard, bus driver Roy Gleason picked up farm boys and girls in a bobsled with a frosty canvas on top. One morning it was 40 degrees below zero and all students had frostbite upon reaching the Otranto brick school building. That was the day I resolved some day to live in Southern California!
Classmates I remember include Marian Wilder, Ruth Priem, Glenda Brandt, Jason Eckert, Lloyd Hagerude, Frank Kerchove, Billy French, Raymond Hartwig and John Stavinsky.
Otranto, although it is still home for 47 souls, has disappeared from the Iowa map here at my Los Angeles office. But 15 other tiny Mitchell County hamlets, Mona, Mitchell, Meltonville (on Worth County line), Carpenter, West Mitchell, Little Cedar, Orchard, Burr Oak, Brownville, McIntire, Bailey, Toeterville, Stacyville, New Haven and Meroa remain along with the “big” cities of Osage, St. Ansgar and Riceville.
Out West, some localities like Mona, Meroa, Bailey and Burr Oak would be called “ghost towns” and would become tourist attractions. But in Mitchell County these little settlements have slipped quietly into antiquity without informing Rand-McNally.
In researching my forthcoming book, “Jesse James – Man and Myth,” I discovered that in the summer of 1876, a year before Otranto’s birth, Cole Younger and his desperate men followed the Cedar River through Mitchell County enroute to a linkup with Frank and Jesse James in Mankato, Minn. The James boys had headed east from Deadwood City in Dakota Territory.
From Mankato the combined band made its unsuccessful assault on the First National Bank in Northfield, Minn, which was owned by former Union General “Spoons” Butler. Instead of pilfering $500,000 in gold, the James-Younger band met bloody disaster.
Now, historians killed off blood-thirsty Cole Younger at least three times, but he actually lived until 1950 when he died at the incredible age of 127 [See note below] in Nashville, Tenn., under the alias of Col. James B. Davis. Among his papers he described the trip taken 74 years earlier from Kansas City via Mitchell County to Mankato. He had scribbled, “South of the Minnesota line (Otranto?), we ran into a tame steer along the river. We cut his throat and roasted him over a fire in the woods. It was a hearty meal”.
So if your great-grandfather or grandfather lost a steer, blame it on Cole Younger.
A former Mitchell County farm boy, Delos Wayne Schrader.
P.S. For your information, I attended schools in Otranto, Mitchell, and graduated from St. Ansgar High School. I’m now a reporter with The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.
Reproduced with the approval of the: Mitchell County Historical Society
From “The Story of Mitchell County 1851 - 1973”Transcribed (June 2003) by: Neal Du Shane
Contact information:
REF: 062703 -- BOYHOOD MEMORIES STIRRED BY STORY.doc
Note: Wikipedia.com says Cole was born January 15, 1844 and died on March 21, 1916 (at the age of 72). Had he been born in 1844 and died at age 127, he would have lived until 1971. If he died in 1950 at age 127, he would have been born in 1823 and been about 37 at the beginning of the Civil War, and in his 50's while hanging around with the James Gang.
Note: Delos Schrader was born in 1917 and died in 1982.
Webization by Kermit Kittleson
Updated 4/3/08