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Time Machine: New Statehouse, new governor
But efforts to save Sherman home in Vinton failed
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When newly elected Gov. Buren Sherman was sworn in as Iowa’s governor on Jan. 12, 1882, Iowa’s new Statehouse was under construction in Des Moines.
The temporary Capitol, a 3-story brick building, was the home of state government for the 30 years it took to build the new Capitol. It was eventually replaced by the Soldiers and Sailors Monument.
Wounded at Shiloh
Sherman was a 24-year-old lawyer from Vinton when he signed up to serve in the Civil War with the Iowa 13th Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
He was seriously wounded at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee in February 1862. While hospitalized, he was promoted to the rank of captain and returned to his company on crutches. His wound, however, forced him to resign in the summer of 1862, and he returned to his home in Benton County.
Sherman married Vinton native Lena Kendall in August 1862. They built a modest, five-room home with a covered porch running the length of the home at 910 Second Ave.
When they weren’t in Des Moines, they and their two children lived in the Vinton home.
Sherman’s career
Sherman was a county judge until 1866, when he became the clerk of district court. He filed the incorporation papers for the city of Vinton in July 1869.
He became state auditor in 1874, serving until his retirement six years later.
The Republican Party nominated him for governor in 1881, a year when the primary issue was Prohibition, something Sherman favored. He won and was inaugurated in January 1882.
He ran for re-election two years later, just as the new Statehouse in Des Moines was being completed.
New capitol
Sherman’s second inauguration, Jan. 21, 1884, was held in the new Statehouse rotunda in front of more than 3,000 observers.
“The new chambers of the Senate and House are well worth a visit from all Iowa people,” the Oskaloosa Herald reported. “The commissioners in charge have done a good piece of work in every way, and one that will attract national attention. The Senate chamber, in many ways, is superior to anything that is to be found in the west, or in the east, and I place it not behind that of the national capitol itself. Its frescoes, while not of the finest, are in good taste, and give admirable finish to the whole. The House is a brighter room, and the frescoes are more decided, but I think that the ordinary citizen will like the tones in the Senate chamber best.”
Popular, honest
Sherman was a popular, honest governor. When he finished his second term, he and his family moved to Waterloo, where he became president of Citizens Mutual Fire Insurance Co.
But as his health failed, the Shermans moved back to Vinton. After returning home from a Masonic meeting in November 1904, Sherman suffered a brain hemorrhage and died.
His widow, Lena, lived in Vinton for a while with her sister until she moved to California to live with her daughter in the 1920s. She died in 1935 and was buried in Vinton beside her husband.
Sherman home
When the Frank Kruse family purchased the Sherman property in 1938, the house was moved to a farm near Garrison where it was occupied by the farm’s hired man, then turned into a chicken house. The farm’s most recent owner said he used it as a place to feed his sows.
Sherman’s house was included in a 1969 “Follow the Heritage Trail” directory that also included Benton County’s Tilford Academy and the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School. But there wasn’t a lot to see. When Gerald Kreutner took over the farm in 1969, he boarded up the old building and fed his hogs in the shade of the front porch overhang.
No return
By 1975, the house was in poor shape.
“When you see it, you can’t imagine that it was ever nice, but it was,” said Betty Myers, Vinton’s unofficial historian, who was part of a 1975 campaign to move the house back to Vinton. The house, she said, was once “beautiful, simply a dollhouse.”
The house was deemed difficult to move because it was heavy. The walls were brick, covered by wood siding, inside and out.
A plan to have the Iowa National Guard move the house as a training exercise fell through with a change in Guard leadership. Efforts to place the house on the National Register of Historic Places hit a dead end because it was no longer on its original site.
As the house continued to deteriorate, hope for moving it waned.
By 1979, Myers said, “I guess we’re not meant to get anything done on this. It looks like the house doesn’t mean a lot to anybody but us.”
Fellow society member Sally Olinger said, “I don’t know what it takes. Maybe if we had money. If it was a mansion like Montauk, and Gov. Sherman had been a wealthy man, there probably wouldn’t be any problem. He was just a good, honest governor from a humble background.”
The Gazette reported in October 1981 that all efforts to move the house back to Vinton and restore it had failed.
Sharon Happel of the Benton County Historical Society said in an email, “Sorry to report that there is nothing left of the cabin. It was used as a hog house until it basically fell apart. It was too far gone to be restored.”
Comments: D.fannonlangton@gmail.com
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