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Buried Stories: Napoleon Bonaparte Buford (1807-1883)
Following his graduation from West Point, Lieutenant Napoleon Buford surveyed the Rock Island and Des Moines rapids on the Mississippi River in the late 1820s. The rapids were a major obstacle for...
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Buried Stories: Gene Baker (1925-1999)
Eugene Walker Baker was born in Davenport on June 15, 1925. He attended Davenport High School, where he starred in basketball and track for the Blue Devils. In his senior year, he was an all-state...
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Buried Stories: Benjamin Bucklin Brayton (1815 -1865) and Benjamin “Ben”...
A life-size bronze sculpture, Lincoln with Boy on Bridge, stands in downtown Davenport’s Bechtel Park near the Arsenal Bridge. Abraham Lincoln stands on a railroad track gazing forward; a seated boy...
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Buried Stories: Father Edward M. Catich (1906-1979)
Nedde Catich was a young jazz musician when he came to St. Ambrose College (now St. Ambrose University) during the Great Depression. At the time, he was playing trumpet in a jazz band at the Purple...
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Buried Stories: Albert Petersen (1865-1951)
Agatha Beiderbecke asked a close family friend, Albert Petersen, to listen to her seven-year-old son play the piano. According to the biography Bix, Man and Legend, Petersen could hardly contain his...
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Aaron Dail Interviews Fanny Curtat, Curator of "Beyond Van Gogh: The...
[The following is a transcription of AM in the Morning host Aaron Dail's recent interview with museum curator Fanny Curtat, whose Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is at the Davenport...
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Buried Stories: Colonel George Davenport (1783-1845)
George Davenport traveled with an army expedition in 1816 to establish a frontier military outpost on the Mississippi River. The outpost would be built on a wooded island within several miles of Native...
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Buried Stories: William Louis Sandoval (1923-1944)
William “Willie” Louis Sandoval was struck down by a machine gunner near the end of the Second World War. His death came after having served 151 days on the front line in Italy; after parachuting...
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Buried Stories: La Main Cassee
These are the first words on an historic marker at the Black Hawk Historic Site in Rock Island. "The marker states that La Main Cassee was 'a true friend of the American cause during the Revolutionary...
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Buried Stories: John Bloom (1906-2002) and Isabel Bloom (1908-2001)
Once upon a time … Isabel Scherer enrolled as a student at the Stone City Art Colony in the depths of the Great Depression. The colony, organized by Grant Wood with two partners, offered classes and...
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Buried Stories: Daniel Drost (1861-1939)
On October 6, 1922, hundreds of baseball fans gathered around a scoreboard in the front window of the Argus in downtown Rock Island to follow the third game of the World Series. Halfway through the...
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Buried Stories: Helen Van Dale (1893-1951)
All heads turned as Helen Van Dale, the notorious “Queen of the Looney Underworld,“ walked to the witness stand in the trial of Rock Island’s mayor, police chief, and one of John Looney’s henchmen. The...
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Buried Stories: D. D. Palmer (1845-1913)
At the crest of Brady Street Hill are monumental busts of the founder and developers of the Palmer College of Chiropractic. At their center is an imposing bronze with these words: “Dr. Daniel David...
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Buried Stories: Charles August Ficke (1850-1931)
The newly created Davenport Municipal Art Gallery opened its doors to the public in October of 1925. Fourteen thousand people – a fifth of Davenport’s population – visited the gallery on West Fifth...
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Buried Stories: Jackson Beardsley (1831-1885)
On June 15, 2002, at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning, a crowd gathered for “Black Heroes Carved in Stone,” a ceremony held at Chippiannock Cemetery. They had convened to honor nine black soldiers who...
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