By Casey Jarmes
Keokuk County, like many a rural Iowa county, is speckled with ghost towns. Atwood, White Pigeon, Pekin, Hinkletown, Lancaster, all once the size of a few of our smaller communities, all now gone and nearly forgotten. Part of this is due to the United States in general changing over time. Revolutions in agriculture resulted in less people working in agriculture and the general population becoming more centered in urban centers. Tiny towns were abandoned for not being near railroads, making living there economically unviable, when compared to other towns in the area, a process that repeated when the interstate highways came through. The widespread adoption of the automobile allowed people living in the countryside to travel into towns for schooling, church and basic necessities, negating the need for there to be a small community every couple miles.
But, perhaps the question is not why the small ghost towns survived, but why the surviving communities have not. The population of Iowa has steadily, albeit slowly, grown over time, but the population of Keokuk County has plummeted. In 1850, seven years after being incorporated, the county had a population of 4,822. A decade later, 13,271, then 19,434 in 1870. The peak of this growth came in 1900, where the census showed a population of 24,979. Since then, that number has gone down every single census, hitting a low not seen since before the Civil War in the most recent census, taken in 2020, where the county’s population was 10,033. The next census will likely show this county as being even smaller.
All of this naval gazing about population decline is a segue to the main topic of this week and the next: Talleyrand, the small, now dead town once located in the Cleer Creak Township, between Keota and Richland. The town was first laid out in lots in 1854; by the next spring, it had three dwellings. The town was located halfway between Sigourney and Washington, then a two-day journey by stage coach, and featured a hotel where people stayed for the night while travelling.
According to a Washington Press article from 1866, at that time there were two dry goods stores, two groceries, a drug store, a hotel, a cabinet shop, two wagon shops, a shoe store, three blacksmiths, a physician and three churches. That article states that “the morals of the people will compare well with those of any other community,” which is one of those meaningless accolades you see often in old texts; I’ve never seen an old article say that the people of a town were terrible.
I was able to find a single mention, from a 1879 Keota Eagle article, of Talleyrand having its own newspaper, called the Talleyrand Owl, because for some reason I do not understand, early settlers loved naming their papers after birds. There was a school in Talleyrand, which had 40 students in 1897, but I could not find much more information about it. At most, the town only ever reached a population of roughly 100 people.
Perhaps the most famous citizen of Talleyrand was Charles Albert Gray (1857-1933), the son of the local doctor, who left home at 17 and traveled across the state, painting portraits of prominent people. He later moved to DC, where he made portraits of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. I could not find these paintings, but myself and a good number of my readers have seen Gray’s work: he painted the portraits of Lydia Sigourney and Chief Keokuk hanging in the courthouse.
I dug through the Keokuk County Historical Society’s records on Talleyrand, and most of their records are centered on two things, one of those being old arguments over the town’s name, of which I found four explanations. The most common story says it was named in honor of a local candlemaker nicknamed Tallow Ann because she was always greasy from tallow. Another common legend claims it was named after a man named Tally, who was challenged to a duel after sleeping with another man’s wife. As the story goes, when they turned their backs and walked ten paces, Tally ran away to avoid being shot, hence the name, “Tally Ran.”
One article claimed it was named after a local civil war skirmish; I assume they are referring to Tally’s War, the shooting near South English, where Cyphert Tally, a pro-slavery and anti-war preacher was gunned down after giving an anti-Union speech; this article was likely wrong, because A: Tally died in 1863, years after the town was established, and B: he was not very popular in Keokuk County, given the fact that he was shot to death. I think all of these explanations are wrong. My money is on the final explanation I found, that town was named after Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, usually just referred to as Talleyrand, the famed French diplomat who served under Napoleon. This explanation was put forth by an actual Talleyrand resident in 1894 and is the only one that actually matches how the town’s name was spelled.
Of course, if Talleyrand is remembered for one thing, it is remembered for the other thing that dominated the Historical Society’s records: the 1898 murder of Matts Mohrain at the hands of Jacob Grier. But, that story will have to wait until next week.
