Here’s the attention-grabbing first line of the 13th chapter of Luther Albertus Brewer and Barthinius Larson Wick’s “History of Linn County, Iowa: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time.”
“What promised to have been a war to death in Linn (C)ounty in the early ’40s terminated because one of our old settlers, then a young man, said what he knew to be the fact and was willing to back it up with force.”
Let us keep you in suspense for a moment to share some details about the book we found this story in. “The Present Time” referenced in the subtitle is 1911. Brewer (1858-1933) was a publisher in Cedar Rapids as well as a book collector. Wick (1864-1941) was a historian, lawyer and educator.
Of their subjects, the authors — members of the Linn County Historical Society and thus men after our own hearts — wrote:
“We have been taught many things by our work that add to the sum of the pleasures of living in a day crowded with all the conveniences of the twentieth century. Our respect for the courageous pioneer men and the equally courageous and self-sacrificing pioneer women of our county has been placed high. Nobly did they suffer, enduring privations now undreamed of, and never complaining that theirs was a hard lot. We stand with uncovered heads and with a reverent feeling in their presence.”
A hero or a rogue?
With that, we return to the chapter in Brewer and Wick’s book titled, “A Hero of the Canadian Rebellion.” The story involves a man claiming to be William Johnson, a notorious leader who had evaded capture with his daughter, Kate, after the rebellion had been put down.
As Brewer and Wick related it, “Robert Ellis met this so-called Bill Johnson at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, in 1842.” Ellis is, of course, the man after whom many Linn County landmarks are named. Soon after meeting Ellis, Johnson and his daughter laid claim to land 2 miles above Quasqueton in Buchanan County, Iowa. “Here,” wrote Brewer and Wick, “he became a sort of feudal lord …”
Soon enough, however, Johnson found himself crosswise of Henry Bennett who, with a party of men, flogged Johnson before sending him on his way. “He drifted into Marion” and managed to convince his new neighbors that they should help him attack Bennett in the winter of 1843. It was an ill-conceived campaign, to be sure, which ended when Johnson’s side ran out of provisions.
One night in Marion’s Phillips Hotel, Robert Ellis heard Johnson telling false stories about his ongoing feud with Bennett. Ellis was having none of that and called Johnson out. For his part, Johnson did not much take to being called a liar. It looked like the two were going to come to blows:
“Johnson pulled off his coat and was about to strike him, when Mr. Ellis spied a hickory stick in the wood box. With that he went after Johnson, who quietly retreated … and the matter for the time dropped. The story leaked out that this Canadian boaster was nothing but a coward, and there were grave doubts as to whether or not he was the person he claimed to be.”
You can find “History of Linn County, Iowa: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time” on the internet. These include recent reprintings of the work, which is in the public domain, that can be downloaded to an e-reader.
Ellis and ‘Kate’ reconnect
By the time Brewer and Wick wrapped up the story, they were referring to Johnson as “bogus Bill Johnson.” Ellis, as it happened, would run into the woman who claimed to be Johnson’s daughter in California in 1849 during the Gold Rush:
“Robert Ellis found them and heard the story that Captain Bill Johnson, once the terror of this part of Iowa, was a bogus Bill Johnson, and the light haired Kate was not the Kate of story and fiction at all. If it had not been for the obstreperous Bennett on the Wapsie and for the hickory stick in the hands of Robert Ellis, bogus Bill Johnson might have terrorized this community much longer than he did.”
We admit to some surprise that the legend of Robert Ellis and his hickory stick has not lived on as a foundational part of Linn County lore. Ellis himself passed away at age 95 a year after Brewer and Wick’s book was published.