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On October 6, 1869 the Ackley Police Department “officially” began. The first City meeting was inside the old Board of Trade Building at the Market Place. Attorney and Notary, C.E. Clough, swore-in John Dillar as the first (justifiable) “Town Marshall”. Before that date the town’s folk probably just appointed some callous roughneck to keep everyone in line. Ackley had a history of being a rough and wild town. On the dockets of the 1870’s it was noted that almost every week someone was arrested and taken before the Mayor on charges of rioting, shooting or fighting. One of the first law enforcement agendas was constructing a jail. The first jail was 12’ x 12’ costing only $175 to build. Election Day in the late 1800s was one of the biggest fiascos. They must have felt politics was well worth fighting over. The local newspaper would release the results of the election and in the column next to it, they would routinely report the number of fist fights on that same day. We think we have alcohol problems today. I think the booze flowed a little more freely in the early days. The “Pioneer Ackley” book records that the east-west alley south of the Main Street business section was dubbed “Whiskey Alley”, and there was those who feared that Ackley was rapidly deteriorating into a “rum hole”.
One name that pops in the dockets often was a villain named John W. Chaney. Saloon owner Chaney had this nasty habit of rioting, fighting and he liked to shoot in the direction of other people’s houses. The “Ackley Enterprise” labeled this culprit “bad medicine”. One of Chaney’s last brushes with area law was providing the get-away horse for his brother Ed. Ed was being led to trial, for horse stealing, by the Sheriff and escaped with that horse. Chaney finally left Ackley and was later killed by two shotgun blasts in Kansas. It was written that, “no one bothered to investigate the killing”! In August of 1887 the “Tramp War” occurred in Ackley. For a spell of several weeks, railroad workers would dispatch several tramps off the rail cars at Ackley. It was estimated that a total of 60 tramps had settled in town. These 60 banded together and put a blockade to any further north-bound trains in the attempts to get the railroad to take them to where there was work in Minnesota. The Tramps captured one train. Several railroad section crews arrived but the altercation stood at a standstill, as the tramps were armed with clubs. The Town’s officials kept telegraphing the railroad to take the tramps out of town. The railroad would reply, “Never”! This news even traveled to the Governor who wired Mayor Rath and asked if troops should be dispatched. Rath advised the Governor that situation was in hand. The railroad officials finally wired and said they would take the tramps out of town. When their train arrived and the tramps loaded up on the cars. An on-coming locomotive then however delayed the train. This was a locomotive loaded with a U.S. Deputy Marshall and 50-armed men. It was reported that when the U.S. Deputy Marshall and his men arrived, the situation again became quite tense and they thought violence would again start. An Ackley citizen, Dr. Kelso, came to the rescue when he guaranteed the fares of all the tramps to Minnesota. Thus ended the three-day Tramp War. On March 18, 1866 was Ackley’s first (reported) homicide. An Irishman named Clay Kelly and some of his friends got drunk, they went into a store that had just opened up by three German partners. They was quarreling with the owner and destroying the store’s property. They were forcefully told to leave and did. Clay however, went off in a rage, got a knife and came back. With knife in hand chased the owner, M. George, to the rear of the building. George grabbed a revolver a pointed the gun at Kelly’s head and fired. Kelly died nine days later thus ending one of the many German-Irish arguments in Ackley. George turned himself in to authorities and was freed on the grounds of self-defense. The verdict probably wasn’t handed down by an Irish judge! This case was just a few weeks short of being Hardin County’s first homicide. Steamboat Rock took that claim 47 days earlier.
On the night of February 27, 1870
somewhere around 2:00 AM the Bowlar House Hotel was completely The 1900’s to present time our community, like any other town, had it’s share of law-breakers and wrong-doers. Since most of these persons are still alive today, have since reformed, or their next of kin is around, I’ll avoid them a little embarrassment and stop writing about any misconduct’s they used to carry out!
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Government
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damaged
by a fire. Two employees of the hotel, Edward Williams and Hontoon
Johston, an ex-slave, were killed in the blaze. They claimed a
defective hot air furnace was the blame of the fire but rumor of arson
floated around town. Folks were saying the owner, J. R. Bowler,
himself started the fire to cover up an alleged murder and theft. It
was believed that a man from California had checked into the hotel
that night and deposited a large sum of money with Bowlar for
safekeeping. The body of the California man (if he had in fact
existed) was never found during the after fire search, nor any trace
of the money. Bowlar denied any truth to that rumor as he stated that,
no one from California stayed at his hotel that night. The case
reopened several years later when the bones of a third victim were
found in the ruins of the hotel basement. The identification of those
bones never was determined. The mystery of the Bowlar House Fire still
remains unfounded.
