Central House - Waukon, Iowa
Waukon main street, 1890
| The first time we saw the Central House referenced was by a note sent to us from Mary Rita (Ryan) Jacobsen. Her note said, "Bartholamew Ryan was born Feb. 27, 1850 in County Tipperary, School Hill, Ireland, the son of James and Ann Ryan. The entire Ryan family mother, father, brothers and sisters (one sister and her husband) came to the United States in 1864. The family settled in the Waukon, Iowa area. They resided on farms in Union Prairie township. When the railroad came to Waukon in 1876 they moved to Waukon and built the Central House. Batty Ryan came to the Dakota Territory in 1880 and homesteaded on a farm 4 miles west of Kimball, SD." |
ONE INTERESTING NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT
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DEATH.
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A murder and the Central House...
James Ryan (son of James Ryan, Sr.) owned one of the first hotels in Waukon, Iowa. Both he and his brother, Bartholomew, built the Central House to provide "lodging" for railroad guests. The hotel was most likely located near the depot, but few records remain as to its whereabouts. This article talks about the role of the Central House surrounding a notorious murder in early Waukon days. The year is 1881.
"One of the coolest and most revolting cases of murder that must be chronicled here was that of one A. C. Johnson, by poison, at the home of Mrs. Hanora Curtin, better known by her former name of Mrs. Garvey, in the evening of December 6, 1881. It seems that Johnson had recently returned from western Iowa to dispose of some property in this vicinity and to make collection of some debts, and was stopping temporarily at Mrs. Curtin's , northwest of Waukon, she being one of his debtors. Mrs. Curtin prepared him a chicken soup, after partaking of which he become violently ill and dispatched a messenger for some neighbors, to whom he declared that Mrs. Curtin had poisoned him and he was going to die, and requesting them to take charge of his clothing, in which he had some three or four hundred dollars, and to write to his boys. His death followed in a few hours, and Sheriff Hewitt was summoned, together with the coroner, at that time Dr. D. H. Bowen. An inquest was held, resulting in a verdict of death by strychnine, and Mrs. Curtin was arrested and kept under guard at the old Central House in Waukon, for want of a suitable jail. The preliminary examination was set for the 9th, but during the night of the 8th Mrs. Curtin made her escape. Later she was apprehended and placed in the Decorah jail for better security, but nearly succeeded in getting away again. She was transferred to the new county jail at Waukon when completed that fall. Not until the May term, 1883, did the case come on for trial, when the testimony showed that she had on the day of Johnson's death purchased a half-drachm of strychnine at a drug store in Waukon, and other evidence was so positively incriminating (including an analysis of the stomach) that the jury promptly returned a verdict of murder in the first degree, and placed the punishment at imprisonment for life at hard labor in the Anamose penitentiary. The testimony indicated that John Barleycorn had a hand in this murder, as in all the other cases, the murderess having nerved up with whisky and was intoxicated that night. She was eventually pardoned, and went to Dakota, where she died."
