The Terrors of Spirit Lake, Iowa

A comb maker and later sawyer, Rowland Gardner was a native of Connecticut, had been able to accumulate some three thousand dollars to take his family to the Far West territory later called Iowa. Thus, in the spring of 1854, he made his way with his family to Shell Rock, Iowa where the family spent their first winter.

In the early spring of 1855 Gardner, in company with his son-in-law, Harvey Luce, made a…