[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, it's Jill. Jen and I wanted to give you a heads up about the content on today's episode. It may be triggering for more sensitive audiences. Refer to the show notes for more
[00:00:10] Speaker B: specifics, and take care while you listen.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: On this episode of Common Mystics, we follow the rise of the river towns, the long shadow of the prairie bandits, and the killing of a man who helped build the frontier.
I'm Jennifer James.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: I'm Jill Stanley.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: We're psychics.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: We're sisters.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: We are common mystics. We find extraordinary stories in ordinary places. And today's story comes to you from Galena, Illinois.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: That's right, Jennifer. And we were leaving Dubuque, Iowa, headed towards Galena with our friend Jenny B. In the car.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: And I'm sure we have a picture of Jenny B. And me that we can put up.
Okay, okay. And we had set our intention.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: And what was our intention?
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Our intention was, as it always is, to find a verifiable story previously unknown to us that allows us to give voice to the voiceless.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: That's right. And right away in the car, I was feeling outlaw vibes, but like someone that I wouldn't recognize. Like. Like. I don't want to say a no name, but like a no name outlaw kind of situation.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I get it. Someone not in the. Like.
Yeah, like not share a Madonna. Like, not first namers.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Exactly. Right, right, right.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: I was feeling the Mississippi river was very important to the voiceless spirit coming through for sure.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: I totally was feeling a riverboat captain and how he was underappreciated.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Interesting.
For some reason, the year 1843 came to me, and I just wrote it down in the notebook in the car without any sort of explanation or anything
[00:02:09] Speaker B: or any context to it.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Right, right, right. I just wrote 1843.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Jenny was feeling indigenous people and trading, like a trading post setup kind of deal.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: And both of us were talking about historical homes in the area, both you and Jenny. Historical homes that were owned by prominent citizens.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: And I was feeling a home that was restored into a museum.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: And Jenny was talking about history that was forgotten, like an event that happened. And yet, even though it was significant, people just don't recall it or remember it.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: What were you feeling?
[00:02:52] Speaker A: I was feeling a murder.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: That's right. And I was piggybacking on that feeling. A shooting. Specifically a rough and tumble shooting.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Ooh, this sounds like it's going to be a good one.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: I depends how much you like murder.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Murder is my favorite.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Galena.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Galena.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Why is she so special?
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Well, it's Fun to say.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Galena is fun to say.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Well, Jill, Galena's haunted first of all.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. She haunted.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: So much energy in the area.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Just looking at her, like, just driving through, seeing her from afar, even like an aerial view, you get the feeling that spirits are alive and well in Galena, Illinois.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: 100%. And it's beautiful gorge. Uh huh. The roads are curved through wooded bluffs and limestone ridges. And then they drop into narrow. A narrow river valley where Rows of 19th century brick buildings appear stacked shoulder to shoulder along main street.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Galena has iron storefronts, arched windows, weather facades that seem less restored than preserved.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Mmm, I love that.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like the town simply kept breathing while the centuries changed around it.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: And I think that adds a lot to why you feel that haunted presence, because the energy around the town and the structures are preserved and not reconstructed.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: I. I agree. And plus, there's so much stone as well. The limestone, the cliffs, the water on the Mississippi.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: She's got a lot going on.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: She has so much going on. And it's so quaint. Church spires, gas lamps, brick sidewalks. It's so cool. I love Galena. We need to go back.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: You do love Galena. This wasn't your first time there. It was my first time. It was my.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: And what did you think? Did she leave a good impression? First impression of Galena.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: I loved her. She's haunted. Like, that is the first thing I said. She's haunted. And time looks good on her. Yeah.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Right? She aged well. Yeah.
I want to age, like classy. Yeah.
Like gracefully. Right. Like you look at Galena and you know, she old. But she look good.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Yes, she does. She looks good. She looks good. So before we get into it, can you tell me a little bit about Galena's history? Tell me about how old she is.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: I would love to. Thank you. Well, long before European settlement occurred, the indigenous people in the area, including the Meskwaki, the Sauk, and the Ho Chunk, they knew that the region had rich deposits of a lead sulfite called Galena, and that gave the town its name.
And so the indigenous peoples mined and traded the mineral for generations before Europeans arrived.
Now, French trappers in the area, they knew about these lead deposits and they were potentially valuable. But. But large scale development wouldn't come around until after the United States would push westward.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Okay, hit me up. 1820s. What was going on with Galena?
[00:06:20] Speaker A: In the 1820s, the town of Galena erupted into one of America's first mineral rushes.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't know, like the California gold rush.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: Exactly. Only this was the Illinois lead rush.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: A little less romantic.
Men poured into the area with picks and wagons and dreams of making it rich.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Yes, they did.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: And what rose wasn't a quiet prairie village, but a rough frontier boom town.
Crowded boarding houses, muddy streets, saloons, gambling halls, and fortunes made in lead.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: You know, the more we learn about these river towns, the more I am astonished to find out that we had the very first, like, the wild, wild west right here in the Midwest.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Just hold on to that thought, because it gets so much worse than you think.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: So by the 1840s, the area was producing an enormous share of the nation's lead production.
Some estimate about 80%. 80% of the nation's lead was coming from Galena.
And the lead.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: No.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: And the lead from Galena went into making things like pipes and paint and ammunition.
And so this little river town helped build the country and arm its wars.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Ooh.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: And the town prospered because of the river.
Now, the Galena river fed into the mighty Mississippi, turning the town of Galena into one of the busiest inland ports in the Midwest.
Steamboats crowded the levees. Cargo moved south to St. Louis and north towards St. Paul, Minnesota. And at its peak, Galena rivaled or exceeded Chicago in importance.
Who would have thought that in the early 1940s? Yeah, for sure.
Bigger than Chicago in the 1840s. Yeah.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: That's craziness.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: I know.
Do you want to sit with that for a minute?
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Okay. I'm done. I'm done. I'm ready to move on.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: But, Jill, as we've seen, boom towns rarely stay at their peak.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: By the 1850s, lead production began to wane. Erosion made river navigation much more difficult. And the railroads, Jill, the railroads shifted the power east towards Chicago.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: That makes sense.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Yep. And so Galena, once poised to become a major industrial giant, began to recede from the center of history.
Then.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: And then? And then. And then.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: And then.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: And then what happened?
[00:09:20] Speaker A: And then the Civil war brought the town a second destiny.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: So, 1860s. Tell me everything.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Well, you might have heard of a struggling former army officer named Ulysses S. Grant.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Heard good things.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Mm. Good things and bad things.
You know what?
[00:09:40] Speaker B: I understand the man might disagree with
[00:09:43] Speaker A: you, but in any event, Ulysses S. Grant arrived in Galena around 1860 to work in his family's leather goods store.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: Personally, I like leather goods.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: I like the smell.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: I don't want to like leather goods. I really don't. I think that is Inhumane.
And yet, every time I buy an imitation leather. Good.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Falls apart.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: It falls apart. It smells.
It's too hot. You get sweaty. You stink. It stinks. It falls apart.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: I agree. So.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: I hate to say it, but I'm a. I'm a fan of leather goods.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Sorry.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: I feel evil just even saying that. But let's move on.
Few would have guessed that that quiet clerk on Main street would sit. Would soon command the Union armies.
And when war.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: I wouldn't have guessed.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: You wouldn't have.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: I wouldn't have guessed. Would you have guessed?
[00:10:41] Speaker A: No, I would. No, I. No. When war came, Ulysses S. Grant left Galena to train volunteers, rose rapidly through the ranks, and returned in 1865 a national hero. He was the General of the Union when the Union won.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Congratulations to Ulysses S. Grant.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: He sat across the table from.
From General Lee at Appomattox Courthouse.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: That's impressive.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: That. That is. That's. Major. You put that. You put that on your resume, and that will get you far.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: True statement. True statement.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Anyway, citizens presented him with a house now known as the Ulysses S. Grant home.
And he would go on to become President of the United States, forever tying Galena to national memory.
And the town also produced an extraordinary number of Civil War generals. I did not know this.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: I had no clue, really.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: Earning a reputation for having more generals per capita than any city in the country.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: How do you like that, huh?
Interesting.
Why do you think that is?
[00:11:55] Speaker A: I have no idea.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: It's a fair answer. Fair answer. So Galena endured after its economic heyday by doing something very unusual. What was that?
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Well, it failed to modernize.
Well, no, actually, that saved it. And today, tourists flock to Galena to experience a preserved 19th century town.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: True.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: It's beautiful.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Visitors enjoy antique shops, boutiques, spas, cozy historic inns, bed and breakfasts, old saloons, walking tours, and historic sites.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: They have ghost tours.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: I know.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: They have ghost tours.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: I know. We need to. We need to go back.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: We need to go back.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: We need to go back.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: We need to spend some time there.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: We need to spend time there. Do you want to go to a haunted bnb there?
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Okay. Great.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Full disclosure. We were fighting during this trip, so it was like. Like we. There wasn't a lot of time to enjoy Galina. We were just kind of. Yeah.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: We were angry with each other during this trip.
We won't talk about why. We won't talk about why.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: I don't remember why. Do you remember why?
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Yes.
Yes, I do.
Okay.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Detours. Detours. Meet us at Detours So. So we can hash this out.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Anyway, today, the town of Galena is a quaint, charming, yet upscale and lively Mississippi river town in northwest Illinois.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: But in the 1830s and 40s, northwest Illinois was literally the wild, Wild West. Girl.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Jill.
Jill. It literally was this. Okay, this is going to blow your mind. Are you sitting down?
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Okay. Yes. Okay.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: In 1830, Illinois. Just an adolescent, just a teenager. Twelve years into statehood. That's all.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Not even in her teens yet.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Not even in her teens and still feeling more like a frontier than a settled state.
Rough and tumble, it was perched on the northwest edge of the United States.
So it was literally was the Old West. That's where it ended. Because on the other side was the Missouri territory and the Louisiana territory. So literally, Illinois was the Wild west.
And. Okay, okay, okay, Jill, right now, 2026, where is most of the population of Illinois? Is it in the northern part of the state or the southern part of the state?
[00:14:39] Speaker B: It's in Cook county in the northeast.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So most. And I looked this up today, about 75% of the state's population is in the North. That's how we've always known it. Right. Since we've been alive. Jill, back then in the. In 1830, most of the population was in the South.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: What were they doing down there?
[00:15:01] Speaker A: No, they. But they were down there.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: They were probably farming. They were living.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: They were farming. I think the. The other rivers was down there. What's that other river?
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Oh, Kentucky.
Kentucky.
Flows Kentucky around Caro.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's Squiggly down there. Yeah, yeah, it's Squiggly with a lot of rivers.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: It's the. Oh, no, it's the Ohio.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I said like a minute ago.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Okay, so I'm glad.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: Glad you had that. That epiphany. But the state is Kentucky down there. Anyway, Anyway, so most people were living down there. So literally, it was like the frontier.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Okay. Now, of course, tribal people lived in the north, right?
Tribe. Tribal peoples lived there. They made it their home for generations.
But, Jill, in the 1830s, everything was about to change. And Illinois would be transformed. How?
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Why? Tell me.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Well, first of all, 1832, we see the Black Hawk War.
The Black Hawk War was a conflict between the United States and the Native American warriors led by the Sauk leader, Black Hawk.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Okay, who won?
[00:16:12] Speaker A: The United States won. And after the United States victory, the Sauk and the Fox people were forced to the lands west of the Mississippi River. And northern Illinois was then opened up to broader European settlement.
Now, that the native peoples are no longer inhabiting northern Illinois. Now the Europeans are moving in.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: But there's more.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Transportation improvements led to population shifting northward. The railroads began to push across the state's central prairie. Instead of following the older population centers in the south Illinois and Michigan Canal would link the Illinois river to Lake Michigan.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: That's huge.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: That was huge for Chicago. And then, I mean, Chicago just exploded.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: And not only that. Have you heard of John Deere and his steel plow?
[00:17:11] Speaker B: I know quite a bit about John Deere and his tractors and other farming equipment.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Exactly. Well, he invented the steel plow in 1837. And then suddenly, suddenly all of this tough prey curry dirt was turned into rich, profitable farmland. And more and more settlers, investors and businessmen were drawn to the opportunities in the northwest portion of the state.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: So things were booming. Fortunes on the rise. What can go wrong?
[00:17:44] Speaker A: It sounds lovely.
It was. However, when fortunes rise, thieves tend to follow.
And believe it or not, bandits were rampant.
Now, these bandits had a lot of different names. The banditti of the prairie.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Are you the banditti?
Are you the banditti?
[00:18:08] Speaker A: I. I am not a banditty. Are you a banditti?
[00:18:10] Speaker B: I might have been a banditty back in the day.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: You probably were a banditti. Banditti of the prairie or. Or prairie bandits or prairie pirates. They had a lot of different names,
[00:18:19] Speaker B: but basically I would be like a. A banditty groupie. You know, I wouldn't do any of the hard work. I just be hanging around them.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: These banditti were bad people.
They're bad banditties.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: They're bad banditties. No, I don't want a bad banditty.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Well, you're going to be a groupie to a bad band diddy group.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Okay, tell me.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Okay, so Jill, they did terrible things. They. They robbed people's houses.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: They stole people's cattle.
They stole people's horses.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: That's a true crime.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Back in the day, they robbed stagecoaches and committed other acts of highway robbery.
And when the lead fever rush struck in Galena and the fortune seekers poured in, the bandits smelled even greater opportunity on the Mississippi river towns.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Oh, no. What happened in those early days? The lawlessness. Tell me about it.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: In those early days, lawlessness spread faster than the institutions that could contain it.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Now, isn't that always what happens?
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say so.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Always. Yeah, always.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Thieves are quicker.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah. If you can do the crimes before the regulations. You're doing the crimes before the regulation.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Exactly.
Not only that, but rumor had it that local lawmen were ex bandits themselves.
I believe it so Maybe, maybe they chose not to come down so hard on their old friends and the illegal activities that they were doing.
But by 1840, the citizens of northern Illinois had had it.
If the authorities weren't stopping this chaos, ordinary citizens were prepared to take frontier justice into their own hands.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Oh, damn, that's never good.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: And vigilante groups began to organize, known in some counties as the Regulators.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: I've heard of them.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: You have?
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: What ensued was all out lawlessness on both ends.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Okay, give me an example.
An incident that is infamous.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Okay. This is the most famous incident that I'm going to tell you about involving the Regulators. Who are the vigilantes and the Prairie Bandits or the bad banditties as we were calling them. And it occurred in the years 1840 and 1841 in Ogle County, Illinois. That's in north central Illinois where we've got frontier.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Why do you think it's called Ogle?
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Ogle?
Because I think they look inappropriately at people in that county.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: I think so too.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: The Driscoll family.
Don't ask the Driscoll family.
Yes, yes you did. So there was this Driscoll family which consisted of John Driscoll and his four grown sons, one William, David, Pierce and Taylor.
And the Driscolls were notorious bandits, part of a gang, and they had been pursued by Regulators for their criminal activities for quite some time.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: And in response, 45 year old will Driscoll burned down a mill that belonged to the captain of the Regulators.
And not only that, he killed his horse.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Oh, what, what the hell?
[00:22:03] Speaker A: I know in a particularly grisly fashion that I will not even repeat because it makes me hurt inside.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: Well, I'm glad for that. Don't repeat it. But that there's no reason to kill the man's horse.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: After this, the captain resigned his post as a regulator. Yeah, he was that scared for his family and. And a new captain took his place.
But the Regulators were not going to stand for that. And about 200 of them showed up at Will Driscoll's place where a small group of bandits had already gathered. Now, okay, the bandits knew they were. They were overwhelmed by the 200.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Outnumbered.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Outnumbered? Yeah, by the 200 regulators. And so they're like, hold up, hold up. And they run off, they. To go get the sheriff. To go get the sheriff and other.
Yeah, and other local. Local townspeople. Right, Other local people in the area presumably to be like, look, look what these vigilantes are going to do. They're not the law. They're not the law. Right.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: However the sheriff arrives, how far they've like fallen from like badass, like, like literally Godfather type shit to like. Hold up, hold up, hold up. Let me, let me go talk to the police about this to see, see if this is on the.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: See if this is legit.
Anyway, so the sheriff arrives, okay. With this group of local citizens. And the sheriff is now brought up to speed on everything the Driscolls have been up to. And the sheriff's like, oh, sorry boys, the regulators are right. And you can either stay and be arrested and you'll answer your for your crimes in the court of law or you can leave town in 20 days.
And the dress girls, a long time to move, right? Well it, I mean it takes you time to pack. I mean they probably 1830s.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: They're already bandits. They live up like, they have probably a small house kind of life, like a small living live.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: I mean you still have to uproot yourself and.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: 20 days.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: 20 days.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Long time. That's a long time in the old West.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: So the Driscolls are like, yeah, we're gonna leave. We promise, we're gonna leave. Give us 20 days and we're out. No problem.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Do you think they left?
[00:24:24] Speaker B: No, absolutely not.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: They did not.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: They're criminals.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: They did not leave town. Instead, they targeted the new captain of the regulators. His name was John Campbell.
And at sundown on June 27, 1841 in Ogle County, Illinois, David and Taylor Driscoll, two of the brothers, ambushed Campbell on his farm and. And murdered him with a single shot.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: That's cowardly now.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: The community immediately pushed back hundreds of settlers. Some 500 men surrounded the Driscolls in a dramatic show of frontier resolve.500.
And when a vigilante trial was convened.
Remember, this is not a legal trial. This is a vigilante trial of 111 men on the jury.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: It reminds me of Peewee's big adventure when they're like, we should skin them, we should get them, we should hang them.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Something like that.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Say we leave them alone.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: 111 men were in the jury, the Driscolls, that were found guilty because not all were condemned.
The Driscolls found guilty faced a firing squad of 56.
Wow.
I think it's safe to say that not much was left after a firing squad of 56.
This reminds me of Bonnie and Clyde, the end of that movie.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah, the Overkill.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: Yeah, they were some. They were heinous creatures.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: They were, they were terrible people.
It was, it was justice or vengeance delivered on prairie terms.
Later, members of that same jury were themselves put on trial for the killings.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Wow, that's a twist.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: But not one was convicted. In fact, the jurors reportedly never even left the box to deliberate before returning the verdict. Not guilty.
That's. That's pretty. That's. I kind of like that image of them turning around and looking at each other in the box and be like, they're not guilty. They're not guilty. You know what I mean? Like, let's not even leave. I don't want to miss lunch. You know, let's just get this over with. Right?
[00:26:49] Speaker B: Sushi today. I've been excited for it all week.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: So this was a major event in the war between the regulators and the banditti in north central Illinois.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: So the regulators wiped out the Banditti. Correct. No more Banditti.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: No, they didn't wipe them out. They just scattered them.
They just scattered and cockroaches. Exactly. And where did they go?
They shifted westward through the 1840s towards the Mississippi river, where commerce was booming in the river towns.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: And that, my friends, that brings us to the night of the incident.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: The incident.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Oh, trigger, Trigger. Warning on trigger.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Trigger. Palooza. If you. Yeah, we are going to get into a very detailed, brutal crime.
And if you are a more sensitive listener, you might want to fast forward this part. But I will say that this description comes from the book the Banditti of the Prairies, a tale of the Mississippi Valley by Edward Bonney, who had a very important role in this case.
Okay, now, the incident.
The incident took place on Independence Day, July 4, 1845.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: America was still so young in the
[00:28:22] Speaker A: town of Rock Island, Illinois, one of the quad cities clustered along the banks of the upper Mississippi River.
And the setting, A beautiful mansion exuding taste and wealth, overlooking the Mississippi river facing Iowa.
It was the residence of Colonel George Davenport.
Now, Davenport had lived in Rock island for more than 30 years, and he wasn't just a prominent man, he was a part of the place itself.
He was known for his generosity and his warmth and his easy social nature.
He was widely admired and deeply respected.
Now it was a holiday, and his friends and his family had decided to cross over from Rock island to the courthouse on the mainland for the holiday festivities.
But Davenport, then in his early 60s and in declining health, remained alone at his home.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: Oh, that's sad. I wouldn't want to leave him.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: You know, these days, early 60s is still young, but back then that. That was old age.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Did you ever think of, like, the smells back then or like how easy it would Be to die.
You know what I mean? Like an abscessed tooth.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Jill, I think all the time, if I lived, like, 150 years ago, I would not be alive at the age of 50.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: Agreed.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: No, I would have died from, like, an earache. I had so many earaches as a kid, you know?
[00:30:04] Speaker B: All right. Yeah.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. What would you die from?
[00:30:07] Speaker B: I don't know, but I'm just thinking about bad breath.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: Like, you know, like the smells.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: No, the smells that have been terrible.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: I mean, infections just stink.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Oh. And just. And the. The horses is their primary vehicle.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: The lack of good sewage. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It must have been bad for sure. Okay. Anything else? For modern.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: Thank God for modern conveniences, that's all.
And dentists.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Now, the Davenports did not want to leave George home alone in the mansion.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: I wouldn't either.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, he was. He was older. He was not in the best health. But also, there was a real fear of the prairie bandits.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: Oh, they were still, like, on everyone's mind.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, for a hundred percent. Like, that was a known thing. Like, there are prairie bandits around, and we shouldn't leave dad by himself in the mansion.
But George Davenport, old Colonel Davenport, just waved off their fears and. And insisted everybody go attend the celebration.
You see, George had outlived the dangers of the frontier, the violence of war, the loneliness of the wilderness, the uncertainty of life at a civilization's edge.
Now he's surrounded by peace and prosperity and a community that he himself helped build.
He did not expect danger to come calling at his door.
And so he said, go.
With a benevolent smile lighting up his wrinkled face. Go, my friends, and enjoy yourselves. I feel secure from all harm.
This is a quote from Edward Bonney's book.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: Okay, so after his family departs, what happens?
[00:32:01] Speaker A: Well, he sat in his parlor reading the newspaper and enjoying the beauty of the river at sunset as it rushed past the island of his home.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: It sounds lovely. Just lovely.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: And it was until after some time, he began to hear noises coming from outside, seemingly from the direction of his well.
And he. He wasn't bothered by it. He thought, somebody's just getting water. It's fine.
But then he heard another noise, this time closer by. And so he rose from his chair to investig.
And just then, the door to his home was suddenly kicked open, revealing three men.
Without a word, one of them pointed a pistol at Colonel Davenport and shot him through his left thigh.
Then the three men grabbed him. They blindfolded him. They tied his arms and legs with hickory bark and he dragged him by his clothing and his hair up a flight of stairs to a closet wherein was an iron safe.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: Why did they have to be so brutal? All they have to do is show him the gun and he would have participated and followed directions.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: The men ordered Colonel Davenport to open the safe, and he did.
And the men grabbed the contents of the safe and then dragged Davenport to a bedroom and threw him on the bed and demanded more money.
Davenport, old, injured and in ill health, trembled as he pointed a feeble finger towards a drawer in a nearby dressing table.
The men hastily opened a drawer, rustled through it, and found nothing. They had opened the wrong drawer.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: And yet, enraged that Davenport had deceived them, they violently attacked him. They beat him, they choked him until he passed out.
Then when he was out cold, they threw water on him to revive him and continued to demand more money.
Again, Davenport weakly pointed to the dressing table. And again the thieves found nothing.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: What a bunch of dumb fucks. If there's more than one drawer, can you open up all the drawers before more torture?
Honestly.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: And finding nothing, they beat him even more brutally. And he passed out a second time.
This time they threw more water on him, pouring it down his throat and threatening to burn his house with his body in it if he did not disclose the location of the money.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: By this time, Colonel Davenport was unable to respond.
The thieves fled the house, leaving him for dead, absconding with between 6 and $700 in cash, a gold watch and chain and a double barreled shotgun and a pistol.
Now, a short time later, it's estimated about an hour later, man named Mr. Cole of Moline, Illinois, was passing down the river in his skiff. He'd gone fishing with some friends when he heard a cry coming from the house.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: It's heartbreaking.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Mr. Cole rode to shore and entered the house, finding the door ajar and blood everywhere.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: He and his comrades followed the cries to the upstairs chamber where they found Colonel Davenport wounded, beaten and bloody.
The doctor and his family were called for at once.
Now, though near death, Colonel Davenport was still alert and he greeted his family members. He told them what had happened. He told them all about the attack with all the details that he could remember, and he described his attackers.
And then finally he succumbed to his injuries between 9 and 10 o' clock that night.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: That is tragic and traumatic to even have to read. So thank you for going through that.
Can you tell me a little bit about who Colonel George Davenport was?
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Colonel George Davenport was born George William King in 1783. In Lincolnshire, England.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Do we know why he changed his name? No.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: For some unknown reason, he changed it when he came to America.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: I mean, King does sound more English than Davenport.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I. I think you're right. King would imply. Right. That he supports the King. So, I mean, that's. I didn't read that anywhere. It's just my intuition telling me that. Yeah, yeah. And he began as a boy shaped by the sea.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Tell me.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Well, young Davenport was apprenticed to his uncle, who was a merchant captain, which meant that his education was less school room and more storm sail and foreign port.
Sounds kind of fun.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Kind of, yeah, it's really impressive, actually.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: But a little hard, right?
[00:37:26] Speaker B: Yes. And good for a young boy. Not for me. You know what I mean?
[00:37:30] Speaker A: You were strapping. You're a strapping young man.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Did I have a nice jaw when I looked very handsome on them ships?
[00:37:38] Speaker A: I mean, you have a good constitution for. For ship fairing.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I'm like. Literally, I get motion sickness in a car.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: Okay, forget it. As a teenager, he was already sailing the waters of the Baltic Sea and visiting ports in France and Spain and Portugal.
He grew up in the rough, disciplined world of maritime trade, where boys learned quickly or broken by the work.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Damn.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: Now, that early life made him resourceful, daring and comfortable with uncertainty, traits that would later define his frontier career.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: Okay, cool.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: But he was on the seas during the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Stop right now. I know about the Napoleonic Wars. Tell me everything. Because he was involved in that. That's crazy. How do you get wrapped up in the Napoleon's wars? Are you kidding?
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Well, the Napoleonic wars were fought from 1803 to 1815, and I'm not going to tell you everything because that would be a very long podcast. There's a lot. He won, he lost, he won, he lost. It's like a big thing.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: But exiled and then.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Right. ABBA wrote a song about it, famously. And what song? Waterloo.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: I didn't know.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Yeah, and they won Eurovision. And now it's a movie with Will Ferrell. That's all you need to know about the.
Anyway, it was a series of major conflicts centered on Napoleon Bonaparte, short guy, big temper.
And against the shifting coalitions of basically the rest of the European powers, and including Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia. And this was a time when Europe was unstable, and that meant that trade was dangerous.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it did.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: Now, around 1803, when his ship entered St. Petersburg, Russia, the Russian government detained the British crews under embargo restrictions, and young George was imprisoned for months before being released.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Crazy.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: He was in a Russian prison.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: That is insane.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: I think that of all the prisons in the world, like the Russian prisons, they are the most notorious. Am I wrong?
[00:40:06] Speaker B: I mean, back then. You may be right.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: I mean, like, Siberia, like, that's a thing, right? Like, don't they put, like, the worst.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: I don't want to give them ideas.
[00:40:15] Speaker A: Okay. All right. Anyway, I don't know. That's. That would not have been easy.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: So, okay, so he's still a young man before he's up and coming. He's involved in this international conflict and is in prison. What else you got? What else happened in his life?
[00:40:31] Speaker A: Well, after he's released from prison, he has this terrible injury that changes the rest of the course of his life.
So he arrived in New York in 1804, and George reportedly injured his leg because he was trying to save a fellow sailor who had fallen overboard.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: George.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: The injury was severe enough that he had to remain behind in a hospital while his ship sailed back to England without him.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: And so he just decided to stay in America instead of go back to England.
Had he not been left behind, George King might have remained an English sailor. But instead, stranded in America, he began remaking himself, becoming George Davenport.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: Now.
After recovering from his leg injury, he made his way west and eventually enlisted in the U.S. army. And during the War of 1812, he served as a quartermaster sergeant at Fort Armstrong on the Mississippi river, on a post that changed everything for him.
Now, the upper Mississippi frontier was not yet the settled river valley that it would become. As we know it was a place of military outpost, native trade networks, fur traffic, and enormous opportunity.
And he was so good at building relationships with people. In fact, he built his relationships before he built his wealth.
And so he developed ties with military officers, with traders, with settlers, and with the native communities.
And those relationships positioned him to enter the fur trade, one of the most profitable businesses in the region. And he became. Became associated with the American fur Company, founded by John Jacob Astor, which connected him to a powerful national trade network.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: How do you like that?
[00:42:30] Speaker A: And by the way, John Jacob Astor would famously perish in the sinking of the Titanic.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Stop. Why do you know so much?
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Because I look this shit up.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: Okay. So not only was he a sailor.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: Then he was in the army. Now he is a.
In the fur company business. The fur trade business.
What else? It seems like he's a modern entrepreneur. He got his shit in everything.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: He totally diversified. He was in fur trading, he was in the mercantile business. He was in land speculation. He was in river commerce. He was supplying military posts, and even banking and civic development.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: That's insane.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: Yeah. He was more than a trader. He was a frontier capitalist.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: All this from a little sailor boy from England.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: And he helped establish what would become Davenport, Iowa, one of the famed Quad Cities. And invested in transportation and the growth of the entire region.
Yeah.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: How?
Why did he make these decisions? What was this based on?
[00:43:40] Speaker A: In the spring of 1816, after leaving the army, George Davenport returned to the Mississippi on an expedition. Expedition to Rock island, where Fort Armstrong would be established. And it was a turning point for him. No longer simply a soldier, Davenport began remaking himself as a businessman on the edge of the American frontier.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: You see, he understood the power of the geography of the area.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: Yeah, he did.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: At Rock island, he built a thriving mercantile trade with native communities across Illinois and the Iowa territories, exchanging goods in a region where formal markets were still taking shape. And soon after arriving, he constructed a double log cabin, the very first permanent residence in the Rock island area.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Very cool.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: And what began as a lone frontier home became the seed of a small settlement.
In 1819, the first recorded religious service in the region was held under Davenport's largest own roof.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: What an honor.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: But he was building more than a cabin or a store. He understood something fundamental.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: What?
[00:44:52] Speaker A: This. While the Mississippi river was not merely a river, it was an economic highway. And whoever controlled the trade routes, the ferry crossings and the river connections could shape the flow of commerce, settlement, and power.
And Davenport saw that geography itself could be turned into wealth. And he built his fortune at that crossroads.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: That's amazing. And what forward thinking. My gosh. Little genius Davenport.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: And so George Davenport was among the most prosperous and influential men on the upper Mississippi river frontier.
And of course, the irony of his success is that the very wealth that made him successful may have contributed to his violent end.
[00:45:42] Speaker B: Did they ever find out who murdered Colonel Davenport?
[00:45:46] Speaker A: Okay, so here's what happened after. After the murder, people around the Rock island area sprang into action trying to catch the killers. And the Davenport family offered a $1500 reward for the capture.
And that's about $65,000 in today's money. A serious sum.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good sum.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: And also they printed hand bills describing the stolen watch and some of the missing money and whatever details could be gathered about the three men based on what Davenport reported on his deathbed. You know what I'm talking about. Those hand bills, like flyers, like them in the Wild West. Like nailed.
[00:46:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:29] Speaker A: To, like, trees and stuff.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: Exactly.
Old fashioned posters.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Search parties were organized under experienced leaders. Men scoured the countryside in every direction, and night watches were posted. In other words, the whole region was on alert, and people were determined that the assassins would not disappear quietly.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: Good. Good for them.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: Days went on, but not the slightest trace of the murderers could be found.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: That's sad.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: Then four days after the murder, an amateur detective by the name of Edward Bonney came.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: I know him.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: Yeah, he's. He's the author of the book where we got a lot of these details.
Four days after the murder, Edward Bonney came across one of the handbills, one of the flyers with the description of the murderers.
Now, as an amateur detective, he had some experience with the local banditties, and he recognized the men to be members of the gang.
Bonnie then successfully infiltrated the gang and helped expose those involved.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Damn. That's some Donnie Bracco type shit. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
[00:47:46] Speaker A: And he literally writes a very detailed description of what he did in the book.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: Just like Donnie Brasco.
Did it become a movie?
[00:47:58] Speaker A: Not yet, but maybe after.
We're open.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: Hit us up.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: Now, several men were implicated, including a man named Granville Young and two brothers, John Long and Aaron Long.
And all three were arrested and tried and convicted and later hanged in October of 1845.
So justice.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: Yes, I would say so. I think it's in a Wild west type of justice, but yes.
[00:48:33] Speaker A: Now, I have to tell you about their hanging because it is notable.
[00:48:37] Speaker B: I'm glad you do, because you have more to say. Yes. Yes, I do.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: Okay. So it's the day of their hanging.
Granville Young and brothers John and Aaron Long each had an opportunity to address the crowd because, of course, it's a public spectacle always.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: You always get the last word in, even today at executions.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: Yeah, but not only. It was like a carnival in those days. Like, there was so little entertainment that when there was a hanging, like, everybody came around with their snacks and picnic blankets.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: True.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: So they each had an opportunity to address the crowd. And Granville and Aaron Long maintained their innocence.
But John Long, he seemed eager to cast himself as, like, the most important central figure of this whole crime.
He confessed his own guilt, and he boasted of his other criminal exploits.
And he insisted that Aaron Long and Granville Young were innocent of the crime. And you know who he did accuse?
[00:49:47] Speaker B: Who?
[00:49:48] Speaker A: Edward Bonney. He's like Edward Bonney. He says he's a detective, but he's really the leader of the gang.
[00:49:55] Speaker B: What?
No, that's wrong.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: Which. Which is a shitty kind of burn. Do you know what I mean? But it is A burn. It is a good burn. It's kind of genius, actually.
He ranted on until time was up, and the sheriff brought his speech to an end. And with his last words, he did not beg forgiveness, but he was still calling to his friends to attempt a rescue to the very last minute.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: I mean, that's consistent.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: All three men are up there.
They're standing on the platforms.
The noose is around their neck, hoods over their heads.
The drop fell, and the three murderers swung off.
John Long and Granville Young were at once launched into eternity.
But Aaron Long's death was actually postponed because his rope snapped and Aaron crashed to the ground.
Now, this doesn't mean he was free, of course. They quickly took him back up to the scaffold, and the officers were, like, adjusting the rope a second time and,
[00:51:05] Speaker B: you know, sucked so bad fixing the platform.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: But in the meantime, a clergyman stepped up, and he's like, hey. And he pointed to the bodies of his brother and Granville Young, and he said, hey, Aaron, they're gone, and you are soon to follow.
There's no escape for you. But if you're guilty, confess now to God.
And then, for the first time, Aaron Long did confess, and he admitted to his part in the murder, undoing the denials that he and John had maintained before.
Then, moments later, he was hanged and his life, too, ended.
Hmm. I'd like to think there's some divine redemption for that final act.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: You think so?
[00:51:53] Speaker A: I'd like to think so. I don't know, but I'd like to think so.
Yeah. The execution of Granville Young and John and Aaron Long became a spectacle in its own right. And notably, the condemned men were among the earliest criminals in America to be photographed before execution.
[00:52:13] Speaker B: Interesting.
I have to tell you something.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: What do you have to say?
[00:52:18] Speaker B: This is so disturbing, but, like, fascinatingly creepy. Okay, so after John Long and his brother Aaron were hanged, their bodies were donated to medical doctors in the area.
John's body was given to a Dr. Patrick Greg of Rock Island.
[00:52:34] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:52:36] Speaker B: Oh, my God. After Greg died, the body disappeared. Greg's widow gave the body. Okay, listen to that. Gave the body to Charles.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: Another doctor.
[00:52:47] Speaker B: Another doctor. Of Chicago.
[00:52:48] Speaker A: Kalki, I would say.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: He, in turn, gave the body to the Illinois Historical Society. After that, the skeleton was mailed back to Rock Island county historical society in 1940.
The skeleton was on display, display in a glass case in the lobby of the courthouse at rock island until 1975.
[00:53:19] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:53:20] Speaker B: When someone in the museum thought, maybe this is in poor taste, and they finally gave him A proper burial, but in an unmarked grave. And that was on September 14, 1978.
Wow.
Wow.
His brother Aaron's body was also donated to a doctor in the medical field in the area, but it was lost over time. They don't know where Aaron's body is. It's probably in someone's basement.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: Is that not creepy? Fascinating.
[00:53:53] Speaker A: That is. That is 100 creepy. Fascinating.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: 1978, they gave the man a proper burial. That's like a hundred and thirty years after the fact.
[00:54:05] Speaker A: That's my worst nightmare, I think. To donate my body to science and then have it lost. Or, like, in the mail. Like, you take it. No, you take it. No, you and then, like, in a glass case somewhere.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: That's not fair to the mail carriers in this region. It's not fair that you. That's not cool, man. And what kind of stickers would it have on it, like. You know what I mean? Like, fragile.
[00:54:28] Speaker A: A lot of stamps.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of stamps. A lot of stamps.
Wow.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: So the crime, the murder of George Davenport resonated far beyond a robbery gone wrong.
People saw it as an attack on order itself and an indicator of lawlessness. Again, on. On the frontier, Davenport represented commerce and settlement and civilization.
And his murder exposed how thin that civilization could be.
Wow. How fragile. Right? How fragile. You think you've made it, you know? And you're still. You're still susceptible, still vulnerable to harm. Yeah.
And there is a haunting irony to it all.
George Davenport had spent decades building wealth through trade routes, land and river power. And his blood was spilled on the floor of the home that had helped cede a frontier settlement.
That's crazy.
So, Jill, why do you think George Davenport is coming through to us? He must be our voiceless, right?
[00:55:39] Speaker B: I do believe he's our voiceless. I believe that his death overshadowed his life, and many people remember Davenport for his murder and not the extraordinary immigrant journey that came before it.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: Interesting.
Interesting. Why do you think Davenport's story is still important today?
[00:56:00] Speaker B: It's an American reinvention story. It really is an American story. It ends in tragedy, but it starts with the arrival of a stranded immigrant sailor who has nothing and builds influence, power, and cities that still bear his name today. Davenport, Iowa much.
[00:56:18] Speaker A: For sure. For sure. But also it shows how wealth and power can be precarious.
[00:56:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:26] Speaker A: His murder reminds us that success can create vulnerability as well as power. You know what? I have to tell you this. Can I tell you this now?
[00:56:33] Speaker B: Yes, tell me this now.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: Give me a minute to bring it up on my phone.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: I Was gonna say it reminds me of the Kim Kardashian kidnapping, of how she was, like, flaunting her jewelry online, and then someone kidnapped her in France.
That's.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that that counts as another example of this on this theme. But also, the day that you were writing this outline on George Davenport, this story came across my feed about a rental car heiress, 70 years old, who had been choked and beaten by a gang of masked thieves in her posh Hollywood home.
[00:57:15] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:57:17] Speaker A: Her name was Margot Merkin. Her name is. She's still, she's still living.
[00:57:21] Speaker B: She. Oh, she didn't die?
[00:57:23] Speaker A: She did not die, no.
[00:57:24] Speaker B: Oh, good.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: But she has this. She's. She's the heiress to the budget rent a car fortune, and she's 70 years old. So an elderly lady living, I presume, by herself in this huge mansion in the Hollywood Hills, and three masked men come into her house, beat her, choke her, just like Davenport, and took cash and jewelry, just like they took his watch and cash.
I, I, I'm, I have no words. Like, I don't understand why this came across my feed at the same time I was working on this outline with you, but I think it just, I think that Davenport is saying, you and I are reading this, like, oh, these were like the days when it was so dangerous. And, hello, we haven't come very far at all.
[00:58:20] Speaker B: Not at all.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: We have not come far at all. And also, if, you know, elderly people living by themselves, they are vulnerable no matter what their financial situation is. And, and we need to remember the elderly in our communities and check on them and take care of them and make sure they're okay, Particularly if they are known to be in possession of something valuable.
[00:58:47] Speaker B: Greed.
Damn.
[00:58:50] Speaker A: Damn. Hey, can we go over our hits? Cause I think I need a little bit of explanation.
[00:58:55] Speaker B: Okay, so, Jill, outlaw vibes, outlaws not knowing the name, Someone not in pop culture.
[00:59:03] Speaker A: So I think that that's the banditties. The bad banditties on the prairie. Yeah, they were the bad little banditties about Jack and Diane.
[00:59:12] Speaker B: What about Jennifer? Are you feeling the Mississippi river is important to our. Voiceless.
[00:59:17] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
Can you explain? I mean, obviously, Davenport lived on the Mississippi River.
[00:59:24] Speaker B: Yes. And he did realize that the geography of the river was powerful. But here's something. We were in Galena, correct? Yes.
[00:59:32] Speaker A: We weren't in Rock Island.
[00:59:33] Speaker B: We weren't in Rock Island.
And George Davenport was the first person to ship lead From Galena to St. Louis, down the Galena river to the mighty mist to St. Louis. He was the first person he Was really the person to cultivate the lead in the area that drew people there.
[00:59:56] Speaker A: Got it. So that makes sense that his spirit was reaching out to us when we were in Galena. Because he built Galena too. Kind of, yeah. Like he was directly responsible for the lead rush.
Again, less romantic than the gold rush,
[01:00:11] Speaker B: but still, it's so important.
The feeling that I had that mass masses underappreciate the riverboat captain. I don't see a sign about Davenport anywhere around galena. Not that I know of.
Oh.
[01:00:25] Speaker A: I don't know if there is one. Interesting.
Hey, what do you think about 1843?
I don't know why I wrote that down. I don't know what was coming through. But he was murdered in 1845.
[01:00:38] Speaker B: Okay. So I have two theories.
[01:00:40] Speaker A: Really. Okay.
[01:00:41] Speaker B: Yes. Okay. So 1843 was a pretty good year for the man. He was like. He was kind of, like, halfway retired. He was doing his. Like, he was planning out different cities around the area. Like, he was doing, like, the things that he loved, his creative work. And it was really this time of prosperity and peace in his life.
Which is funny, because I think the reason why you got the date wrong and was off by two years Is because you and I were fighting in the car, and I think you were distracted, and you got pretty close to the actual murder date. And I'm going to give it to you, because that's off by two years, but that's pretty. Pretty freaking impressive.
[01:01:19] Speaker A: Thank you. I guess I'll take it. I guess I'll take it.
[01:01:22] Speaker B: Okay. Wow.
[01:01:25] Speaker A: So Jenny and I were noting historical homes, which makes sense because he is his home still there.
[01:01:35] Speaker B: It's still in rock island, and it is now a museum.
[01:01:39] Speaker A: The home where he was murdered.
[01:01:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:01:42] Speaker A: Is still standing.
[01:01:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:01:43] Speaker A: And now it's a museum.
[01:01:45] Speaker B: Correct.
[01:01:45] Speaker A: That's crazy, because you were picking up on an old home that was converted into a museum.
[01:01:51] Speaker B: That's right.
[01:01:52] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:01:52] Speaker B: That's right.
[01:01:53] Speaker A: And of course, we were feeling murder.
[01:01:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:01:56] Speaker A: A murder forgotten by history. And you were feeling a shooting, which he was shot.
[01:02:01] Speaker B: Poor, poor man.
[01:02:02] Speaker A: Wow. Is there anything else? Oh, the trading with the indigenous people.
[01:02:07] Speaker B: Well, that is the fur trading that Jenny was picking up on. And Jenny is so stupid psychic, she needs to own it already. Own it, Jenny. Own it, Jenny, baby, own it.
All right.
[01:02:17] Speaker A: All right.
[01:02:18] Speaker B: That was fun.
[01:02:20] Speaker A: That was fun. That was sad fun.
[01:02:22] Speaker B: That was sad fun.
[01:02:23] Speaker A: That was not happy. Go lucky fun.
[01:02:25] Speaker B: What was fun about it is learning about the history that I was not aware of and, you know, giving spotlight to the man's life.
[01:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:02:35] Speaker B: And not just his sensational, sensational death.
[01:02:38] Speaker A: What a strong person to go through all of that. The. The incident, you know, the beating and etc and then to like call for help and then to like say, this is what happened. This is what the men look like. He's the reason that his own murder was. Was that his murderers were found.
[01:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:03:02] Speaker A: He had a tremendous amount of strength.
[01:03:04] Speaker B: The fact that he was so powerful and so well known and he was still so sweet. Like the smile he had on his face that would light up a room and he's like, no, fam, you go celebrate the fireworks. I'm good. You know what I mean? Like, he just comes across as such a sweet man.
[01:03:21] Speaker A: Well, and the other thing is that he did have a reputation when a lot of people didn't for trading fairly with the indigenous peoples in the area, the Sauk, the Fox. Because he set up the trading post and he was. He was fair and people really respected him.
[01:03:38] Speaker B: So.
[01:03:38] Speaker A: Anyway, so hope you learned something about Colonel George Davenport and the history of Illinois, which used to be the wild west of the United States. What?
[01:03:48] Speaker B: Who knew who?
[01:03:50] Speaker A: Prairie bandits.
[01:03:53] Speaker B: The Banditti.
[01:03:54] Speaker A: The Banditti.
[01:03:55] Speaker B: They needed a better name. That's stupid. I'm sorry.
[01:03:58] Speaker A: That's terrible. I know it's terrible.
[01:03:59] Speaker B: It does not strike fear in my heart.
[01:04:01] Speaker A: No, it's silly.
[01:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah, no, for sure. So a couple things you guys. As you know, I am still giving readings, so please reach out to us atcommonmystics gmail.com. jennifer, my brilliant sister is available for one on one mentorship at your discretion. So please email
[email protected] for that. We've been lazy on our socials, but please check out our socials at Common mystics pod wherever you are.
[01:04:28] Speaker A: Meeting up online and our email is common mystics gmail.com.
[01:04:34] Speaker B: what was I saying?
[01:04:35] Speaker A: Commonmystics.com I know they knew what you meant.
[01:04:39] Speaker B: You know. Commonmysticsmail.com is our correct email address. Thank you for that catch.
[01:04:45] Speaker A: You're very welcome. All right, well, thanks for listening everybody. Love you.
[01:04:49] Speaker B: Love you.
[01:04:49] Speaker A: Bye bye.
[01:04:51] Speaker B: This has been a Common Mystics Media
[01:04:53] Speaker A: production editing done by Yokai Audio, Kalamazoo, Michigan.
