Jackson County IA Archives History .....Iron Hills Vigilantes July 20, 1954
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Ken Wright wright@prestontel.com October 21, 2011, 5:01 pm

Maquoketa Community Press, July 20, 1954 
(Editor’s note: Articles which were omitted from the Jackson Sentinel’s 
Centennial issue because of lack of space will appear for several weeks.) 

VIGILANTES-Individuals who band together to aid in law enforcement-have been 
active in Jackson County during two periods of history. 
The first group organized in the Iron Hills community about 1857 because of an 
obvious lack of law enforcement, soon fell into disrepute because of the mob 
violence it engendered. The second group, however, worked directly with peace 
officers and provided valuable service. 
Citizens of Bellevue rid their community of a band of outlaws in 1840 by the 
famous one-day “Bellevue War.” But as the western part of the community became 
populated, the law-abiding citizens frequently at odds with rough, lawless 
men, who operated counterfeiting and horse-stealing activities from hide-outs 
in the hilly timberland. 
By 1857 there had been 15 alleged murders in the county, but only one 
execution. Therefore, when John Ingles of the Iron Hills community was 
murdered while hunting in March, 1857, prominent citizens determined that the 
death should not go unavenged. Thus the Iron Hills Vigilance Committee was 
formed. 
The suspected murderer having been lodged in the jail at Andrew to await the 
grand jury action, a mob of some sixty men marched to Andrew in double file on 
the afternoon of April 11, 1857. With sledge hammers they forced their way 
into the jail, tied a rope around the suspect’s neck and took him to a nearby 
tree. 
There he was urged to confess, being promised that his life would be spared if 
he did. He not only admitted the actual shooting, but implicated two men who 
he said had paid him for the act. Despite the promise that had been made, mob 
violence prevailed and he was immediately hanged by the neck until dead. 
Of the two men implicated, one escaped from the county and the other was 
spirited to Bellevue by constables and sent by boat to the penitentiary at Ft. 
Madison for safety. When he was brought back for trial some months later, the 
excitement had died down and he was never prosecuted. 
The same mob took the law into its own hands the following month, after a 
former Farmers Creek township resident murdered his divorced wife at Bellevue, 
where she had taken refuge with relatives. On the night of March 28, 1857, the 
mob stormed the DeWitt jail, where he had been taken for safe-keeping, 
returned the culprit to Andrew and hanged him. 
A third incident in the history of the Iron Hills vigilantes was the 
punishment some of the committee inflicted upon a man who was known as “a gay 
Lothario.” Accused of forcing his unwanted attentions upon women of the 
community, they took him one night to a ravine, smeared him with tar, and 
liberally applied several sackfuls of chicken feathers. History records that 
he left the county, never to be seen again. 



  


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