Jailhouse History

This old wooden jail with the "Rockwell Jail House" sign has a colorful history, one that goes all the way back to 1889, 18 years before the town of Rockwell, Iowa was incorporated, when the first settler, Jarvis J. Rogers built a log cabin in Geneseo Township.

Rockwell was incorporated in September 1881 and on Sept. 9 1889 the town council appointed a committee to check into the cost of building a "calaboose" or jail. Committee members reported that Sheffield had a 12-foot square calaboose built of two by fours laid flat to form the walls. The floor and ceiling also had been built of two by fours. The cost was $151. The committee ordered the calaboose to be built in Rockwell and leased a site for it.

It was noted in a December 1993 article by the Globe Gazette that it was a habit in Rockwell’s early days to steal a groom on his wedding day and, "... let him languish in the calaboose until some friend rescued him from the pranksters."

The old Rockwell jail had been purchased by Edward "Buck" Roeder to serve as a granary on his farm a mile east of Rockwell. At the time the above article was written Roeder reminisced about the earlier times of the Rockwell community, especially the old jail.

"Although made of wood, it was built to hold law breakers," Roeder told the journalist. "It is built like the old grain elevators - two by fours laid flat to form the walls. At each end are very small windows blocked by steel bars... when I bought it some years ago it was so heavy I had to use two tractors to move it."

Roeder also recalled that kids avoided the jail, even after it had been moved to his farm. They had heard many strange tales of its early history. According to Roeder, around approximately 1938, two belligerent young men were thrown into the calaboose after a town dance caused them to get into a street fight over some "belle".

Since the calaboose, or jail, was a one-room structure, a man named Frank Siegfried, a store clerk in town at that time, was deputized by the town marshal to keep the men apart and was locked into the jail with them. He was given a gun to protect himself and all through the night he sat on a chair and kept the gun pointed at the two trouble makers.

The old Rockwell Jail House was moved to the Don and Connie Hitzhusen farm in 1978 before being laboriously moved to the Kinney Pioneer Museum grounds on April 20, 2000.

Note: Information for this article came from The Story of Rockwell 1870 to 1970, written by Elizabeth Jane (Roeder) Hithusen; a December 1993 Globe Gazette newspaper article, "Timber Stand Felled By Bulldozer"; and an informational plaque, all located inside the old jail. Information and photos compiled by the Kinney Pioneer Museum.