“Just wait, I’ll explain everything,” Joseph Gadbury pleaded as Deputy Sheriff Anthony Row of Britt prepared to transport the fugitive from Winnipeg, Canada, back to Iowa. “I thought the check was good.”
Clinton, Iowa, in the 1870s was home to plenty of “rough freedom-loving frontiersmen” who worked in the numerous lumber rafting and milling establishments that lined the riverfront. It was a relatively new city with a population of a little over 6,000 and businesses of all kinds were booming.
