Anamosa Eureka    Arrival of Convicts    May 1873

Anamosa Eureka May 1873
Arrival of Convicts

Last Tuesday afternoon twenty convicts from the Ft. Madison penitentiary, in charge of Warden Craig, arrived at Anamosa and were immediately transferred to their new quarters. It having been noised about that the prisoners were expected, quite a number of people gathered on the grounds.

The prisoners, as will be seen below, were mostly young men and, with a few exceptions, wore countenances not by any means altogether vicious or dejected. We could not help thinking, as the manacled couples filed in behind the iron doors, that some of them were probably better men, so far as their average impulses and sober desires were concerned, and had committed less crime against humanity and caused less misery, than some who will look coldly upon them in their prison garb; - better men than many whose naturally mean and cowardly spirit, or whose fear of the punishment which the law constantly holds up before them, restrains them from committing the same or worse acts than those for which these convicts are now paying the bitter penalty.

Arrangements are now in progress for setting the prisoners at work, and a few days more will probably see them all occupied.

One of those prisoners was:

John Barlow from Clinton Co Colorado      Crime - Larceny    Committed to penitentiary March 28, 1872 for two years

Nativity - Iowa / age 22    Occupation - Sawyer     Habits - Temperate     Married