Amend’s high quality meat has been a culinary treat for the city of Des Moines since founder Conrad Amend opened his first meat market four years after the Civil War. Amend was 11 years old when, alone, he left Germany to seek his fame and fortune…

*Original article published in The Annals of Iowa 20 (1936), State Historical Society of Iowa.  Isaac Brandt and his family moved to Des Moines in the spring of 1858 and decided to locate on the east side of the Des Moines River because of its…

Major Hoyt Sherman was born in Ohio in 1827, the youngest of 11 children. His father was an Ohio Supreme Court judge, his brother John became the U.S. Secretary of Treasury and Secretary of State, and his brother William Tecumseh Sherman, a famous…

A history of the Rowat Cut Stone Company should begin many years back. In fact, in 1850 a boy was born into a large family in Kilmarnock, Scotland. This boy started to learn to be a stonecutter at the age of 14 and just after he was 21 years old he…

James C. Savery was Des Moines' first great hotel man. Arriving in 1857, Mr. Savery purchased the Marvin House on 3rd Street and renamed it the Everett House which became the terminus of the stage line.In 1856, he led investors in the building of…

Ronald (Dutch) Reagan, movie star, governor of California, and president of the United States from 1981-1988, lived in Des Moines for a time in the 1930s, when he worked as a sports announcer for WHO radio. Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, in…

William Wirt Witmer grew up the 12th of 13 children on Pennsylvania farm. He attended school at Gettysburg College, leaving it to enlist in the 104th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. After being mustered out he studied law and came to Muscatine,…

Benjamin Franklin Allen and his wife Arathusa celebrated the completion of Terrace Hill on their fifteenth wedding anniversary, January 29, 1869. The home was designed by W.W. Boyington from Chicago, had 20 rooms, and is said to have cost the Allens…

According to a Des Moines Register article, Egidio Romano came to Des Moines from Italy by way of Omaha, Kansas City, and then St. Paul.  Romano started his fruit stand in Des Moines in 1891 and eventually became the Secretary-Treasurer of the…