A.W. Harlan: Iowa's "Forrest Gump"
Archival papers show an ordinary man pop up in remarkable places throughout American history.
With a quick glance into the Harlan Family Collection , Aaron Word (A.W.) Harlan appears to be a typical 19th century Iowan who farmed, soldiered, and died at the age of 99.
But if one looks closer into this collection, a remarkable life reminiscent of Forrest Gump's emerges. Harlan witnessed the selection of Brigham Young as the Mormon's new leader, traversed the frontier during the California Gold Rush, dug graves throughout the devastating Sacramento cholera epidemic, was shipwrecked in Mexico and a Confederate prisoner of war, and saw the first Ferris wheel at the Chicago World's Fair.
But, before all those adventures occurred, A.W. Harlan's story starts with humble beginnings in the Midwest...
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Dearborn, Indiana
Aaron Word Harlan was born on November 15, 1811 in Dearborn, Indiana. His father, Joshua Harlan, was a Baptist farmer and mechanic, and with his first wife, Sarah Word, he had three daughters and two sons – one being Aaron. Sarah died in 1814 when Aaron was only three years old. Joshua remarried and had four more children.
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Commerce on the Mississippi
Unfortunately, very little is known about Harlan’s childhood in Indiana. By 1833, Aaron (now 22) lived in a settlement near the Wabash River, working as a mercantile clerk. He transported produce on flatboats down to New Orleans – a common occupation and commerce route taken during the time.
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Settling in Iowa
In winter of 1834, Harlan traveled up the Missouri River to St. Louis and then Des Moines, finally settling in Lee County to work as a carpenter.
Curious Encounters in Iowa
Iowa remained Harlan's permanent residence for the rest of his life, although he would leave and return from thrilling adventures multiple times. During his first decade in Iowa, however, Harlan encountered notable American figures from warring chiefs of Native American tribes to Brigham Young, the leader of the Mormon church.
In October of 1834 near Montrose, Iowa, Harlan met Black Hawk, a noted war leader of the Sauk. Black Hawk was famous for his role in the Black Hawk War of 1832 when the Sauk contested the 1804 Treaty of St. Louis which would have illegally ceded their land. Defeated by the United States Army after a long fight, Black Hawk was briefly imprisoned and paraded around the country to herald the defeat. Harlan met the infamous man after he had resettled with his family in Southern Iowa.
“Strangers generally wanted to see that somewhat noted man and at times it seemed to annoy him a little.”
Harlan was also acquainted with Chief Keokuk, a Sauk leader who opposed Black Hawk’s policies and convinced a large portion of tribal members not to fight on his side. Keokuk visited Washington often and was regarded as a shrewd politician.
Harlan remarked that they were often passengers together on the same steamboat from St. Louis to Keosauqua, and once, “At the mouth of the Mississippi I saw the Indians each of them throw a plug of tobacco overboard as a sacrifice to the great spirit and again on entering the Des Moines.”
While working in the fields one day Harlan witnessed George Catlin, the famed painter who specialized in Native American portraits, arrive by steamboat to paint Keokuk’s likeness.
“Within a few days we saw Keokuk on his best horse dressed in his best clothing with that great collar of white bear claws.”
In December 1834, Harlan purchased land on the Des Moines River near the foot of the “Great Bend” where he built a cabin, grew potatoes, and enjoyed life as a bachelor. He became a mail carrier and established the first mail routes at Farmington, Bentonsport, Columbus, and Des Moines. He briefly operated a store in Des Moines in 1837, but quickly went bankrupt and built a new cabin in Van Buren.
In Van Buren in 1838, Harlan met and married Eunice Briggs. From 1841 to 1853, the couple had four children: Emeline, Justin, Frank, and Albert. Much of what is known about Aaron comes from letters written to Emeline, his eldest daughter.
In a letter A.W. curiously references “the fact of me having seen Brigham Young chosen as the successor of Joseph Smith to take the leadership of the Mormons.” After Smith was killed by a mob in an Illinois prison, Young spoke to a crowd of 6,000 church members on the banks of the Mississippi in Nauvoo, Illinois and was chosen as their next leader.
A.W. claims to have been in that crowd and recalls Sydney Rigdon, Young’s challenger for the leadership role, meeting with the “non Polygamous portion of the Church” in an old stone house near the ferry landing.
“The Mormons have sprung up in my time and are a fanatical power in the land to day [sic] as to Joseph Smith I tried to understand him but to me he was incomprehensible as to Brigham Young I had but little acquaintance with him but he must have had a strong hypnotic influence besides Faith Patience and perseverance.”
Heading West: The California Gold Rush
In 1850, after residing in Iowa for nearly 17 years, Aaron became restless. Swept up in the excitement of the California Gold Rush, he joined a team of men and oxen traveling from Missouri to California in search of adventure and riches. Harlan kept a detailed journal for the duration of the journey, providing a richly detailed glimpse into what pioneering miners endured.
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The Journey Begins: Athens, Missouri
Harlan, Wilburn Wilson, James Wilson, and Michael Dust embarked on their journey to California on May 1, 1850. They left from the town of Athens, Missouri, traveling 10-30 miles a day with their oxen along the Des Moines River. They reached the Platte River on May 25, where Harlan penned the poem pictured to the right.
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Trials and Triumphs on the Journey
Harlan describes the beauty and frustration of the journey: oxen made lame by rattlesnake bites, days spent wandering the “Romantic Bluffs” of Western Iowa, shooting prairie dogs to eat because no antelopes could be found, observing Nebraska’s Chimney Rock from 33 miles away, weeks when their oxen were starved in the sandy Western deserts, the smell of rotting horse carcasses left behind by settlers, and thousands of blooming bluebells seen from the top of a snowy mountain.
Harlan notes the decimation of the buffalo as they were hunted for food and sport by settlers moving West: “There are many dead Buffalos scattered over the plains. Some of them appear to have died from poverty and some have been shot for amusement.”
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Finding Gold
By July 1, the team was halfway to California. Harlan climbed to the top of Independence Rock, reflecting, “Just half way to California and the middle of the 19th century.” On July 7, they found gold dust for the first time in the Rocky Mountains.
Finally on September 17, 1850, he writes, “I have separated from my companions and went with the team to the Diamond springs 2 ½ towards Sacramento city... I have seen several men digging and washing gold I can now say I am fairly into the gold diggins and will probably cease keeping a Journal.”
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Sacramento City, California
In Sacramento Harlan encountered the villainy of greed. He wrote that the best life insurance policy is to "let it be positively known that a man has no money about him."
Still, he predicted the California would become an important location one day based on its agricultural abundance and diverse makeup of people of all identities. He writes quite prophetically, “...those who estimate the value of California by the amount of her golden treasures have but a faint idea of her real importance. The position that California may assume in Political and religious points of view will have much to do with the future destinies of the world.”
Gravedigging during the Sacramento Cholera Epidemic
In October of 1850, Harlan and his Gold Rush company camped near Sacramento to wait for the rain to come again so they could pan for gold. In the meantime, Aaron decided to take a temporary job as a gravedigger in Sacramento, unaware of the sickness that would soon overwhelm the city and its cemetery. Within the month, a cholera epidemic broke out in California, centered in San Francisco and Sacramento City (now known simply as Sacramento). Harlan recalled the creeping tide of cholera deaths, writing, “I went to work [to] dig two graves the first day and three the next, then there was the suspicion of cholera...” He visited the Sacramento City Council to relay the increasingly daunting situation in the cemetery, and they gave him the authority of superintendent for a few months to hire more hands.
“At a good many of the burials where I had dug the graves Brother Benton of the Presbyterian church conducted the funeral services. But in many cases there would be only some few old friends to look on and still oftener no friend at all.”
To avoid cholera himself, Harlan mixed a small amount of French Brandy from the local drug store and pulverized asafoetida, a plant resin and purported cure for cholera, into the pond water which was their only drinking source. Still, the epidemic continued on. In a haunting image, Harlan recalled how the undertakers would gather to eat lunch at noon together near the oak bushes with “the coffins piled around near us.” At the end of the six-week epidemic, Harlan recorded 1,146 six burials, although not all were due to cholera. Some sources claim that the cholera outbreak killed 1,000 of Sacramento City's 10,000 residents and sickened another 1,000.
Harlan recounts the Sacramento Cholera epidemic (left). A photograph of the Sacramento City cemetery in 1866 (right).
As the epidemic subsided, Harlan didn't rest for long. He opted to travel back to Iowa by boat rather than on land, a choice which would see him shipwrecked in Mexico.
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Departing San Francisco
In November 1851, an Iowan man, Mr. Williams, asked Harlan to help him transport $6,000 worth of gold dust back to their home state. Anxious to see his children, Harlan joined with his own $2,300 in profit.
The pair traveled to San Francisco and boarded the SS Republic, a steamship headed for Panama operated by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Harlan worried about the condition of this ship which had already run aground once, and conspired with a young Frenchman that the two would seize a wooden plank together and try to keep their heads above water.
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Shipwrecked in Acapulco Bay
Near Acapulco, Mexico the boat began to fill with water, and it was run aground in Acapulco Bay. He recalled that while he remained calm, “it was quite different with many of the others, especially the three women... it was then I learned how much noise a few women could make.”
Passengers ran ashore with their gold dust; some were robbed, and one man was killed. An enslaved man from Missouri was robbed of $1,000 worth of gold which he had collected to buy his freedom. Harlan suggested that the passengers establish a guard to protect the goods on board while the men went ashore; in the end, some $30,000 worth of gold dust was placed in the pile (equivalent to $1.139 million in 2023).
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Homeward Bound
After two weeks living in the local villages of Acapulco, the passengers were picked up by the S.S. Panama which deposited them on the shore of Panama within four days. They canoed through the freshwater rivers, encountering local tribes, coconut trees, and “the Big ring tail monkeys” who screeched louder than Harlan could believe.
Finally, the party boarded the SS Empire City which brought them first to Cuba, then finally to the mouth of the Mississippi in New Orleans in January 1852. Within a few weeks, he was home in Iowa.
Harlan's account of the shipwreck in Central America.
Triumph and Capture in the Civil War
It is possible that once he returned to Iowa, Harlan had had enough of adventuring. Yet, duty called his name as the American Civil War broke out in spring of 1861. Harlan wrote detailed letters to his family while enlisted, enabling historians to follow his movements.
1861: Harlan enlists in Company F of the 21st Missouri Infantry
March-May 1862: Preparing for Battle
Harlan's regiment moves between Missouri and Tennessee, preparing for a battle to break out in Corinth, Mississippi. At the intersection between two major rail lines, Corinth is a vital town for delivering military supplies. On May 22 Harlan writes, “We do not know when the great Battle of Corinth will come off or whether it will come off at all...” The regiment has prepared their battle lines which Harlan draws on the back of a letter. But indeed, the battle does not happen in May just as he suspected, and the regiment returns to Tennessee. As he travels to Memphis, Harlan witnesses the Confederates burn nine trains of provisions to keep them from falling into Union hands – he laments, “Oh my son, the waste of war is wonderful...”
October 3-4, 1861: The Second Battle of Corinth
In September the Company returns to Corinth. Confederates attack on October 3, hoping to wrest the city from Union control and disrupt supply lines. Harlan writes that his clothes have become infested with fleas, so at dawn on October 3, he is wide awake scratching and sees the first shells bursting. As the battle progressed, he wrote, “About noon our Regt. was changed from the north to west side of town. I was just taking them their dinners all in one wagon and accidentally at just the right moment came to a secure place on exactly the right position to see the whole maneuvering and fighting in the last desperate charge the rebels made on sat. and I Could not help admiring their desperate valor although it done me no good to see them mowed down. In short the night was a glorious one to behold. Such a sight makes it seem as though a man lived a year in a single minute” (Oct. 12, 1862). The Confederates retreated with 4,838 losses; the Union suffered 2,359.
May 1863: A Confederate Prisoner of War
Harlan’s letters cease from March 1863 to May 1863. Finally, on May 8 he writes to Eunice from Maryland, “My Dear wife it is some time since I have had the privilege of writing to any friend having been a prisoner of war since the latter part of March.” He tells her that he was captured while scouting for concealed ferry boats on the Tennessee River. Unarmed and alone, he surrendered to the Confederates soldiers who found him. They took him from Columbia Tennessee, to Chatanooga, to Knoxville, to Richmond Virginia, before settling in Annapolis Maryland. He has been robbed of all his belongings except for a small sum of money concealed in the lining of his pants.
Harlan writes of his time as a prisoner of war: “... even then as a prison I could and did do twice as much as I could have done if I had been in line with my musket. If a soldier can’t do one thing, he can sometimes do something else if the has The Audacity.” He recalls once meeting a sociable Confederate soldier who did not want to go into the fight. He told him to run during the confusion of dinnertime: “They are getting ready to start there will be some confusion. Then will be your time to get away. On starting he spoke almost in a whisper saying to me, “My name is Morgan. I live in Conway County about forty miles north of Little Rock and if you can get away come to my house and you can stay there...” And he was off.”
1863-1864: A Change of Heart
Harlan is exchanged later in May and returned to his regiment in Memphis, Tennessee. He rises to a position in the Contraband Headquarters – later called the Freedmen Headquarters – which cares for and supports self-emancipated slaves who set up camps near Union forces in occupied southern states. It is during this time as he routinely interacts with African Americans that Harlan’s opinions on abolition changed. He writes to Eunice that he used to declare he was no abolitionist, “but I am compelled to say that circumstances over which I have no control is daily making me one.” Harlan long argued for colonization – the resettlement of freed slaves in Africa – yet he has now recruited many freedmen to the army who rightfully deserve citizenship and taught in a school for the children of freedman who settled in Contraband Camps.
December 1864: Harlan returns to Iowa
Battle line drawings and a letter from the Second Battle of Corinth.
A Vacation at Last: The Chicago World's Fair
In May of 1893, Harlan arrived in Chicago, Illinois to attend the “World’s Columbian Exposition” (also known as the First Chicago World’s Fair). The event, which ran from May 1 to October 31, was held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the “New World” in 1492.
In letters to his family, he details the exhibits he explored during his month-long stay. On May 20 he wrote his daughter Emeline, "I have now spent 3 days on the fairgrounds, have conversed with many persons on the subject and they all admit that it is much beyond their expectations and indeed the amount of each and everything that can be imagined is simply incomprehensible.”
Harlan describes witnessing Buffalo Bill’s Wild West outdoor show, an authentic Chinese pagoda, a tank full of “millions” of freshwater fish, and goods from across the world numbering in the ten-thousands, to which he gave “each artifact near two seconds of thought.” While he doesn't mention it, it is likely Harlan also witnessed the first Ferris wheel which was premiered at the fair.
A.W.'s Final Years
Harlan returned to Iowa and lived quietly for the next 18 years. He spent much of his last years writing down his memories from the early pioneer days and his own adventures. Historians can thank Aaron's grandnephew, Edgar Ruby Harlan, for encouraging A.W. to pen the hundreds of pages of letters which recount his life ( E.R. Harlan's papers are also housed at the Drake University Archives).
"Mr. Ed. R. Harlan my Kinsman, Your recent letter was quite welcome. I have done as near as requested as I could conveniently. I am now getting old that such a request is rather flattering to my vanity. Indeed whatever can an old fellow be good for... When writing of those old scenes I can sit down of an evening and many of them seem to pass in review before me... Yours Truly, A.W. Harlan."
In the years following 1903, the two corresponded dozens of times, and E.R. visited his grand uncle often. Although A.W. believed that his "thoughts are worth but little to myself or to any others," he continued to describe his adventures in striking detail. His health began to decline in 1905, as is visible in the deterioration of his handwriting.
Aaron Word Harlan died on April 30, 1911. Yet, his life and legacy live on in the documents he left behind. E.R. Harlan completed his biography of A.W. before he died, remarking that, just like Forrest Gump, "Mr. Harlan may be said to have participated in every event though which he passed..."
A.W. Harlan's biography written by E.R. Harlan.
