Neighbors: A Foundation of Civic Order in the Rural Midwest

Rural midwesterners have a tradition of neighborliness. They greet people on the streets, wave when vehicles pass, bring casseroles to newcomers, invite neighbors to join community groups, organize potlucks, and fund-raisers when needed, bring food and comfort to the bereaved, visit nursing homes and hospitals to bring cheer to those they know, or who are from their churches or communities. What they no longer do, in most cases, is maintain civic order in their neighborhoods, organize posses to chase down burglars, rapists, or murderers, or ride miles to inform the law of trouble. For purposes of the following, “civic order” refers to the private sectors of society, including voluntary and informal associations, such as neighborhoods. It serves as a complement to public order, which includes government and public authorities at all levels.

There was crime in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century rural Midwest, just as there was everywhere else, but we know very little about it. Cities, as they began to grow in the 1830s, became the assumed centers of disorder and crime, and therefore received the most attention from public authorities and civic associations. Prior to the organization of adequate, easily accessible law enforcement in rural areas of the Midwest, individuals and private groups acted together as neighbors, to protect and defend family and friends within the neighborhood. On rare occasions neighbors organized to bring harsher justice to murderers, rapists, or practitioners of incest. The failures of the public order, or fears that the public order would fail to properly punish lawbreakers (or alleged lawbreakers), prompted violent retribution.¹

The modernization or professionalization of law enforcement in the beginning of the twentieth century eliminated many functions of the neighborhood or community. Policing developed in the cities early. Boston began its paid, twenty-four-hour police force in 1838, and New York began its in 1845. By the 1880s, all major US cities had instituted professional police forces. City police forces were designed to prevent crime. The new, organized, and publicly supported police forces had rules and protocols, were led by police chiefs, and developed bureaucratic structures of operation.² However, a form of the colonial and early nineteenth-century “watch” system remained in effect for much longer than in cities; citizens remained vigilant and reported crimes to public authorities, which often took many hours or days to accomplish.

State or territorial law, depending on the time period for each midwestern state, governed rural areas in the Midwest. That generally meant sheriffs housed in county seats and perhaps a deputy or two made up the available law enforcement. Slow travel by foot, horse, or horse-drawn conveyances, over miles of rural roads or trails, meant that neighborhood members usually had to react long before public police authorities could arrive on the scene. In times of crisis or tragedy, the first step was to send a family member or hired man to inform and gather the neighbors.³

Neighborhoods are small-scale and may not appear to be the next big thing in the study of the Midwest as a region. For those of us who “write small” in our historical studies, however, neighborhoods play a large role: they structure daily life, impact local institutions and communities, facilitate responses to crisis (or not), and are essential in understanding the history of past family and community life.⁴

For those interested in these building blocks of the Midwest, easier access to key tools makes research much easier. Newspapers, an excellent source of first-person information on events, individuals, and localities, have long been available on microfilm, but required travel to specific libraries and archives, sometimes slow or clumsy interlibrary loan orders, or expensive purchases. Newspapers are far more accessible now. The Library of Congress site Chronicling America has a growing collection of local newspapers from across the United States. Access is free. Newspapers.com, a subscription service, provides faster service and more efficient “save” processes. Ancestry.com is an excellent subscription service with a host of documents to help flesh out the biographies of those defending or violating civil order. These include state...