The Courtship of Our Maternal Grandparents Floyd Nash and Leora Hamm
By Lisa J Herrick Peters
AMES
In the mid 1850s, in a swampy area in Iowa that started out as a station stop for the railway, there was a small group of people known as the Squaw Creek Church that would meet together for worship, led by a Baptist minister. In 1862, a one room Civil War school was built for 12 students on the east bank of Squaw Creek, so the group started meeting there. The area was founded as Ames in 1864.
The Squaw Creek School built in 1862
In 1868 two reverends determined to organize a ‘proper’ Baptist church there drove out from Des Moines looking for Baptist families. They found 5 people, and so a prayer meeting was organized by Reverend John Anson Nash (our great great uncle), who was one of the founders of Des Moines and the first Reverend there. That same Reverend had influenced his nephew, our Great Grandfather Darius Albert Nash, to relocate from Illinois to Iowa.
Portrait from our family collection of Reverend John Anson Nash
8 people met in the rear room of a harness shop, and officially named the new ‘church’ First Baptist Church of Ames. Membership grew to 23, so they rented the second floor of the ‘old Tomblin building’ which was tall and top heavy and in such poor condition that, when it was very windy, it had to be 'braced at the sides with timbers ‘so it wouldn't tip over or shake completely down’. In 1872, one of the members bought two lots on that same corner and gave them to the Baptists as a gift, and so they were finally able to build a traditional wood frame church.
First Baptist Church of Ames 1872
Ames in 1875. First Baptist Church and Squaw Creek School are circled
As the congregation grew, they made plans for a new church. They started construction in 1908, and the building was dedicated in 1910.
The new church and a fancy round horse trough on the left at the intersection of two dirt roads
Postcard from our family collection. It belonged to our Grandma Leora Margaret Hamm.
NASH’S
A few years earlier, our Great grandparents Darius and Idella Nash sold the 320 acre farm Darius had homesteaded north of there after the Civil War was over, when he was 18-19, and they moved to Ames, because they were getting too old to work the farm. They bought a house and a large piece of land there near the Iowa State University campus on Boone Street (later changed to Lincoln Way). That property is now the Dept. of Transportation of Ames.
Darius and Idella then bought a large piece of land adjoining the first property. The entire combined property was named Nash Subdivision, which is what it’s still called today, over 100 years later. The property was unbelievably huge, backed by a beautiful creek that turned into a popular place to ice skate in winter. They built a new house using the same plan as the house on the farm, and it was completed in 1910 at about the same time the new Baptist Church was completed. By then, they were in their early 60s. More streets were created, and many more homes were built, including homes for some of Darius and Idella’s adult children and their families.
HAMM’S
Just under a mile away on the same road, on the ‘less desirable southeast side' (our Grandpa’s written words), our other great grandparents Lewis and Sarah Hamm lived in a house that was built in 1895, the same year their daughter (our grandma) Leora was born. Grandma Leora wrote that it had been her 'first home', and that she could hear the hymns and the hours being chimed from the 'campanile' (Italian bell tower at Iowa State University nearby) when she was growing up.
Postcard from our family collection. It belonged to our Grandma Leora Margaret Hamm.
FLOYD AND LEORA MEET
Around the same time Darius and Idella finished building their new home in Ames, their youngest son (our Grandpa Floyd) returned home after spending 2 years in Des Moines. He was 24 years old.
Grandpa Floyd wrote that in 1910, when Leora was 15 years old, a neighbor girl convinced her to attend Sunday school at the First Baptist Church, and before long she became a 'Sunday School Primary Teacher’, and was then asked to sing in the church choir.
Floyd had seen Leora before because she was one of his mother's students over the years, and he'd seen her 'running around' with his sister. He became interested, so one day he made a point of meeting up with her before choir practice and asked if he could take her home, because he knew she walked alone, and so the 'courtship' began. He wrote that 'one day we were having choir practice and there was a problem with the anthem they were singing’, and he recalled how Leora had solved it.
Leora Hamm and Floyd Nash during their courtship
Floyd and Leora were married on New Year's Eve at her parent's home, and then she moved with Floyd into his parent's home down the road.
Floyd Nash and Leora Ham(m) wedding announcement New Year’s Eve 1912
A home was built for Floyd and Leora on the same little Maple Avenue as Darius and Idella’s house, and it was completed in 1920, the year Grandma Norma was born.
OFF TO CALIFORNIA
About a year after our mom was born, Great Grandpa Darius died. Idella had him buried in Vernon Cemetery, a ‘tiny cemetery among cornfields’ near their old farm, where their infant son Albert, and her father Chapman are buried. Whatever land they still owned in Nash Subdivision at that time was sold, but Idella kept the ‘touring car’.
Example of a 1915 touring car
Not long after everything was sold and the estate was settled, Great Grandma Idella, Grandpa Floyd, Grandma Leora, our Uncle Delbert and our 15 month old mama Norma, moved to California. They bought several little houses in Highland Park, lived in this one and that one, eventually settling into our Meridian Street house when our mom was 13. It couldn’t have been long after they moved in that she first met our dad. She told me she was 13, sitting at the piano, and he and Uncle Delbert, both 16, walked into the house from school. The Nash’s were still living in that house when our parents were married 6 years later.
Young Uncle Delbert Nash and our mom Norma Nash goofing off in front of the Meridian Street house in Highland Park
Our mom grew up with her Grandma Idella living with the family, and at one time, when Grandma Leora spent an extended time back in Iowa, her Grandma Idella took care of her. This was during the time that our mom started Kindergarten and was skipping grades in school, and I have to wonder if Idella, a school teacher, was an influence. Our mom was reading before she entered school, and I wonder if it was Idella who taught her.
Grandma Leora’s dad, our Great Grandpa Lewis Hamm, died in 1936. Leora’s youngest sister Ruby Hamm drove Sarah to California. Floyd’s mother Idella moved into her own little house in Los Angeles so that Leora’s mother Sarah could move into the Meridian Street house in her place. Once both of those great grandmas were gone from Iowa, most of their kids followed with their own families, and that’s pretty much how we all came to be here in California.
Idella died in 1946, and she is buried in a family area in Forest Lawn of Inglewood. Her daughter Hattie is next to her. Selfish probably, I wish she was next to Darius in Iowa.
12 years later in 1950, when Sarah died, Grandma Leora took her back to be buried with Lewis in Ames. That cemetery is right behind their old house.
When our mom and dad first married, they lived in a duplex in Los Angeles. During the time she was pregnant with Lola, our grandparents moved out of the Meridian Street house, and they moved in.
By the late 50s, Floyd and Leora were living in a cute small cabin in Bellflower. Over the years, Grandma had at least a couple or three different trailers down at or near the beach, but I don’t know the exact history. I see photos from before I was born (1953), and when I was very little, and I remember her having the trailer in Huntington Mobile Home Park in the early 1960s when I was growing up (our dad and then Uncle Del lived in it later on). I don’t know which ones Floyd was in with her if any. That’s research for another day.
Leora and Floyd at their little cabin in Bellflower circa 1957
Floyd died in 1958, and Grandma had him buried in a double grave so she could join him when she died. She remarried and her last name was changed to Peters. She died in 1965, and she is with Floyd in their double grave in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Long Beach.
The grave marker hasn’t had her name added to it yet. She is Leora Margaret Peters on her burial records.
Burial marker for Floyd Chapman Nash and Leora Margaret Hamm (Nash) (Peters)
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