“Iowa was that place of refuge that we needed to grow, to prosper, to have a chance to achieve the American Dream.””

Robert Rushing

“It was really heartwarming. We have a new family member; that’s the way we look at it.””

Claudia Bishop

KALONA

The average eye, when looking at the photo above, might first take in the family posed front and center. Then perhaps it moves to the imposing house, and then to the flanking horse-drawn carriages. Perhaps it eventually notices the chickens. Given how the photographer framed it, that is likely what he intended the viewer to see.

Historian Marilyn Yoder’s eye was drawn to the man on the far right. She knew of him in name only, having come across information about him in her research, but she not seen him in a photo before. The sight of him thrilled her; she knew then his story needed to be told.

“I am intrigued by stories, history,” she says. “When you actually see a ‘name’ come to life as a person in an old photo, then you think, Okay, what’s his story? You want to tell their story. Everybody has a story. His story deserves to be told, so he’s not just another name and face.”

The man in the carriage is Robert Rushing, and he was born in 1854 into an enslaved family in Georgia. Although the details about how he came to reside in Iowa are not completely clear, as there exist a couple of different accounts, what Yoder believes most likely is that Rushing was a young boy who was found beside his mother, who had died of a gunshot wound, in Arkansas by the 1st Iowa Cavalry, Company F, during the Civil War.

Fugitives from slavery weren’t allowed in this cavalry’s camp, but Philip Shaver, being a captain, may have had enough clout to flout the rules. Perhaps Shaver enlisted him as a personal assistant or as a drummer boy (both being cited as the case in historical sources); whatever the case, when Shaver returned to Joetown in 1863, Rushing was adopted into the Shaver household.

In his civilian life, Shaver was a farmer and a businessman; he was the first president of Kalona Savings Bank in Kalona. He lived well, building a large house just east of Joetown in 1877, and was known and respected in the community.

Evidence suggests Rushing was beloved by the Shavers. When he was older, Shaver endowed land to him near Washington so he could make a living by farming. When Rushing married Sarah Ann Hall in 1890, the wedding was well-attended, and Shaver’s second wife (the first having died) gifted Rushing and his bride each $500 (equivalent to $17,000 each today).

It seems the Shavers were dear to Rushing as well; he and Sarah named their first son Philip Shaver Rushing in honor of Rushing’s adoptive father.

Of Rushing’s four children, two died in their youth. Rushing was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Washington alongside them when he died in 1907. Newspapers remembered him kindly, noting that he was the only Black person in the area who spoke fluent Pennsylvania Dutch.

A tale of two descendants

Philip Shaver is Claudia Bishop’s great-great-grandfather, but she didn’t know any of this history. She had seen a newspaper story and photo about his being the bank president that her grandmother had kept, but that was the extent of her knowledge about his life. At least until her friends started conducting research for the Streetscape exhibit at the Wahl Museum, a part of the Kalona Historical Village, back in 2016.

Janet Ferry and Marilyn Yoder were tasked with researching and conceptualizing the new exhibit, which opened earlier this year. Ferry, knowing Bishop was a descendant of Shaver’s, asked if she wanted to help.

“That’s how I found out about [Robert Rushing], but up until then I didn’t know anything either,” Bishop says. “A couple years ago, when we got started on this, they were telling me the story, and then I passed it on to my brothers and sisters. We’ve kept that in the back of our minds since then.”

Yoder, who loves genealogy research as much as history, wondered if she could track down descendants of Rushing as well. She went to work, following a trail that led her to Colorado and California, but then dead-ended at a fitness center in Arizona. She wasn’t sure how to proceed.

And then a man in Des Moines started wondering about his own family history. His grandfather had recently passed away, and he hadn’t shared much with his grandson. He began looking up his ancestry online, and stumbled upon a family tree created by Brent Spencer, who is related to the Shavers. He contacted Spencer and mentioned coming to visit Joetown in October, wondering if Philip Shaver’s house was still standing. Spencer contacted Yoder, who then contacted him.

His name is Robert Rushing.

Finding freedom

“It’s always been something that was on my mind,” Rushing says of his cloudy family history. “My grandfather was a very stern old man. He never really liked to talk about his past, about who his father was and where they came from, things like that. It was always kind of a secret thing in our family as far as where we come from.”

Prompted by an ad on Facebook, “I started going back and looking at census records and marriage certificates and military discharge papers. I found out who [my grandfather’s] father was, which is Robert A. Rushing. And then I was able to [trace back to] Washington County, Iowa, with his father being Philip Shaver Rushing,” Rushing says.

Learning his family history had a profound impact on him. He knew he would have to visit Joetown and Washington, to see the place his great-great-great grandfather found a home and a life after the Civil War.

Family reunion

“It was just so heartwarming,” Bishop says of meeting Rushing and his family on Oct. 21. “After all of these decades, to meet with somebody that has a connection to my family, it was just heartwarming.”

Although Bishop and Yoder were hoping to learn more about the Rushing family, and perhaps clear up some of those ambiguous details, the experience they had was the opposite: they ended up being the informants.

“It was just an amazing experience to provide him with the information that we could,” Yoder says.

Bishop and Yoder took Rushing and his family to the Shaver House, which still stands just outside of Joetown, although its appearance has changed. They enjoyed watching Rushing take in the home his great-great-great grandfather lived in for a time, absorbing the sense of history, family, and connection to his previously unknown past.

“It definitely resonated with me, being able to see the lineage and where we came from and how we ended up in Iowa in the first place,” Rushing says. “If Robert Rushing the first hadn’t come to Iowa, we wouldn’t have gotten our freedom. That really carried significance with me.”

Bishop and Yoder also shared with Rushing a map so he could find the gravesite of his namesake in Washington. They knew this journey was a personal one for him, so they did not accompany him.

“I know that there was a lot for Robert to think about after meeting,” Yoder says.

The experience was a meaningful one for Bishop, who was accompanied by one brother and one sister, as well.

“My other brother and sister wish they could have been here. It would have been great if all five of us could have been here, but that didn’t work out,” she says. “That connection to our family from so long ago, and to have that feeling of relationship, I get tears in my eyes. It was just really heartwarming.”

“We have a new family member, the way we look at it. I think he [Robert] feels that way too,” she continues.

“We definitely have family ties,” Rushing says. “Even though that was our first time meeting, they still treated me as if I were an extended part of their family. The experience I had with them was phenomenal.”

In the end, Rushing is left feeling grateful, and that “it filled in a lot of the missing pieces in my own personal identity.”

“I appreciate Iowa for allowing us to be free,” he says. For generations, “Iowa was a place of refuge for us, because we know that the South was pretty rough. Iowa was that place of refuge that we needed to grow, to prosper, to have a chance to achieve the American Dream. I appreciate Iowa for that. I appreciate Kalona for that. I appreciate Washington County, Iowa for that.”

The historian’s gift

Both Rushing and Bishop recognize that Yoder’s curiosity and persistence is what brought them together and made a difference in their lives. Her research, which began with the goal of building an informative exhibit at the Wahl Museum, extended out into personal worlds where there were open questions and missing pieces.

“Thank goodness for Marilyn, because without her research, we wouldn’t have ever gotten to this point,” Bishop acknowledges.

“I appreciate Marilyn for being so kind and courteous to me and my family when we came out there,” Rushing says. “She was definitely helpful in providing the history of Kalona, providing the history of the Shavers. She even gave me a couple of pictures of my (Great-great-great) grandfather.”

And so it is that, when revisiting the historical photograph, our eye sees a tale of two families, who, although separated by generations and time, would eventually reunite with grateful hearts.