Appanoose County/IAGenWeb

05/08/2026

03/11/2026

Check out What's New! Jerome School pics, Salem - Moravia and Salem-Udell cemetery transcriptions 😀 https://iagenweb.org/appanoose/whatsnew.html

01/03/2026

SUNSHINE, IA
APPANOOSE COUNTY

Arguably the most ironically named coal-mining community in the state, Sunshine began to take shape around 1906, though coal was already being mined in the area by 1905, so it’s possible the community started forming slightly earlier. At its height, four mines operated at or near Sunshine, producing coal into the early 1970s. Sunshine No. 1 was located a short distance west of the Pale Moon Supper Club, pictured here in the background on land owned by Harrison Baker. The company town was also located on his property and developed along the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, which ran adjacent to what is now Highway 2, west of Centerville.

Sunshine had a school as well. It stood on the northeast side of the intersection of Highway 2 and T-14, directly across from the Pale Moon, where the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall stands today. The school was properly known as Bellair No. 2, but more commonly called the “Sunshine School.”

The plaque reads: “The village of Sunshine developed in the early 1900s and was named for the Sunshine #1 mine located a short distance southwest of this point. The first owner was R.A. McKee who died in the 1917 flu epidemic. S.V. Carpenter and J.R. Hamm became owners of the Sunshine Coal Company , composed of mines #1, #2, #3, and #4 with J.R. (Dick) Hamm chief operator. The largest provider of coal for lowa Southern Utilities was Sunshine #3 located one mile north of this marker. At one time some 125 miners worked underground and extracted and hoisted 700 tons daily from that mine. The village of Sunshine lay westerly from this point and had over 30 homes, a store, gas station, a "common well", a tavern and a school. The village began to disappear in 1945 when Sunshine #1 was closed. The coal mining industry was declining and the last mine in Appanoose County was closed in 1971. The first paving outside of Centerville was from Centerville to the Sunshine corner in 1926.”

01/03/2026

FORBUSH, IOWA
APPANOOSE COUNTY

How about another place that makes your head spin to think there was once a town there? Forbush was only located halfway (and slightly to the east) between Rathbun and Centerville, though little remains to suggest a town was there. Soon after the railroad was completed from Moravia to Centerville in 1880, the Whitebreast Fuel Company, an eastern firm, bought land in the area and began exploring for coal. Silas Augustus Forbush was sent from Chicago to help manage sales, and the mining operation soon drew workers and their families to the site. Joseph P. Schenck, a bookkeeper for the mine and brother-in-law to Forbush, was part of the early operation. What started as a coal venture quickly became a town that took its name from the man overseeing it.

Forbush was platted with Highway Avenue along its south edge. Streets named Brazil, Central, Mystic, and Timber ran east and west, crossed by Summit, Main, Relay, and Lake streets running north and south. By 1896, the plat map showed sixty-five homes, a hotel, and a public school. A post office had been established in 1890. Laid out along the Iowa Central Railway, the town also had a Western Union office and a handful of businesses that met everyday needs.

The Whitebreast Fuel Company opened Mine No. 19 west of the railroad in 1891. It was a vertical shaft mine, sixty-five feet deep, and more than eighty acres were eventually worked. Mining was dangerous work. In 1895, John Steemer, a miner originally from Austria, was killed when he was crushed by a fall of slate. Conditions like these led miners to organize. Union activity arrived in the area in 1891, including early groups that would evolve into the United Mine Workers. John Reynolds, an attorney in Albia, served as president of the newly formed union, and southern Iowa became an important early center of organized coal labor. In Forbush, the company controlled much of daily life. The store was company-owned, and miners were often paid in orders redeemable only there, keeping wages circulating back to the company.

Coal mining ended at Forbush around 1901. Shale from the mine was later loaded onto rail cars and spread along railroad beds and county roads. The post office closed in 1905, and the company town faded away. None of the original houses remain. Today, only a few scattered homes line what is now 490th Street. One small cemetery, now overgrown, contains a single known grave, and a ghost town monument marks the location.

01/03/2026

05/22/2025

🇺🇲

REMAINS OF FORMER CINCINNATI IOWA WWII SOLDIER KILLED ON D-DAY IDENTIFIED

WASHINGTON — The remains of an Iowa soldier who was killed in World War II have been accounted for, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

U.S. Army Pvt. James L. Harrington, 21, of Cincinnati, Iowa, was part of operations to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, in Normandy, France. Harrington, a member of Company A, 149th Engineer Combat Battalion, was on a Landing Craft Infantry 92 headed for the beach when it struck an underwater mine, causing the craft to burst into flames. Enemy artillery fire also struck the craft, causing an explosion that ignited the ship’s fuel supply, immediately killing everyone in the troop compartment.

The burnt remains of servicemen were found in the troop compartment and recovered on June 10, 1944. They were first buried at the United States Military Cemetery St. Laurent-sur-Mer. In 1946, the American Graves Registration Command examined the remains and separated them into four separate Unknowns. Efforts to identify the Unknowns were unsuccessful and they were interred in the Normandy American Cemetery, in France.

The DPAA and officials with the American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed the remains in 2021 and scientists from the DPAA laboratory conducted anthropological analysis. The mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome DNA were further analyzed by scientists with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System in order to identify Harrington’s remains. The DOD says he was accounted for on August 21, 2023.

On Thursday, May 29, Honorable Transfer of Harrington’s Remains by US Army Honor Guard will be at Thomas Funeral Home around noon. On Friday, June 6, a processional from the funeral home to Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Cincinnati, Iowa will take place along with a brief graveside and full military ceremony and interment by US Army Honor Guard. Time is yet to be determined.

🇺🇸We will have more information next week on Tuesday, May 27 on Appanoose AM about the ceremony. Please plan to watch at 7:00 AM.

03/06/2025

The remains of U.S. Army Pvt. James L. Harrington, a 21-year-old soldier from Cincinnati, Iowa, who was killed during World War II, have been identified nearly 80 years after his

02/22/2025

05/17/2024