Amos Dues' Home For Wayward Girls

Amos Dues Home For Wayward Girls as it appeared c. 1898.
The buildings in the rear are the chapel, schoolhouse, and dormitories.

Kossuth: Professor Noël Carlisle of Georg on Podebrad College sits speechless as he carresses the blackened human skull in his own fleshy hand and stares into its eyeless sockets.

     "Who are you, my pretty?" he says, giddy with wonder. "And how did this happen to you?"

     Dr. Carlisle, Professor of Archeology at Podebrad discovered the remains while excavating the site of the legendary Amos Dues' Home for Wayward Girls near the tiny town of Swea. The excavation is part of an on-going archeological surey of historic Iowa Houses for the State's Sesquicentennial. The school, founded in 1866 by Amos Dues, served as a refuge for troubled girls from Iowa, Minneapolis, and Chicago. It was burnt to the ground in 1908 by local inhabitants, taking the lives of several girls and probably Amos Dues, leaving tales of eldritch nocturnal deeds in its reeking ashes.

     Stories which Dr. Carlisle dismisses as ignorant claptrap.

     Yet, evidence of these legendary black and bloody deeds has been uncovered in its scorched foundation walls: pillasters to support secret passages and a cell fitted with steel bars. Corners in the foundation contain mummified animals in ritually designed niches at principal compass points. But the most disturbing discovery has been the uncovering of three sub-basements.

     "The fact that there are sub-basements is quite astonishing. They were chisled out of the bedroock and dive as deep as 60 feet below ground surface. The two upper levels contained a large number of burned remains buried in debris from the building's collapse during the fire. We cleaned that out and found the bottom level still intact--just as Amos Dues had left it 88 years ago." Carlisle smiles, cradling the black skull. "We found her remains there, buried in the bottom level."

     Pressed for details about that last level, Carlisle becomes evasive, "We're not ready to comment further."

     The professor is right to be cautious. The discovery of a large number of human bones has alarmed some folks in nearby Swea. More than a few times, several shots have been fired over the archeologists' heads from so-called "deer-hunting locals". And despite Carlisle's constant assurances that disease, in particualr typhus, caused the many deaths at the school nearly one hundred years ago, people are consumed with dread.

     Amos Dues' origins are a mystery. In 1865, he and his 12 year old son named Horace, drove their wagon into the tiny isolated town of Swea and moved into a small two-room house. Dues was a tall, dark-eyed man with large, powerful hands. His demeanor was austere, his taste in clothes dark and reserved but expensive. He breathed fear into everyone he met by citing scriptural verses dealing with sin, death, and Hell. He was overly fond of correcting people in public-especially those who used poor grammar-by cracking his silver-knobbed walking stick across their wrists. Those he instructed thus avoided further encounters with him. Those who believed they knew him, such as Swea's Lutheran Pastor Jackson T. Schuemacher, regarded him as "a diligent and noble educator of inestimable knowledge, salient with the finest points of the most modern sciences, and comparisioned all around with the warmest affection for his fellow man."

     Dues was also rich. Soon, he aquired a farmstead ideal to his purposes: the building of a school for the instruction and salvation of troubled young girls. Money flowed out from him as water from a spring and virtually made him the Lord of Swea. In one month, he employed three-fourths of the towns' men to build the school house, dormitories, and out-buildings. The main house, however, was constructed by skilled Chinese laborers brought in from California and none of the local men were allowed near the site (it was these workers that Carlisle believes placed the animal mummies in the foundation walls, though for what purpose, he cannot explain). Several of these Asian artisans were seen arriving in town, but none were ever seen leaving the Dues' property. Considering the unique qualities of the foundations and the extensive sub-basements, perhaps they never did.

     His son Horace, on the other hand, was fair haired with a ready laugh and light heart; the exhuberant antithesis of his father. This enraged Dues as he had contracted an intense hatred of the mother that haunted his son's face. He frequently shouted abuse at the boy, calling him "albatross" and "whore-son wastrel". At such instances, Horace remained irrepressable-tempting his father's wrath with his quick wit and sunny disposition. Not a few times townsfolk watched in fascinated horror as their town's benefactor bound his son to a wagon wheel in the main street and horse-whipped him until he fainted.

     The work on the house and dormitories continued for eighteen months. Amos Dues, meanwhile, toured churches in Iowa, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Chicago drumming up interest in the school. The tours succeeded and often brought connections to powerful regional political bosses. Within 6 months, he had secured the enrollment of 50 troubled girls in his school and an agreement with Cook County to send its most difficult cases directly to his care. Girls of any creed or race were brought to his school and ranged in ages from 11 to 18, though some stayed until they were 21. They were instucted in the classics, natural science, and the Bible in an environment of rigid discipline where the slightest infraction of the rules was met with swift, often painful punishment. Dues personally hired all of the 30 people who staffed the school; 20 of which were teachers, 5 who were dormitory warders, and 5 more who cooked, cleaned and maintained the house and grounds.

     In 1866, work on the dormitories and house was completed and Dues busied himself with preparing for the opening day. One of the requirements the state imposed on the school was that it provide its own conscecrated ground to serve as a cemetary. This area is on a small rise due north of the school site. The chaplain hired by Dues', Reverend Ismael Fern, arrived the day before the school's offical opening. According to two women sweeping the front hall, they overheard Dues' order his new Chaplain to conscecrate the burial ground. Scarcely had the orders left Dues' lips when poor Fern fell down dead. Beneath a waxing moon, Dues laid him to rest in the unconscecrated earth of the school cemetary. During the next 40 years, other chaplains were hired by the school but none ever arrived as some misfortune waylaid each of them. The detail of the cemetary's unholy state went unnoticed or ignored.

     Horace turned 14 when the first girls entered the school and he shyly watched them walk from dormitory to the school house. Not long after, he fell desperately in love with Matty Ahearn, an orphan from Chicago. She returned his affection and the two hearts entwined devoted about each other that summer. But Dues heard of the affair and struck out to squash it.

     According to legend, Emily Sunter, a domestic at the time witnessed Dues confront his son in the library one night in June, 1867. Horace refused to be intimidated by his father. Enraged, Dues, lashed out, "I didn't open this school to be a cauldron for you to slake your sinful desires with trollops and whores! This wench-this Matty is a hussy and a slut befouled by Lucifer and sent to tempt you!"

     "No!" Horace defied, "She loves me! And you can't stomach my happiness! You never could! So you're going to try to keep us apart! But you won't succeed-I have her heart!"

     "You err, my boy. I do." Whereupon Dues produced a fist-sized packet of white butcher's paper spattered with red and dropped it with a squish on to the table.

     Matty Ahearn was buried the next afternoon having been "discovered" by some loyal staff that she had hung herself during the night. To his father's delight, the episode crushed Horace's exhuberant spirit. By autumn, Dues banished him to a bording school near Philadelphia, PA.

     With this cruel victory over his son and the taste of young blood still in his mouth, Dues pursued certain nocturnal experiments deep within the security of his hidden sub-basements. Devising a special course to aid his selection of the most intelligent girls, he initiated three of the smartest into what he called "The Ellysian Mysteries". The initiation turned out to be nothing more than Dues' adminstering laudanum to girls to make them compliant and forgetful. Little else is known about his grim necromancies, and one can but imagine the dehumanizing horrors inflicted on his unsuspecting acolytes. But on the night of July 20, 1871, he had profound results.

     Fire erupted that night around midnight. All who witnessed it from the dormitories later described it as a huge conflagration that engulfed the whole house in a furious fireball and then instantly snuffed itself out, leaving only faint whips of smoke and sulpherous stink. Dues staggered from the house onto the front porch greatly transformed. His dark meticulously combed hair had turned into a wild pale bush. His eyes darted and burned with an unearthly intensity and a predatory smile lit his usually dour demeanor. Of singular curiousity was a wound the size of a thumb-print on his temple that appeared more like a brand than burn. This Dues concealed with his hair so that none should ever examine it.

     More freakish fires blasted the house during the coming decades-36 in all. And each time, Dues emerged a changed man. By 1879, he no longer concealed his animal lust for the girls under his charge nor his passion for delving into black secrets. After several girls died giving birth to freakish half-human beasts, a young history teacher named Mrs. Charlotte Eichler banded with several other teachers to prevent Dues' further predations. Foolishly, Eichler's band confronted the fiend in his house. With charm and poise, Dues' separated Eichler from her fellows for a personal conference. Emerging alone a moment later, Dues summarily fired the rest of the conspiritors. A few managed to write journal accounts of their experiences at the Home, three of which detail student disappearances, infusions of bizzarre solutions and demonic summonings. But all perished under curious circumstances within one week of leaving the school. These examples effectively cowed the remaining teaching staff into silence. Mrs. Eichler was never heard from again, though house domestics later instisted they heard hideous wailings welling up from the basement the night she disappeared.

     On July 17, 1886, lightning struck the house, setting fire to the upper floors. While the damage was minimal, the incident flung Dues into a fit of profound agitation causing him to sputter snatches from the Book of Revelations and other pieces of verse chanted in an unknown tongue. Terrifed, he locked himself in his huge library for three days ,taking no food save a strange herbal tea he concoted himself. On the third day, he called for food and as the servant brought it he, she saw him kneeling in prayer before a crucifix. Tears streaming from his face, he reached out to touch the cross only to recoil as it burst into flames. The lightning strike was repeated on the same day for the next 6 years and each time, Dues fearfully scuttled into the bowels of his house to continue with his ghastly experiments.

     During the winter of 1895, thirty girls died when a wave of disease alledged to be typhus broke out in the school. The school nearly closed and even Dues himself contracted the disease. By spring, the infection was driven off. Dues, now in his seventies and very weak from the illness, kept to his bedroom and library for nearly a year.

     By the late 1890's the school housed 250 girls, one of whom was a rebellious toe-headed girl known as Mary Fontaine from Des Moines. She arrived at the school from Des Moines at the age of 13 in 1901. Through hard work, she won a position as an assistant teacher when she turned 18. Aaron Magnus Svenson, a journeyman working at the sawmill in Swea met her one day as he delivered lumber to the school. Over the next year, the two fell deeply in love and made plans to marry.

     Dues had also noticed Mary Fontaine, and had been obsessively making plans for her himself. Bit by bit, he dazzled Mary with a few of his benign electrical inventions and the scientific principles that made them work. Inspite of cryptic warnings from teachers to avoid being alone with Dues, Mary grew fascinated with the bizzarre aging man and at length was invited to dinner on the night of October 13 to discuss science and religion with the schoolmaster. She disappeared in the night.

     On the night of October 26, a traveling minister by the name of Henry Amosson arrived to preach to the people of Swea from the back of his wagon. As the chill fall air whirled dead leaves about his shoulders, Amosson scrourged the guilty emotions of a people he seemed to know too well. "You slaves!" he shouted and pointed to the Dues house not far distant. "That man has you weaklings scared! You linger like dumb animals hoping that mad, sinful fiend won't come prowling for your children! For nearly forty years, that house has run with blood-you all know it! But you're all cowards---the lowest sort of sculking coward who hides away as the most depraved of evils grinds up innocent children!"

     In a few minutes, Amosson was at the head of a torch bearing mob storming towards the school. When they arrived at the house, the crowd demanded Dues to be brought out. When the domestics failed to produce him, Amosson lost control of his mob. The vengeful townsfolk ran amuck into the house, smashing and looting and setting it alight. As they watched the magnificent house burn, servants came running out. At last, a naked woman fell through one of the large front windows onto the porch. Some of the mob rushed in and rescued her from the flames. It was Mary Fontaine. No others emerged from the vengeful conflagration that night. His work done, Amosson slipped silently away into the night.

     A week later, Mary Fontaine gave this account to county authorities:

     "I remember nothing about the dinner. I only remember waking in pain on a table in a dim rock-walled chamber. There were other girls present as well and we all shared a single wound in our bellies that had been stitched up with considerable care. I stumbled naked about the room, trying to wake the others, but all in vain. At last, I found ladder that took me up into what I soon realized was the basement of the Schoolmaster's house. I heard men shouting above and smelled smoke. I ran upstairs to find the kitchen a roaring inferno. Frantically, I stumbled through the flames and thickening smoke desperate to find someone to help the girls in the chamber below. I found no one. I think I fell through a window-I do not recall for certain as I fainted. I awoke a day later wrapped in a blanket in Aaron's arms. Of the chamber, I can recall nothing further save the other misfortunates lying helpless there."

     Shortly there after, she married Aaron Svenson and moved to Muscatine County.

     Despite diligent efforts by the local constabulary, neither Dues' remains or any of the girls Mary Fontain spoke of were ever recovered from the charred ruin of his fine house. Horace Dues surfaced the following year and closed the school. He razed the buildings, sold the land, and left once again, perhaps happier this last time.

     Asked if it is wise to delve into matters dark and steeped in blood, Professor Carlisle laughs. "Dues was a brilliant and rich eccentric. The local populace were scared by his strange fascination with science and eastern religions, so they invented legends of him summoning demons and Hell fire. I don't think we have a Vincent Price movie, here. The archeological evidence points to a desperate response to a typhus epidemic."

     Perhaps. But consider for one brief moment that by ignoring stories and legends spanning 40 years, Carlisle is a fool. Then, he has ignored the simple fatal fact that something as dark and malignant as the young woman's bones may yet brood in that bottom chamber, biding its time.