Around Burlington: How Burlington’s first poet and fledgling street brawler was knocked out of politics

Burlington politics in the mid-19th century was a rough-and-tumble game and few played the game better than the feisty Irish poet known about town as “Fox.”

James Fox Abraham came from a well-connected family in Pittsburgh. His father was a hero of the War of 1812, and his mother was a Quaker who named her son for George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends.

Fox arrived in town in 1846 to work for a relative, James Love, in the book and stationary business. That store was to later pass through a series of ownerships until it closed in the 1970s, when it was known as Gnahn’s Book Store.

Fox quickly realized he was not cut out for selling books and turned to speculating in local real estate. But he still found time to use his quick wit, his love of language, and his caustic tongue to castigate Democrats and anyone else who drew his ire.

Fox was of small stature but an immaculate dresser. A newspaper account of the 1870s describes him as a “man of brilliant intellect. He is very energetic with a driving disposition and a nervous, active temperament which kept mind and body in a state of high activity.”

Fox may have been a real estate hustler and political animal, but there was more to his character. He was widely liked in the community, active in charitable causes, and a local mover in Irish liberation groups.

But his most intriguing attribute was a love of poetry and writing. By today’s standards, his surviving poems are ponderous and sentimental, but in his time they struck a chord.

His work was published in the Hawk Eye newspaper and at least two poems drew national attention. The “Tin Bucket Brigade” dealt with working men and “Santa Claus Knows” was widely circulated during the holidays.

Fox’s business activities prospered to such an extent that he was able to build an attractive home near the gully at North and Market streets. This ravine was known as “Abraham’s Hollow,” then as “Stoney Lonesome” and is now the site of the high school football field.

In the 1850s, Fox’s expanding real estate holdings in Burlington earned him a footnote in an important Iowa freedom of the press case. It began when one of Fox’s properties was rented to a gentleman who ran a house of ill repute out of the building.

Because Fox held legal title to the building, he was held responsible for operating a “disorderly house” by Judge Claggert. But there were political overtones to the charge because Claggert was both a Democrat, a curmudgeon and a legal bully who often used his office to administer punishment to political opponents.

Fox was fined $100 by the judge — a considerable amount in those days — which caused Fox to make a number of intemperate remarks concerning the judge’s parentage and then Fox threatened to take the ruling to a higher court.

The canny Judge Claggert cut off this avenue of attack by placing an appeal bond on the case of an astronomical $50,000. All of Burlington was perhaps not worth $50,000 in those days and the local newspapers now threw themselves into the fray.

Clark Dunham, editor of the Hawk Eye, wrote “It is easy to see what an engine of injustice and outrage our courts are capable of being in the hands of a vindictive and implacable man.” The judge was outraged and charged the newspaper with contempt of court.

The case was appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, which sided with the newspaper’s claim of freedom of the press and effectively ended Claggert’s political career. But Fox’s local reputation was only enhanced by the decision and this led him to venture into politics.

In 1860, he became a force in Burlington’s Republican Party and was elected to ward alderman and then to town trustee. He was appointed Burlington postmaster and wrote a column for the paper. He forged a solid reputation with many voters, thanks to his continued attack on the practice of allowing pigs and cows to wander city streets.

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His reformer tendencies occasionally got him into trouble, such as the evening he was passing a Main Street bar when the door of the establishment flew open and a crowd of battling raftsmen erupted onto the street.

The nattily-clad alderman wasn’t about to see his town sullied by such street performances, so he resolutely strode up to a particularly large brawler and using his cane, began to belabor the man about his head and shoulders while demanding the fighting cease.

The riverman declined Fox’s request and instead delivered a roundhouse right to Fox’s chin that lifted the alderman from the sidewalk and deposited him unconscious in the middle of the muddy street.

In the weeks following the brawl, friends of Fox noted a change in the erstwhile poet. He seemed subdued and content to abandon the political stage.

However, he remained an active player in the town’s real estate game until 1875 when he passed.

This article originally appeared on The Hawk Eye: Around Burlington: How Burlington’s first poet and fledgling street brawler was knocked out of politics