Bowersox family a Shueyville institution

Mary Margaret Shuey was born in Augusta County, Virginia to Elizabeth Shuey and Jacob Shuey on January 26, 1825. On October 19, 1843 Shuey married Reverend James E. Bowersox. Between 1854 and 1855, the Shuey and Bowersox families moved to Iowa, settling in Jefferson Township, Johnson County, Iowa.
In 1856, Jacob Shuey laid out the town of Shueyville. Mary Margaret and Reverend Bowersox settled on a farm one half mile north of the town. There they had ten children, six boys and four girls, eight of whom survived their parents. Revered Bowersox died in 1888. Mary Margaret Shuey Bowersox died November 19, 1896. When David Bowersox was growing up in Shueyville, there was a one-room schoolhouse to attend.
He mostly went barefoot until he was in fourth grade, which didn't bother his teacher, who was his aunt, Elizabeth Bowersox.
On the last day of school, he and his buddies would always take a long bike ride to celebrate a summer of freedom. Two of Bowersox's aunts, Elizabeth and her sister Edna, also a teacher, once lived in the home he and his wife Kathy now share. It was built in 1865 from bricks made in two Shueyville kilns, which are now gone.
Bowersox said the bricks are unusually soft.
Bricks from those same kilns were used to build the original Shueyville church, which has since been replaced by Shueyville United Methodist Church, and the buildings of Western College, once located south of Shueyville in Western.
The Bowersox farm also was famous for its sorghum mill, which operated from the late 1800s to 1963. Sorghum, made from a kind of sugar cane, can be used as a substitute for sugar, which made it a popular commodity during World War II. Ten or so men from the neighborhood would help harvest the cane, run the press and make the sorghum. Processing the crop took about a month, he said. Clay Bowersox and his brother, W.H., began making sorghum at a small mill about a mile west of Shueyville, near Exit 10 from I-380.
Kids who grew up in Shueyville before 1963 could stop at the mill for a piece of cane to chew on.
Jacob Shuey, Bowersox's great-great-grandfather and the man from whom Shueyville gets its name, gave land for the villages of Western and Shueyville as well as property to each of his children. His son, W.H. Shuey, platted both villages. After 1868, W.H. was the postmaster in Western, where he lived.
Another relative, Clay Bowersox, served as store owner and postmaster for Shueyville. Clay was appointed in the early 1880s and served until the post office was closed in the early 1930s. Bowersox said he believes his great-uncle Clay was the longest-serving postmaster in the country.
Mail continued to be delivered to Shueyville. The store owner would separate it into cubby holes for area residents to claim. Today either the Cedar Rapids post office or the Swisher post office delivers the mail, depending on where the mailbox is.The Bowersox name has been part of Shueyville history since the beginning. David's great-grandmother, Margaret Bowersox, who was the daughter of Jacob Shuey, was in the first wagon train that arrived in the Johnson County area Oct. 31, 1855.
According to a history Bowersox's two aunts wrote in 1995, the pioneers lived in their covered wagons until their log houses were ready on land Jacob Shuey bought for $1.25 an acre. It took them seven weeks of mostly rain and "cold disagreeable weather" to travel from Augusta County, Va., to Iowa.
Everyone lived in log cabins at first, Jacob included.  It wasn't all work and no play, though. Much later, when Bowersox's father was a youngster, he was sent to the pasture every summer Saturday afternoon to clean up after the cows. Sunday afternoons were devoted to baseball, with teams from all over journeying to the Bowersox farm and pasture to play. The team from Western was exceptionally good, he said.

1158 Club RD NE
Shueyville  -
319-848-2220
Copyright ©2012 Shuey's Restaurant & Lounge  All Rights Reserved     www.shueyslounge.com Home   History   Entertainment   Specials   Pictures   Contact Us