HERBERT QUICK
The astounding life a century ago of Grundy County’s most nationally prominent native son
You have seen the sign below in Grundy Center’s Orion Park. Do you know if Herbert Quick (1861-1925) was a student at the school, taught there, did both, or neither? Click the links below to learn the answer and much, much more. You’ll be surprised, and your Grundy County pride will grow!
Herbert Quick: Pioneer Grundy County farm boy
HQ: Country school teacher and city educator
HQ: Acclaimed national Journalist
HQ: Visionary and authority in rural education
HQ: Leader in launching the national Farm Credit System
HQ: Book author and playwright
HQ: Farmer and advocate of new ideas
Herbert Quick: Pioneer Grundy County farm boy
Herbert Quick was born on October 23, 1861, on a farm in Shiloh Township in Grundy County near the Hardin County line. He was called Herbie and had a polio as I boy. The disease didn’t prevent him from doing farm work, but it did deny him an appointment he wanted to West Point. The Quick family moved three times as farm tenants before buying in 1869 an 80-acre place less than a mile east of Colfax No. 9 school – the school house now in Orion Park since 1933. Quick completed his country school education at Colfax No. 9 but never taught there. Inside the school house, however, you can see Quick’s desk as a teacher. You can also ring the school bell he used to call students inside for classes.
Quick was a true son of the prairie. In Quick’s own words: “The Widow Fuller Place [Near the boundaries of Hardin and Grundy counties, where the Quicks were tenant farmers in the 1860s] was on the prairie, and it was here that I became a prairie boy, to grow up on the prairie, live with it in all its moods, struggle with its storms, watch the plow destroy it, see its groves of trees burgeon until it looked almost like a strange sort of woodland, count the new farms as they came into being as by some sort of magic, see winding trails plowed up and give place to straight roads along section lines, hear the whistle of the railway engine come closer and closer until every county-seat in Iowa was a railway station, and finally to lose entirely the old prairie which we feared, loved and conquered.”
Country School Teacher & City Educator
At age 16 in 1878, Quick paid $1 to attended a six-week summer Teachers Institute in Grundy Center to earn a teaching certificate. His first job for $25 per month was at Shiloh No. 2 northwest of Wellsburg. In the winter of 1880-81 he switched to a country school in Clay Township for what Quick described as an “extravagant salary”of $40 per month. In 1981 his father sold his Colfax Township farm and bought another one in Cero Gordo County. Herbert moved with his family, taught and was a school administrator at Mason City, and also studied law.
Lawyer & Politician
In 1890, having passed the bar exam, Quick got married and moved to Sioux City to practice law. He fought political corruption, served a term as mayor, and was nominated to be a Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court but was not confirmed because of political party politics.
Acclaimed National Journalist
While in Sioux City, Quick began writing articles and opinion pieces for agricultural and general interest publications. Between 1909 and 1916 he served as editor of Farm and Fireside, a national farm magazine of 1.2 million circulation. Quick was also a popular contributing author of the Saturday Evening Post, which in the first half of the 20th century was the most widely-circulated magazine in America. In a 1927 book, Pioneer Agricultural Journalists, Quick was featured with 14 others who pioneered the craft of agricultural journalism in America.
Visionary & Authority in Rural Education
For his entire life Quick maintained his passion for improving rural eduction. He wrote many articles and opinion pieces on the subject and became a popular speaker on the subjects at state and national meetings. He promoted the idea of training students, who had finished country school, with specific skills that would make them more successful in farming communities. The general concept caught on as two-year junior colleges emerged in the early 1900s. The Brown Mouse is a novel in which Quick incorporates many of his ideas for improving rural education.
Leader in Launching the National Farm Credit System
In 1916 President Wilson appointed Quick to a five-member Federal Farm Loan Board to launch a system to get farmers access to more and cheaper credit. The result of the board’s work is what is now called the Farm Credit System, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2016. Quick was the acknowledged key communicator in explaining the new system to farmers and ag leaders across America. The concept, called a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), is a quasi governmental entity established to enhance the flow of credit to specific sectors of the economy. Quick and his board successfully led the way for more GSEs to follow: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mac, Ginnie Mac, Farmer Mac, and Sallie Mae.
Book Author & Playwright
Quick wrote 18 books. His best known novel, Vandemark’s Folly, was published in 1922. The book was fiction but based on historical facts about Grundy County in the 1850s through 1900. Critics acclaimed the book for its historical detail, description and accuracy of life on the Iowa prairie. Quick’s publisher wanted to promote it as “the best American novel ever written.” Quick’s biographer wrote:”Quick refused to allow the editors to claim that this was the best American novel ever written, but he was willing to allow them to publicize the fact that he had refused to allow them to make that claim.”
Humanitarian
In 1920, Quick resigned from Federal Farm Loan Board. President Wilson appointed a him a colonel in the Red Cross. He was sent to Vladivostok, Russia to close down the operations of the Red Cross there as the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, tightened their grip on power following the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks later would become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Quick wrote extensively about what he witnessed up close in the early years of communism, including co-writing a book, We Have Changed All That, with Russian Elena Stepanoff MacMahon.
Farmer & Advocate of New Ideas
Quick bought a thousand-acre estate near Berkeley Springs, West Virginia in 1913. He built a house and called it Coolfont. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which describes Coolfont as an "architectural landmark that is set in a pristine rural environment that is one of the beauty spots, not only of Morgan County, but of the state of West Virginia." Quick planted a diverse orchard on his property and applied the best conservation practices. After Quick’s death on May 10, 1925, Dr. L. H. Pommel, head of the Botany Department at Iowa State, said about Quick: “Herbert Quick was born on one of the branches of Pine Creek in Grundy County. He caught the spirit of conservation. In all of his writings he has given us a most realistic picture of the prairie and its adjacent forest along the Iowa River.”
Honored by his home state with Herbert Quick Week
After Quick’s death, Iowa Gov. John Hammill proclaimed October 18 to 25, 1925 – the week of Quick’s birthday – as Herbert Quick Week. “I earnestly urge that the services of this great man to this state and nation be emphasized on the occasion of his birthday. To that end the inspiration of Herbert Quick’s life shall be inculcated in the young. I recommend that appropriate exercises be held in the schools through our state, as well as public meetings, in commemoration of the life and works of this great writer.”
The schools of Grundy County all participated. In Grundy Center, the Woman’s Club sponsored a “Herbert Quick Program” at the high school. The Herbert Quick Society of the 8th grade was entertained by Miss Julia Cary. The two-day Grundy County Teachers Institute also had a program on Quick.
The Quick Center Spartans
After Quick’s death in 1925 there was serious talk about renaming Grundy Center to honor Quick. One suggestion was Monterey Center, the fictional name for Grundy Center in Quick’s novel, Vandemark’s Folly. Quick’s son, Edward, wrote a letter to Grundy Center (below) suggesting Quick Center, or Quicksburg, or Quicksville. Talk soon died down the following year and Grundy Center remains our name.
Learn More
Most of Quick’s books are available free from Google Books online. Just click on the links below to read his autobiography, One Man’s Life, and the Iowa trilogy novels about life on the Iowa prairie starting in the. 1850s: VANDEMARK’S Folly, The Hawkeye, and The Invisible Woman.
