Hannah "Anna" Hutchcroft, d/o John & Mary (Ripley) Hutchcroft, md. 29 Aug. 1871 to William James Jordan of Leicester, England, no issue.


Ref: The Hawk Eye, Burlington, IA, Sunday, 6 Nov. 1983, pg. 27, by Michael N. Sweet -- When Jim Jordan walked out to his woodshop each summer morning, he often paused to gaze down on the river he loved so much.

The view of the Mississippi from his home on the bluff in the 400 block of North Street is still lovely. It is not difficult to see how the river seduced him so long ago.

Summers were his favorite season, and it seems fitting that Jordan died in the midst of his 92nd summer in 1940.

Jordan was born in Leicester, England, the son of a cabinetmaker who emigrated to Burlington in 1859, when Jim was 12.

Nine months a year Jordan made his living traveling the U.S., selling gourmet foods wholesale for a New Jersey canner. But cherished summers were spent in his shop, knee deep in fragrant wood shavings and sawdust, his apron soaked with linseed oil. Jim Jordan built boats, more than 150 of them in his life-time. His boats, only seven of which are thought to survive, are the legacy he left to his adopted city.

His were not the traditional working john boats that dominate today's river. Jordan designed and crafted sleek wooden rowing skiffs, their graceful lines derived from the vessels New England fishermen and outdoorsmen have utilized for two centuries.

When he wasn't building boats he was rowing them. In 1873 Jordan took a $10 bet that he couldn't row the 39 miles from Burlington to Keokuk in less than six hours. His winning time: five hours, 55 minutes, an average of 6.6 mph.

Jordan and local jeweler Charles Walden promoted one of Burlington's first rowing races in 1869. The races grew more popular each year, and wagers, according to the local paper, were as common as they were encouraged. Prizes were hefty for the times; $30 for first place; $20 for second.

Most modern boats are made of fiberglass, steel or aluminum. In Jordan's day, wood fastened with bronze or iron nails as the only material.

Today, dozens of east coast boat builders are still crafting boats of wood, primarily for customers who appreciate the art.

Jordan's most popular design was a 17 1/2 foot double ender, similar to a canoe. Its ribs were stream-bent red elm; its planks white Maine cedar. It was designed to carry two men wielding oars 10 feet long. In races held at Burlington in the 1870s, crews were timed at sustained speeds of 7.9 mph.

Another Jordan design, which featured a pointed bow and squared off stern, was similar to the elegant Whitehall rowing skiffs of New England. He named that class of rowing boat Elsey, after his granddaughter, Mrs. Elsey Wells of Davenport.

Jordan's boats sold for up to $100 each, a hefty price in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He also gave his boats romantic names like Moonbeam, North Star and Rising Sun. And there were others less romantic -- Skipack, Dolphin, Tornado and Swamp Angel.

Moonbeam, North Star, and Skipjack are among those still in Burlington. Bob Holstein, 2068 Highland, owns the North Star, which was Jordan's personal rowing skiff. Burt Prugh Sr., Ft. Madison Road, has Moonbeam, built for a friend of Jordan's. He also owns another derelict that is beyond salvage. Ed Dailey, 403 Court, owns Skipjack and a one-of-a-kind sailing/rowing skiff which Jordan made for the Brooks family.

The boats were powered with two or four huge sweep oars, depending on whether one or two oarsmen were aboard. "Two guys that know how to use those oars can really make it run," Holstein said.

The North Star was later acquired by Holstein's brother, who used it in Wisconsin and who covered the 3/8" thick wooden planks with fiberglass. Holstein retrieved the boat when his brother died and he plans to remove the fiberglass and restore the boat to a natural wood finish.

Building a hull took time. Jordan searched the woods near Burlington for the proper lumber. He felled and sawed the logs, air-dried the wood, and shaped each piece by hand. The planks were of Maine cedar, which could be acquired at local lumberyards in those days, Prugh said. The elegant red elm frames were curved by heating the wood with water vapor in a steamer.

The sweeping bow timbers, called stems, were hand hewn from the naturally curved crooks of a tree.

"Actually, I think he was a genius," Holstein said. "Today it would take a genius to do what he did even with modern equipment.

"I always admire good craftsmanship. This series of boats Jim Jordan built, oh gee, they have to be the epitome of poetry in wood. Their lines are just beautiful."

Elsey Wells, now 85, recalls her grandfather as "a great man of the river. He loved the Mississippi and he spent lots of time on it.

"My grandmother (Hannah Hutchcroft Jordan), she could row a boat as well as any man. He taught me to row properly too. Sometimes in the shop I'd hold a clamp now and then while he was working on a boat."

While in their 30s, the Jordans and another couple took the Moonbeam and North Star to St. Paul, MN, on the deck of a steamboat. They then rowed downriver to Burlington, camping along the way. The Jordans retraced the voyage about 1912, when Jim was 65.

Jordan ignored outboard motors, even after they began to replace oars and sails in the early 1900s. "He thought they would shake his boats to pieces," Mrs. Wells said. "But after he passed on my father used a motor on one of the boats and it didn't fall apart."

Mrs. Wells, a retired teacher, said her grandfather introduced her to the river when she was less than a year old. "We rowed all over the river in those boats. Families would take their dog and a lunch and go to the islands for a picnic. It was a great time to grow up. I was kind of a river rat. I didn't marry a river rat though. I married a farmer's son."

Mrs. Wells' three grown children recall their great-grandfather as "a fine fine man." They sat on his knee and he told them stories about buying buffalo meat from the Indians for the Union Pacific Railroad.

"Everybody called him Uncle Jim. Neighborhood boys would hang around the shop and their parents thought it was wonderful. They always said they didn't worry when they were with Uncle Jim."

Dailey recalls rowing his boat to Ft. Madison and back one day with a friend in the 1930s. They stopped at Dallas City for a steak and beer, the proper fuel for a rowing skiff crew, and rowed back to the boathouse at Burlington about 4 a.m. "Then we walked home. In those days you didn't call your mother to come and get you," Dailey said, chuckling.

Most of Jordan's boats have long since rotted away; the rest remain unused in boathouses or garages. Eleven Jordan-built boats were destroyed when a fire gutted the North End Boating Assn. in the 1920s.

No local craftsman has emerged to carry on Jordan's work since his death 43 years ago. No one probably will.

The owners of the surviving hulls know they are the caretakers of a legend, and the guardians of a fragile piece of history.

Burt Prugh, whose avocation is naval architecture, said Jordan modified other boat builders designs to get even more speed from his hulls.

Jordan's boats were durable because each plank was soaked in hot linseed oil, which permeated the wood and, if cared for, prevented dry rot caused by fungus.

Dailey's one of a kind Jordan boat is a delicate sailboat built for the Brooks family. Its bow features a graceful compound curve, resembling the sophisticated New England pleasure boats of the last century. Dailey's children occasionally sailed the skiff on the river. But a Jordan hull hasn't cut the chop on the Mississippi in years. (several pictures, one of the "North Star")

Ref: Mediapolis New Era, Mediapolis, IA, 13 Apr. 1889 – Mrs. Jordan of Burlington is visiting her brother, George Hutchcroft. Her niece, Miss Anna Lane, of Roscoe, is with her.

Ref: Funeral Card – James Jordan b. 8 Aug. 1847, Leicester, England, d. 10 Jul. 1940, Burlington, IA, services at Burnett-Wallen Funeral Home by Rev. Bruce Masseliink, interment, Aspen Grove Cem; Mrs. Hannah Hutchcroft Jordan, wife of James Jordan b. 6 Jan. 1852, Yorkshire, England, d. 14 Jul. 1939, Burlington, IA, services at Burnett-Wallen Funeral Home by Rev. Bruce H. Masselink, interment at Aspen Grove Cem.