A Small-Town Iowa Fourth of July in 1907
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Joy Neal Kidney, a regular contributor of Our American Stories, shares the tale behind a cherished family photograph taken on the Fourth of July in 1907. Through the memoirs of Leora Goff, we're transported to small-town Iowa, where parades, brass bands, picnics, and fireworks filled a long summer day of celebration in 1907. It is a vivid snapshot of how Americans celebrated Independence Day more than a century ago.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories. |
| 0:17.9 | And up next, a story from our regular contributor out of 1040 WHO in Des Moines, |
| 0:23.0 | Joy Neal Kidney. Joy is the author of Leora's letters and Leora's Dexter's stories. And today, |
| 0:29.4 | she shares with us a story entitled Independence Day, 1907. Take it away, Joy. |
| 0:38.1 | Independence Day, 197. |
| 0:41.0 | What a familiar photo this was to me as a child. |
| 0:44.4 | Sherd and Laura Goff and all 10 children who survived into adulthood. |
| 0:49.3 | But it wasn't until my grandmother, Leora, the oldest daughter, died and left her handwritten memoirs, |
| 0:55.9 | that I learned the story behind the photo. |
| 0:59.0 | Her memories even lured my sister and me to pay a visit to the county seat town of |
| 1:04.5 | Audubon, Iowa. |
| 1:10.4 | We always had a big celebration the 4th of July, Liora wrote. |
| 1:15.1 | Nearly every town or burg had something doing. |
| 1:18.6 | We used to get up at daybreak, get our work done, farm chores, and get ready to go to town with a wagon or buggy to see the big parade and stay till the fireworks, |
| 1:30.3 | and then do farm chores when we got home. |
| 1:33.3 | We were all tired but glad to have a big day. |
| 1:37.3 | The 4th of July when I was 16 years old, she said, that would have been 197. The citizens of Audubon were |
| 1:46.5 | awake in that morning by firecrackers in the boom of the old cannon, saluting the 45 states, |
| 1:53.9 | comprising our great republic. Ma was probably frying chicken and packing the picnic basket. |
| 2:02.8 | While the older boys were helping paw hitch up the horses, the older girls would have helped the four younger ones, button suspenders, |
... |
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