theordquiz.com

By Kate Wolf
   It all started out as an idea for a feature story on Ord’s inner-city treasure, Bussell Park.  It’s been there as long as anyone who’s still alive can even remember and Bussell is the name long associated with the beautiful park grounds we all know and love. One would assume there are records everywhere, easily researched and documented, right?  Wrong.
   The search for the man, James S. Bussell, who so generously donated 60 acres of land to the City of Ord, turned out to be quite an exercise in frustration. He was nowhere to be found.
     There are many references to the park itself and how it has grown from the original 60 acre tract into a metropolitan-class recreation area that now encompasses playgrounds, picnic areas with shelters, tennis and pickleball courts, Dane Creek Golf Course, fishing at Auble's Pond with a lovely walking trail, RV camp sites, and aquatic center, as well as a top-tier sports complex that draws visitors from miles around. Valley County is immensely proud of its beautiful park and rightly so. You would be hard-pressed to find anything with so many attractive features even remotely like it in one location anywhere across the entire state.
   But what about the man, James S. Bussell? Who was he?  What did he do for a living?  What prompted his remarkable generosity?  
   My first stop was the Valley County Museum Research Room, yet another treasure of which Valley County can be extremely proud. Curator Janet Jones spent quite some time with me combing through files, books, articles and documents for the slightest mention of James S. Bussell but the research proved fruitless.  Every resource referred only to the “Ord City Park and Athletic Field” as well as a Park Board but no mention of who served on it.
   On to the Ord City Offices where it was determined that James S. Bussell was indeed buried in the Ord Cemetery but no additional information could be found. You have to remember that it was a very long time ago, too long perhaps for a paper trail of retrievable evidence.
     That left The Ord Quiz digital archives and the possibility of an obituary.  City records indicated James Bussell was buried in December of 1918, so back-tracking through the archives lead to….wait.  No digital Quiz copies for the year 1918?  What happened?  Was there a fire?  How to account for this gap? (Groan…start over).  Approach this from a different angle:  The land for the park was donated in May of 1909, let’s start there.
   At last, success! After pouring over the minuscule print from countless digital pages of the Quiz from May of 1909, there it was:  A barely noticeable mention of four lines simply stating “The City Council has accepted the deed of J. S. Bussell for the Bussell Park.  Everyone voted for it at the last meeting.” 
     That’s it.  No big story.  No fanfare.  No image of Bussell shaking the hand of the Mayor (because no photo’s back then) and no artfully drawn rendition of what the park might look like in the future.  Thanks to Kristi Hagstrom of the Ord Township Library and the “Find a Grave” site online, the man who so generously donated the land for our beautiful park/recreation area was found.
    Pick up this week's Quiz for the complete story!