Valerie Van Kooten has a weird and wonderful backstory about how she came to lead the State Historical Society of Iowa, and it helps explain the society’s new project: “Weird & Wonderful Iowa.”

“Coming from Pella,” Van Kooten told me, “I knew that people were really hungry for history, particularly if you package it in interesting small bites.”

For example, how Louisa County got its name. 

That’s Episode One of the society’s new “Weird & Wonderful Iowa” feature available on YouTube. 

The Louisa County video runs a little over four minutes and is a delight to watch. It explains one version of the county’s namesake, which in this case was Louisa Massey, a 16-year-old girl who in 1835 avenged the murder of her brother. 

In the video, Van Kooten weaves a colorful tale that ends with young Louisa shooting a man in broad daylight on the streets of Dubuque. 

Technically, Van Kooten explains, Louisa should have been charged with a crime, but she wasn’t because the man she shot was a member of a claim-jumping family that killed her brother and was threatening to kill more of her family.   

Louisa’s story appeared on YouTube in September. 

A second episode of “Weird & Wonderful Iowa” was set for release in time for Halloween. It centers on Milton Lott, a 12-year-old whose grave is in the middle of nowhere in Boone County, and whose spirit, some say, has never rested.

Whether Milton’s ghost is still around or not, his fate was later tied to the Spirit Lake Massacre, which took place 10 years after his death.

Milton’s father, John Henry Lott, was a horse thief, trapper and trader who was said to have cheated both the soldiers who established Fort Des Moines and Native Americans, who the U.S. government was paying to move out of Iowa. 

In 1846 during the removal period, Lott built a cabin in Boone County and ignored a warning from Sioux Chief Sidominadota to leave. In December, the chief and others arrived at the cabin to evict Lott, who fled, leaving his wife and two children. 

Son Milton later fled on his own, and his frozen body was later found 20 miles from the cabin, where his grave and headstone are today.  

Lott spread stories about atrocities committed on his wife and daughter, although doubt was later cast on the details.  

In any case, Lott sought revenge and later lured Sidominadota on an elk hunt where he shot the chief in the back before also killing most of the chief’s family, and placing his head on a pole. 

Lott was indicted for the murders but could not be found and was never punished. 

Sidominadota’s brother (or cousin) was Inkpaduta, the renegade Sioux chief who led the massacre of 35-40 settlers at Spirit Lake a decade later. At the time, food was scarce and Native Americans claimed they were being cheated, just like trader Lott had cheated Sidominadota.

When Van Kooten mentioned other videos her staff is working on, I asked how they come up with such interesting and specific details. 

“There are people here who can find things,” she said, noting that the Iowa Historical Museum has vast stores of information.

Van Kooten’s fascination with history came from her parents, who were farmers near Pella, a community that has preserved much of its Dutch heritage.

“I grew up loving history,” she said, and her career revolved around it after she received a journalism degree from Iowa State University in 1985.

In 2023, as director of the Pella Historical Museums, Van Kooten wrote an article titled “Slaughtering the Sacred Cows,” chronicling her trip a year earlier to Holland to speak about Dutch settlers who arrived in Pella 175 years earlier in 1847. 

She knew the settlers had split into sects soon after arriving in Iowa, but she was surprised to learn in Holland that the leading families of Pella were not viewed so positively in their native land.

One old man told her, “You guys were the ones who left. You were the troublemakers.”