History of Madison County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I, Part 1

Author: Mueller, Herman A., 1866- ed
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago : The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 566


USA > Iowa > Madison County > History of Madison County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 1


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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY


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1


HERMAN A. MUELLER


HISTORY OF


MADISON COUNTY


IOWA


AND ITS PEOPLE


HERMAN A. MUELLER SUPERVISING EDITOR


ILLUSTRATED


VOLUME I


CHICAGO THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1915


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PREFACE


For several years it has been my ambition to prepare and compile a History of Madison County. That time has been delayed until in the fall of 1914 when arrangements were made with The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company of Chicago to act as Supervising Editor of the first volume. Mr. W. L. Kershaw was employed to do the writing and compiling from the large source of material at hand.


The manuscripts of the late Andrew J. Hoisington, of Great Bend, Kansas, who in the year 1905 gathered much valuable material for the purpose of pub- lishing a History of Madison County, were secured through the kindness of his .sister, Mrs. Samuel Johnson, of Union Township. ( Read the Life of Andrew J. Hoisington in Volume Two.) Much of the material from this manuscript was incorporated in this History.


Another source was from the material collected by the Madison County Historical Society since its organization in 1904. All papers presented before the Historical Society are preserved as well as other matter of historical value. Much of this material was drawn upon for this History.


Also the two histories, viz : Davies' History and Directory of Madison County, published in 1869, and The History of Madison County, published in 1879, were used. These two books were written at a time when many of the early pioneers were still living who knew much of the beginning of things in Madison County. Nearly all those persons have passed away, which makes the collecting of early history more difficult.


The newspaper files of the Winterset papers, especially the special historical numbers published at various times by The Madisonian, The Reporter, The News, and The Winterset Review, were freely used.


To all the above sources we make due acknowledgment for the data which was drawn upon for the present History.


We wish to express our sincere thanks to the Advisory Board for their advice and assistance rendered; also to the many members of the Madison County His- torical Society who have at different times presented papers before the society. These papers have been used quite extensively in this volume.


We especially express our appreciation to the persons named below and make due acknowledgment of the same at this time. Two of them have passed away but their many kind and noble deeds live in the hearts of those who were privileged to know them, viz : W. S. Wilkinson and Mrs. Jennie Lothrop Whedon.


The names of the authors and the subjects written by them which appear in this History are as follows :


W. S. Wilkinson: "The Big Snake Hunt," "As a Boy Saw It," "Early Schools, Religion, and Politics," and "The Buffalo Mills."


E. R. Zeller: Biographies of Andrew J. Hoisington and Judge J. A. Pitzer, and "History of the Kentucky Settlement."


iv:


PREFACE


T. C. Gilpin : "History of the Presbyterian Church of Winterset," "History of Pitzer Post, G. A. R., Winterset," "History of Evening Star Lodge, A. F. & A. M., Winterset."


James Gillespie : "History of the Irish Settlement of Madison County."


W. Il. Lewis : "llow the Courthouse Was Taken by the Board of Supervisors," "Winterset in 1864."


George Storck: "History of the German Settlement of Jefferson Township." "History of the Farmers' Mutual Insurance Company of Madison County."


D. B. Cook: "History of the Quakers in Madison County."


Ezra Brownell: "History of the Grange Movement in Madison County."


Mrs. Jennie Lothrop Whedon : "History of the W. R. C. and of the Chapters in Madison County."


A. E. Goshorn : "The Geology of Madison County."


' Samuel Fife: "Reminiscences of South Township in an Early Day."


Fred Beeler : "Early Days in Walnut Township."


The Supervising Editor in the past fifteen years has gathered much material and has written several articles for the Historical Society. This material and. papers were also used in the first volume.


As the manuscript is not before me at this writing, it is possible that mention of some persons who have contributed has not been made, so at this time I want to make acknowledgment to all who have in any way helped to make this History possible.


The History may not reach the expectations of many, not even the Supervising Editor, but if it has served the one mission of collecting and preserving history to future generations some good will have been accomplished. Doubtless there will be much valuable historical matter which will be omitted which possibly should not have been, but it will be for the reason that such facts were not known or were overlooked by the Supervising Editor. That it will be free of errors is almost an impossibility. Memories of persons are not always reliable, dates are not always safe to handle, and names are easily twisted, so to make a history without errors creeping in would be a task seldom ever accomplished.


I trust that this llistory will meet the approval of all who have a real interest in Madison County, and who have its history and its people at heart.


Again thanking the many persons who have encouraged and assisted in the gathering and writing of this volume, and with a promise that in the future a better and large history may be written,


I remain, respectfully yours,


II. A. MUELLER,


Supervising Editor.


CONTENTS


CHAPTER I


GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF MADISON COUNTY I


CHAPTER II


INDIANS AND THEIR VILLAGES IN MADISON COUNTY 12


CHAPTER III


MADISON'S ADVANCE GUARD OF CIVILIZATION


20


CHAPTER IV


MADISON COUNTY ORGANIZED


29


CHAPTER V


36


PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMISSIONERS' COURT


CHAPTER VI


57


COUNTY BUILDINGS


CHAPTER VII


66


POLITICAL


CHAPTER VIII


ORGANIZATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN MADISON COUNTY. 75


CHAPTER IX


78


EDUCATIONAL


CHAPTER X


90


RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS


CHAPTER XI


99


TIIE MEDICAL PROFESSION


CHAPTER XII


103


BENCII AND BAR


CHAPTER XIII


114


THE PRESS


V


vi


CONTENTS CHAPTER XIV'


POSTOFFICES


117


CHAPTER XV


FIRST MARRIAGES IN THE COUNTY . . 123


CHAPTER XVI


MADISON COUNTY CLAIM CLUB


CHAPTER XVII


THE REEVES WAR


1344


CHAPTER XVHI


SWAMP LANDS


138


CHAPTER NIX


LOST AND FORGOTTEN TOWN SITES


144


CHAPTER XX


SOME MADISON COUNTY MILLS


150


CHAPTER XXI


THIE SIMPLE LIFE 150


CHAPTER XXH


TRANSPORTATION


160


CHAPTER XXIII


OUT OF THE BOUNTEOUS HAND OF NATURE.


176


CHAPTER XXIV'


THE "UNDERGROUND RAILROAD" 183


CHAPTER XXV


MADISON COUNTY IN THE CIVIL WAR


185


CHAPTER XXVI


MADISON COUNTY SOCIETIES 217


CHAPTER XXVII


221


CHAPTER XXVHI


228


CLAYTON COUNTY COMES TO MADISON.


CHAPTER XXIX


SCHOOLS AND RATTLESNAKES 233


QUAKER SETTLEMENT IN MADISON COUNTY.


CONTENTS CHAPTER XXX ASSOCIATIONS AND OTHER THINGS 240


vii


CHAPTER XXXI


SOUTH TOWNSIIIP 250


CHAPTER XXXH


UNION TOWNSHIP


269


CHAPTER XXXIII


SCOTT TOWNSHIP


279


CHAPTER XXXIV


DOUGLAS TOWNSHIP


288


CHAPTER XXXV


LINCOLN TOWNSHIP


296


CHAPTER XXXVI


300


CHAPTER XXXVH


WALNUT TOWNSHIP


307


CHAPTER XXXVIII


WEBSTER TOWNSHIP


313


CHAPTER XXXIX


316


CHAPTER XL


320


CHAPTER XLI


330


CHAPTER XLII


341


CHAPTER XLIII


344


CHAPTER XLIV


349


GRAND RIVER TOWNSHIP


OHIO TOWNSHIP


CHAPTER XLV 356


PENN TOWNSHIP


MADISON TOWNSHIP


JEFFERSON TOWNSHIP


JACKSON TOWNSHIP


LEE TOWNSHIP


CRAWFORD TOWNSHIP


viii


CONTENTS


CHAPTER XLVI


MONROE TOWNSHIP 360


CHAPTER XLVII


THE CITY OF WINTERSET. 303


CHAPTER XLVIII


FRATERNAL BODIES OF WINTERSET


376


CHAPTER XLIX


WINTERSET IN 1864- PIONEER MERCHANT 380


CHAPTER L.


MISCELLANEOUS


395


HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY


CHAPTER I


GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF MADISON COUNTY (By Arthur Goshorn, Editor the News)


All my life I have delighted in the outdoors and lived in it as much as possible. I believe I can say to this society that this liking is real, not assumed. The bug has always been in me and it is yet there. I could always understand the man in James Whitcomb Riley's poem who said he liked to go into the woods and do


"Just as I durn please, When the green Is on the trees."


As a very little child I had the old gully that cuts into the shore, or at least the shallows, of the old Carboniferous Sea, which you know as Kipp's Hollow, and which I knew as Bradfield's, for a playground. The fossils of its rocks were my first playthings. Its little brook ran through our calf lot, and it was the first thing I ever dammed.


One of the first questions that I ever asked myself was why some of its rocks were red, and round and smooth. Why the pebbles were round and smooth, and why some of the rocks were flat and white, and seemed to grow in the ground, and how the funny shells got into them, Why some of the soil was black, and some red, and some yellow.


A sarcastic teacher came nearly preventing all outward expression of this liking for the outdoors by assigning us a nature topic, and then singling out my little effort, and ridiculing it before the whole school, characterizing it as stolen gush. It was not stolen; it was not gush. But her sarcastic words hurt so bitterly. the gibes of my none too gentle companions cut so deep, that it was years before I dared tell anyone that it was not just for the hunting that 1 explored every crook and turn of every one of Middle River's ravines, and hunted its rock exposures ; and that it was not the passionate love of fishing alone that made me get acquainted with every riffle on the river, and every peculiarity of its bed.


Sarcasm and ridicule are cruel weapons and make ugly wounds. A home thrust may easily change the bent of one's mind, or the course of his whole life. A few years teaching, and many in the newspaper business have made me know that every man. every woman, and every child is pleased by praise ; and that Vol. 1-1


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HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY


every man, every woman, and every child is deeply hurt by sarcasm or ridicule. no matter how indifferent to it he may appear to be. or how invulnerable he looks. And he who is addicted to their use may well pause before he lances his victim.


It is only in late years, anyhow, that healthy men and women have taken possession of the outdoors. It is only in late years that an active business man in vigorous health dared get up and say that he liked outdoors, and that he could see beauty in the landscape, and in the sky's coloring, and that he liked it just because he liked it, and did not care who in Sam Ilill knew it, without being set down as weak minded, cracked, sentimental, and a gusher.


As a boy, as an okler boy, as man. I tramped over the wooded hills of Middle River and explored every bit of its ravines and hollows and its rock exposures ; and as an indifferent student of geology studied its structure until I came to think that perhaps I had an idea how it was formed. It is only because of this lifetime acquaintance, tramping its hills and its valley from one end of it to the other as perhaps few have tramped it that I presumed to impose on your time and perhaps offer a few suggestions that may be of value when you once fairly start into the study of its geology, in whatever branch you may take up.


And believe me when you undertake this work, even if you do not take it seriously, you have an intensely interesting subject in one of the most interest- ing bits of geological formation in lowa. And you and I know that not in the the whole state is there another valley so peculiarly made, so grandly cut in canyon walls, as that of the ancient valley below us. In taking up its study you are at least out of doors in Iowa's finest scenery.


If you believe in the conclusions of the men who have made the structure of the earth a lifetime study, you must believe in boundless, limitless time. Not time as it suggests itself to you in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, or even centuries ; but ages, ages upon ages, millions upon millions of years, a vast abyss of time, in which your lifetime and mine would be but a clock's tick, or the passing of an electric spark. One can hardly conceive of such time. It is one of the few things the human mind cannot grasp: for like space, it had no beginning, neither will it have end.


All the earth at your feet, every bit of soil, all its clays, all its rocks, except a very few, are but ground up rock, rock ground over and over again and deposited hy wind on land, or by rivers on their flood plains, or carried out in solution or as silt and sand to the beds of lakes or seas. It may be in varying degrees of hardness and of fineness, but nevertheless it is all ground up, igneous rock which we only know as granites and quartz. Pick up a bit of it and perhaps you can see the sand in it. Examine it under the microscope and it is all rock, every bit of it, except a little vegetable mold called humus.


When the earth cooled sufficiently to allow the moisture in its air envelope to collect on the igneous rock-for the whole body of the earth is supposed to be fire heated rock-in wrinkles and depressions on its face, into seas and oceans, the formation of the land as we know it commenced. If one's imagination be the least vivid he can picture the world in formative stages a veritable battle of the elements, so awful in its magnificence, so terrifying in its aspects, so staggering


3


HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY


in its proportions that he will shiver in terror and draw bed clothes, child-like, over his head.


Hissing, half molten rocks hurled back scalding, boiling seas ; tempests com- pared to which our awful cyclones would be but tiny wind storms, swept its surface. Explosions compared to which Sumatra's eruption that twice belted the earth with its dust would have been a pop gun's report, shattered its dense atmosphere. Earthquakes that hourly threw up mountain chains only to demolish them again and bury them in ocean depths, rocked it. Lightning played a con- stant tattoo in huge bolts on rock and sea, for there was no land then.


Some fireworks that! But it must have been under some such conditions amid some such terrifying scenes, after the earth became somewhat stable, that the wind and water commenced the attack on the igneous rock, to manufacture them into the earth as we know it. And it was only after it had become stable, . allowed something permanent, that we commence to read its history in the deposits of the old seas.


And such has been the length of time since that has happened, since the sur- face of the earth became permanent or cooled, that there has been deposited over almost all of the face of the earth these sedimentary or manufactured rocks or clays from a few hundred feet to thirteen miles in thickness. Such a deposit seems incredible, but again you must go back to time, and allow enough for it. How much time you may not name, but your guess, if you but guess large enough, is just as good as that of the most scientific man's.


But whether you believe in this nebular hypothesis of the world's forma- tion, that it developed from a molten body and that it had grown to its full size before the wind and water commenced their work, or whether you believe in the later and now very generally accepted theory, the Planetesimal theory of the growth of the earth and the moon from slow accumulations from an earth-moon ring, and that the oceans and rivers and the wind began their work long before either body had attained its present size, is not material now. We are concerned with the time in which our own country, or at least the face of it, was formed. There is too much in geology, too much of it in our own topic to even scratch it in-whatever this paper is.


If we would go out in Mrs. Whedon's yard and dig or bore down with a diamond drill, a core drill, eight hundred feet and stretch the boring out, it would be nearly three blocks long.


I. You would find one to three feet of black dirt. That is loess, a wind deposit, mixed with vegetable mold, and it was brought here by the wind.


2. A foot.or two of buff loess that has been little mixed with vegetable mold.


3. Between thirty and forty feet of glacial drift and residual limestone clays. The drift was deposited by glaciers ; the residual clays are either decom- posed rock, or clay not hardened into rock, and were deposited in the sea bed.


4. One hundred and fifty feet of alternating layers of limestone and shales that were deposited in a carboniferous sea, the last water that covered Madison County-the Bethany limestones of the carboniferous.


5. Six hundred feet of alternating beds of limestones and shales and clays that were deposited in the first carboniferous sea that covered the county, or


4


HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY


at least part of it. You might find a bed of coal in it. How much more of the formation of that old carboniferous sea is there no one knows, for Soo feet out on the old Newlon farm, just beyond North River, is as far down as boring has been made. A deeper boring was made by the Great Western at Peru, but its record is not public.


Whether this carboniferous formation rests on the Devonian formation, the age preceding it, we do not know, and will not know until a deeper boring has been made. If it does, we were a long time under water.


THE CARBONIFEROUS


Discussing Middle River's ancient valley we shall only consider its structure. Middle River Valley is the oldest one by far in this part of the state. It is very. very old and has successfully withstood the attacks of glaciers. Compared with our valley the country to the west and north of us, and their rivers, are very new and very recent.


All we really know of the county is that its top, after, of course, removing the drift and the loess, was laid down in the bottom of a carboniferous sea. And since it was deposited the earth here was not violently disturbed at any time for the strata of clays and limestone lie in our hills, layer upon layer, not wrinkled, exactly like the layers of a jelly cake. You can trace a bed of lime- stone clear across the county. You can find that bed of shale from which they make the tile at the tile works, at Pern, on Cedar and on North River and North Branch. The bed of limestone, from which you gather so many fossils in Kipp's Hollow, is the very same one which lies on the very top of the Backbone and. if you are not able to identify it by the rock, you can do it by the fossils in it.


The lower valley lies wholly within the coal measures which are here in lowa called the Des Moines. The coal measures are exposed along Middle River as far west as the Backbone. There is no coal to speak of in the formation exposed and whether there is any deeper down we do not know, for the explorers for coal have drilled so foolishly and unwisely that we know little about it. The first coal boring that I know of was made years ago in that little round glen below Dabney's Lake. At the Mardis Brick Yard a syndicate bored down from the top of the hill. A little geological knowledge would have sent them to the river's bottom and saved 150 feet of drilling. An old man bored or tunneled into the hill in Young's Hollow, east of town, and the shaft is there yet. Bailey, who drills wells, says that only small coal veins are encountered in the Des Moines formation. Tilton and Bain are of the opinion that somewhat deep borings in the northeast part of the county may find coal and that pockets may be found. That okl carboniferous sea stretched from Fort Dodge in lowa to Keokuk, and from What Cheer to Winterset and beyond. It covered the whole of Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas and stretched into Oklahoma and Arkansas.


How the coal was made we do not exactly know. There are just as many theories as there are geologists.


Certain it is that during the carboniferous time vegetation in luxuriousness such as the earth does not now know grew over its face, and that in its slimy.


5


HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY


oozy swamps, trees grew and fell, and were converted into coal. In its muggy, moist climate, such as geologists picture it to be, ferns grew to huge trees and lower plant life into sizes such as we can scarcely conceive. All the coal in lowa seems to have been deposited along the Des Moines River from Fort Dodge to Keokuk.


THE BETHANY LIMESTONE


When the country east of Tileville rose out of the great sea or swamp, the country around Winterset remained submerged until two hundred feet or more of rocks and clays had been formed.


Winterset must have been close to the edge of the sea and if not on the very shore was not far out in the shallows. The abundant fossils of the rock are good evidence of being close to shore, for marine life in such quantities lives close to the beach or in the shallows of the sea. The rocks disappear at Tileville and while Winterset was submerged Patterson and Bevington and the country to the north- east was out of water. The last carboniferous sea extended from Eartham down into Missouri. It extended far west. When they bored the deep well in Clarinda, they came upon our rocks 600 feet down and found them of the same character and nearly of the same thickness and separated by about the same shaies as they are here. At Bethany, Missouri, they are exposed, and Bethany gives our rocks their names as they were first described there. Bethany lies south of here.


I remember, when yet a small boy, I went with my uncle and grandmother to Missouri to get three wagon loads of peaches. None grew here then and it was a common thing to do. The peaches rotted and coming home we stopped in the rocky bed of a river about the size of Middle River, near Bethany, Missouri, to can some peaches and make peach butter. The hills had a familiar look, the rocks had too. It reminded me of and looked much like home.


We had not been in camp long until, prodding into the bank I found a fine specimen of Cameratus, a spirifer that is quite common in our own rocks. I soon dug up other kinds common to our rocks, and promptly named them. And when on closer investigation I saw our own rocks reproduced bed for bed, the hills resembling our own hills, our clays, the rocky river and all that, the home longing came over me so strong that I could not go back to camp. Uncle laughed at me when I told him we had the same rocks at Winterset, but 1 proved it to him by the fossils. Grandmother cased it over for me by saying that if these were our rocks and the stream like Middle River there surely must be bass in the pools, and sent me to catch her one. I did, 1 caught three in ten minutes and permitted my brother to make our share of the peach butter after that. Incidentally I might mention that it was on this same trip, near Plattsburgh, in another rocky hollow, going down, that great flocks of wild pigeons passed over us morning and evening, the last time I ever saw the bird whose mysterious and complete disappearance so suddenly has sorely perplexed ornithologists.


There are four beds of the Bethany limestone. The top one is the Fusulina, a thin shaly rock, in many places so full of fossils you could not stick in another if you tried.


The second bed is the Winterset limestone, our fine white building rock that


6


HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY


is handsomer, stronger, than any other Iowa limestone, and far superior to Bed- ford stone. Some day all the best houses in Iowa will be built from it. With its shales and clays it varies from twenty to forty feet thick. There are miles of it exposed.


The third bed is the Earlham limestone, named because of the exposures at Earlham. It, too, is fine building rock and from it was burned the excellent lime in the old lime kilns that were once in every hollow near Winterset. The Earlham limestone and shale is from thirty to forty feet thick.


The fourth bed is the Fragmental, a fine rock but little used, because it lies deep and there is so much good rock above it. It varies in thickness and with its shales is from ten to thirty feet in depth. All the rocks are fine cement rocks and with their shales produce the best cement.


When the country slowly emerged from that carboniferous sea in which our limerock was deposited it rose up in a great plain. Middle River was not there, neither was the valley. There were no hills, no ravines. It was as flat and probably as unrelieved as this floor. There may have been lakes on its surface, but judging from all that is left, the country, drawing a line from Truro to Earlham, through Winterset, was flat without a hill in it. It tipped or sloped gently to the northeast. And then the water commenced to make our country as we know it by gouging out the ravines and carrying down the soil and clays to the Mississippi Delta.


Every hill and every valley we have in the county was caused by erosion. The material that once lay between is now down in the Mississippi Delta. The limestone restricted the erosion in the western two-thirds of the county. Middle River cut deep through the rocks, but it cut its gorge narrow, as rivers always do in hard rocks. We are, right here. 200 feet above the bed of the river where John Holloway cuts his ice a mile away. Patterson is 230 feet below us and Bevington is about thirty feet more. Earlham, Winterset and Truro are about on the same level, and all lie on ridges that have been little eroded, held up by the underlying limestone and the tough residual clays.




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