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IVO PONESA EK
PARKER
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HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY IOWA
A RECORD OF SETTLEMENT, ORGANIZATION, PROGRESS AND ACHIEVEMENT
By PROF. L. F. PARKER
Local history is the ultimate substance of national history -- Wilson
VOLUME I
ILLUSTRATED
CHICAGO: THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING CO. 1911
. HR
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 536368 ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. 1912 L
PREFACE
Macaulay, himself no mean historian, tells that "usually history begins in novel and ends in essay." Even a county history must begin and be continued in something of novel; it ought to have a place for more or less of essay scat- tered through its pages. That brilliant Englishman defines history as "a com- pound of poetry and philosophy." For our purpose and our work, we would say that "history is a narration of events colored by personal feeling."
To illustrate: A dyspeptic friend of ours visited Europe. His nose was turned up and the corners of his mouth were drawn down on his journey. He was tortured on the ocean by the awful smells from the steerage, and on the land by the soiled cups in the hotels, the garlic in the food, the imper- tinence of the newsboys, the sour weather of England and by the thought that his estate would be squandered by extravagant charges if he should die in any European state.
Dyspepsia made him hungry as he rose from the table, made the Rembrandts he saw dismally black and robbed St. Paul's and the Vatican of their grandeur and the master-pieces of Raphael and Michel Angelo of all beauty. There was no charm except in what he did not see, and rarely in anything which he could imagine.
How blue his letters are!
Now cure him. Let his nerves thrill with pleasure. The sun is brighter, the earth is beautiful and the men on it are always angelic. Now note the change. They begin to think "How much human affection there is in a dish of oysters! How much religion in a pound of beefsteak !"
Those who have furnished us with the facts in these volumes have not been dyspeptics ; those who have written them have enjoyed the exercise, even though a change in the health of the editor-in-chief has induced his physician to ad- vise him to put his business in shape to leave it at any moment. Although the change has delayed the work, it has not darkened his vision of the past or the present.
If his fifty-five years, practically, in this county have made him see the brighter side of life here too brightly, he confesses that he prefers the colors of midday to those of midnight, in its individual and social history, but above all he prefers the exact truth.
He is grateful for the aid of his advisory board, so cheerfully and so wisely given, and to all the help from pioneers and their children and to others and especially to those who furnished articles for this volume. They have been well qualified for their work.
Only a few of the deserving have been named, and but little of their desert has been recorded. We wish the narrative were more complete.
L. F. PARKER.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
TERRA INCOGNITA. PAGE
Iowa unknown-The "New World" the oldest-Iowa ice field-Origin and development of the Indian-French on the road to Iowa-Iowa is seen- Whites claim Iowa-The United States buy Louisiana-Sacs and Foxes leave Iowa I
CHAPTER II.
IOWA.
Origin of the name "Iowa" -- Lieutenant Albert M. Lea-Early legislation- The Dred Scott decision-The territorial legislature smiles-State is ad- mitted into the Union-Settlers enter Poweshiek-The first to come- Indian traders and agents 39
CHAPTER III.
PIONEERING.
Men of brawn and stout hearts-Neighbors were red men-The pioneer women-Claim associations-Prairies-Mormon exodus through Iowa- Criminals and their crimes-Snakes. 51
CHAPTER IV.
PRAIRIES.
Farming in Iowa-Agricultural societies of Poweshiek county-Adopted citizens-Improvement in cattle-Silos in Poweshiek county. ........ 69
CHAPTER V. TRANSPORTATION.
Early means of locomotion the horse and the ox-Roads the first public improvement in a settlement-Railroads are built and the East is con- nected with the West-Railroads entering Poweshiek county and when built
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI. ORGANIZATION.
The county of Poweshiek is organized-First officials-Land bought for seat of government and lots sold-Commissioners' court-County judge an autocrat-Public buildings and infirmary-Township organization- Growth of the county in its infancy-Development of county to 1860- Temperance in Poweshiek county-The Indian chief Poweshiek. 83
CHAPTER VII. OFFICIALS.
This chapter is devoted to listing county officials-Names of those holding county offices since 1848-Members representing Poweshiek in the gen- eral assembly-Judges of the circuit and district courts. IOI
CHAPTER VIII. SCHOOLS.
Schools follow the settlements-The log house and pioneer teacher depicted- Free schools soon established-High and graded schools rule throughout the county-Beautiful buildings and libraries-Normals and institutes. . . 107
CHAPTER IX. IOWA COLLEGE.
An institution of learning the pride of Grinnell-Founded at Davenport in 1848 and moved to Grinnell ten years later-Magnificent buildings and a generous endowment fund that is growing-Men who held chairs of learning in its halls .. .119
CHAPTER X. THE PIONEER PHYSICIAN.
Hardships and privations of the early physician were many-Rode horseback day and night in all kinds of weather-His work arduous and remunera- tion small-The Poweshiek County Medical Society . 129
CHAPTER XI. BENCH AND BAR.
Lawyers have great influence in shaping and making laws-Standard of morality high-Poweshiek bar made up of able and influential men- Sketches of early members of this bar-Reminiscences of the late Judge Blanchard .135
CHAPTER XII. THE PRESS.
The county well and faithfully served by its newspapers-Compare favorably with the press throughout the state-The linotype and other modern labor saving machinery in use -- Origin and growth of the various papers now published .149
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIII.
PERSONS OF DISTINCTION.
Poweshiek county has turned out her great men and women-Educators- Legislators-Writers-Painters-Orators and others of eminence- Sketches of those now remembered. .155
CHAPTER XIV. NATURE'S WAYS.
There have been blizzards and cyclones in Poweshiek-Disastrous effects of terrific wind storm of 1882-Eclipse of 1869 a memorable sight. . . . . . . . 163
CHAPTER XV. EPIDEMICS.
Ills of the flesh of man and beast-Epizootic-"Spotted fever" in Grinnell from which many die. 171
CHAPTER XVI.
CIVIL WAR.
The bloody conflict and those who took part in it-Steps that led up to the war between the states-Poweshiek sends her sons to the front-Or- ganizations in which they served. .177
CHAPTER XVII. TOWNSHIPS AND TOWNS.
Organization of the townships-Their record of patriotism during the dark days of '61-The prosperity that has come to the farmer of the twentieth century-Schools and churches-Cities, towns and villages-The county seat-Brooklyn-Malcom . 227
CHAPTER XVIII. TOWNSHIPS AND TOWNS.
History of the townships that of the county-Improved farms and prosper- 011s citizens-Searsboro-Deep River-Ewart-"Humbug City". . . . . . .. 271
CHAPTER XIX. GRINNELL.
Chief city of Poweshiek county-Busy industrial and manufacturing place- The seat of Iowa college-Her schools, churches, libraries, etc. 365
Biography of Dr. James Irving Manatt . 391
PROF. LEONARD F. PARKER
History of Poweshiek County
LEONARD FLETCHER PARKER.
BY PROFESSOR J. IRVING MANATT, BROWN UNIVERSITY.
The master builders of a new country are Youth and Hope; and both were incarnate in Leonard Fletcher Parker. Among all the young men who came in their early thirties to build up this county and commonwealth, no one has played a better part than he in making the History to whose record as a Grand Young Man of eighty-seven he is heroically devoting his sunset days.
"In the small town of China in Western New York, a rural region con- spicuous for intelligence, radical reform, and religious character," he was born August 3, 1825-the youngest child of Elias and Dorothy (Fletcher) Parker, both of Puritan and Revolutionary stock. Of his forbears, one of whom settled in Concord in 1635, a Fletcher and a Parker served on the town "Com- mittee of Correspondence" that helped prepare the way for Independence and both probably held the bridge with the other "embattled farmers" who "fired the shot heard round the world." Thus the lad came honestly by his fighting blood which no good cause ever failed to arouse. Left fatherless at four years of age, he grew up on his mother's little farm till he was twenty taking his part in all the labor of the seasons until at sixteen the simple schooling of the countryside had fitted him for varying the round of "Works and Days" by teach- ing winters. Meantime, the plan of life was taking definite form; and at twenty-one he set out for Oberlin with five dollars in his pocket and an un- limited fund of youth and hope on draft. At his journey's end he had a dol- lar left ; but he turned the less tangible capital to so good account that he pres- ently found himself a tutor as well as student in the new college and at home in the family of Professor (afterward President) Fairchild. He taught his way through and graduated in 1851, out of debt and with one hundred dollars cash in hand !
Oberlin at the mid-Century was a ferment of reforms. Abolition and Pro- hibition were Law and Gospel; and Finney ( Boanerges) was calling men to re- pentance with the authority of a Hebrew prophet and an Apostle to the Gen- tiles rolled into one. One is little surprised to hear how, while still an under- graduate, young Parker in his Professor's absence once taught the last Latin of the course for half a year. Bred in this tonic atmosphere and in the com-
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HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
panionship of kindred spirits such as his classmates, Jacob D. Cox, Samuel F. Cooper, and Sarah Candace Pearse, he looked to a life of service, and thought to find it in the missionary field. He entered the Seminary at Oberlin and had actually been assigned to the Siam mission in 1852, when failing health-dying of consumption, the doctors said-broke off his studies and his plans.
Happily, it proved a false alarm; and presently he was able to take up work as superintendent of schools at Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Meantime, on the 2Ist of August, 1853, he entered upon a more important and enduring engage- ment when President Finney joined him in marriage with his classmate, Sarah Candace Pearse, who was to be his helpmeet through the century. After three years' happy work at Brownsville, he visited Kansas in search of a wider field ; but he found the territory in the throes of civil war and offering more induce- ments to the sharpshooter than the schoolmaster. Returning East for his wife with a view to establishing himself at Des Moines, the new capital, he now set his face toward Iowa. But on the way he heard of the new colony at Grinnell and in September, 1856, stopped there to look about him. The village with its "grassy walks, few houses, 200 or so inhabitants, most of them from New Eng- land," with "their purpose to make everything vastly better and their spirit of pitching into everything that promised good with a cheerful abandon"-all ap- pealed to him; and, though there were those in the community who seriously doubted if any good thing could come out of Oberlin, a bargain was promptly struck with the new-comer that he should take charge of the public school and prepare the way for "Grinnell University" already established in their sanguine minds. This he did and so wisely that the school was recognized by the Courts as the incipient "university" and so taken over as an asset in the merger with the transplanted Iowa College.
Thus when the College opened in 1860 with Mr. Parker as principal, he had twelve young men well advanced in their preparation for a Freshman class ; and it was the remnant of the twelve-three-fourths of the original number then serving as veterans or filling soldiers' graves-who themselves returned from a briefer service to take the first degrees given at Grinnell in 1865. Up to that time, while carrying on the preliminary work with the aid of Julius A. Reed and Stephen L. Herrick and then as head professor with Professor von Coelln and Principal Buck as his colleagues, Mr. Parker had been actual head of the college, although George F. Magoun, who came in season to graduate the first class, was the first titular President. But in terms of service the young Principal with his accomplished and devoted helpmeet, the "Lady Principal," long led all the rest. In labors abundant, they were the life and light of the infant college. The Principal taught three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon five days in the week and rode circuit Saturdays as county superintendent for four years (1858-62)-an office he held again in 1869-70. Thus in the very beginning Iowa College anticipated the State Universities by getting in close touch with the public schools; and the superintendent, whose gray nag car- ried him to the remotest schoolhouses and whose genial personality made itself felt everywhere, by placing able teachers and so developing "lads o' pairts" and lasses too, advanced the highest interests of the country and the college at once. Incidentally, he started the first bookstore in the county ; took a hand in every
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HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
movement religious or secular affecting the community, including some service on the "underground railway ;" was a Trustee of the State University ( 1858- 62) and President of the State Teachers' Association ('66) ; as First Lieu- tenant of Co. B, 46th Iowa, he led all the college boys who were not already veterans in the Campaign of a Hundred Days; and he represented the county in the Legislature of 1868, being Chairman of the Committee on Education and active in securing legislation which for the first time established the State's power to regulate railway rates.
Meanwhile, the "Lady Principal" was doing her full. part. Herself a grad- uate, she had to lay down lines of discipline and study for girls in an institution whose trustees still shared the Eastern prejudice against co-education. No woman could have been better fitted for the delicate task; and the fine, strong women of the early Grinnell classes fairly reflect the spirit in which she wrought. She taught English and History ; she made a home for many a poor student ; she aided her husband in his endless labors, finally assuming the county super- intendency when he laid it down to go to the University; and during his one European Sabbatical she filled his University chair. If this is anticipating, it is because no sketch of Grinnell in the '6os can justify itself without taking note of the unique team-work of the pair.
By the close of the '6os the college was fairly on its feet. The Faculty had received notable recruits from the East in H. W. Parker and Charles W. Clapp; but President Magoun with his strong personality dominated all. The Oberlin element was a bit restive; and a second call from the State University was accepted by Professor Parker. There he was to labor for the next seventeen years ( 1870-87) -- first as Professor of Greek and Latin but most of the time in the Chair of History which he had come to prefer. But the record of this period, fruitful as it was in the development of the University and in the training of men and women for large service in the State and Nation, can be barely mentioned here. At a reception given him at Fargo by university graduates and teachers, Hon. N. C. Young of the Supreme Court of North Dakota, said that "he had done more to ennoble student life than any other man he ever met."
In 1887, after declining calls to Ripon, Carleton and Oberlin, (which had honored him with the degree of D. D., as it subsequently made him a charter member of its Phi Beta Kappa chapter) he returned to Grinnell as Professor of History ; and joyfully renewed the associations and labors of his youth. In his classes during the decade of his new service there he found many sons and daughters of the students he had taught in the earlier period; the old love that had never waned was quickened afresh; and the Parker home became again a vital centre. It was indeed a new Grinnell and a new college, bigger and stronger, but at the moment too much given to new gods; and in the period of storm and stress that always attends a salutary exorcism no man kept a more level head or stood more sturdily by his guns than the Grand Old Man.
When the college came up to its first jubilee, in 1898, its first principal and professor, with every faculty except his hearing unimpaired, retired from active service ; but it would be hard to parallel in any college chair anywhere his many- sided activity as Professor emeritus. He has founded and, as permanent Presi-
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HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
ident, conducted the County Historical Society, as he had already made large contributions to the State Historical Society and published the authoritative history of Higher Education in Iowa; he organized and carried through with the genius of a Field Marshal the Grinnell Jubilee; he has served as unofficial pastor at large of the entire community in all its joys and sorrows; and he is now at eighty-seven and in the valley of the shadow heroically working on his History.
Youth and Hope invincible-for all the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Of five gifted children, two died in the early Grinnell days, two more were drowned before the agonized father's eyes in the Iowa River, and but one survives-Mrs. Harriet Parker Campbell, an accomplished graduate of the State University as is her husband, the long-time Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court. Two years after his retirement, he lost the companion who for well nigh half a century had shared all his labors-leaving him to a loneli- ness that could not long be borne. Three years later he married Mrs. Nellie Greene Clarke, also a graduate of Oberlin and President of the Iowa Branch of the Woman's Board of Missions-a lady well fitted to restore his broken home and sustain him in his later activities.
In an age of growing luxury, he has lived the simple life. Never sparing or pampering self, he has never withheld his hand from another's need. The youth who entered college with a dollar and graduated out of debt with a hun- dred dollars saved-that youth was father of the man who has probably given away more than the sum total of all his little stipends since he took office as Principal at $600 a year. For with all his getting of higher things he was born with the Yankee genius for getting ahead; and one can only fancy what a for- tune he might have made if he had had nothing better to do. But he never had time to make money. That was but a by-product in a life devoted to human service wherever human need might call him; and his endowments at Grinnell have enriched the college less than the devotion and the nobility of character which he built into her earliest foundations. May the bronze bust presented to the college by his old pupils and the oil painting from the State University stu- dents which now hangs on University walls help to keep his memory green ; and, grit about "with love, obedience, honor, troops of friends,"
Serus in coelum redeat.
CHAPTER I.
TERRA INCOGNITA.
IOWA UNKNOWN-THE "NEW WORLD" THE OLDEST-IOWA ICE FIELD-ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDIAN-FRENCH ON THE ROAD TO IOWA-IOWA. IS SEEN-WHITES CLAIM IOWA-THE UNITED STATES BUY LOUISIANA-SACS AND FOXES LEAVE IOWA.
It is only sixty-eight years since the first white man built his cabin in this county, yet for its history and its one-time occupants we must go back beyond all human records. We must call to our assistance the geologist and the ethnol- ogist, even though we may give only a questioning assent to some of their the- ories.
This continent was "The New World" to Columbus and his mutinous fel- lows, to John Smith and his idlers, to William Penn and his upright men among the Indians. Its woods, and flowers, and corn were new, its copper colored barbarians and savages with their unique customs were novel; but Agassiz tells us that this was "the Old World," the oldest part of this world. His exact words are :
"First born among the continents, though so much later in culture and civ- ilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated 'the New World.' Here was the first dry land lifted out of the waters; here the first shores washed by the ocean that enveloped all the world beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched, one un- broken line of land, from Nova Scotia to the far west."
Whether oldest or newest, this continent was altogether new to the people of Europe who made their homes here in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies. Curiosity and money brought them, and religion had its attractive in- fluence. There was more or less of the missionary spirit in their thought of settlement in the New World, and doubtless this was purest in the mind of woman for a century or so. Queen Isabella of Spain felt the attractive force of that motive most keenly, and contributed liberally to further the efforts of missionaries, while Ferdinand cared more for the production of gold coin if it cost the lives of multitudes of those whom his wife was eager to christianize.
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HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
Wherever the Spaniards planted their feet the natives suffered at first, and they left behind a strongly composite group of inhabitants, all possible group- ings of colors and races.
The English talked of missions, yet won but few to Christianity before their wars annihilated whole tribes. The Indians shrank away from their presence. They cared less for the white man's churches than for homes in the forests which evangelizing agents from England rarely saw.
The French entered Canada, and Bancroft says that "not a cape was turned, nor a mission founded, nor a river entered, nor a settlement begun, but a Jesuit led the way." They plunged into the forest, lived like the Indians, did them much good, and, on occasion, died like heroes and as martyrs. The French Forest Rangers followed them, and sometimes preceded them. These wood rangers lived in their wigwams, married their squaws, and half-breeds became numerous. The population of regions settled by the French or by the Spanish are yet of all colors and of complex ancestry.
The French ascended the St. Lawrence, explored the Great Lakes and looked out on the wonderful western plains covered only with grass and flowers and hemmed in by scattering trees and small groves.
What should those newcomers call those grassy spots? They looked like meadows. They did the most natural thing in the world. They called them "meadows" in their own language, by a word which the English changed to prairie. The name is derived from "pratoria," medieval Latin as used in France, or we may call it medieval French, if we choose. More strictly it seems to be Latin before the Latin of the French had become French.
But what shall we say of the absence of trees there? When strangers came to the prairie-west from the wooded-east they found this question a puzzling one. They wondered whether the deep black soil was friendly to trees. They began to inquire if trees could grow there. It was not long, however, before observation and experiment made it plain that they would grow as luxuriantly on the prairie, when the ground was tamed and cultivated, as in the most fa- vored parts of the forest regions. Surely that soil which will raise trees four feet through in forty years is no "stepmother" to forests.
No groves surpass some groups of trees planted on the prairie, tall, erect, straight as an arrow, where Iowans have reason to be proud of their homes in their summer coolness and in their winter shelter from freezing blizzards.
THE IOWA ICE FIELD.
Geologists tell us that there was a time when the region where we live was covered with an immense sheet of ice, which moved down from the northeast to the southwest, flowing through the rocks by the way and bearing boulders, at times immense ones, and scattering granite blocks over our prairies. The southern limit of that vast ice field seems to have been a strangely irregular line north of the Ohio and near the Missouri river through the state of Mis- souri. To be more specific, the southern terminus of glaciation seems to have been somewhat near the Ohio river across Ohio till near Louisville, Kentucky, then to have turned sharply west of north to Martinsville, Indiana, thence south-
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HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
westerly into Illinois, and sweeping around to south of Carbondale into Mis- souri, thence south of St. Louis, along near the Missouri river a little south of Kansas City and out of the state into Nebraska. The ice field was vastly larger than this, but it is enough to notice this part of it.
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