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HISTORY OF
STORY COUNTY
IOWA
A RECORD OF SETTLEMENT, ORGANIZATION, PROGRESS AND ACHIEVEMENT
By W. O. PAYNE
Local history is the ultimate substance of national history-Wilson
ILLUSTRATED
VOLUME:'F'
-
-
.
CHICAGO: THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING CO. 1911
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
BIOR LENOX ANC TILDEN FINDAT ONA R 1. 2
7
CONTENTS
Foreword
CHAPTER I
5
A General View
14
CHAPTER III
General View-(continued )
. 22
CHAPTER IV
29
The Early Settlement
CHAPTER V
The New County
. 38
CHAPTER VI
Reminiscences by Col. Scott
. 52
CHAPTER VII
Reminiscences by Col. Scott-(continued)
. 61
CHAPTER' VIII:
Reminiscences by Col. Scott-(continued )
72
CHAPTER IX
Reminiscences by Col. Scott-(concluded) 82
CHAPTER X
County Affairs before the War 93 . .
CHAPTER XI County Affairs before the War-(continued) . 103
111
CHAPTER II
.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XH County Affairs before the War-(concluded) . . . ... 109
CHAPTER XIII
Pioneer Reminiscences
117
CHAPTER XIV
Mrs. Hannah Kellogg-1855 and later 129
CHAPTER AV
Pioneer Interviews by MIrs. A. M. Payne . 142
CHAPTER XVI
Early Days in Howard
.156
CHAPTER XVII
Tales of Early Days
.... .. 170
CHAPTER XVIH
Story County in the War
.179
CHAPTER XIX
Story County in Various Regiments 187
CHAPTER XX
Third lowa Infantry 198
CHAPTER XXL
Second łowa Cavalry
217
CHAPTER XXH
Twenty-third lowa Infantry
.220
CHAPTER XXIN
Thirty-second “ไม่ !!
238
CHAPTER XXIV
Home Afairs in Was TonSIE !!
.250
CHAPTER XAV
Home Affairs in War Time-(continued ) .263
CHAPTER XXVI
The Close of the War .
. 275
..
CONTENTS
V
CHAPTER XXVII The Imprisonment of Robert Campbell .. .. 282
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Escape of Robert Campbell . 296
CHAPTER XXIX
Robert Campbell Reaches Friends
.309
CHAPTER XXX
The Decade After the War
.324
CHAPTER
XXXI
General Conditions Following the War .332
CHAPTER XXXII
Ames and the Narrow Gauge
341
CHAPTER XXXIII
Founding the College
349
CHAPTER XXXIV
Fixing Nevada's Business Center
CHAPTER XXXV
Politics Following the War
364
CHAPTER XXXVI
372
Various Matters After the War
Editorial Reminiscences
CHAPTER XXXVIII
.393
CHAPTER XXXIX
In the Latter Seventies
407
CHAPTER XL
Affairs in the Eighties
418
CHAPTER XLI
Politics in the Eighties
426
.
.355
Politics Following the War-(continued)
CHAPTER XXXVII
.
.383
vi
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XLII
Affairs in the Nineties ... .
435
CHAPTER XLIII
Politics in the Nineties .443
CHAPTER XLIV'
The Last Decade
. 448
CHAPTER XLV
Railroads and Ditches . 455
CHAPTER XLVI
Politics of Last Decade
462
CHAPTER XLVII
Conclusion
469
1 O PAYNE
History of Story County
CHAPTER I.
FOREWORD.
A History of Story County is a matter that has been once or twice at- tempted as a whole, and has from time to time, by a great many different people, been a subject of contributions in parts of varying importance and interest. The compilation of such matters is a theme which is inviting but which grows more and more formidable in appearance the more seriously it is contemplated and definitely undertaken. When the author was asked to undertake this work he felt that he probably had available as much of the material needed as anyone had or could well have had. and as he has endeavored to gather and assort this material and to add to it, he is still impressed with the idea that there is an abundance of the material. At the same time, the proposition of compiling a really complete history be- comes more and more serious, and he knows that when the work shall be completed, it is bound to have in it many omissions and to be unsatisfactory in many respects. At the same time, in the belief that the work ought to be done and that the material at hand ought to be put in the most available shape, the work is undertaken in the hope that the result may be pleasing if not satisfying.
In examining other works of this general character, we discover that a large amount of space has been given to the review of the discovery of the Mississippi River and the exploration of the Mississippi Valley, to the ac- quirement and exploitation of the Louisiana Purchase, and to the history of that portion of the country generally of which Iowa is a part, but in which no inhabitants of Iowa, and still less of Story County, had any real part to perform. Any review of this sort will here be made very brief indeed. We believe that there is in sight enough material pertaining strictly to Story County, or to people who are or have been parts of Story County, to make this volume as large as it needs to be, and by condensing or omit- ting the matters of Northwestern History, which in a proper sense must be regarded as preliminary merely to any History of Story County, we shall gain more space for matters of less general importance, but which. even
5
C.
HISTORY OF STORY COUNTY
though they may not have affected greatly the development of Story County of the lives of its citizens, are reasonably certain to be of more enduring interest to the people of this immediate community, and which will be taken as more significant of this community and of the people who have built it up.
So far as the writer is able to ascertain. Story County had no history whatever of its own prior to the admission of lowa as a State in the Union, save that from time to time the unoccupied territory, which now constitutes the county, was assigned to one or another political division and was finally, within the year the State was actually admitted, given detinite boundaries and the name it now bears. Not even an Indian tradi- tion seems to pertain to this particular bit of territory. When the white man came, he found the deer, the elk, and about all the other wikl beasts or wild fowl that are supposed to have inhabited in recent times this part of the country, excepting, perhaps, the buffalo, which we believe had been run out of this part of the country before the actual tide of immigration reached thus far. In some parts of this county there have been reported buffalo bones, but we have never heard of a permanent Indian encamp- ment.
So blank indeed must be the pages referring to this part of what might be the History of Story County, that an explanation appears to be called for. This explanation quite evidently arises from the original character of the county. The natural and reasonable choice of the Indian for his more permanent abodes, and, so far as practicable, for his temporary en- campments, was a wooded country, well drained and overlooking consider- able streams. The bluffs overlooking the Mississippi or the Missouri, the bank of the Des Moines, the Cedar and the łowa, typified the localities where the Indian, the aborigine, delighted to make his habitat. The pur- pore of agriculture, as developed under processes of tiled drainage, did not particularly attract him. He wanted a place where he could have abundant fuel, be handy to fishing, employ canoe transportation when practical, and, of course, have good hunting about. Hunting may have been about as Rownl in one place as another if the grass was abundant, but fishing and fuel and canbe transportation were bound to hold him to the banks of the larger streams, except for occasional diversions and excursions.
Such conditions as are here suggested were not inviting the Indian to live in Story County, and in passing, it may be said that their absence un- doubtedly had the effect of delaying materially the carly settlement and development of the county. Story is essentially a flat county. The one considerable stream passing through it is Skunk River, and that stream is not so very large now, while in the early days all the traditions relating to it indicate that it was notable, not for the volume of water contained in it. but for the almost impassable bogs that bordered it. Upon the con- trans, counties both east and west of Story have conditions essentially different from those predominating here before the improvement of the
7
HISTORY OF STORY COUNTY
land, and were therefore in an early day much more attractive both to the Indian for his habitat and to the white man for settlement. Iowa River to the east was the sort of a river that Indians like to live upon; and it is to be recorded that one considerable band of Indians that had once been persuaded by the white man to give up their lands in southern Iowa and had moved to Kansas, came back to Iowa, and with the proceeds of their an- nuities from the government purchased lands on the white man's terms and established on the banks of the Iowa in Tama County some forty miles to the eastward what is now the one large Indian settlement in Iowa. Simi- larly to the westward in Boone County and in the counties north and south of Boone the country is broken by the Des Moines River, along which the Indians had their trails and camps and up which the white man pushed his earlier settlement. Near to these rivers, moreover, the Des Moines and Iowa, there was plenty of room, plenty of fishing, plenty of hunting, plenty of general means for the comfort and sustenance of the aborigines accord- ing to their standards and they had no occasion to leave such an attractive situation and undertake to establish themselves on the undrained lands of Story County.
Another fact bears on the absence of Indian lore pertaining to Story County. This fact pertains to the division of territory between the Sacs and Foxes on the one hand and the Sioux or Dakotas on the other. This division was made under the general inspiration and with the advice and assistance of the white man, but it was made before the white man in any considerable numbers had crossed the Mississippi into Iowa. It was the result of a conference and political agreement effected at Prairie du Chien in 1828, and it recognized the fact that southeastern Iowa, so far as it was occupied at all, was occupied chiefly by the Sacs and Foxes, whereas north- ern and western Iowa was occupied similarly, if occupied at all, by the Dakotas or Sioux. The Sacs and Foxes were so closely allied as to be spoken of nearly always in the same connection, and between them there were no troubles, but as between the Sacs and Foxes on the one side and the Sioux on the other, there was no end of troubles. Their hunting par- ties collided, and the results of these collisions were reprisals. The two elements seem to have been far enough apart so that it was not convenient for them to engage in any great wars, but whatever their difficulties lacked in magnitude they made up in persistency. So the white man tried to fix the matter up and the result was the agreement upon a division line ex- tending from the Mississippi near the northeastern corner of Iowa to the Missouri somewhere near Council Bluffs and having midway its most defi- nite and most important point at what was known as the forks of the Des Moines River. These forks were not those converging at Humboldt and now known as the east and west forks of the Des Moines, but were the Des Moines River proper, as it is now known, and the Boone River. These forks converge almost on the county line between Webster and Hamilton counties, and above their convergence the country was supposed to be Sioux
8
HISTORY OF STORY COUNTY
and below it Sac and Fox. The establishment of this division line did not entirely settle the trouble and so, by a later agreement, there was estab- hshed a neutral belt extending for twenty miles on each side of the division line in which belt hunting parties from both sides were permitted to chase game, but not to molest each other.
Only one serious collision seems to have followed the establishment of this neutral ground. This collision occurred in the eastern part of Kossuth County, some time in the early fifties, and its story was that a small fishing party of Sioux were there attacked by a large body of Sacs and Foxes, who had been camping at Clear Lake and who learned of the proximity of the smaller party of the Sioux. The Sacs and Foxes made a night march to the camp of the Sioux, attacked the camping party in the early morning. and allowed no one to get away to tell the tale. Captain Ingham, father of the editor of the Register and Leader. ran upon the scene of this mas- sacre a few years later and found there the skeletons of the unfortunate Sionx, those of the children being huddled and each of them chipped as to the skull, where the tomahawk had struck. This incident occurred after the settlement of Story County : but the fact that only one incident of this sort is definitely recorded, illustrates in part why there is no Indian history of Story County.
The History of lowa, so far as the white man is concerned, begins with the discovery by Marquette when he floated down the Wisconsin River into the Mississippi in 1073. and thence coasted the eastern shores of Iowa to the outlet of the Des Moines. Tle found very little indication of inhabit- ancy of any sort until he reached the vicinity of Fort Madison, where defi- nite signs of Indians were discovered; and pursuing the trail for a few miles from the river. he found Sacs and Foxes who received him with much courtesy, accompanying him back to the river and speeding him on his way. Other explorers came along, but nothing very definite happened to Towa. In common with the rest of the Mississippi Valley west of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio, lowa became in a nominal sense the possession of the French, but there was not even a respectable trade with the Indians, and it had very little, if any, importance to the French. At the close of the French and Indian war it passed with other portions of the French empire in America to Spain which nation held nominal control for forty years. The nearest Spanish post which had any element of prominence was that at St. Louis, where the convergence within a short distance of the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Illinois, the Ohio, the Tennessee and the Cumberland suggested a mid-continental metropolis when the land should be peopled and while the people should be dependent largely upon the rivers for their transportation. The one actual settlement in Towa under the Spanish domi- nation or for a considerable time afterward was at Dubuque, where Julien Dubuque, a Frenchman, secured a grant from Spain to operate lead mines and established a post which existed for a number of years. In 1803 Iowa
9
HISTORY OF STORY COUNTY
passed with the rest of the Louisiana Purchase into the possession first of France and then immediately of the United States.
Under American authority, Iowa was successively part of the territory of Louisiana, of the district of Louisiana, of the territory of Missouri, of the territory of Indiana, of the Territory of Michigan, of the territory of Wisconsin, and of the territory of Iowa. The territory of Iowa was not the same in area as is the State of Iowa, but it extended more or less in- definitely north and west from the junction of the Des Moines with the Mississippi and included with much other territory the present state of Minnesota, nor did the first attempt to erect Iowa into a State correspond to the State as it is. The first proposed State of Iowa naturally included all of that part of the then existing territory of Iowa in which the white man had established homes, but that was only a very small part, and the proposed State did not extend westward to the Missouri, but did extend northward so as to include quite a piece of what is now southeastern Minne- sota. It was because this territorial arrangement was not satisfactory to the people of the embryo state that the first constitution framed under the authority of Congress for the State of Iowa was rejected by the people of Iowa, and on account of this rejection a fresh start had to be made for the erection of a State, and in accordance with the subsequent proceedings the State of Iowa assumed its present geographical proportions.
Iowa was first opened legally to settlement as one of the results of the Blackhawk war of 1832. Prior to this war the Sacs and Foxes, of whom Blackhawk was the principal chief, had the right of exclusive occupancy in all of Iowa that had yet interested the white man as well as the north- western part of Illinois. The war arose over the invasions by white squat- ters of the Indian territory in Illinois, but when the war was over the In- dians gave up all their claims in Illinois and also to that portion of Iowa which is known as the Blackhawk purchase and which included the eastern part of the State, south of the line of division heretofore mentioned be- tween the lands of the Sacs and Foxes and of the Sioux. Following these cessions white settlers really began moving into the State in 1833, Iowa then being a portion of Michigan territory. By 1836 there were enough people on or near the Mississippi to make it worth while to set them up as a territory under the name of Wisconsin, from which name, however, it is not to be inferred that Iowa was an incident to Wisconsin, for the fact is that Iowa was of more account than Wisconsin and the Wisconsin legis- lature sat at Burlington. A further division was soon desirable with in- creasing settlement and the name Wisconsin was more suited for that part of the territory which included the Wisconsin River ; so, in the separation the eastern territory retained the common name while the western portion took the name of "Iowa" and thus became a separate territory in 1838.
The territory of Iowa had three governors and seven legislative as- semblies. The first governor was Robert Lucas, who was appointed in 1838 by President Van Buren and who continued a resident of the State
10
HISTORY OF STORY COUNTY
after his retirement from office. John Chambers was the second governor. He was appointed by President Harrison and had been a Whig congress- man from Kentucky. He served four years as governor and when he was superseded by a Democrat he returned to Kentucky and had no further identification with the territory or State. The third and last territorial governor was James Clark, who came in with the Polk administration in 1845 and retired a little over a year later when the territory became a State. The period of territory was one of continued growth and advancing settlement, but as before noted, neither the growth nor the settlement is known to have touched Story County. There was plenty of room in the eastern portion of the territory for all of the people who had yet found their way across the Mississippi, and it was not even until near the end of this period that so much as a military post was established in the most strategic situation in central Iowa at the confluence of the Coon and the Des Moines.
Among the people of Iowa the story of this time is of difficulties and trials in the acquirement of land and of the general privations of pioneer life. Seemingly about all the money that came into the country in the form of real cash had to go to the government land office for lands. The people provided themselves with their own supplies so far as they possibly could, and their purchases were small and primitive ; their markets for their prod- ucts were remote and difficult to reach, but in a general sense they were able to live off the country and to extend a welcome to the people who came on from farther east and occupied the farm next to the west. In this tide of migration there were necessarily numerous rough characters and in some localities such characters became sufficiently numerous to cause serious trouble for peaceable citizens. Probably in Jackson County this trouble became most acute and in the ultimate it was there dealt with ac- cording to the rough and ready and quite effective methods of pioneer justice ; but with all its eddies the advance of the human tide was steady, and by the end of the territorial days its farthest edge was not so very remote from Story County.
To this county the one really important contribution from the territorial regime is the name. The most important business of the successive legis- lative assemblies, as that business now leaves its tracing upon the State, was in the setting off and naming of the counties. There was a lot of this work to be done. There had, of course, been some counties established in the days of the Michigan and Wisconsin territories, but the areas com- prised by such counties were much larger than would suit the convenience for corresponding divisions of a settled country. In beginning. Des Moines County covered the south half of the State and Dubuque the north half. From these counties portions were cut off from time to time, every leg- islative assembly contributing to this work of partition. Naturally the eastern counties were the first to assume definite shape and get names that they could keep, and as the recognized names were thus appropriated for
11
HISTORY OF STORY COUNTY
the smaller but settled portions of the earlier and larger counties, new names had to be devised for the divisions that were left. In the choice of these names a permanent monument has been left of the political senti- ments dominating among the early pioneers. Successive legislative as- semblies were every one of them Democratic, and furthermore, the men composing them particularly on the majority side had come very largely from Indiana and Kentucky. The consequence was that heroes of the Democratic party in general and of the Democratic party of Indiana and Kentucky and adjacent states in particular have their names engraved permanently on the map of Iowa. Not less than forty-five of the ninety- nine counties of the State are named for Democratic politicians. Even in some cases where an inquirer might be led to think that a particular name was an exception to the rule, closer investigation might show that he was mistaken. For instance, Hamilton County was not named for the first secretary of the treasury and the founder of the protective system, but for a Democratic State senator from Dubuque. Sometimes, however, there were real concessions as, for instance, when the County of Slaughter, named for some now forgotten Democratic light, was renamed for the father of his country ; but when one takes into consideration the fact that there were numerous Indian names to choose from, battles of the Mexican war to be commemorated, a few ladies to be complimented, as Ida and Louisa, popu- lar foreigners to be flattered, as Kossuth, Revolutionary heroes to be rec- ognized, as Marion and Jasper, there was not a great deal left for the statesmen of the order Federalist or Whig. All of this being true, it is hardly possible to guess by what strange happening it came about that six- teen congressional townships, at the time totally unoccupied, but destined ultimately to be most strongly anti-Democratic of any sixteen townships in a bunch in Iowa, should have been given the name of a great judicial expositor of liberal construction of federal authority. But somehow so it came about and the last legislative assembly of Iowa, on the 13th of Jan- uary, 1846, set apart a portion of the then County of Benton, to-wit : Townships 82, 83, 84 and 85 of Ranges 21, 22, 23 and 24, west of the fifth P. M., Iowa, to be the County of Story. Four days later the new county was attached to Benton County for election, revenue and judicial purposes, the unsettled territory set off therefore being treated as appurtenant to rather than a part of the settled County of Benton. This arrangement, how- ever, did not stand at all; for later, on the same day, Story was attached to Polk County for the same purposes. This relationship of Story to Polk County continued until some time after settlements in the county had begun and to some extent grown, whereupon on the 22d day of January, 1853. Story County was again changed in its attachments, being this time at- tached to Boone County. In this relationship it continued for the few months until Story County actually set up in business for itself.
Thus do we come to the point at which the history of Story County properly begins ; but before we actually do begin, it is fitting to pause and'
12
HISTORY OF STORY COUNTY
pay a brief tribute to the great jurist whose name it is an honor to this county to bear and bear alone amid all the counties in the Union.
JUSTICE JOSEPHI STORY.
Joseph Story, jurist, for whom this county was named and famous as the great associate of Chief Justice Marshall for more than twenty years in the supreme court of the United States, was born in Marblehead, Massa- chusetts, September 18, 1779, and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 10, 1845. Ilis father, Dr. Elisha Story, was one of the "Boston Tea Party" and subsequently a surgeon in the Revolutionary army. In youth the son manifested unusual powers of observation and an intense craving for knowledge. In 1798 he was graduated from Harvard, deliver- ing the poem at the commencement exercises, and took up the study of law under Samuel Sewall and Samuel Putnam. In 1801 he began practice in Salem, and in 1805 prepared and published "A Selection of Pleadings in Civil Actions." He published also, in 1804, "The Power of Solitude, with Fugitive Poems," a literary venture which he afterward deeply regretted. Becoming interested in feudalism, he made a profound study of the old black letter law of England and soon took rank among the leaders of the New England bar. In 1805 he was elected a representative of Salem in the legislature where he soon became the acknowledged leader of the re- publican party. In 1808 he defended the embargo in opposition to Chris- topher Gore, then at the zenith of his fame. In the same year he was elected to congress where, in opposition to the administration, he labored to repeal the embargo on the ground that it was expedient only as a tempo- rary measure. President Jefferson attributed the repeal of that measure to Mr. Story whom he styled "a psuedo republican." On his return home he was reelected to the Massachusetts house of representatives, and in 1811 became its speaker. In November of that year, at the age of thirty-two. he was appionted by President Madison an associated justice of the su- preme court of the United States. His circuit embraced four states : Maine. New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He was largely the creator of the laws pertaining to the admiralty salvage. marine insurance and patents, the laws on these subjects having been poorly defined prior to his time. He also with Chancellor Kent founded the American system of equity in jurisprudence. In 1819 he denounced the slave trade still car- ried on in the New England ports and in the same year gave his famous decision in the Dartmouth College case.
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