USA > Iowa > Washington County > History of Washington County, Iowa from the first white settlements to 1908. Also biographical sketches of some prominent citizens of the county, Vol. I > Part 1
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
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HISTORY
OF
33 Washington County lowa
From the First White Settlements to 1908
By HOWARD A. BURRELL
Also Biographical Sketches of Some Prominent Citizens of the County
ILLUSTRATED
VOL. I.
CHICAGO THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1909
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIDHARY 2680044 ASTOR, LENOX AND NEJEN FONDATIONS 1 3
DEDICATION
In proof of my appreciation of the Washington County Historical Society, I dedicate this book to that body of men, proud to be admitted to fellowship with those who honor the memory of the Pioneers and those later Old Settlers who made to our hand, out of the Wild and the Raw, the civilization in this county that we all prize and enjoy.
HOWARD A. BURRELL.
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4
PREFACE.
But why a preface? Unless, indeed, to make my acknowledgements.
I have had satisfaction and help from Hon. Nathan Littler's History of this county, and from the county history issued in 1880, and from the Atlas of Washington county, date 1906, and from several papers in the Iowa Annals written years ago by Irving A. Keck, and I have received, with gratitude, much help in preparing data for this first volume, from Colonels D. J. Palmer, W. B. Bell, Charles J. Wilson and S. W. Brookhart; from Captains J. A. Young, D. E. Cocklin, J. S. Gray, D. A. Boyer, J. J. Kellogg ; and from J. W. Morton, Porte Lewis, Tom Allen, D. J. Eichelberger, Marion O'Loughlin, and in civil and social life from Hon. C. H. Wilson, Hon. C. J. Wilson, Recorder Hugh Kendall and his deputy Miss Ruth E. Latta, Auditor Chauncey Myers and deputy Miss Anna Dawson, Mesdames Judge Dewey, J. A. Harwood, Ab. Anderson, Dr. Bailey, Cora Bell Wilson, Miss Anna Hen- derson : and from Win. A. Cook. O. E. Brown, W. E. Kerr. Charles Hebener, John Yockey, Squire Neiswanger, Wm. Coppock, John Parks, Nate Jones, Marsh W. Bailey, Senator Alberson, John Williams, Henderson Wallace. James Eckles, John Shields et al.
All these I thank, and to them I orient myself and kowtow.
HOWARD A. BURRELL.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATION
Howard a Burrell.
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, IOWA.
CHAPTER I.
EVOLUTION OF WASHINGTON COUNTY.
Washington county is a part of the vast region once called "Louisiana," which embraced all the territory west of the Mississippi river, except Texas and the areas ceded to the United States by Mexico and Russia. It was called "The Louisiana Purchase," or "The Colony," or "The Province of Louisiana." France claimed it in 1671 by virtue of the voyages of certain zealous, holy, romantic, heroic Frenchmen, whose eyes had absorbed many horizons of that terra incognita. And at the peace of Ryswick in 1697 all Europe recognized the validity of her claim.
It is an easy way to get title to real estate-easier than by conquest, cheaper than by purchase. When the world was new, this western world that was stumbled on by mistake, as it were, in a dark night or in a day of fog, all an European sovereign had to do, to gratify his earth-hunger, was to send out a discoverer, who should go ashore, set up his patron's standard, draw his sword, take a gallant attitude before the wondering natives, and say, "I take possession of this island, this continent, in the name of my sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, or of Louis XIV, or of the king of England." That island or continent was thus transferred to said king, and all that was needed, more, was to give a commission to an artist to paint the scene-C. Columbo and his men standing near their small boats, saluting with drawn swords the imperial banner whose staff was stuck in the sand, a lot of aborigines grouped around unconscious of their physical charms, in very decollete dress, or undress, looking on this strange pantomime. The poor creatures were surprised that they had been discovered. In fact they did not know that they had been lost.
MHSTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Because two gentlemen from France, Marquette and Joliet, had paddled down the Mississippi from the mouth of the Wisconsin river, as far as the mouth of the Arkansas river, and there learned that the big river did not empty into either the gulf of California or into Virginia, but into the gulf of Mexico, and cast their eyes over their right shoulders and saw leagues on leagues of land to the west, they filed a claim to all that sunset region for France ; claiming not only what they saw, but the whole stretch of land above and below the terminals of their voyage. Faith is the substance of things not seen. In 1682 La Salle went down the river and took possession of some more. Spain missed out on this imperial claim. De Soto had marched from Florida to the Mississippi river in 1542, but, wounded by an Indian arrow, he had died and his body was buried in the river at night, before he could take possession, set up a standard, file his claim, and hire a painter.
Balboa, another Spanish gentleman, carried this easy mode of gaining real estate to a ridiculous extent. One day, September 26, 1513. to be exact, he climbed a peak in Darien, and looked all over the isthmus, and instantly annexed it to Spain per formula, and then he exclaimed, "Holy powers, bless me, if that blue dampness out in the offing is not the Pacific ocean." And he hastened down, before any body else could get it, waded in as far as he dared, jabbed the standard into the sand, and with naked sword waving solemnly to the west he took possession of the whole ocean as a Spanish lake. Just as easy! No such snaps now? Yes, as we shall see.
The wild continents and the islands of the sea were in this simple fashion seized by globe-trotters for Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Great Britain and Holland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in somewhat the same unceremonious way that Africa in our day was partitioned by Germany, England, France, Italy and Belgium, under the unwritten law of ethics, Might makes Right.
Easy come, easy go. In 1763 France tossed that easily won estate to Spain, as carelessly as a steamer passenger throws a biscuit to a gull. In 1800 the shuttle shot back, and Spain ceded Louisiana to France. Our early statesmen fretted under the situation-Spain holding Florida and France. Louisiana. The correspondence of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Pick- ering, King, Livingston, Madison, Monroe, beginning August 27, 1790, and extending to January 4, 1804, on "who shall own Louisiana?" is published, showing that these great men did not relish the fact that powerful Spain and France were on our flanks and rear. Livingston was sent to Paris to try negotiations with Napoleon for the purchase of Louisiana, but the wary first consul was coy, and skillfully pretended he wished to colonize Louisiana
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
a la Egypt. Monroe was sent to help Livingston. Finally, when war between England and France seemed likely, Napoleon, in 1803, knowing the fickle nature of war and foreseeing that the English navy would wrest this region from his grasp, put the vast province on the bargain counter and marked it down to fifteen millions. President Jefferson took it, though he had no authority to buy it. But congress backed him, with here and there a dissenting critic who could see no farther than an owl at noon. Even Daniel Webster, later, had no faith in our great northwest. It would never, could never, be settled, and was practically worthless, in his judgment-not quite infallible. Men, even shrewd men, said Seward was a fool to pay seven millions for Alaska, but it has paid for itself dozens of times over.
Congress on October 31, 1803, authorized the president to take posses- sion and provide a temporary government for Louisiana. If far-off Wash- ington county, and Iowa proper, as parts of one stupendous whole, felt a thrill at the announcement, I know not, but have strong affirmative sus- picions. On March 4, 1804, congress divided the territory, and on the following October 1, all the area south of the thirty-third parallel of north latitude was named "Orleans," and the rest "the district of Louisiana," the latter to be under the government of Indiana territory. But this district was on July 4, 1805, made a territory, self-governing, called "Louisiana," and so it continued till 1812. The territory of Orleans was on April 30, 1812, admitted into the union as the state of Louisiana, and the next Decem- ber the territory of Louisiana was recognized as the territory of Missouri. On March 2, 1819, congress created Arkansas territory, comprising the present limits of the state of that name plus the country to the west of it. and Missouri came in as a state in March, 1821. For the next thirteen years there is no record of an organized territory west of the Mississippi river. north of the Missouri line. Washington county and indeed all Iowa were then in No-man's land. There were but few whites in this region, and they had permits to trade with the Indians and live among them. They needed government no more than do colonies of prairie dogs, owls and rattlesnakes, tenants of the same hole, and they doubtless endorsed the political maxim, "that government is best, that governs least."
A red-hot nebula has to rotate a long while in the frightfully cold inter- stellar spaces before it radiates its heat and solidifies into a habitable sphere. In 1838 we began to see the crystals shooting into a solid organization. On June 12 of that year congress divided Wisconsin territory and established the territory of Iowa. Before that, the territory had been a sort of proto- plasmic "district" which, from 1834 to 1836 was attached to Michigan territory for judicial purposes, and all of the country north of a line drawn
ISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
west from the User part of Rock Island was to be Dubuque county, and all south of that west line to the north line of Missouri was to be "Demoine" county, and that county was to constitute a township known as Flint Hills, that is, Burlington. Each of these two counties was to have a court with annual sessions in April and September. The people could elect township officers. That was the first legislative enactment by Michigan. From 1836 to 1838 we were attached as a tail to Wisconsin's territorial kite. Then the umbilieus was ent, and we stood on tottering baby feet under our proper pame "lowa," and the territory reached from the north line of Missouri to the southern boundary of British Columbia. The map appended will be scanned with interest by the reader, a map published in Newhall's Sketches of lowa, issued in 1841.
At last, we were "Iowa," a word meaning "this is the place." "the beau- tiful," or "beautiful land." as one chooses to interpret it. Some say the word is a modification of the old name of a tribe of Indians, Ayouas, or from the river Ayoua, which was finally spelled loway, Iowa. As late as the expedi- tion of Lewis and Clarke, the Indians here were called Ayouas.
lowa was for long a pollywog, but its absurd yet nutritive tail was long since absorbed into a frog that can sing and croak for itself.
The first territorial governor of Iowa was Robert Lucas. He served from 1838 to 1841. President Harrison, a Whig, hated Lucas, a Democrat, and removed him. It was the first political scalp raised in this state, but not the last. John Chambers was appointed governor March 25, 1841, and re-appointed by Taylor in 1844, and removed by Polk October 20, 1845. The only thing noteworthy about him was, he wrote his autobiography for his son, but he couldn't spell or punctuate any better than high school pupils do now.
Sixteen of the twenty counties of lowa took part in the first election, September 10. 1838, for members of the first legislative assembly. Des Moines county cast the largest vote, eight hundred and fifty-four, and John- son, Linn, Jones, Slaughter (the first name for Washington ) plumped from twenty-seven to thirty-five votes each. The total vote was four thousand four hundred and ninety-two. James M. Clark was elected councillor or senator for the Muscatine, Louisa and Slaughter district, and John Trierson, W. L. Toole. Levi Thornton and Clinton Hastings were the representatives, and W. W. Wallace delegate in congress. This legislature held three sessions in Burlington in Old Zion church.
Congress had on January 26, 1835, passed an enabling act for Iowa terri- tory. to form a constitution and state government. The delegates went to Detroit. George W. Jones was chosen delegate to congress, and Major Jerry
L
NATHAN LITTLER
Author of Littler's History of Washington County. Printed in Washington Gazette
IRVING A. KECK
Author of Keck's History of Washington County. Printed in Annals of Iowa
HISTORIANS OF WASHINGTON COUNTY.
. 2 DLW YORK DLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX JULEN FOUNDATION
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Smith, Jr., and Joseph B. Teas were elected members of Michigan territorial legislature, and attended at Green Bay. Henry Dodge, father of Augustus Caesar Dodge, was governor, and he ordered a census, which revealed a population of ten thousand five hundred and thirty-one in Iowa territory. "Demoine" county had six thousand two hundred and fifty-seven, Dubuque county four thousand two hundred and seventy-four, in 1836. He also ordered an election of thirteen senators and twenty-six representatives, Demoine to have seven representatives and three senators, and the winners were Jerry Smith. Jr., Joseph B. Teas and Arthur B. Ingham senators, and representatives Isaac Leffler, Thomas Blair, Warren Jenkins, John Box, George W. Teas, Eli Reynolds, David R. Chance. The Teases were brothers and lawyers. Later, George W. Teas became a Methodist minister, preach- ing in Washington, and dying here. His son Lucien, who never was a cler- gyman, is living now in Crawfordsville. 4
Burlington was the capital of the territory until March 4, 1839. The capitol building cost fourteen thousand dollars, and burned December 13, 1837. Zion church received the body, which deliberated amid the subdued echoes of Amens. The first enactment was the divorce of Mary McArthur from John, and the second was like unto it, and several more couples, loaded with incompatibility, absence of cohering affinity, and inability to stand with- out hitching. had their bonds unsoldered by the assembly. It seems that way back there the State of Matrimony was a state of insurrection. Parties then were joined, but not mated. They were in theory one, but the trouble was to find which was the one. Two souls with but a single thought, and that thought to get rid of each other, to cleave to some one else, very likely ; two hearts that beat not as one, but as two, most decidedly. Marriage was a good deal of a failure and gamble then, as now. In fact, the time of the legislature was so taken up, rectifying Captain Dan Cupid's wretched work, there was not time to attend to matters of state. Hearts were trumps, till the assembly by statute, in sheer desperation, turned these miseries in the chest, over to the courts. Lawyers could afford to deal with them for the fees.
The sixth act set the boundaries of the counties Dubuque, Jackson, John- son, Jones, Linn, Cedar, Clinton, Clayton, Scott. and authorized the forma- tion of Buchanan, Delaware, Benton, and Fayette. Under an act passed December 7, 1836, "Demoine" county was divided into the counties Lee, Van Buren, Des Moines, Henry, Louisa, "Musquitine," and Slaughter. Our county was first named in honor of Wm. B. Slaughter, a clever territorial secretary, but a merciful and esthetic Providence, perhaps stirred into action by vigorous protests, dropped that ugly name and adopted that of the Father of his Country, and we have been trying ever since to live up to it,
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1 IS DORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
and uccerding beautifully, as all know. The date of that change was January 25, 1839. Think of living now, and having others know we are living in the city and county of Slaughter, a word that rhymes with nothing fair but "daughter." and nothing ethical but "ort-er."
let's get this fact fixed fast in memory. The legislature of Wisconsin, January 18, 1838, named "us" Slaughter. We have never liked Wisconsin since that dav, and the grudge has been accumulating down to the climax- La Follette. 1 find this bit of history in a paper by Frank Harmon Garver in the January, 1909, lowa Journal of History and Politics, and I quote :
"This act was one redefining the boundary lines of those counties carved by the law of December 7. 1836, from the original county of Demoine. The two laws differed in that the earlier one included a county called Cook, which was omitted from the later act, while the latter included a county called Slaughter not mentioned in the former.
Slaughter county is not to be considered as a continuation of Cook county. None of its territory came from the latter. Most of it, in fact, was received from the original counties of Louisa and Musquitine. Possibly the southwest corner had been within the limits of the original county of Henry. It is certain that the northwest corner was new territory. All except this part had been within the limits of the original county of Demoine at an earlier date.
As first established, Slaughter county included townships 74, 75, and 76 north of ranges 5, 6, 7, and 8, west. The three easternmost townships, those in range 5. are now part of Louisa county. The remaining nine town- ships are part of Washington county to-day.
The original county of Slaughter was reduced in size by an act of the legislature of the territory of lowa approved on January 12, 1839. This act, the title of which referred only to Louisa county, redefined the boun- daries of that county so as to include within them the three easternmost townships of Slaughter county, although the latter was not mentioned in the act. This loss of territory left Slaughter county only three townships, or eighteen miles square in size-the smallest county ever included within the limits of lowa. In this reduced form it remained in existence only thirteen days, for on January 25, 1839, there was approved an act of the legislature of the territory of lowa which changed the name of Slaughter and then enlarged the latter by extending its limits one township farther north and one range farther west. Thus the county gained seven townships and received practically its present territory. Yet one more change had to be made to secure permanence, and this was made by the legislature June I, 1845, by the terms of which the Iowa river was made the boundary line
WASHINGTON COUNTY COURT HOUSE
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
between the two counties for six or eight miles. Washington county lost to Johnson that part of township 77 north, range 6 west, which lay east of the Iowa river. Since 1845 the boundaries of Washington county have not been altered.
The territory included within the present limits of Washington county was acquired from the Indians in three separate treaties. All of it was ceded by the Sac and Fox Indians. Nearly half of the county (the southeastern portion) belonged to the Black Hawk Purchase of September 21, 1832. The northeastern corner was part of the Keokuk Reserve ceded to the United States government September 28, 1836. The western and northwestern portions were acquired by treaty of October 21, 1837.
The eastern portion of the county also belonged, for a time, to the original county of Demoine. Certain portions were included a little later within the limits of Cook, Musquitine, Louisa, and Henry counties as established by the act of January 18, 1838."
The state capital was removed in 1839-40 to Iowa City, when the place had but twenty families, and not a grist mill nearer than the Mississippi river, till one was built in '41. All roads led to Rome, but not to Iowa City, and folk got lost on the prairie trying to find it, especially those coming from Dubuque way, and the citizens hired Lyman Dillon to plow a furrow one hundred miles long, from Iowa City to Dubuque. His outfit was five yokes of oxen, a two-horse wagon filled with bedding and provisions, and the cattle lived on grass along the way. It was the longest furrow on record. Later, a road was made alongside the furrow, which served as a sort of balustrade.
This county was a part of Demoine county till January 18, 1838, when its boundaries were defined thus: "Beginning at the north-east corner of Henry county, thence west to the north-west corner of same, thence north to tap a line dividing townships 76 and 77 north, thence east on the same line to the line between ranges 4 and 5 on it, thence southi with said line to place of beginning, is hereby set off into a separate county by the name of Slaughter, and the seat of justice of said county is hereby established at the- town of Astoria, and all the territory west is hereby attached to the county of Slaughter for judicial purposes."
But our people would tolerate neither Slaughter nor Astoria, so things were not "established." Astoria was located on the south-east quarter, sec- tion 25, township 76 north, range 7 west, that is, in what is now Oregon township, near to and south of Ainsworth. It was laid out in 1837 by three Henry county men as proprietors-Lawson B. Hughes, Col. W. W. Wallace and Dr. Jacob Myers, who were, later, members of the territorial legislature.
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
The town was surveyed, but the records are lost. Simpson Goble helped the trio lay off the town. They built a cabin of hewn logs, with a rear addition, for a court-house. It was not a noble specimen of Renaissance architecture ; it lacked a plaster of paris heroic-sized figure of a woman in directoire gown slashed down part of one leg. as an effigy of the Goddess of Justice, with bandaged eyes, like the Amazon perched above the south door to our present court-house, holding scales and a sword, but who was probably, really, hunt- ing a man, as usual. But this primitive court-house, that was, indeed, quite ambitious for a back-woods period. was never used. It and its site were left with Mr. Goble to sell as a common claim. It was the first grave-yard of Great Expectations, the sepulcher of the Last Sixpence, and the scene of "vaulting ambition o'erleaping itself and falling on the other side," and getting a bad sprain.
Many years later, Judge Francis Springer, of Louisa county, said a court was held at Goble's Point near Ainsworth ( called Astoria in 1839), and he was prosecuting attorney and Cal. Shelladay foreman of the grand jury. No bills were found, and no one was there to be prosecuted.
This county was Slaughter county but one year, and the records are mostly lost. However, a spectral figure glances across our vision for a moment. One John C. Ellis was sheriff, and his acts were legalized at a special session of the legislature in June, 1838, and he got thirty-four dollars and ninety-eight cents for taking a census and finding our population was two hundred and eighty-three. Why did he not make his bill an even thirty- five dollars ? He seems to have been marked down to ninety-eight cents. And then he went off at that price, and no more is known of him than of men who lived five thousand years ago. In the record of the legislature this feature- less, almost bodyless man flits like a ghost across the platform, like Hamlet's father's shade, very pale, as the cock-crowing was near and he must be off, and so with that far-off dawn he fades away utterly from men's ken, being of such stuff as dreams are made of.
Another spectral thing, that fairly haunts the historic imagination, is that pale session of court at Astoria, May 7, 1838, David Irwin judge. Thomas Baker was appointed clerk and gave bond in two thousand dollars, with Nel- son Ball and David Goble sureties, and he used a seal made from an old style ten-cent piece, and, after doing nothing mightily, they voted themselves a day's pay all round and adjourned till next term. All that is dim and shadowy, yet there are a few gleams of realism shed on the scene by a Goble youth who recalls that the honorable court left the cabin, and sat in its shirt-sleeves, to simulate ermine-if the shirts were clean-under the trees on the north side of the house where the expectoration was safer. And at the fall term,
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
the aforesaid Goble deposeth and saith that he carried water to the elephants, as it were. That is, he toted watermelons to the court, and Francis Springer, then and there present, gave the Goble aforesaid a ten cent piece for his share of the said fruit, and no lawyer interposed an objection on the ground that the said melons were immaterial, incompetent, irrelevant, leading, and not the best evidence.
Astoria, or Castoria, failing to materialize, and wearing itself to a frazzle, as Slaughter barely got beyond birth, christening and baptism, Washington county swam into men's eyes. The first legislature appointed John Gilliland, of Lee county, Thomas Ritchey, of Henry county, and Wm. Chambers, of Muscatine county, commissioners to locate a county-seat for Washington county. Two of them met in the metropolis, Astoria, June 1, 1839, and were paid three dollars a day each. Mr. Chambers was absent. Mr. Gilliland wanted the county-seat to be at the geographical center of the county, one mile north-west of the present city, while Mr. Ritchey would go a mile south- east of the city. Finally, they agreed on the south-west quarter, section 17, township 75 north, range 7 west. The lands chosen were a part of Nathan Baker's claim. He gladly let it go, as it enhanced the value of the rest of his land. The whole board of commissioners met June 13. 1839, and affirmed the selection, and named it Washington.
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