USA > Iowa > An illustrated history of the state of Iowa, being a complete civil, political, and military history of the state, from its first exploration down to 1875; > Part 44
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RUDD is a village between Nora Springs and Floyd, to the east of Floyd creek, and it has the great ad- vantage of being a station on the Mil-
prairie land surrounded by a country of great fertility, with plenty of tim- bered land near. The town was laid out in 1869.
MARBLE ROCK is a station on the Burlington, Milwaukee and Chicago Railroad, near the Shellrock river, and the village enjoys a very fair local trade in consequence of its facilities for shipping. There is a good flour- ing mill at Marble Rock.
ROCK GROVE is a small village on the east of Shellrock river, about three miles from Nora Springs, but it does not grow rapidly.
WATERTOWN and ULSTER are only post stations at present.
Franklin County is the fifth west of the river Mississippi, and third from the north line of the state of Iowa. The county is twenty-four miles square, having an area of 368,640 acres being five hundred and seventy-six square miles. The streams which meander through this county are mostly tribu- taries of the Cedar, a river sufficiently familiar to our readers. The county is well watered. The river Iowa wat- ers portions of two townships in the southwest corner of the county. The west fork of Cedar river crosses the northeastern corner of Franklin coun- ty. The several streams thus cursorily mentioned, not only give good drain- age to a large area, but they also afford excellent powers which will be utilized and propel powerful machinery. Many of the best sites are already improved, but not up to their full capacities. Well water can be found at moderate depths, varying from ten feet, the min- imum, to a maximum of thirty feet. There are some good springs, which feed the tributaries and creeks, but none which call for special mention. In the eastern section of the county there are fine groves of timber, and the south west is well supplied, but the northwest is somewhat, bare, although the soil is of unsurpassed fertility.
This county is well supplied with building stone; limestone is available for every purpose to which it can be applied, and there is a fine quality of sandstone which is in good repute. Clay can be had in almost any quanti- ty, so that brickmaking may become a profitable business, as the quality is excellent. In some parts of the coun-
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ty there are fine beds of peat, which may be used for fuel, but at present there are other supplies which are much preferred. The soil is generally loam, mixed with sand, dark in color and of great fruitfulness, producing grain and grass in great plenty. Farmers will do well to continue as they have begun in Franklin county, uniting the avocations of agriculture and stock raising. The surface alter- nates rolling prairie with rich valleys and bottom lands along the river courses.
The county is traversed to a greater or less extent by three lines of rail- road, but very few stations compara- tively are located and working. The Iowa Central runs north and south, having stations at Geneva, Faulkner, Hampton, Sheffield and Chapin. The Iowa Pacific Railroad Company have ouly located one station on their line so far, but the works are well ad- vanced, the road being graded and bridged the whole distance through this county, from east to west. The town of Hampton is the only place yet indicated as a shipping point on this road. The Illinois Central Rail- road enters the southeastern extremity of Franklin county, but there is no station connected with that road with- in its boundaries.
The first white settlement within the limits of this county was con.menced in 1852. Some of the new comers did not remain after their favorite pursuits as hunters and trappers failed, but others of the party which came origi- nally from the state of Ohio remained to build up the county, and their names are remembered with honor.
Like many of the other counties in this state, Franklin has had its Indian scare, and for some time took it badly. The first symptoms came in the shape of a rumor, that there were three hun- dred Indians on the war path, ap- proaching a small settlement Maynes Grove. Nobody had seen the hostile force, and nobody wished to do so. On that point there was perfect unanimity in the heroic band, and a retreat to Beaver Grove, the first and only movement relied upon, became almost a stampede, so anxious was every one to reach a point in the rear, from which he could safely and prop- erly digest the situation. There was a rapid movement along the whole line
into Hardin county, and there the res- olute and intrepid force remained about three weeks, but it is probable that the vigor manifested in this Fa- bian strategy saved many valuable lives - from monotony- as upon their return to their homes at the end of the campaign, no indications could be found that the red skins had visited the locality.
Chickasaw and Hardin counties were hoth at different times allowed the honor of administering the law in this region prior to its organization as a county, but in 1855, when only fifty- two votes were cast in the elections involved, organization was effected. The county seat was located at a point near the present town of Hampton, which was at first named Benjamin, but Benjamin was not the favorite, and when upon a popular vote being taken to stay the tumult of discontent, the same locality within two miles was resolved upon there was a compromise effected, the time honored name of Benjamin being abandoned, and the present name substituted as the appel- lation of the county seat. It was well that an issue so momentous could be thus satisfactorily ended. The final vote was taken in 1856.
HAMPTON, at first named Benjamin, but renamed at the solicitation of a wide circle of friends, was first laid out in the year 1856. The great Prin- ter, Scientist and Philosopher, in spite of all his services to the country, by his discoveries, his diplomacy and his business tact, had not friends enough in the county named after him, to se- cure the continuance of his first name in the nomination of the county seat. So the place was called Hampton, and the county seat was there located. The town is incorporated, and it is a shipping point for a large amount of produce from the surrounding fertile land. The first settlement on this lo- cation was made in 1856, but the growth of the place went on very slowly for the first three years. In 1869 when the near approach of the Central Railroad raised the hopes of the inhabitants, and from that time, it has progressed with much greater ra- pidity. There are several newspapers published at the county seat, and it is a noticeable fact that there has never been a saloon within the corporate limits of Hampton. Eastern men and
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their families have built up a most de- one, which is located at the village of sirable place of residence here, and al- though there has been nothing convul- sive in its development, the town steadily goes on with substantial promises of an enduring prosperity.
Reeve township was the area within which Mayne's Grove attracted the first settlement in the county limits. It was from that point that the settlers retired for a time before an attacking force that never came on. The old question, " what will happen when an irresistible force comes in contact with au immovable hody ? " was not raised here, but the exact reverse of that proposition in every detail came to a remarkable solution. Maysville, once a competitor with the present locality, for the honor of being the county seat, was laid out here in 1856, and there was no retreat in that campaign. Nine years later, when a tax was voted to build the present court house in Hampton, it was held that an act so decisive on the part of the county, set the question at rest, but Maysville, like the man convinced against his will, was of the same opinion still. Three miles east of Maysville there is a small town growing up round the railroad station of Geneva, and to that place, all that was great and prosper- ous in Maysville was rapidly remov- ing. There is one feature which yet remains, and which may at no distant date recall the echoes of earlier days, as the best school building in the county is located at this spot. Mayne's grove is a fine body of growing tim- ber, a beautiful addition to the land- scape, and it occupies about one third of Reeve's township.
MORGAN TOWNSHIP secured the first settler within its area in 1853, and has retained that man ever since. Otis Grove flourishes in the northwest of this township, and with minor excep. tions the rest is all prairie, well water- ed and tolerably fertile. The Iowa river runs through a small part of this township, and the village of Otisville is the only considerable settlement - made within the borders. That place is on the boundary line, but it contains a postoffice, and is for that reason sought from far and near.
INGHAM TOWNSHIP first began to be settled in 1854, near Allen's Grove, on the west fork of the Cedar river. This township has a postoffice, and only
Menzie, an inconsiderable place, but something where there is little else. The old adage wisely says that : " Among the blind, the man with one eye is king." On that principle Men- zie flourishes.
GENEVA TOWNSHIP was first settled about 1856. Mayne's creek runs through this township from west to east, aud with many tributaries drains and waters a large area. There is tim- ber in this township at Four Milc Creek, and also in Highland Grove. Geneva station was laid off in 1871, and since that event there has come to be a considerable population attracted by the facilities for business offered by the Central Railroad of Iowa. The wisdom of the railroad company be- comes apparent not only in the statis- tics of their business, but in consider- ing the beautiful expanse of the agri- cultural land in which they built their depot.
OSCEOLA TOWNSHIP has enjoyed a separate organization since the year 1857, having been first entered for set- tlement four years earlier. This town- ship is nearly all prairie, with but little timber in any part, Down's, Blake's and Towhead groves being quite in- considerable. The little village of Faulkner is in this township, and is mainly noticeable for the station on the Central Railroad of Iowa, which gives it importance. The buildings necessary to facilitate shipments of grain are the features most likely to attract attention in Faulkner, and the growth of the place would be more rapid but for the fact that a large share of the shipments from the township cross the county line to Ackley, in Hardin county, where there is a good station.
CLINTON was settled by a little colony from the state of New York, and the name was meant as a reminder of their former home. The first settle- ment was effected in the spring of 1854, after which date arrivals were continuous, but not very rapid. There are two stations within this township, Chapin, to which the old town of Chapin has been removed since 1871, and Sheffield on Bailey's Creek, which has only had an existence outside the brains of a few speculators, since the the year 1873. Neither of the two vil- lages challenges notice by mere dimen-
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sions, but there is a great deal of busi- ness pluck which will ensure prosper- ity.
OAKLAND TOWNSHIP has been sepa- rately organized since 1867. The Iowa river well timhered along its course, runs through this region from north- west to southeast, and the prevailing timher of the district is said to have been the inspiration of its name. The first settlers came in 1854, and they have remained upon the fine farming lands then selected, than which, none better can be found in Franklin coun- ty. Oakland Valley is a beautiful lit- ile place on the west side of the river Iowa, but the trade once attracted to that region has gone elsewhere since the days of railroading.
WEST FORK TOWNSHIP was first set- tled in 1855, and has had a separate organization since 1868. There are two postoffices in this township, at Cold Water and at Ingham.
GRANT TOWNSHIP was organized about five years since, and has had no history, the quiet record of daily pros- perity being matter too tame for the sensational days in which we live. The surface of this township is all prairie, hut very fertile land.
LEE TOWNSHIP resembles its im- mediate predecessor in quality of soil and characteristics of surface, and it was organized in the year 1870. Iowa Falls, Hardin county, is the trading post of this very pleasant and prosper- ous township.
HAMILTON TOWNSHIP is another of the same class. The postoffice of the township is at Congress.
RICHLAND TOWNSHIP was named after a county in Ohio, whence many of its settlers came in 1854. Three years later there was quite a consider- ahle emigration to this point from Connecticut.
MARION TOWNSHIP is the youngest in the county and all the surface is prairie. Until within the last two or three years there was no population there, nor is there much there now. Organization was effected in 1874. There is one small grove, known as Tharp's, in this region.
Fremont County has an area of five hundred and twenty-eight square miles and it occupies the south west corner of the state of Iowa. The river Nishnabotany and its many branches
and tributaries drain the major part of the county, the Missouri river being the main resource of the remainder. Ravines and small creeks make their way through the system of bluffs to the mighty river, many of the minor streams percolating through the earth into which they sink and no outlet is found save that the stream by which they are absorbed flows on forever. The bluffs which seem to say to the Missouri " Thus far and no farther " attract more attention than the muddy stream over which they stand in per- petual guard. Their heights vary from one hundred and fifty feet to three hundred, with small exceptions, very rare indeed. The rocky bluffs of the Mississppi are scarcely more precipti- tous and abrupt than these in their gen- eral aspect. An angle of less than forty-five degrees in such formations seems almost perpendicular, and among these Missouri bluffs the bold- est proved, on actual measurement, to have an angle of only fifty degrees. Ravines which have been cut hy the gradual operation of water, sometimes trickling and slowly percolating, and again rushing like a mad torrent with a cutting force, which must be seen to be understood, are usually very abrupt and steep, waiting for superincumbent masses to be worn away by disintegra- tion and frost, that they may conform more pleasingly to the law of beauty, have a peculiar effect on the observer. Some few years hence they will be much more sightly than they now are, but the bluffs are perhaps improved by even such variation from dull uni- formity.
Away in the interior of the county beyond the bluffs which border the Mississippi valley, telling of a time when the stream was mightier than it is now, flowing from a lake system which left the high lands of this con- tinent in part as islands merely, we find the surface becoming more even but the soil substantially the same bluff deposit. These prairie lands dif- fer but little from other such lands in appearance, except where the broken land allows the peculiarity of its for- mation to become apparent.
The valleys of east and west Nishnabotany unite near the center of this county, and along those streams we find none of the rugged character- istics which have been described else-
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where. The same soil and substratum remain, but the quieter movement of the waters has hollowed out a valley here and there, leaving a slope of mod- erate height and an unbroken emerald from the rock bottom to the crowning eminence. The valleys which are thus formed are about a mile across on an average, gracefully inclining toward the river's banks on either side, but at their heights, where the ascent is lost in the rolling prairie above, the breadth varies from three to four miles. Thus it will be seen that the valleys are broad and shallow, but every acre has its value, so great is the general richness and so surely can the whole area be made available for agricultur- al purposes. The boldness of the grander scene is wanting, the sem- blance of a dislocation and an upheaval can nowhere be found.
Belts of wood skirt the several streams, and their branches also, wherever there has been no accident- al or willful action to disturb the har- mony of nature's operations. East of the west Nishnabotany and beyond the belts of wood already mentioned, there is a stretch of prairie, but west of the same stream timbered land prevails, all kinds of wood being procurable in profusion. The Missouri bottom has some timber, but that is not a general characteristic, the erosion worked by occasional floods being apparently as destructive in one case as the rav- ages of fire in another. The bluffs where they were broken from the sur- rounding country enough to isolate their trees from occasional conflagra- tions have plenty of wood, and all over the county now since settlement and civilized care have permitted the recu- perative powers of dame Nature full sway, there are vast expanses of young trees which promise to go on covering the soil more speedily than the ax of the settler can hew down and consume.
The bluff deposit is a kind of lime- stone, sometimes rather resembling the debris of a formation than the formation itself. Here it forms the bluff, not merely on its surface but throughout. The valley bottoms have been enriched by occasional overflows, but the same base remains, and the fertility imparted thereby to the soil cannot be surpassed for the growths to which it is specifically adapted. The drift formation underlies this strange
combination of qualities, and in some places there are strata of the upper coal measures to be observed in situ near the base of the bluffs, especially in the northwest of Fremont county. The measures in question where found are a very impure layer in which coal is a prominent feature for about ten inches of depth. The limestone for burning is the main value in this ex- posure.
The Nishnabotany with its branch- es, and Walnut creek, give many valu- able water powers, and in addition to these features, full of promise to men of industry and enterprise; it is im- portant to note that good building stone can be procured, good clay for the manufacture of brick, good water for stock, by sinking wells of very moderate depth, and springs are here and there to be seen forcing their bounty through the rock, not smitten by the rod of Moses, like the famous Horeb.
Early in 1840 the first settlers came to Fremont county ; there was then no such county in fact, but it is more con- venient to speak thus of the territory which afterwards was so named. Mc- Kissicks and Pleasant Groves in the south of the county first attracted at- tention. Lacy's Grove, near the pres- ent site of the town of Sidney, came next in order. Missouri held jurisdic- tion over part of the territory pending the settlement of boundary disputes, which gave to Iowa much that had been under the rule of Missouri, and took from Iowa some territory which until then had not been liable to be oc- cupied by dark skinned human chat- tels. Purchases made from the Potta- wattomie Indians had made good the title to the soil before white men came to settle. The redskins were removed to Pottawattomie county in this state for a time, but soon afterwards they re- linquished their hold upon this section of country, and were settled in Kansas.
Many of the early settlers who thought they were living in Iowa found that they had been Missourians, and some parts of Iowa had been repre- sented in the Missouri legislature, but all these difficulties were set right in good time before settlement was far advanced.
Fremont county was organized in 1850-51, but it was not until 1860 that a court house was erected at the coun-
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ty seat. The county agricultural soci- ety organized in 1868, held its first an- nual fair the same year, and has since that time continued every year to hold out inducements, not great in them- selves, but valuable as incentives to emulation which can be seen by their results in every considerable farm in the county. Men measure themselves and their productions by standards of ex- cellence which otherwise would be be- yond their reach, and as a consequence they attain results to which dull and plodding contentment would never as- pire. The operation of this law of hu- man nature in Fremont has been visi- ble in the fruits and grain brought up for exhibition, as much as in the blooded stock of faultless pedigree, of which every stock raiser is rightly proud. Apples of excellent quality have been raised here, so have cherries and all the small fruits commonly pro- duced in Iowa. Grapes are grown in great variety and profusion anywhere on the Missouri slope, where_proper attention has been bestowed. Peaches have not yet been pronounced a suc- cess, but wild fruits, such as plums, raspberries, strawberries, and such like, abound.
The cultivation of permanent hedges is a desideratum in any part of Iowa, and in this county special pains have been taken to secure the best results. Hedges have been made by constant care for a time which are practically impregnable against stock, and which, with ordinary precaution, may be re- newed for many generations. The influence of such hedges on the cli- mate can be assessed by our readers; their effect on the scenery of the prai- rie must be witnessed to be fully ap- preciated.
TABOR COLLEGE was founded by a colony of advanced thinkers, mostly from the New England states, in 1848, at the village of Tabor, on the northi line of Fremont county. The civilized world was at that time on tiptoe with expectation of the grand results which were to have been achieved by Lamar- tine, Arago, Louis Blanc, Ledru Rollin and a few others who, by force of superior mentality, had arrested the popular mind in Paris upon the verge of dire excesses, upon the failure of the Orleans branch of the Bourbons, and the flight of Louis Phillippe to England. There was hardly a man of
average intelligence in this country whose emotions were not stirred by admiration for the eminent thinkers and workers, who were striving to save a half trained race from themselves, and to fit them for a form of govern- ment, which, in an exceptional degree, demands virtue and self control in the individual. We were thrilled then by the eloquence of Lamartine at a dis- tance, as afterwards we were aroused and lifted by the magnetism of Kos- suth; yet, though we could see the beauty of aspirations toward liberty, among peoples of the same color with ourselves, this country, a realization, as it was fondly dreamed, of the high- est form of free government, could not in the year 1848, while Lamartine's voice was still to be heard, tolerate on our own soil the demand for liberty, even to the extent of permitting chil- dren to be educated by abolitionists, nor documents in which their views were set forth to be transmitted through the post. The right to memorialize congress on this subject had long since been repudiated, and strong feel- ings, hard to be repressed, on both sides were leading up toward the death grapple in which north and south eventually came together. Tabor colony was near the Missouri line. Some families from Oberlin, Ohio, had made their home on the Missouri river, intending to found a college similar to the famous institution which had made their former home the glory of a people. Colleges were not com- mon in that country ; there was no in- stitution of that kind within hundreds of miles, and the strangeness of their purpose, no less than the fact that many of them were New Englanders by birth and instincts, made their slaveholding neighbors suspicious that their peculiar institution was in dan- ger, so their school house was burned.
In 1851 a site was chosen on the di- vide between the Missouri river and the Nishnabotany, and the colony procured an incorporation, but it was not until 1857 that it was thought pru- dent to open a school there. Had some "one man power " committed such an outrage as to destroy a school, and to offer violence to teachers and pupils, there would have been an out- cry all over Christendom; but the many headed tyrant seemed to exer- cise a prescriptive right to violate the
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most sacred obligations, and there were few, very few, to raise their voices against the act of wrong. The day came when all such accounts had to be liquidated in blood, and num- berless petty inflictions intensified the struggle. The school now famous as Tabor college, the heart and center of the colony, was afterwards opened aud placed on a college basis in 1866, since when some thirteen hundred teachers have gone out from that light set upon a hill to teach a better philosophy and a higher phase of Christian love, tban had, until the abolition of the stain, been possible in that section of the country. The teachers have permeated the population in which the giant wrong was dominant, and their teach- ing has silently accomplished more than the school burners, in their wild- est panic, ever feared. From one hundred and seventy-six students, at the lowest, to two hundred and forty- six, at the highest, have during several years been subject to the ameliorating influence of learning and the highest culture in this alma mater; and it would be impossible to speak too strongly of the results which may come from such labors. The founding of the college was largely due to the personal sacrifices of one man, whose noble enthusiasm moved the entire colony to do their utmost to secure the success which is being realized. The founders of European colleges cen- turies ago gave of their substance to found institutions which reached no great fruition until centuries later, and even then were, and still are, ham- pered by old forms, customs and creeds, which make their usefulness, to a terrible extent, but in the founda- tion of an American college, worthy of the name, there is an almost in- stant realization of value with a fair prospect of ever increasing good. The popular mind is ready for the seed. The quality which yearns for the stimulant of sensationalism in trashy publications is still a hunger which can be made conducive to mental and moral growth. The hero, however valorons or talented, must have some crowning mark of moral goodness, or the reading boy and the weeping girl will throw the volume aside with a muttered pshaw. Material, such as thought, combustible as powder, can be more readily moved than the dull
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