USA > Iowa > Marion County > Down on the ridge : reminiscences of the old days in Coalport and down on the ridge, Marion County > Part 7
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she ministered unto them. Although she knew it not, this kindly widow gave her mite. She cast her scanty food upon the waters ; and then in the long after years, beside her bed of pain, Uncle John administered to her, if not to relieve, yet to smoothe and ease her tired soul away on the wings of peace and rest.
After the fashion of most young people Aunt Miner- va's children soon began to leave the old home nest to make homes for themselves, and in due time the old-fash- ioned cradles rocked to and fro where those young home- builders built castles in the air while their ambitiousfeet raced joyously along on the paths toward coveted achievements.
Morty married Miss Nancy Nossaman, belonging to a good family, old and most favorably known in Pella and vi- cinity. Sometime afterwards Morty bought and improved a farm beyond Whitebreast Creek, just west of the Coal Ridge neighborhood, near the site of the Ross water mills. The dam and the old mill have long since disappeared. I have a very distinct recollection of that old mill. Once upon a time in midwinter when the snow was deep and the temperature nearly down to zero, though the sleighing was fine, my brother and I went to that old mill, taking a sack of corn on a little hand sled, going all the way from the Coalport bottom.
On the farm described above Morty and " Nan " lived a good many eventful years, saw their children come and go out from the old home. Sometime in the early "eigh- ties " Morty sold this place and moved to Missouri, where, after a few more years of strife and toil, they laid down the working tools of life and went to their well- earned rest.
Carroll, after a short period of adventure, seeking gold out on the Pacific's golden shore, returned to Iowa and
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JOHN AND MRS. HEGWOOD.
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married a Miss Eliza Karr, belonging to a family of pio- neers who had settled on Whitebreast prairie in an early day. Together these people built a home in Appanoose County, near Centerville. During the war period they sold their farm down there and bought the place and built the house now owned by Mont Hegwood, beyond Competine. Tiring of this place, they soon afterward sold and returned to Appanoose County where they pur- chased another home in which they lived for a number of years, when they finally went to Smithfield, Illinois. There with his boys he engaged in mercantile and banking business. After a few more years of striving these two old pioneers, surrounded by a successful group of sons, laid themselves down in eternal sleep.
Jane Reynolds married Tapley Hegwood, an early comer in the community. The early part of the married life of these people was spent largely in the neighborhood near where the town of Harvey now stands. After the war they bought the James Caldwell place, east of Com- petine Creek and west of the old Parks place. On this place they lived for a number of years, after which they sold out and went to Missouri where, near Stansberry, they bought their last home in this world. There after playing a part in the many tragedies which lay in hiding for so many, many people Jane after days and months of suffering took her pains and griefs to God and laid them down in the happy forgetfulness of glorious things. "Tap " now lives in Oklahoma.
Leah F. Reynolds and John Hegwood were married in 1849. He came from Illinois, down on the Sangamon. He knew Lincoln ; saw him in his plain, humble way building for the greatest honor that can come to an American citizen. In a little log house, close to the road near the Baptist Church building, these young folks lived and loved and toiled. On the hearth of this little
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log cabin home six children came and played. In this happy pioneer home the cradle rocked to and fro; here mother's nimble fingers shaped and fashioned and built the warm woolen stockings, or with thimble and needle made garments large and small, the little lullaby songs were sung, and the cradle rocked away until little won- dering eyes were closed to the world so strange to them.
John Hegwood was a picture of physical manhood, tall and straight and big. No day too cold, no day too hot for him to walk a long and weary way to work and toil for fifty cents a day for food for wife and child. But one balmy day in April, 1861, the leaping, bounding breezes, fragrant with the blossoms of the southland, freighted with the sweet notes of the southern song-birds, came dulled with forebodings of war and bloodshed and tears, and then men everywhere went out to fight their brother man. It was when this husband and father put on his country's blue the first shadow fell upon the threshold of this home. Then that mother with her little band of children took up the weary rounds of life alone. No boy could then fathom the heart burdens which laid their blighting weight upon so many, many homes during those cruel years of war; then when every bit of longed-for news came upon the footsteps of dread, fearing a life had gone out on a bloody southern field.
The breaking of this home circle and the dread of war's avenging hand was not the only burden that came into that little home. One time when all was Oh ! so still, an angel came into that lonely, waiting home, and when this strange visitor had quietly slipped away little Morris, too, was gone. On downy angel wings his little soul was borne away into the spring and summer land above. Then this lonely mother with the sweet promises of God wiped · away her tears and fought on and on in the world's fierce strife.
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The years dragged along on weary feet until Appomat- tox came and with it the missing link, and together again these people took up the battle of life. They built a new home farther towards the west ; nestled on the bosom of a friendly grove it stood. The little log house with its sweet memories and seasons of childish glee and mirth and joyous shout, that little home with its strange scenes of bitter grief, was torn down, and now it stands only as a memory in the castle halls of the past. In that new home other children came. The patter of little feet again was heard. Then came the solemn marriage vows that united two hearts as one, the wedding feast and the going out to begin a strange, new life. The footprints of Time left his tracks upon the brow of these people, and, though it seemed that the harvest was only in the bloom, yet one day that friendly grove in which the song-birds, morning, noon and night warbled their songs of cheer to burdened men, was clothed in the deep hush of silence, for a soul had gone home. John Hegwood, the pioneer boy, the soldier man, the true friend, the kindly husband, the gentle father, the sick one's tender nurse, was dead.
Lutisha, the youngest daughter of Aunt Minerva, married John DeMoss, a son of one of the early settlers on Whitebreast Prairie, in the neighborhood of which they lived for a number of years, and there this pioneer girl died.
Morris L., or Lud, as we all knew him, first came in- to my life away back yonder. I remember the occasion very well, indeed. He with Welch's boys was jumping on that little plat of ground near where the old potter shop stood. He wore a red woolen shirt, so common in those days. In jumping Lud was hard to beat. However, I saw little of him until after his marriage to Adelaide Adams, a daughter of Simeon Adams, a native of Ken- tucky and an early settler on the Ridge. Following their
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marriage these people lived west of the road between the church and the new schoolhouse as they now stand. Later Lud bought the land adjoining the Hegwood prop- erties on the west, and there they made a home.
Of the younger set perhaps I knew Lud better than any one else. My father, being in the milling business, employed Lud with his team for quite a long while. With Kit, a sorrel with flaxen mane and tail, and Gray, Lud hauled logs and lumber and shingles. With his team he furnished the power for the shingle factory. With Kit hitched to one sweep and Gray to the other and Lud in the center with his whip, they went round and round and the faster the team and Lud went round the faster the shingles flew from the keen knife as it danced up and down. My father with a long "prod " lifted the steaming blocks from the great boiling vat, my brother held the blocks to the fluttering knife, while I with nimble fingers threw the shingles into bales and securely bound them down.
I would go with Lud to help him plow his corn so he could return to my father's work. I would plow with Kit and Lud with Gray, each with a single-shovel plow, both horses wearing muzzles made of hickory bark to pre- vent their taking an occasional bite of corn blades as they toiled along under the blazing sun. Kit was a proud old nag and extremely jealous of her rights. To touch her when she was doing her share at the doubletree meant a balk that was fierce in its results. At least half the load had to be unloaded, then haul part of it to the top of the hill, unload that and return for the remainder of the load. I helped Lud during one of these stunts. I was about eighteen years old, and was then afflicted with asthma and consequentiy wheezed like a leaky steam chest. On account of this defect Lud called me "Downing, " the name of an old wheezy hardware dealer in Pella at that time.
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Lud always when working for my father ate his dinners with our family, consequently he came very much into our home life. A strong cord of friendship was woven around the hearts of each one of us that has stood the test of all the years. Later Lud bought the Uncle Billy Amsberry place near the brow of the hill over- looking the rich fertile valley of the Des Moines River. There he made his home with Addie by his side; there his children grew to manhood and womanhood; their grand- children came to greet grandpa and grandma; there my father's old friend lived while the weight of years bore down upon his failing shoulders and dragged the lines of time upon his brow; there this pioneer boy of nine and Christian man of ripe old age served his God and loved his fellowmen; there his children watched while he took a last fond, lingering look upon the things of earth and those he loved so well, and when his light had gone out here they knew he had only stopped just over the way where no earthly day can be so full of sunshine and joy and rest.
To-night my heart is sorely bruised while I pay a trib- ute not to mine own alone but to my father's old friend. While I look through tears to that little company down there gathered round the open door through which this husband, father, brother and friend has entered into his eternal rest, how glad I am to know that near together in the same church yard my father and his friend have gone to a house purer and brighter and cleaner than the snow that so gently caresses their silent homes.
John, the youngest of this pioneer family, I saw very little of until his return from the war. He was tall and very slender. We knew him as "Long John." But I never could quite make him out as tall as a certain fellow down there would have him, who said he reminded him of a "tall oak, twenty feet without a limb, knot or wood-
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pecker hole." Not long after his return from the army John married Sarah Thompson, daughter of Garrison Thompson, an early settler in that community. John was rather crafty in a business way, and could get along in the world where anybody else could. He was kind of heart, but withal queer and odd. He would fight with- out coaxing, yet never went about with a chip on his shoulder. He sold his land adjoining my father's place and went to Nebraska and afterwards made his home in Oklahoma, where a short time ago he fell a victim of heart trouble, and while away from home and wife and children his life went out.
To-night I am filled with sad recollections of the many changes that have come down there while these things have been making history. Father, Lud's friend, has long since gone down to his grave. Of the three little tow-headed brothers who played about the old shingle mill, the story of their lives can only be brief and sad. One lives on Nevada's silver crest, one wandered away and is lost to human speech, the other drifted away from his drum, his little gun and the toys I delighted to buy, and at last lay down with the dreamless dead overlooking the Golden Gate through which great ships go out on the Pacific's tumbling waves. Mother, the best and truest friend I ever had, sleeps in the gold and silver crested city of Helena, Montana, where no tear of love can ever fall upon her quiet home, nor friendly hand caress the spot where her dear dust lies hid from the gazing, won- dering world. Ah ! Even now it seems I can hear her sing those lullaby songs so soft and low .
No songs that come to me in dreams In after years can bring The same sweet memories as those My mother used to sing.
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And in those dreams I see her face And catch the glad, sweet smile That drew my boyish love to her, So free from sin or guile. I see her rocking to and fro, Her voice so sweet and low ; In melody the angels chant The songs of long ago.
When evening's shades were gathering, And shadows long would creep,
'Twas 'Hush, My child, lie still and slumber !' Gently lulled me off to sleep.
And with these melodies I see The old home fireside,
With mother seated in her chair, Before the hearth so wide.
But sweeter yet is borne to me, As shadows dance and leap, Those old-time songs my mother sang, To lull me off to sleep.
In going back into memory-land I can but see what dreadful havoc the great reaper has wrought on the lives of the goodly men and women who laid the foundation for the homes down there. Of all that little company of pioneers away back in the "forties" only Mrs. John Heg- wood remains, standing as a living witness of God's good- ness. She stands away up on the towering mountain top of life, a gracious, kindly sheaf of ripened grain. Every day she lifts her heart to God in humble prayer. With- out God and her children she might indeed cry out in her loneliness. The reward she so richly deserves will some sweet day be hers.
I now return to the heroine of this simple story, Aunt Minerva Reynolds. She was robbed of her health and strength for many weary, weary years, yet the force
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of her guiding hand was ever felt and her wise counse worked for good in that pioneer family of young men and young women. Ah ! she was truly a "mother in Israel." I never knew her when the blush of health rested upon her cheek. Though bowed down with the hardships incident to pioneer life and broken health, she was a woman of high ideals and most noble purposes. Though confined to her bed for many weary, tired months, her time went on and on until nearly ninety years had heaped upon her frail shoulders the burden of a long and useful life ere she went home.
Some say that God employs the accumulated years of pain of a suffering one to serve a purpose all his own. I do not believe it. But I do believe that the Christian forbearance, fortitude and patience of that good woman, pained and tired though she was, comes to every one who knew her, fragrant with beautiful lessons of patience, a glorious example of submission. Hers was a very beauti- ful old age, after all.
CHAPTER X
THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF THE RIDGE, AND THE SCENES OF BYGONE DAYS
I do not feel that I can close these reminiscences of the old days down on the Ridge without taking up the thread of events and incidents touching more fully the boyhood and girlhood stages in the lives of the boys and girls of the period in which the plot of my story of the olden time is laid.
I trust that I shall be pardoned when I say that even the first paragraph of what I hope to tell you about the scenes and incidents of those far-away days threatens to throw open the floodgates of grief, even in view of the fact that most of the incidents connected with the early life of the young people of the time that appeals to us so forcibly now was full of joy and sunshine, notwithstand- ing so many and many of us did not know it but insisted on looking away through the fog of coming days and years, which to our young lives seemed to stand between us and the bright, golden goal of peace, contentment and delight.
I can not, neither would I if I could, prevent a train of saddened thoughts as they come to me breaking over the horizon of the good old days long gone. Though that old homeland which furnished shelter and food and friends to my parents in the noonday of their lives; there, where children came, and young men went out into the world to meet the enemy alone; there, where the sister and
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sweet, confiding companion of my boy life one sad day in August more than thirty years ago, while I was wander- ing in strange and distant lands, just quietly and peace- fully walked over the border-land of the world, which had been to her so full of suffering and pain, into the ever- blooming fields of heaven, and now only a modest marble slab remains down there to tell the story of her short life : though it was written in the book of fate that my fight in this old world's battles should be made in other fields; though for all the years that make up a generation of men, my home and shelter and joy, and my share of the world's grief has been mine in another land ;- yet, after all, the hardships of my boy life, the mills of pov- erty my parents trod in the early days, the graves of my people down there, make tender and soft my very heart ; and though it may be many a day, if ever, I shall see again those old roads and the dim outlines of the paths over which I used to run and leap and play when a boy, yet I am bound to that old homeland by ties too sacred to be broken.
If, in this simple story of those who lived and loved and labored and played in the days back there, I shall refer briefly to a few of my personal experiences, I know I shall be forgiven by you. I have not whispered into your ears this little story of other days and years, calling you and me over into that dear old memory-land, to gain notoriety. I would much rather live the simple, quiet life. I would rather hide myself under some peaceful, blooming bower, fragrant with the perfume of home, sweet home, and revel in the tranquil stream of domestic bliss than to wear the robes of office or mingle in the mad race for gold, stabbing the innocent and even for- getting the whiteness of the winding sheet, if only I could win. I would rather be a little daisy, blooming down in some quiet, peacefull, shady nook where the golden sunbeams could steal in and kiss from my cheek
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the teardrops of the morning, and listen to the music of the singing birds and catch the refrain of true and honest, praise from the lips of the lowly woodman as he passes by, than to be an American Beauty rose, blooming in a public flower garden where the multitude pass by to flatter, and then be plucked and my beauty laid low in · places of sin and shame. What I shall say of myself was pretty much the experience of most of the boys who began life with me, down on the Ridge.
I began to labor early in the game of life; in fact, I began to work before I had really commenced to play. All the years of my life since have been a ceaseless round of toil. The farm, the shop, the woods, the railroad sec- tion, down in the deep mines digging "dusky diamonds" and in the sunless office my life battles have been fought. I have not grown rich, nor did I care to. I have toiled too hard in this old world to finish up trying to wiggle through a needle's eye to gain entrance into the better world above. I only count it fortunate for myself that I had to work. God intended that men should labor when he said, "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread. " Though sometimes my bread has been eaten at a fearful cost of sweat, yet the bread was so much sweeter. A loafer is not only a poor excuse in the economy of God's great plan, but he is a nuisance everywhere in the paths of commerce and trade and labor.
When only eight years old I engaged to a Mrs. Davenport, who lived near by in a small field opened up in the deep woods, to assist in making sorghum, my recompense being a quart of the product per day, worth probably ten cents. I remember how, when ten years old, I gathered wild blackberries and carried them to Knox- ville, where I sold them, and with the receipts bought a straw hat to wear to Sunday school, which, with a linen coat and pants my mother made and the pair of shoes I
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wore into this world, completed my toilet. Really, when I walked into the little old schoolhouse the next day I was embarrassed. I thought I was the envy of all the boys.
But one of the happiest days I think I ever saw was one bright winter day; the snow was deep, the sunshine was so cheerful that all nature was glad. The plump little quail was abroad in the land. Fortunately I was prepared for the occasion, having had a trap already made and set, so when the old sun had started on its journey over the hill, down by the old "snake den," I placed my pants down in my red-topped copper-toed boots and waded the deep snow out to the back of the field to see how fortune had shuffled the cards, when to my supreme delight I found the old figure-four triggers had played fair for me. There were fifteen birds in my trap, and one trying to get in ; this lone bird, finding he could not secure passage on that boat, and seeing me, made his escape into the hill country.
The next day I carried my fifteen quails through the snow to Knoxville, seven miles away, where I sold them and with the proceeds bought a copy of McGuffey's reader, and walked back home against a cold north wind, where I arrived about sundown, tired, hungry and cold. A short time in front of the blazing logs in the old fire- place, where, turning around and around brought warmth and cheer, then a good hot supper,-old-fashioned country sausage, nice, sweet corn-bread and milk that would make a city kid green with envy, and I was ready to take up my new reader, and, with my smaller brothers and little sister sitting close beside, aided by the light of a tallow candle my mother with her tired hands had moulded in the old tin mould, I read :
The lark is up to meet the sun, The bee is on the wing ; The ant its labor has begun, The woods with music ring.
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It has been many and many a day since I saw that little reader, but the picture illustrating the lesson I can see now away back through all the years. It showed the fields, the flowers and the happy, singing birds in the tree and on the wing ; it showed a youth in the morning time of life standing in the midst of the beautiful handi- work of God. Out over a stretch of earth's fair landscape, the sun with its myriad streaks of light was breaking over the horizon and chasing away the stars.
It was down there on the Ridge where we boys and girls learned the first lessons in love, laughter and song, and read the first chapter in the world's great book of tragedies. There we boys "broke " the yearling steers to work in bow and yoke, and performed some of the most wonderful teaming feats. There we boys, and girls, too, dropped and covered and hoed the corn, buoyed up and encouraged by the promise that when our work was done those of us boys who were faithful might go to the old " swimming hole " or go a-fishing, and the girls could each have a new hair ribbon or sun-bonnet.
Down there we bound the sheaves of golden grain beneath the harvest sun and at noon time nodded in the shade to the tune of the harvest fly. And in the summer twilight, while the birds were singing their retiring songs and the old whip-poor-will was awakening the echoes in the deep, dark woods, these same boys and girls, out under the shade of the old apple tree, tied up hearts with a golden thread drawn out on the spindle of love in old Cupid's mill, where hearts flutter and beat while the spindles go round and round. Of these sheaves so delicately bound down there some were tied with the fickle ribbon of sport to be untied before the spreading of another net ; some have been loosened down by the water's edge, down by the shore of that ever-rolling river none can see and live. Of the ungrateful hands that unbound some of these life sheaves some were stained with the heart's red blood and some
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could not be seen, for grief had blinded the eyes of sorrow- ing souls with tears; while one here and there went to live with God.
It was there we saw the first railroad train, after the old D. M. V. R. R. had stretched its long streaks of rust into Pella, which town at once became the Mecca for commerce far and near. The trains on that road then probably made twelve or fifteen miles an hour, butto our youthful imagination they simply flew like a wild pigeon through the air. We boys would gladly have paid a dollar a mile, had we had it, for a ride in one of those old coaches which now would not be good enough for a "smoker, " but I heard an old lady say : "I wouldn't attempt a ride in one of them cars for anything, because I know I would be seasick. "
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