USA > Iowa > Early settlement and growth of western Iowa; or, Reminiscences > Part 4
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following style: Gen. 2 : 16-17, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." "Now, how is this? This command was given to our first parents near the beginning of their existence. They remained obe- dient but a short time manifestly, and yet Adam lived 930 years. How are we to understand it? Peter tells us that 'one day is with the Lord as a thousand years,' and Adam didn't live a thousand years. So you see he died the same Lord's day that he ate of the forbidden fruit. It is by com- paring scripture with scripture that we may hope to understand the Bible."
After he had finished and sat down, his brother arose and discoursed upon the attractions of Salt Lake valley thus: " You needn't be afraid to go on to the valley, lest you want for bread. They have had excellent crops there. Nothing but the pure wheat grows there. They have raised wheat in abundance to supply all that are likely to go on, and more too; so that none who go on need fear coming to want. You may have heard that the crickets injured the corn. Well, they did eat some of the outside rows, but by and by the gulls came along and ate up the crickets, and so made a good job of it all around. But before I stop I want to tell you a story. A man at the east invented a
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gun which possessed properties of sufficient worth to get it patented. He accordingly had a model constructed, preparatory to applying for a patent. But before he sent it off he undertook to exhibit its extraordinary qualities to a friend of his, and, while looking at it, it began to shoot-and it shot! -and shot !- and shot !- until it shot itself all away but the lock, and that lay snapping; and now lest I be like that gun, I will sit down, for I don't want to be snapping." These were the remarks, the application, and conclusion, of this peculiar discourse, and the speaker sat down.
An item of business was brought forward at the close. Some of the poor saints had reached them on their way westward, and lacked means to proceed farther. A collection was accordingly taken, and arrangements made to forward them on their way to Council Bluffs (then Kanesville).
As there were no farther public services, we re- turned to Elder York's, and improved the remain- der of the day in reading and resting. That night it rained, which Deacon Hall always spoke of as a special providence to prevent the stealing of our horses. We were hospitably received, well enter- tained, and not exorbitantly taxed. On the morrow we passed on our way rested and refreshed, both we and our horses.
We were now so near " the three river country," that in conversation with Elder York, we learned
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that some of his neighbors had gone there in the early spring to make sugar. I proposed, therefore, to Deacon Hall that we leave the Mormon trail, and visit that country often so highly commended. But he would not hear of it at all, contemptuously saying, " Do you think the Lord would send us round by the Missouri river, if He wanted us to go to the three river country ? "
The rain during Sunday night rendered the road somewhat muddy, nevertheless after breakfasting and settling our bills, we again mounted our steeds, and set our faces eastward. Our roadway was for the most part discreetly chosen. As the country was generally well watered by rivulets, whose flow had commonly cut deep channels through the soft alluvial soil, which required bridging, economy oft- en prompted a crossing just above a break off where the confluent water of a marsh began to form its channel. The safe way here was usually a narrow way. To go too near the brink or waterfall on the one hand, was attended with danger, and to venture out among the cat tail flags on the other, was hardly less perilous. Fortunately for us, we were on horseback, and not cumbered with a wheeled vehicle. Once we found a deep stream, where the bridge had been carried off by a freshet, leaving only the stringers. The problem to solve was, how to get across. The horses could not walk the stringers, and to attempt to ford so deep, swift and
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swollen a current, with banks almost perpendicular, involved great risk. By carrying our saddles over on the stringers, and by means of a lariat, one drew the horses from the farther side, while the other urged them into the stream on this side. Thus we got safely over, and were enabled to pursue our lonely way. Although houses were few in this part of Iowa at that time, we always found lodging un- der shelter. One night in the vicinity of the White Breast stream we stopped over night with a Mr. Wilson of perhaps threescore years, who with his wife had the year before come from the region of Savannah, Mo., taken a claim, and made a new start in frontier life. They had built a log cabin, and made some improvements, and enter- tained us right hospitably. From our host we learned of his experience the following :
In beginning a home with everything to be done, it is always wise to do first, what is most necessary. His team was an indispensable helper, yet at first he could feed his horses only by tying them out on the prairie at the end of a rope to graze. One morning he rose early to get his horses to go to mill, as they were about out of flour; and went out hatless, and lo ! his horses were gone. By tracking them he ascertained the direction they had taken and hoped to find them in the next hollow. So he followed, lured on still by hope of seeing them from the top of the next rise. On and on
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he went-drawn by hope, and impelled by ne- cessity; for what could he do without a team? He could not go to mill, and two persons would sooner starve on the little they had than would one, and so on he pushed hatless and coatless, in the dishabille in which he sallied forth in the morning. After many disappointments, hope of overtaking them began to fail; but as he was already far from his home, what better could he do than to follow on to the place, from which he had brought them? And so he did, and found them there, after a tramp of not less than one hundred and twenty-five miles, and most of the way across a trackless prairie.
Before reaching the Des Moines river we left the Mormon trail, and crossed the river at Eddy- ville on a ferryboat, which was propelled across by the force of the current.
At Fairfield we found a member of the Iowa legislature, and entrusted to him the petition sent by us from the Gentile mass meeting held in Wabonsie to the legislature, asking for the organ- ization of a new county in southwestern Iowa. We found Hon. Mr. Baker, a member of the Iowa legislature, at work in his blacksmith shop, and as we asked an interview on business, he dropped his hammer, folded his arms, seated himself on his anvil, and gave audience. We presented the petition, related the circumstances in which it was drawn up, and requested him to bring the matter
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before the legislature at its next meeting. We understood him to promise that he would, but never heard from the papers afterward. After a lapse of many years, I incidentally met the same Mr. Baker in Council Bluffs, when on inquiring about the matter, he replied that he never presented the petition at all-that he took us to be Mormons, and considered the whole to be a Mormon device.
From Fairfield, passing through Mt. Pleasant, Burlington (where we ferried the Mississippi river), and Monmouth, we spent the Sabbath, and worshipped with a good Methodist brother, in a country place, about six miles south of Galesburg.
On Monday morning we passed on to Galesburg, called on Rev. Lucius H. Parker, and thence directed our course toward Granville in Putnam county, where we found my father, brother, sister and brother-in-law, Mr. French. As it was getting late in the season, and cold weather seemed im- minent, we only stayed over night, and passed on in the morning. It had rained and snowed, so that the puddles along the road were frozen over. Near Valparaiso, Indiana, we passed the polling place, where a crowd was gathered holding the presidential election of November, 1848. Our third Sabbath on the way was spent at a hotel in Wheatland, Michigan. We attended service in a school house, where the writer preached in the evening. We found the road very bad through the
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Maumee swamp, but in the course of the week we reached our homes in Ohio, without sickness, accident or any farther remarkable occurrence. Soon after, we met in public meeting at Oberlin, the friends interested in our enterprise, and presented a detailed statement of what we had learned about the country, and the feasibility of the contemplated settlement. Some thought fa- vorably of the project and others unfavorably.
CHAPTER IV
INTERIM AND RETURN TO IOWA
O N THE writer's return to Ohio, his pastoral duties to the people of his charge in Clarksfield were resumed, and continued for about eighteen months longer. Meanwhile correspondence was kept up between the friends already in Iowa, and those in Ohio, who were interested in the success of the enterprise. No one, however, from Ohio joined those already in Iowa during the year 1849. But in the spring of 1850, Deacon John W. Smith, of Litchfield, and Deacon Josiah B. Hall, of Oberlin, Ohio, with their fam- ilies joined the settlement at Percival, going by way of the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers. In the same spring the writer's pastoral relations with the church in Clarksfield ceased. His household goods were packed and forwarded to Iowa in the care of Deacons Hall and Smith, while we, after sorrowful partings from those we had learned to love, and sad farewells, repaired to the residence of the writer's father-in-law, Judge Atkins in Cleveland, where we also had a numerous family meeting, which proved to most of that large family group a last meeting on earth, as but one now sur-
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vives. As we were going to so remote a part of the country, it seemed like a last farewell. The writer too visited the place of his nativity, and looked once more upon the scenes of his childhood-the stone house-the barn where we played "hide and seek "-the old red pump where we so often slaked our thirst-the green meadow coursed by a rippling rill, where we so often sprinkled the bleaching cloths-the pasture where on the green hill-side the lambkins sportively played, while their dams quietly grazed by their side-the pond near by, the paradise of geese and ducks in summer and of skating boys and girls in winter, but a worse than Tartarus to the luckless hen that chanced to lead her bastard brood of ducklings too near its shore- there too was the orchard where we so often satiated our craving for fruit-there the garden, where currants and strawberries flourished, and where wise and honored parents so oft required of lazy boys the thorough cleaning out of a definite portion of weedy garden, before any playing could be allowed. They required it, and made their word good, and now their children rise up and call them blessed. How mistaken the notion that to let children have their own way is kindness! It is a downright curse !
The writer also passed on to New York, and visited Washington,-looked in upon the august legislators of this great nation-Webster, and Clay,
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and Benton and their compeers, he entered the White House, and stood by the side of President Taylor, only a short time before he died. From the center of national power, and wealth, and culture, and art, and refinement, he turned his face to the frontier of civilization.
As the friends in Iowa had expressed a wish that a teacher for their school should accompany the writer on his return, he accordingly obtained the consent of Miss Rachel Tucker (now Mrs. D. P. Matthews) to respond to that call. She accordingly joined us at Cleveland, where with wife and three children, we all embarked on a steamer for Detroit-thence by the Michigan Cen- tral railroad to Michigan City- thence by steamer across Lake Michigan to Chicago (then an in- significant village)-thence by Illinois and Mich- igan canal to LaSalle -- thence by private convey- ance to Granville, where we visited for several days, and saw father for the last time. Again we took steamer at Hennepin on the Illinois river, but the river was very low, and our progress was thereby very much retarded, so that, instead of reaching St. Louis before the Sabbath, as we were encouraged to expect, when Saturday evening came, we found ourselves many miles from the mouth of the Illinois river. Accordingly we were put ashore and stopped over the Sabbath, and not until Tuesday or Wednesday did we find a chance to
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re-embark. Did a proper regard for the Sabbath require this at our hands ?
We reached St. Louis in safety, and were de- tained there several days before we found a boat, that would take us to our destination. We had the usual experience of a boat ascending the Missouri river, but had to contend with fewer obstructions, as there was a full stage of water. Although de- siring to stop at Lambert's landing, the captain took us to Council Bluffs, and left us on his return the next day, July 1, 1850, at Lambert's landing. We were glad enough to find a stopping place. We found that a long and tiresome journey prepares the emigrant to be content with the necessary privations and hardships of a frontier settlement. Our friends greeted and welcomed us most cordial- ly, and our meeting was the occasion of mutual gladness.
In the twenty months since Mr. Gaston's arrival much had been done, considering the few there were to do, and the inconveniences under which they labored. A house had been built for Mr. Gaston, a house for Mr. Adams, a house erected and en- closed for the minister when he should come, a school house also for the school, and a frame for a steam saw mill, and boiler room to receive the boiler, when the machinery already contracted for should arrive. A kiln of bricks had been made and burned, and a shingle factory had been started,
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and thousands of shingles been made, besides stables, barns, and sheds for stock. Many acres of land too had been broken and enclosed.
In Christian work too they had not been idle. A union church had been organized embracing most of the professed Christians of the neighbor- hood. A Sunday school had been started, and many of the people had been gathered into it. A well attended weekly prayer meeting was main- tained. A temperance society was organized, and numbers in the community had been induced to sign the pledge for the first time. When the minister came among them, the various parts of the machinery for Christian work were already in operation. The first public service to which he was called was a Sunday school celebration of the Fourth of July, when he was called upon to address the children in the unfinished boiler room of the steam mill. Mrs. Platt had drilled and prepared the children to sing on the occasion, which they did with great spirit and enthusiasm. After the public exercises a picnic or basket dinner was discussed by the assembled throng. Though comparatively a day of small things, it was a great day to many- a day such as they never had seen before.
CHAPTER V GETTING INTO THE WORK
A LTHOUGH a log house had been raised and roofed for the minister before his arrival, it was not in a state to be occupied. There was neither floor nor door in it. Mr. Gaston's house was not completed, but such accom- modations as it afforded were willingly shared with the minister and his family, until his own home could be made tenantable. A chamber floored by a few loose boards formed his sleeping apartment, and the forest near by, his study, so that he lacked not for ventilation by night, or by day. Soon, however, practicable measures were taken to finish the parsonage. No pine lumber was attainable in the region anywhere, and no lumber of any kind nearer than 25 miles, and only a little and at fa- vored times could be had as near as that. Conse- quently Mr. Gaston and Mr. Adams with some others to assist repaired to the woods with team and tools, selected and felled a free splitting cotton- wood tree, sawed it into pieces of about six feet in length, which were then split into slabs or pun- cheons, as like heavy plank as they could be made by splitting. These were drawn to the parsonage,
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a mile or more distant, where by a little ingenuity, they were set and firmly held on their edge, until one side was smoothed with a broadax. These, when properly placed upon the sleepers, formed a passably good floor. A doorway was also cut, a door frame inserted and a door hung, and the house was ready for the parson.
Owing to the late hour of its completion and our desire to relieve our friends, and get into improved quarters, we moved into our new house late Satur- day evening. The three children had gone to sleep, and were stowed away for the night, while we, their parents, devoted ourselves industriously to arranging our household effects, so that we might keep the Sabbath in a Christian way. We had provided ourselves with mosquito bars and fixtures, but supposed that in a new house, we might pass at least two nights without them. But very soon, restlessness on the part of the children, and an occasional outcry assured us that the enemy had already gained entrance, and demanded immediate attention. Not until we had surrounded our bed with mosquito bars, and driven out the invaders, did we dare to retire. Persons of the present day can form little idea of the annoyance produced by these insignificant pests, in those early days-in- significant in size but formidable in numbers. The usual prairie breezes kept them down in the tall grass, but in a calm sultry evening it was amusing
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to see milking done. It was a brush with both hands about the face and ears-then a hasty draw from the cow's udder-these movements alter- nating with great regularity until the work was done. Sometimes it was with difficulty that respiration was performed without inhaling mos- quitos. Indeed, in some calm afternoons they would rise from the grass so numerous and dense as to cast a haze over the sun. They were of a prolific and sturdy species. "A great many of them would weigh a pound," and if they did not sit on the trees and bark, it was because there were no trees there. During that first summer the building of a mosquito smoke toward evening became a daily necessity. Nor would these sacrilegious pests hesitate to break in upon our devotional hours. We often found it necessary in our weekly prayer meetings to watch and fight as well as pray, and not infrequently would be heard between the ascending petitions the sweep or brush of the hand to drive away the assailing foe.
But the hot season soon passed by and the bracing winds of autumn began to whistle around our dwellings. Many were looking anxiously for the steam saw mill in expectation, that they might obtain the lumber needed to make their homes comfortable for the approaching winter. The parsonage was no exception. High enough fo a story and a half, it was open from puncheon floor
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to the shingles on the roof, and a Stuart cooking stove, that freezes the cook, could do little toward warming properly such a house. Lumber was not obtained until late in December-not until it had become so cold that the water in our glasses at table actually froze over, while we were eating (for adhering still to our Oberlin principles we used neither tea nor coffee). Our table too was as near the stove as we could place it, and the stove as hot as we could make it. The weather was very cold. The piercing prairie winds had come down upon us in their fury, as if to destroy us. But the cold relaxed. Lumber was obtained. A floor overhead narrowed the space to be warmed, and we were more comfortable. The minister's study was the common family room. Two holes were bored in a log on the north side, at a proper height and incline, in these two wooden pins were inserted, and across these a puncheon was fastened. This was the writing desk, but, as in cold weather, this was too far from the stove to be comfortable, the parson seated himself by the stove, and with portfolio on his lap and inkstand on the stove or on the lid of some pot, there prepared his sermons. As the puncheon floor became seasoned, the children were greatly annoyed by the sudden disappearance of their playthings down the cracks. After ad- justing matters around home and providing for the comfort and welfare of the family, arrangements
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were made for holding religious services abroad.
About 1849 when the wonderful stories of rich gold mines in California had crazed so many, a company of emigrants set out from Bureau county, Illinois, to cross the plains, consisting of father and mother Clark, stepson Barnes and family, two daughters, Mary and Cordelia, and their husbands Tozier and Martin, two sons, Am- brose and George, and their wives, and one un- married son, James-thirteen adults in all, for California across the plains, but having started too late in the season to reach their destination, stopped to winter on the east bank of the Missouri river, at a point opposite the mouth of the Big Platte river. There they laid out a town calling it California City. (In later years it was known as Florence.) As a company they never went farther. At that point regular appointments were made. Several of the company were professing Christians, others became interested and a little church was formed which existed for a number of years until several died, some moved away, the location went into the river and other points attracted the people.
At Trader's Point, 8 miles farther north and nearly east of Belleview in Nebraska, a place of 35 or 40 buildings, another appointment was made. Still another on Honey Creek, 18 miles above Council Bluffs. Another at Stutsman's Mills on
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the West Nishnabotna. Again in Cutler's camp on Silver Creek, not very distant from Silver City. There were appointments also on High Creek, and at Linden in Missouri. Glenwoood and Sidney had then no existence. Sidney was selected for the county seat in the summer of 1851, but had only a pole with the stars and stripes flying there- from to mark the site selected. No buildings were erected on the site until the latter part of that summer.
The steam mill did not reach the settlement on the Missouri bottom until December, and was so far from complete in its parts that it was a source of great vexation all winter. The man, Mr. Lyons, sent out to set it up, could not make it work satis- factorily. It produced some lumber, but at a dear rate. Every repair was made at a great disadvan- tage so remote from all machine shops.
Since in the unorganized state of our county, there was no legally recognized school district, or established public school, some of the neighbors on the bottom friendly to education co-operated, and erected a comfortable log school house about the year 1849. In this a flourishing school, embracing most of the children of school age in the vicinity, was in successful progress in 1850, under Mrs. E. G. Platt as teacher. In the autumn of that year a colored family by the name of Garner came into the neighborhood, who had been known to
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Dr. I. D. Blanchard when in Kansas. They had been industrious and economical and bought their freedom and came to a free state to enjoy it. The children of this family were of course invited to attend both day school and Sunday school, and as they accepted the invitation, immediately up bounded the race question, which was soon prac- tically solved by the incendiary burning of the school house, the only place in the entire settlement where either school or meeting could be held. Such was the sentiment of the executive officers of the county, and the laws of the state too, that this family was required to give bonds that they would not become a charge to the county, before they could become residents of the same. I. D. Blan- chard and G. B. Gaston became their bondsmen.
A case of Asiatic cholera occurred on the boat on which the parson and his family ascended the river from St. Louis in June, 1850. In July or August of that year there were several fatal cases in our settlement. Squire Lambert and his wife both died of it, and were interred by night. None who practiced total abstinence were attacked by it.
In 1851, about the time when the June rise in the Missouri river had filled its banks, we were visited with frequent heavy rains attended by sharp lightning and heavy thunder. The rains came usually in the night and often the flash of light-
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ning was immediately followed by the thunder, quick, short, and sharp, like the explosion of a cannon. The streams from the bluffs swollen by the rains poured large quantities of water into the bottom, where meeting the overflow from the river they spread out over a large part of the lowland. It could not, however, be seen, on account of the tall green grass, which at this season completely cov- ered the Missouri bottom. From the roof of a barn on which the parson had just been working, there was as fine a view of the surrounding region as he had ever had. Northward and southward as far as the eye could reach was one sea of waving green. Eastward it was bounded by the bluffs, and westward by the forest along the river. The land of Canaan never furnished to Abraham such a view as this. But things seen are not always what they appear to be. On a bright Saturday afternoon in June, 1851, our itinerant set out on horseback for Linden, Missouri, to fill his appoint- ment at that place the next day. All was dry and pleasant around home and no indication of any- thing unusual ahead. He accordingly mounted his horse, and followed south along the sand ridge, on which the road ran for a mile or two until it struck across the bottom. On leaving the ridge, he had gone but a few rods before he found himself in water, four or five feet deep, with water nearly across the entire bottom, as the se-
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