USA > Iowa > Benton County > History of Benton County, Iowa. From materials in the public archives, the Iowa Historical society's collection, the newspapers, and data of personal interviews > Part 11
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"Outside of parts of Polk. Benton, Canton and Taylor town- ships few land entries were made until about fifty-two to fifty-five. As a matter of course there was no market for farm products and live stock except to the immigrant. Schools and churches could not exist nich before the fifties because you were so few and scat- tered. The railroad and telegraph did not come until 1869. I doubt not the first settlers look upon these early days as their happiest, notwithstanding the privations they endured. Is it not true that we are in great measure creatures of our circumstances; that our actual needs are few and our others are largely bounded by our environment ?
"These first frontiersmen were but the advance guard of the army of sturdy, strennons, intelligent citizens of the more eastern parts invading the wilderness between them and the Pacific ocean. At one time the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts Bay. as they thought, proper investigation determined that population would never be very dense beyond the territory immediately about Boston and that a little way west from there the country never would be worth anything. We know that they were. like some of us today. judging that of which they had no adequate knowledge. Not longer ago than the beginnings of civilized life in this community you were tanght that west of the Missouri river was the great American desert. On the map we studied and in the imagination of the people the western border of Iowa was the
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limit of our agricultural lands and beyond lay a great waste that here and there might, possibly, be used for grazing purposes. Some began to wonder what we'd do with our ever increasing pop- ulation ; how in time, we'd feed them. Let us see. for a moment what the facts are as we know them or can reasonably believe them.
"Whose was the influence. intelligence and energy that brought about the wonderful changes we have seen in our national condition; that laid the foundations for our schools, colleges. churches and the law abiding instinct of our people and that so well put in practice the Golden Rule? It was the early pioncers. Counties and communities have men and women their formative in a county, state or country,
their childhood, as do time. The first settlers usually leave their in- press upon its people following them. There is no great difference in elimate or soil between North and South America. Both are in the new world now; whatever there was of civilization in either at discovery was found in the southern parts. Both of the Ameri- cas have their temperate, tropical and frigid zones. In the one the frigid zone is in the north while it is in the south in the other. In all other respects how great the difference. In one the people are progressive energetic, intelligent, law abiding and happy, commanding everywhere respect and influence. In the other the people are generally unprogressive. slothful. ignorant and ever ready to set aside law and disrupt government and without res- peet or influence as nations anywhere. But for the aegis of the Monroe doctrine, enunciated and maintained by the United States. it is more than possible many of these states of the south part of the continent would now be colonies or dependencies of some of the old world powers. In the one the pioneer settlements were made by those of the Anglo Saxon race, while in the other they were made by those of another blood. Some one, asked when the training of a child should begin, answered 'a hundred years before it was born.'
"Why did he answer so? Because the characteristics of the ancestor will inhere in the child and more or less mould its life. Changing circumstances may modify but not wholly eradicate these. The austere Puritan lover of religions and personal lib- erty was the pioneer at Massachusetts Bay. Ile left his home to enjoy such liberty yet he denied it to those who followed him into the wilderness for the same Pause, and ernelly persecuted and punished all who dared
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to differ with him. But there were many of the qualities in him that are so essential to nation builders. The cavalier of Virginia, in his coming, cared little for religious liberty and less, it may be for religion itself. From these two sources more than any where else has come the steady stream of immigrants who first opened up the Ohio valley, then that of the Mississippi and all that is west of it. This mingling and their changing circumstances modified the characteristics of each class, smoothed down and rounded off the roughness of the one and added strength and steadfastness to the other, but left untouched or intensified those of our race which make us, and those akin to us in blood, world leaders. Our Benton county pioneers are their descendants. Their training as citizens began in Massachusetts, Virginia and other Atlantic states long ago.
"The future of our country that some of you fonght for. that some of your sons or husbands died for and that all of us. both north and south, love so well, depends upon our children. Our day for shaping and moulding her destiny is abnost gone. God grant that it may continue to increase in all that makes a nation great until time shall be no more."
REMINISCENCES OF I. VAN METRE.
I. Van Metre. so well known to all old settlers of Benton coun- ty, contributed generously to the Vinton Eagle's jubilee edition of 1905. and the following is quoted from his articles:
"I did not get into Benton until late in the spring of 1856. when the sloughs were at their best. having been left behind to bring up the rear. I made the trip on horseback. I remember the ride well. Coleman's Grove was on the road seven miles from Cedar Rapids. and there was no human habitation for fifteen miles. It was a State road running from Cedar Rapids to Toledo. and was traveled by a large share of the population of the west. who did their trading. both buying and selling, at Cedar Rapids -chiefly buying. The preceding winter the fall of snow had been exceedingly heavy and the sloughs were at this spring season cor- respondingly full of water, and the mud was deep and stiff. The amount of travel on the road going and coming was great and the sloughs were badly ent up. I do not think it an exaggeration to state that the roads over many of these sloughs were a quarter
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to a half-mile width ; the sod worn out entirely in places. evidences being frequent where teams had been swamped, mired. and where the pluieky teamsters had carried their loads to the opposite bank. There were wagon tracks which indicated that some enterprising settlers had endeavored to head the sloughs. Having had a great deal of trouble getting over some of them myself, I concluded to follow one of these tracks. I think it was more than half a mile -it seems so. at least-where the track turned into the slough to eross. It seemed well up toward the head of the swail, and i-s appearance promised an easy passage. I turned my horse's head to follow the course taken by the wise man who had found a way to beat a slough. I soon learned something. Both my eyes and the action of my horse awakened me to a realization of the fast that neither the teamster nor myself had mastered the slough prob- lem. I saw. a hundred or so feet ahead of me, where the old grass had been tramped into the mud for yards around and where there was every appearance of horses having been struggling in th- mud. I got ont on the same side I had started in, and in time gut to the other side farther down.
"It was nearly sundown when I reached a cabin occupied by Thomas Keenan and family. Finquired the distance to Mr. Vau Metre's. There were several young men besides the oldl gentleman : near the door of the cabin were several women and a girl or two and numbers of small children. There were a few cows and cattle in the stable yard and some dueks and chickens. Mr. Keenan and some of the others answered my question: 'It is two miles, and the sloughs are bad.' A young fellow volunteered the assertion that I could not get through there that night, and Mr. Keenan said: 'Get off your horse and stay the night.' I protested, but he paid no attention to my protests. . Take the lad's horse,' he said, and the horse was taken. I was ushered into the house and had my supper. The cabin was probably sixteen feet square and very low. The family had had supper and were outside, except as elderly lady. who. I afterwards learned was Mrs. Keenan, and a younger woman. While I ate, I had a good opportunity to make a survey of the surroundings. There were three beds in one side of the room, very close together; the table stood near the door, and the stove was in the corner nearest to it. A miscellaneous assort- ment of articles filled the other corner. The food was plain. but good. and I ate heartly. The friendliness shown in every aet and the hospitable urging to eat more were little less effective in sharp-
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ening the appetite than the strenuous day's work I had done in braving twenty-five miles of early-day Iowa sloughs in wet spring- tine.
"The family retired early, giving me the bed in the southwest corner. which, like the others, was enrtained. I was tired and sleepy, and remember nothing of what followed until called for breakfast. I had supposed that most of the people I had seen the evening before were visitors, and was surprised to find them all seated at the table. As I recall the faces now, there were Mr. Keenan. Mike Smith. Mr. MeCormick and Mr. Cummins. sons-in- law of Mr. Keenan, Mike and Con Keenan, and myself. There were also Mrs. Keenan and two of the other ladies, if I remember rightly. It was homelike and free. and I did full justice to the substantial and palateable food.
"A surprise was awaiting me at the end of the meal. I had not observed the previous evening that in the corner filled with miscellaneous articles stood a ladder very upright. Neither had it ocenrred to me that there was any room upstairs for anybody to sleep. At the close of the meal old lady Keenan arose. and. go- ing to the ladder, called. 'Childer. coom to breakfast.' Such a gettin' downstairse I never did see. The little fellows following Katie Keenan -- I think that is the name. a miss of twelve or thir- teen years, perhaps -- simply rolled down that ladder.
"It seems that the sons-in-law and their wives. each pair of whom had two or three children, were staying temporarily un- der the home roof while building houses of their own. I think I am not at all out of the way in my count, which footed up eighteen of us sleeping under that roof that night. The names of the ser- eral poisons I ascertained later, and it is possible that I may have gotten them mixed. but otherwise the statement is simple truth.
"The incident strikingly illustrates a phase of the early pion- cer life-its free-handed, open-hearted, kindly hospitality The wel. come to the total stranger: not a grudging admission to shelter. but a fatherly order from old gentleman Keenan, 'Get off your horse and stay the night : the sloughs are bad and you may meet with trouble.' And this when the house was full to overflowing. and I was but two miles from my destination. Hospitality! How little people in general know of the significance of the word!
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SLOPE POLITICS.
"The largest gathering of people for a good time and a stroke of business held during the early days on the southern slope was held in the winter of 1857-8, I think it was, at the home of the Andersons, about a mile south of where Blairstown now stands. Along in the years of 57-8, and, in fact, for several years, there was a strong disposition upon the part of the people of the Slope and certain townships in Iowa and two or three townships in Tama County, to set up a new county. The people in South Ben- ton thought it unreasonable and unjust that Vinton, away to the north of the county, should be the county seat, and the action of Judge Samuel Douglass in building a court house and that of Tom Drummond in securing the location of the College for the Blind there, had practically cut off all prospect of the removal of the county seat to a more central point; so the active brains of the ambitious people of the southern section conceived the idea of a new county. The matter was broached to some of the principal men of the northern townships of lowa County, those lying north of the lowa River, which that stream, then poorly bridged. cut off from Marengo, their county seat. Marengo, like Vinton, is in the north of the county, and Williamsburg, further south, had al- ways had an ambition to be made the county seat. The people down that way favored the new scheme. Then over in Tama the people of two townships favored it. The men who did the figuring in the interest of the new movement calculated that these three. or rather four, interests-that is, the Tama corner township in- terest, and the north and south lowa County interest-could con- trol a majority of the voters of the two counties if the ques- tion were fairly submitted to them. The matter was earnestly discussed and quietly agitated by the people in the several di- visions named. and there were enthusiastic individuals who believed that the project was not only feasible, but certain of consumma- tion.
"I called it a meeting, but it was a party, and yet it had the elements of a meeting in it. Anderson's was what was known as Stoneeyfer's Grove, and was well located for the county seat of the new county, according to the best judgment of the people who lived in the immediate vicinity. I would not attempt to give a list of the big men who attended that party. You may be sure that Andy Stein was there. Andy was always around when aux inter- est of the Slope was to be forwarded or any interest of the county
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was to be protected. He lived at the foot of the bluffs, not far from the Jowa county line, and a few miles southeast of where Belle Plaine now stands. Jake Springer was there, then and ever since, Chief Mogul over in St. Clair. Pat Kelley and Mike Smith and two or three of the Van Metres were there. Snow and E. W. Stocker, of Kane township, and the Twogoods. Grahams. and mimerons others from over in Tama. There were representatives from all the territory to be affected by the change, large repres- entations of men, women and children.
BITTER OUTSIDE -- JOLLY INSIDE. -
"Having returned to Cedar Rapids and begun the study of law. I remained there after the family had moved out on the farm. but by frequent visits home I kept in touch with the people of Van Metre's Grove, or Pickaway. as the place was named in honor of the county from which the family had come when moving from Ohio. A postoffice was established at Pickaway in 1856, and John E. Van Metre was appointed postmaster. It was the halfway stopping place for the hack line between Cedar Rapids and Toledo, a visiting place for Ohioans and other of the family acquaintances at Cedar Rapids. I was stopping with the family of D. M. Me- Intosh in Cedar Rapids, in whose law office I was continuing my studies after my brother. Ezra's death.
"On Monday morning Me. suggested that we go out to Pick- away for a day or two. I think it was the first day of December. 1856, though it may have been a week earlier. The weather had been moderate. but damp. but this morning was reasonably fair. and not at all cold. We got a two-seated open buggy or wagon. such as were common in those days, and a good team. There were Mr. and Mrs. MeIntosh and little boy, Mrs. John Graves and my- self. The roads were not bad as they usually were in the spring time. but not any too good. We stopped to water the team at Mnd Creek, eight miles from home. While I was watering the horses it began to snow. Before we reached home the ground was covered an inch or two deep with the beautiful. It continued to snow through the night and was still at it in the morning. and the wind was busy piling it in drifts.
"Notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, we insisted on thinking that it would not be much of a storm. Brother Henry who had an errand at E. W. Storker's two miles west. hitched up a team and took in a couple of girls, relatives of the family, who
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were staying there, and Mrs. JJohn Graves, and went up to Mr. Stocker's. They intended to return without further delay than was necessary to warm up. but the storm grew so fierce and the snow-drift so high that they were obliged to stay over night, Even then the men did not dare to venture out with the ladies until they had broken a track the full two miles. All were safely back by evening of the second day.
"I mention this as an instance of the terrific character of the snow storms of those days, and because these mountainous snow drifts rendered doubly severe the too severe weather. vastly in- creasing the diffienlties of caring for stock and attending to other necessary labors. Think of a snow storm in these later years which would deter people from making a drive of two miles! We don't have them.
"But our Cedar Rapids party. From two days we extended our visit to ten. when Mr. MeIntosh having pressing professional business awaiting him, had to go. My brother Taylor hitched four horses to a bobsled with a wagon box on it, made all preparations to keep warm, and he and Mr. McIntosh started out to break a track to Cedar Rapids. They had a very hard time of it, but reached their destination that night. They returned the next day. bringing an additional conveyance with them. and the following day reached Cedar Rapids with the ladies.
"That is an incident common enough in those times. It was rough and severe outside, but indoors there were jolly times for two weeks."
JACOB SPRINGER.
"One of the most prominent characters in Benton county for the past fifty years is the Hon. Jocob Springer, of St. Clair town- ship. Ile is now living in retirement at the home of his daughter. Mrs. Jabez Bowers, of that township. He came to this country in 1852. while in the very prime of his young life. He and his good wife (now in the heavenly home) settled in St. Clair township when there wasn't a neighbor for miles and built up a prosperous home. It seemed to them then, and they often remarked it for several years, that they would not live to see the day even when their own township would be settled. Mrs. Springer, though now dead for several years, lived to see the almost full development
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of the county. From a land bare of homes it became dotted all about them with happy homes and school houses.
"Mr. Springer, in his active life, was a natural leader of men. lle possessed great organizing and executive ability. Hardly a movement, either civil or political. was suggested but he was called into the councils and his advice sought. He was born in Fayette county, Pennsylvania. January 21, 1824. On the 11th day of March, 1845, was married to Eliza J. McCormick. They raised five children to manhood and womanhood. three girls and two boys, one of which. Engene B., enlisted in Company H, Second Iowa Cavalry. in September, 1864, and died in the service in July. 1865; the balance of the children are now living.
"In 1852, Springer and family emigrated to Iowa, leaving Pennsylvania on June 2d. They came overland by team. There were no railroads at that time west of Chicago; crossed the Missis- sippi at Muscatine on a horse ferry-boat. East of Iowa City they passed two squadrons of United States troops in charge of the Mus- quakie Indians, taking them back to the reservation. The follow- ing summer four hundred of them left the reservation and returned and are now living near Tama City on land purchased with their own money, derived from the sale of their lands which the govern- ment purchased from them in Iowa. Springer and family arrived in Iowa City on the 5th day of July and stopped over there two days. They arrived in what is now known as St. Clair township on July 9th. Mr. Springer put up a tent and lived in it until a log cabin could be built, into which the family moved before it was finished."
GEORGE R. KNAPP'S REMINISCENCES.
The following was written originally for the semi-centennial edition of the Vinton Eagle by George R. Knapp of Vinton :
"My father, John Knapp, first visited Iowa in 1850. He had fought through the war with Mexico from Palo Alto to the peace of Guadaloup Hidalgo, with General Taylor and his ever-vieto- rious army, as well as one campaign against the Sioux Indians in the Northwest. He served with the famous First Mississippi under Colonel Jefferson Davis, afterward president of the Southern Con- federacy. This regiment sailed from New Orleans with twelve
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hundred men and mustered out there at the end of the war one hundred and thirty only. The ten hundred and seventy comrades were dead. every man, warrior and chief. There had been no sick leaves. no discharges, no prisoners. . My father had been wounded at Monterey, and his health had been ruined. like that of all his comrades.
DANGEROUS CRACKS.
"After his first visit to Jowa, Mr. Knapp went to Philadelphia and engaged in business, but found his health unequal to city life. so that he returned to Iowa in 1856 and settled with his family near Remington's Ferry in Cedar township. There was a small log cabin on the place erected by some squatters. This one had big cracks in the floor. When my nucle took me out of the wagon and put me down on the floor I was afraid to move lest I would fall through, and never know where I 'was at.' How- ever. there were so many things to frighten a boy, ghost stories and bears and panthers occassionally, and Indians.
"The Indians who visited us were all friendly, but just as good to scare children as any. So it happened that I soon got so used to all the scares that I was not afraid of any of them. I do not think this was anything unusual. Border children get a good nerve about the first thing. Indeed. I was fully grown before I had any idea what people meant when they said they were ner- vous.
THE SQUATTER "DEFINED."
"Perhaps I should explain, for the instruction of some of the younger readers, what a squatter was. The squatters were people. mostly Americans, who were forever keeping on the border of civilization, pushing the wild beasts and the Indians ever west- ward before the muzzles of their rifles. They generally bought no land. built their cabins on any land that suited them, staying unti! the settlers came. cultivating a little land and fishing and hunt- ing. They cut all the timber they wanted wherever it suited them. varing not a whit who owned it. Their cabins were warm in winter and cool in summer, and they made a good living after their fash- ion with little exertion. They were nearly all very is- norant and spuerstitious, but kindhearted and helpful, though not particularly honest.
"Did the settlers buy land which they had improved of the gov-
.
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ernment. and come and drive the squatters off and take their im- provements ? No, not on your life. That is, not at that stage of the game. That may have happened to some belated squatters, but the great body of them never suffered thus. There were plenty of hogs among the settlers that were not above taking anything from anybody, but they had noticed that other hogs of their type who had robbed squatters suddenly found themselves out of busi- ness entirely and in the hands of the coroner, or in equivalent circumstances. It was easy to steal from the Indians, but there were few people indeed who wanted the contract of robbing squat- ters.
"I remember that a man bought some timber, and in that timber he found a big pile of rails. One night, in a cabin, he said to the host: 'I bought that timber. and I suppose that big pile of rails is mine. They will come mighty handy to use in fencing in the spring.' Just then a man who had been quietly smoking said, "You let them rails alone"' and not another word. That was enough. though; the settler never moved a rail. What law there was could not be used against the squatters, for they could prove anything whatever by all the other squatters in the neigh- borhood.
"The squatters were always telling ghost stories, even locating the places where they could be seen nightly in wholesale lots. These stories aroused my enriosity so much that I felt that I ought by all means to see some ghosts myself ; and that never having seen a single one, placed me far behind the times. So one night, not knowing any better. I posted off to a lonely path in the woods where I had been told the ghosts were the thickest, and hiding where I had good view of the path, I waited and waited, never see- ing a ghost, until my mother got frightened at my absence and called me many times. I did not answer for fear of searing away the ghosts. I finally went home very warm under the collar at the disobliging ghosts."
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