USA > Iowa > Black Hawk County > History of Black Hawk County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 12
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On application of James Barclay and others, Barclay Township was organized into a civil division on March 2, 1855. In April of that year an election was held, with William C. Morton, C. A. Foye and Charles B. Coon as judges, and James Barclay and Ira Bradford as clerks. James Barclay was elected to the office of township clerk and William C. Morton and James Barclay, justices of the peace. James Barclay was also the first settler in the township, which division was named after him. He once kept a hotel at a place then called Camp Creek.
Among the first settlers in this township were Mr. and Mrs. Jason Stubbs, who lived at Dunkerton. They came to the township in the year 1857, but Mr. Stubbs had come out the previous year and purchased ninety acres of land with a log cabin, 16 by 20 feet, located upon it, with twenty-five acres broken and fenced, for $1,000. The couple came from eastern Tennessee, where they were married in 1850, afterwards driving a yoke of cattle to Illinois. During this journey only one railroad was crossed in a distance of six hundred miles. They settled on section 15 in Barclay and retired from active work in 1903, then moving to Dunkerton.
Mr. Stubbs related that he only saw one deer after coming here, but that wolves and rattlesnakes were plentiful. He said that their noise of howling was dismal and fearful and that almost any morning or evening they could be seen loping across the bleak prairies. They were not the ferocious timber wolves, but the smaller species, which would follow men and dogs from afar, but would flee when advanced upon. Their depredations were confined to killing defenseless sheep and hogs. It is also related that the families had a hard time getting breadstuffs in 1858, because in July of the preceding year a terrible hail storm
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completely devastated their fields, leaving not a single stalk of grain standing. That was the worst storm which ever visited the county and the most com- pletely devastating in its sweep. Mr. Stubbs also told about how he and a neighbor became lost while going to Waterloo to mill one autumn day. They could not leave Waterloo until it was getting dark and the night was pitchy black, with no stars to lead or guide and with no well-beaten path to lead them home. They floundered around considerably and after traveling for several hours the clouds broke away in the west. The welcome stars came out and they were able to go their way. They found that their teams were headed again for Waterloo and that no doubt they would have wandered around all night. On another occasion the family were lost on an unfenced forty acres of land near their home. The snow was deep and the blizzard was raging and the cold was intense. They had come with their twin girls to visit at John Smith's home. The boys, who were a little older, had gone to school. It was late in the evening when the parents started home and they wandered around and around on the prairies, unable to find their premises. They finally came to a farm owned by the Sanderlins and by a fence line were able to find their way home. There they found their boys safe and sound.
It may be news to this later generation to learn that at one time there was a flourishing little village at the Town of Barclay when Jesup had never been thought of. As stated before the first resident of the town was James Barclay, who took up a generous quantity of land and planned a city. It was about this time that a survey for the Dubuque & Pacific Railway had been projected west- ward from Dubuque and the stakes set by the surveying gang were on Barclay's farm. Thus his ambitions for a city site there were encouraged. At Barclay town, which was known far around, were several general stores, two hotels, a blacksmith shop, drug store, jewelry store, and two physicians. Joe Trum- bauer was the host of one of the hotels and Ed Bossey conducted the jewelry store. Wolff & Bunnell kept the main general store and John Derr built and operated a steam sawmill. When timber became exhausted this mill was con- verted into a sorghum factory. The postmaster was a man named Geiser, the father of Mrs. C. E. Phifer of Waterloo. The mail was kept in a portion of a double log cabin, built of poplar logs. Mr. Derr was a son-in-law of Mr. Geiser.
A wonderful town had been laid out on paper by Mr. Barclay and the part mentioned was to be only a beginning of what was to be a great city when the railroad was constructed. But there was the rub: the railroad was never built, at least where it was surveyed, but three or four miles south where people showed greater liberality. Mr. Barclay refused to give a penny as a bonus to have the road cross his farm and pass through his town. He would not even give the right of way. His lack of liberality in this particular lost him his pet scheme of building up a great city; and when the railroad was finally built across the southern part of the township the new Town of Jesup sprang up and Barclay withered. The houses of the villagers were removed to become the abiding place of the farmers and the store buildings were either moved or converted into homes or torn down. This was in 1861.
Dr. James Munsey, who practiced his profession for a number of years in Jesup and who has been dead for a long time, was formerly located at Barclay.
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PIONEER HOME IN BARCLAY TOWNSHIP
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The religious history of Barclay Township, as well as all of the other divisions of Black Hawk County, may be read in the chapter devoted to the history of the churches.
During the ten years subsequent to 1860 quite a few settlers came to Barclay Township. Among the very early settlers were: Dr. James Munsey, John Schuler, Dan Brunn, T. F. Rice, L. Lewis, Charles Kleckner, H. Buss, W. Walker, H. Oliver, Cyrus Smith, Enoch Jenkins, Thomas Cunningham, John Buhner, Gregor Neith.
BENNINGTON TOWNSHIP
On the petition of Lester Harwood and other citizens of Lester Township, dated February 1, 1858, the County Court of Black Hawk issued an order setting off township 90, range 12, before a part of Lester Township, into a new division to bear the name of Bennington Township. The home of B. G. Updike was selected as the place of holding the first election and he was authorized to post notices of the same. At the first election the judges were: Samuel Buck, Charles M. Bower and Thomas S. Thames, and the clerks were: Isaac K. Vanderberg and Harlan P. Homer. Thomas E. Homer and John E. Burlaw were elected justices of the peace : Isaac K. Vanderberg, clerk; Hiram E. Bundy and Daniel Falkner, constables.
One of the last living residents of this township among the list of pioneers was H. P. Homer. He came to this section in 1856 from Cortland County, New York, in company with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas S. Homer, his sister, and his cousin, James Sunderland. They came by train as far as Dunleith, now East Dubuque, and across the river, part way with boats and part way on the ice, as the stream was not completely frozen over. Landing on the west bank all of the party except H. P. Homer took stages westward across the country. Mr. Homer walked all of the way to Bennington Township. He did not have to come alone, however. as other pedestrians were overtaken, all going in one direction.
After arriving in this township the father bought out Yeager Baum, who owned a tract of land in section 4. There was a little log cabin on the place, but afterwards this was removed. The father died on January 5, 1864, and the mother October 5, 1880, and both are buried in the Bennington Cemetery. The son was married March 22, 1860, to Glorvina A. Corwin, who died in Waterloo in 1900.
Mr. Homer was nineteen years of age when he reached the county and began at once to teach school in deserted log cabins, which were used in the early days as schoolhouses. These habitations always afforded an abundance of ventilation and the sunshine, also rain, entered freely in the cracks and crevices and the roof, the latter being constructed of shingles three or four feet long, hewn out of logs. The floor was of puncheons laid on stringers. While Mr. Homer was teaching six miles northwest of his pioneer home in the district which included a part of Bremer and a part of Black Hawk counties, he and his father, one winter evening, narrowly escaped being frozen to death. There were no fences to guide one along the highway in the early days and it is well known that the snow storms and blizzards were far more severe than any we have today. The
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schoolmaster's father hitched up two yoke of oxen to a wagon on Friday after- noon, expecting to go to the big woods which was but a short distance north of the schoolhouse, to get a load of wood. When he reached the school it began to snow so hard and the wind blew up so cold that father and son decided to return home and not continue farther in the face of the storm. It was intensely cold and became dark immediately after 4 o'clock, which darkness coupled with the blinding whirls of snow made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead of them. They took a direction opposite from that in which the wind was coming. as that would take them directly home. They had not gone far when the wind suddenly shifted and before they could get their bearings the oxen, blinded by the storm which was now in front of them, turned around headlong in an opposite direction. To add to their bewilderment the highway, which had been followed heretofore only by the snow covering the short weeds and the place being white instead of strewn with weed tops as the rest of the country was, suddenly had become a bank of white and no weeds were to be seen anywhere. The men knew then that they were lost. To call for help would be useless for there were no settlers near and had there been the fierce wind would have destroyed their cries at twenty-five paces. All of this time the snow was rapidly piling up deeper. Just as that indescribable feeling takes hold of one who is really lost, the son had his attention drawn to a large tree branch which appeared ahead of the oxen. Calling his father's attention to the object, the father uttered a cry of joy because they had at last found a familiar landmark. The tree branch had been stuck into the ground during the summer by Mr. Homer. From that point new bearings were secured and the journey to the cabin was again taken up with added courage. There were many difficulties in the way even then. The white snow path would occasionally be filled with weeds and the whole surface of the country would present a monotonous picture, only a ghastly bank of white every- where. The lost men could not tell their own cabin which lay before them, because the snow had drifted around the windows so high as to shut out the beacon rays of the candles inside, which in pioneer days were always set in the windows to guide the travelers. Ordinarily oxen were very intelligent and would go home of their own accord when their masters were lost on the prairies, but these animals seemed to be crazed and had seemingly lost all of their intuitive cunning. But there was a reason for it as Mr. Homer discovered when he examined their heads after they had been placed in the stable. Their faces were covered to a depth of three or four inches with ice and snow, completely blinding them and im- pairing their hearing. In order to indicate how cold was the weather that night it is only necessary to say that when H. P. Homer raised the front of his cap for a moment to get a better view of their location, he froze his forehead. A man on the same night was frozen to death near the schoolhouse where Mr. Homer had been teaching.
This same narrator also said that when he first came to Bennington Township he could drive to Waterloo almost on a straight line, so few were the fences and so few were the settlers. When he came to the township there was a family by the name of Ilarwood living on the north section and a family by the name of Bundy living farther to the west, while several families were residing near the big woods. Thomas Blake lived near Blakeville and other residents of the town- ship were B. G. Updike and James Rogers.
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Mr. Homer said that he saw only one wild deer during his period of early settlement, because most of the deer had been killed the previous winter. Every house, then, was a hotel and hospitality was of the sincere and generous sort. Rattlesnakes were very plentiful and it was not uncommon to kill twenty-five or thirty of the reptiles in a single season. No one in the township was bitten by them, but Mrs. Homer's younger brother, Freeland Corwin, who was living in Fox Township, was bit on the foot one evening, while driving the cows home, and died shortly afterwards in great agony. A man near Jefferson was bitten by a rattlesnake, but a liberal dose of whiskey neutralized the poison.
The only tragedy which has ever happened in Bennington Township was the mystery of Chris Monk, whose decaying body was found in a grove near the west edge of the township. It was never known just how Monk came to his death, but there was a supposition at the time that he had been murdered, although no one was arrested on the charge.
A postoffice, with B. G. Updike as postmaster, was established on June 18, 1856, and that, also the town, took the name of Blakeville. No plat of the town was ever filed and when the rural free delivery mail system came in the office at Blakeville was abolished.
Other men who came to this township in an early day and made entries were : Hiram Bundy, Aaron Butts, Robert Allen, Perry Casteel, Nathan B. Choate, Joseph H. Cowlishaw, Henry Graham, Samuel Buck, William W. Hutton, Charles M. Bower, Daniel Faulkner. Yeager Baum entered the southwest half of section 4 in 1855, built a log house and sold the place in April, 1856, to Thomas S. Homer. In this same year Nathan Harwood entered and built a house in the northwest quarter of the same section.
The first white child born within the township was a son of Yeager Baum and wife, born in April, 1856. The first girl was a daughter of Jesse Myers and wife, born in January, I857.
The first marriage on record known to have been performed in the township was that of Catherine Myers and Clark King, on May 27, 1860. Thomas S. Homer, justice of the peace, officiated.
The population of the township in August, 1858, was 108, of whom twenty- six were school children. These people were located upon eleven sections, leaving twenty-five sections without an inhabitant.
Data upon the religious, educational and other individual topics connected with Bennington Township may be found in their respective chapters.
BIG CREEK TOWNSHIP
On the same day on which Cedar Township was created, namely, March 12, 1856. the following appears of record :
"And it is further ordered. That all of that part of township 87 north of range 12 west, in said county, which lies south of a line running east and west through the center of the same, and all of that part of township 87, north of range II west, which lies south and west of the Cedar River be and the same be hereby organized into a township for election and other purposes, to be known and designated as Big Creek Township, and the first election in the said Big
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Creek Township be held on the first Monday in April, at the house of Thomas R. Points."
The two townships of Cedar and Big Creek were slightly confused in the contest. The election in Cedar was ordered to be held at the house of Dr. Jesse Wasson and he was elected justice of the peace of Big Creek Township. The election in Big Creek was ordered at the house of Thomas R. Points and he was clerk of the election in Cedar. At the first election in Big Creek Township James Hammer, Christian Good and S. P. Cooper were judges, and S. N. Knowles and Jesse Wasson, clerks. John Shawner was elected clerk and C. Good and J. Wasson, justices of the peace.
In the settlement of Big Creek Township and La Porte City. Dr. Jesse Wasson, long since deceased, had a very prominent part. He was the first settler of La Porte City, was the first justice of the peace and the first postmaster. He was also the first physician. His life resulted in great good to his com- munity and his kind deeds are still remembered. During the first year of his reign as postmaster he paid all of the expenses accruing from that office out of his own pocket, as the town was not on the regular mail route.
Doctor Wasson came to the township in 1855 from La Porte, Indiana, and he named the town from that city. He constructed a small building on the corner of Main and Locust streets in April. 1855. It was designed as a store house and on the following May opened with a stock of goods. His family occupied one corner of it until the next summer, when the doctor built a dwelling. The first sawmill was erected on Big Creek in 1856 by him. The first grist mill was built by Louis Turner in 1855-6. In 1860 the mill was burned, but another was constructed five years later by T. Il. Elwell and bore a good reputation. It was supplied with four runs of stone.
Among the first to settle in the township were: John Smelser, who located two miles east of La Porte City, in Benton County, on Rock Creek, in the spring of the year 1853. It is said that he helped build the first house in La Porte City, the materials, logs and lumber, being brought a distance of twenty-five miles. Hiram Parks settled on a farm two miles east of La Porte City in the spring of '54. com- ing with his father. John Parks. He attended the first school taught in the district, which was taught by Albert Reeve. Henry Husman and his son, Joseph, came to this county in 1854 and located one mile east of La Porte. Christian Good came in the spring of 1853 and located on a farm two miles east of La Porte City on the Cemetery Road. John Howrey came through La Porte City on March 16. 1852. Owing to the high water in Big Creek the party was compelled to construct a pontoon bridge. Howrey was accompanied by a family by the name of Points, who located in Cedar Township, on Miller's Creek, that spring. Howrey walked back to Indiana, but returned the following spring and located in Spring Creek Township, where he lived until 1896, when he came to La Porte City. Seth Cooper came in 1854. He was one of the first to attend school in La Porte City. in the schoolhouse standing where the Union State Bank is now located. John Shimer was an carly settler of Spring Creek, but moved to La Porte City later. In fact, Mr. Shimer was born in Spring Creek Township on January 26, 1853 .. John Haymond located in Spring Creek in 1855, but came to La Porte City in 1892. Abraham Longaker settled in Spring Creek in 1857 and came to Big Creek Township in 1879. and in 1902 to La Porte. G. G. Jones also was an carly
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settler of Spring Creek, but forsook that township for Big Creek in 1885, and La Porte City in 1907.
The first men to locate in Big Creek Township between 1851 and 1854 were: Joseph Brown, William Brown, Luke Bravender, Joseph Forbs, James Hannes. George Cook, John Dees, John Smelser, William Smelser, Christian Good, Mr. Dempsey, John Shafer. In 1854 and 1855 the following persons located in the township: Henry Husman, John Parks, John R. Reeves, Levi Kennicott, Seth Cooper, William Cooper, Chris Erbe, Henry Turner, Sol Harvey, Alfred Ken- nedy, Salmon Chapin, William Clark, John Clark, Riley Mautry, Ezra Burns. S. W. Knowles, Dr. J. Wasson, John Thompson, John and James Fosdick. Those who located in the township between 1855 and 1856 were: George Nicholas, John Nichols, John Gannon, Thomas Mayes. Wal Herd, James Herd, Mickey O'Rear- don, Lenius Turner, William Fox, David Fox, Cyrus Cotton, Allen Cotton, Ed Quackenbush, George Hackett, Jackson King, John King, John Leach, Jesse Dodson, George Bishop. The latter was the first attorney in La Porte City.
In 1856, John Rohlf, an early settler, and W. L. Fox built a story and a half building twelve feet square in the brush on the east side of Main Street. The timber was all taken from public lands. In the lower floor were placed a few rude benches, slabs with the soft side up, and it was here in the summer of 1856 that the first school was opened. Miss Hattie Flemming was the teacher, who after- ward married James Fosdick. The first schoolhouse was constructed of logs and was located on Schoolhouse Square. The second was a frame building built on the same site in 1864. One of the early principals of this school was Walter H. Butler, who afterward became congressman and a free silver democrat. .
The first blacksmith in the township was John Thompson. He opened up business in a log shop. The first iron bridge in the township was constructed across Big Creek in 1867. The first newspaper was the Progress, published by Dr. Jesse Wasson, and was established in November, 1870. The first road through La Porte City was the state road from Vinton to Cedar Falls, which was opened in May, 1855.
CHAPTER V REMINISCENCES
EARLY WATERLOO By H. B. Allen
In October, 1855, I left the law office of Judge Brown of Lowville, Lewis County, New York, to seek the health I had lost in leaving the farm where I was raised, at the age of seventeen, and devoting myself too assiduously at school as scholar and teacher, to fit myself and secure the means to enter upon the more congenial and profitable occupation of a lawyer.
Naturally, I turned to the then far and fair West. After bidding relatives and friends a reluctant and, as they thought, a final farewell, I found myself on board of a steamer at Sackett's Harbor on the east end of Lake Ontario, ticketed for Chicago; from Chicago by the Galena Union Railroad on its first passenger trip through to Dunleith, now East Dubuque, and over the Mississippi on a steam ferry to Dubuque, Iowa.
Before leaving New York I had made and saved up enough to pay for an economical trip to Iowa and to enter at Government price, at $1.25 an acre, a quarter section of land, which I then hoped to find near the City of Dubuque. By working and improving it a year or so, I hoped to restore my health and enable myself to enter upon the practice of law.
Instead of Government land, subject to private entry, near Dubuque, I found upon examination of the records in the land office that there was no desirable land short of Franklin and Cerro Gordo counties and also that land was selling in Dubuque and adjoining counties at $25 an acre and up.
Not to be defeated in my purpose to obtain an Iowa farm, I made arrange- ments with a Hoosier emigrant who, with his family, was in pursuit of the same purpose, to make a trip of exploration together. Leaving his family in a camp a few miles west of Dubuque, and with all my earthly goods in a small trunk, a small package of currency in a belt secured tightly and safely around my waist, and with high hopes of regaining health and strength and an insatiable ambition to become rich in the ownership of an Iowa farm, we started on our journey westward in a light covered wagon which served both as a living and sleeping tent.
Passing through Delhi (Manchester did not then exist), and Independence, in three days we reached the infant village of Waterloo, forded the Cedar River below the brush dam, and landed at the log house called the Sherman Hotel, situated where the old Central (Carpenter) House now stands. The house was full to overflowing, and we were sent adrift to seek lodging and shelter for Vol. I- 7
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the night. The Crittenden family that had just arrived from New York and had built their house on the block on which now stands the postoffice building, took us in, and although crowded for room, kindly gave us permission to sleep on the floor, which we gladly accepted and highly appreciated, as in the morning when we awoke, we found the ground covered with a carpet of snow.
Not finding any Government land in Black Hawk County, we proceeded on our way through Cedar Falls over what seemed to be endless prairies, guiltless of inhabitants, and with only an occasional natural grove or timber, until we reached Cerro Gordo County.
There we found and located each a quarter section of beautiful and fertile land on Lime Creek, about two miles from where Mason City, the county seat, now stands.
We stayed over night in the cabin of a homesteader on a quarter section near the land we selected. The cabin consisted of but one room without a floor, and in the early morning we were awakened by the loud and exultant crowing of the proud rooster who, with his contented harem, occupied an exalted perch in the same room as a harbor of safety from the ravages of the wily coyote.
When, after a three days' ride over the prairie, we reached Decorah, where the United States Land Office was located, we found that the land we selected had already been claimed or entered and then all my bright visions of an Iowa farm vanished.
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