USA > Iowa > Black Hawk County > History of Black Hawk County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 18
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"Barrick was also profuse in expressing his opinion in regard to the extra good quality of the meat, which he ate for young deer. He said he had never before eaten such tender and juicy meat, that his teeth went through it like chewing cheese. In order to put his appreciation of it on exhibition he filled himself up until 'too full for utterance.'
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"After dinner, in strolling around the camp, Barrick and Newell ran across a pile of refuse, consisting of what seemed to be the heads and feet of a large number of white dogs. Barrick inquired in amazement : 'What in time does all this mean ?'
".It means,' answered Newell, 'that these are the parts of the dogs that were discarded at the feast.'
""Why, you don't pretend to say that the meat we ate for dinner was dog meat, do you ?'
"'It undoubtedly was,' Newell informed Barrick. 'There is nothing that the Indians prize so highly or would receive the least consideration as a substitute at their annual feasts for the flesh of the white dog. They are bred and raised for these occasions. What we ate for dinner was no doubt the choice young ones.
"That was too much for Barrick. His stomach began to nauseate and he soon parted with his dog and hominy. He used to say that from that time on he never could look a dog squarely in the face and always had a perfect abhorrence for white dogs.
"James Newell came to Union Township in 1845."
EARLY DAYS IN WATERLOO
The following are the pioneer experiences of George R. Crittenden :
"I came here in 1855. There were nearly 300 inhabitants then (in Waterloo). Among the principal citizens were A. P. Hosford and Edmund Miller. They were running a sort of banking and real estate business. They were both shrewd business men. Then there were Charles Mullan and George W. Hanna, who were the first comers and the original proprietors of the town. John H. Leavitt was here and active in business. He opened a bank in 1856. Previously, he was in the real estate business, which he continued in connection with his banking. B. J. Capwell was here and cut a prominent figure in business. He had a store in a log building and it was a common resort for the people to gather in and talk over matters. J. C. Hubbard, who had the best store in town, was here. He was afterwards county judge. William Haddock came in that year and started the Waterloo Register. The press and material were second-hand and the whole was a modest affair. He sold the plant in 1859 soon after Hartman and Ingersoll had started the Courier. Sullivan Day was here when I came. He was consid- erable of a man and much of a character. In 1856 he erected a two-story brick house on Sycamore Street, one of the first three to be erected in the town. F. S. Washburn was here when I came and was building a steam sawmill. Farmington Lewis was here, also Joshua Davis, father of Paul Davis, proprietor of the Paul Davis Dry Goods Store, and Dr. J. C. Harper, who was the only physician, as I remember. T. I. Mesick came in 1856 and had the first good store there was in the town. John Mesick, father of Ed. Mesick, also was here, but he lived on a farm before coming to the town. There were others who were quite active in business affairs at the time, whose names I do not recall. L. A. Cobb, who figured conspicuously in his day, came in 1855. Henry and John Nauman were here when I came. Henry was the father of William, George. Frank and Charles,
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- afterward business men of Waterloo. Henry was a young fellow then and was working for Charles Mullan, father of C. W. Mullan. Henry Sherman kept a hotel where the Central House later stood. He was a big man for the times and no one appreciated the fact better than he.
"There were no superfluities in amusements. A country dance occasionally with some little doings on the Fourth of July and at Christmas time. But we were very sociable people and as I look back it appears to me the youth of the present day have no advantage over us boys and girls of more than fifty years ago. There is more tinsel, pretension, more elaborate, gorgeous plumage; more of formality and less of freedom, but of real youthful, heartful enjoyment and joy of life I really believe that the advantage is in favor of the old new times of the very early days. Everybody went to every gathering from a church sociable to a picnic and were free and easy as our family gatherings.
"Personally, when I came to Waterloo I came with my father and family. My father owned a farm northeast of town and I farmed it and lived in town, not being married. My father bought a forty-acre tract where the Catholic Ceme- tery now is located. I also farmed this. Later I went into the grocery and fruit business, in which I continued for several years.
"S. L. May was an early comer. He kept a hotel in the building on the corner where the Commercial Block now stands, corner of Fourth and Sycamore streets.
"One of the most important characters in early Waterloo was G. W. Couch, who came here in 1866. He had big ideas and something followed his coming. He built the first flouring mill. His presence inspired confidence. He built the first bridge. Money and work were subscribed for the purpose. He took over the subscriptions, agreeing to build a bridge, which he did. Only a small part of the subscriptions were ever paid. His interest was greater in having the bridge than that of others as better connections with territory on the east side of the river than that afforded by the ferry was in a measure necessary to the success of his flouring mill. In my opinion he did more to boost Waterloo than any other man of the times. H. B. Allen, who was a power and success in Waterloo for many years, came in 1857. Sylvester Bagg, who for many years, later on, was judge of the District Court, came in 1856. Allen, like Bagg, was a lawyer and a good one, but besides that was a shrewd and highly successful banker and general business man. A great many men came in the following fifteen years and too many figured in town, county and city affairs for me to even pretend to name them. There is Horace Boies, whose deeds and accomplishments are known to every one. J. C. Gates, who came in the '6os, and A. J. Edwards, who came in the '50s. Both of them had been and are still important factors in the business, social and religious life of the city.
"Following the advent of the Dubuque and Sioux City Railway, now the Illi- nois Central, in 1860, and for about eight years following, when Waterloo was incorporated as a city and particularly after the location of the Illinois Central shops here in 1864, there was a great increase in population and business. To tell everything would take a volume. I can only assure you that among the several thousand who came in those ten years there were a great many ambitious young men who pushed their own and the city's interest. Not a few of them are still here, not so young as then, but imbued with much of the early spirit and still in the ring."
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TIMBER RELAY STATION FOR HORSE THIEVES
Andrew Sutherland, one of the pioneer residents of Spring Creek Township, a man of literary taste and well informed on all subjects of current interest, is the author of the following :
"'Go West, young man, and better your condition.'
"These words moved the multitudes to stake their claims in Iowa.
"Others had spied out the land, but the great wave moved in the '50s.
"One coming through the miry streets of Chicago in that decade had need of a highly cultivated imagination to see results achieved since that time. Events of social, political and economical importance crowded each other so rapidly in this decade that we now wonder where the men and means came from that enabled us to so fully grasp the situation and mold it in a few years so as to dot the trackless prairies with modern cities, that put the then Chicago far in the shade.
"Winter in the early '50s gave little warning of the blizzards that swept over the state, particularly in 1856 and 1857, which took lives in a few days that re- quired three figures to enumerate. Within twenty miles of Howard Center twenty-four persons were frozen to death, one of them a Myers boy, residing in Black Hawk County.
"Herds of elk, rendered helpless by the deep snow and sharp crust, were wantonly clubbed to death in the northern counties and later on the snow became so deep and the crust so heavy that heavily laden teams traveled at will over the country, the few fences being under the white, the protruding stakes being occu- pied to the limit by prairie chickens, and it was no unusual sight in the early 6os to see a half mile of rail fence literally covered with these birds. Immense numbers were caught, their breasts dried and smoked and the remainder thrown away, and later on their shipment to the eastern states was a prolific source of revenue to the country people.
"Among the earliest of whites to stake a claim was a character known as Jim Chambers. He roamed over the entire state, gathering the best of wild game, wild fish, and honey, which he sold or bartered to the newcomers. His frequent trips to the Indian hunting grounds were resented by the red men and some of his getaways had only a narrow margin of safety.
"Chambers also had much to do with stripping the cedar timber from our river banks and rafting it to Cedar Rapids.
"It was in the '50s also that the greatest gang of horse thieves that ever existed in the state was broken up by 'regulators,' well organized, reaching through three or more states. They defied conviction, laughed at law officers and threat- ened witnesses appearing against them.
"Noble County, Indiana, seemed to be their headquarters, our Cedar River, one of their principal highways, and Spring Creek timber, one of their noted relay stations.
"The number and value of horses stolen in this vicinity was so great that owners were nervous night and day until as a last resort a committee visited several prominent citizens, among whom was a man named Bates, living on what is now known as the old John Clark farm, and told them to quit under penalty.
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"Good, yet strange, horses were seen hereabouts almost every day, until the vigilantes organized all along the line and held about twenty neck-tie parties. sending scores of the gentry to the penitentiary.
"Several, Bates among the number, left here in a hurry and the rest were good for awhile.
"In those good old days the real estate man was in the blossoming stage. One, Chambaud, called on us from Europe. A little cask, mixed with brains and cheek, enabled him to plot and lithograph Gilbertville. Fleets of steamers churned the waters at the wharves on the Cedar, while innumerable trains crowded the railroad tracks.
"Genial and guileless Chambaud! With his stock of liquors and cigars from Paree, he benevolently shared his good things with friends yonder toward the rising sun and left for France. If living he is there yet, while his friends from the East have but recently ceased their inquiry about the hole that Chambaud dug for their money.
"In the land craze of 1854 and 1858 the United States land agent at Osage turned a trick that would put ye modern realty kid to sleep. He then took a long vacation and upon his return found it convenient to donate many thousands of dollars to the public.
"Compared with the old timer our present land man is a model.
"In 1858 the steamboat Black Hawk arrived at Waterloo with freight and cut the price of heavy goods which had been previously teamed from Iowa City, Cedar Rapids or the Mississippi.
"I saw her in 1862 near Memphis, Tennessee, where she was engaged in con- traband cotton trade, in which she was lost. Thus ingloriously ended what at first appeared to be a most promising career.
"Rail service by the Illinois Central was opened to Waterloo about the close of this decade, but the winter of 1860-61 held up trains almost continually for over sixty days; violent storms and deep snows kept them busy shoveling, only to be drifted full ere they had been pulled through.
"But the most conspicuous event in that decade, however, was the death of the 'wild cat banks.' Gold and silver circulated freely and plentifully until 1856, when paper money took its place to a great extent. The land bubble burst about this time and with it most of the banks died or became very sick. Our Legislature enacted many special and important laws for the relief of the debtor class, and specie was a minus quantity./
"In 1861 I was building a residence for an aged man named Billings in Poyner Township, who, by the way, had deposited paper money with John Leavitt in 1860. the bills being sealed in an envelope and returned to Billings in early '61, only to disclose a depreciation in value of 70 per cent. Forty acres of land were sold to partially complete the house and Billings died under the load.
"On one of our trips to Waterloo Billings took a barrel of eggs packed in oats and, failing to get an offer for them at the stores for any price or in such goods as he could use, emptied the barrel in West Fourth Street, mixing eggs and oats by driving over them. Looking from the store a few moments later I saw a sów and her pigs feeding on them.
"In the early '6os it was no cause for comment to see the husky landowner come to town barefooted, with home braided straw hat or muskrat cap, for corn, coffee
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and pork were so cheap that he traveled on his uppers. Sorghum was evaporated in big iron kettles, often burned to vary the flavor, and listed among the luxuries, to be used in pastry and crab apple sauce.
"Frenchtown, as Gilbertville was called, enlivened the situation by rye dis- tilleries and a brewery, but when Uncle Sam's minions were approaching on a still hunt in 1866, Oppel met them half way to Waterloo, carrying his copper still on his back. After a few preliminaries, including a number of fines, the industry was wiped out.
"Fond memory recalls an especially pleasant link between Waterloo and the outlying territory in the stalwart, warm-hearted Doctor Barber. Generous and sympathetic to a fault, he was richly endowed with the faculty of inspiring his patients with hope, faith and charity, and the peaceful last days of the grand old man and his good wife are cherished by the old settlers as one of their happiest recollections.
"A hundred or more Musquakies on their annual trapping or visiting tours were familiar and interesting .events at that time, and their unselfish willingness to permit their female relatives to monopolize the labor market gave us pointers, and one had no need to draw on imagination to see a half dozen white men sitting about the cook stove, decorating it with tobacco saliva, while the housewife was chopping wood with which to cook dinner.
"In the person of Dr. Jesse Wasson of La Porte City we may see a fine speci- men of pioneer days. Versatility, with which he was richly endowed, was a prime necessity, and, measured as legislator, mayor, postmaster. physician, editor, manufacturer in various important lines, general merchandising, mechanics, wood or metal, he scored well. As a general booster he had few equals, while the cares of life and his three hundred odd avoirdupois were lightly borne.
"He loved to take the conceit out of the fast ones in the fifty-yard sprint, and rarely missed an opportunity to shake the 'light fantastic.' He seldom danced in a house with but one room, but on one occasion consented to join in a one-room house with porch addition near Frenchtown, and when he cut loose in a German the crowd on the porch cheered him to the echo, and claimed him as one of their own in disguise.
"Among those who have neared or passed the century mark are Ekler Josiah Jackson, county supervisor at one time, now in Arkansas, living at one hundred and one years of age; Mrs. Howrey, ninety-seven years old, living in Spring Creek Township : our own 'Mickey' O'Reardon, who helped to dig the Erie Canal in the long ago, and served his three years in Company D, of La Porte, when over sixty years of age, dying in 1905. in his second century. The Nestor of them all, perhaps, Mr. Washburn, who settled in Spring Creek Township early and built a grist mill on Spring Creek in 1866, when over eighty years old.
"A Maquoketa paper announced his death at that place a few years ago, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Jerome Tryon, also well known here, and gave his age at something like one hundred and three or one hundred and four.
"Elder Jackson wielded the real birch here in the early days, and some think it was twenty feet long and two inches in diameter.
"Opportunities were open for all for a common schooling at an early date, but in a recent short visit to Normal Hill, the contrast between the monumental group of massive, yet beautiful, structures and the one lone building on State Street,
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Albany, New York, in 1850, requiring a large sign to find it, furnished food for a comparative reverie. Queer, indeed, must be the Iowan who, in the presence of these huge piles of stone and brick, does not tingle with pride even to his finger tips, while giving thanks for the wisdom which inspired the powers to concentrate and conquer rather than divide and fail as other states have done. Fortunate in its executive head, its national repute does Iowa proud."
RECOLLECTIONS BY EDWIN MESICK
On the wall of my grandfather's parlor on the banks of the Mohawk, way back in old York State, more than a half century ago, hung a small steel engraving which had a most peculiar fascination for me as a boy. The view was that of a wide spreading prairie. In the foreground an emigrant with his covered wagon in which was assembled his family and all his earthly possessions, with the ever- present dog and a cow or two following on behind. The fleeing emigrant was gazing in terror behind him and following in his wake was a great mountain of flame and smoke reaching to the very heavens which threatened soon to over- whelm him in its onward march. I never entered that parlor without gazing with 'breathless interest on that picture and wondering what the outcome would be between the helpless traveler and the fire fiend which was sweeping toward him like a besom of destruction. How little did I then think that in a brief period I would be called upon to look at an almost identical picture-only that the picture I should behold would be a reality. I well remember the night, back in the fall of '58 or '59, after we had moved west and were living in Black Hawk County. We saw and remarked about the fire as the shades of evening fell, but as the blaze was fully ten miles away we felt no apprehension, for there was never a night at that time of the year but that the heavens would brilliantly reflect back the work of the fiery monster somewhere within the range of one's vision. By midnight it was upon us. Starting from some point seemingly south of Pilot's Grove, it swept over the intervening country, then a trackless wilderness, across Elk's Run, licking up in its remorseless path everything combustible, and when near my father's residence the few settlers then living out that way assembled to make such a stand as was possible and attempt to curb the onward march of the monster.
When morning broke what a scene of blackness and desolation was all about us. Thousands upon thousands of acres had been burned over; where now are comfortable farm houses, generous barns, groves of timber, and other improve- ments, there was one black waste. Hundreds of stacks of grain and hay and many small and unprotected sheds and barns went up in smoke that night, but so far as I remember only one house fell a prey to the flames. This was a log structure, standing about a mile south of us on what was called the Independence Road, which a short time before had been abandoned as a residence and was filled with hay.
How well I remember the year 1858. Rain, rain, rain! Would it never stop raining? The wheat crop was an absolute failure. Not as much grain was har- vested from an acre of land as had been put in at seed time. And that gathered would not be considered decent screenings now. I remember my father taking a couple of sacks of this grain to Frenchtown (now Gilbertville), as we could not
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get it ground in Waterloo on account of the high stage of the water, and the flour we received was so poor that bread could not be made from it-the loaves after baking being about as palatable as cannon balls, and nearly as hard. The country that year was one vast succession of lakes and ponds and ducks and geese never left this region during the whole summer.
It was during this year that I got my first schooling in Iowa. We lived some three miles east of Waterloo and I walked in to attend the sessions, going to a small stone or concrete building not far from the present cast side high school. The teacher, if I remember rightly, was Mrs. McStay. One afternoon in particu- lar is indelibly impressed upon my memory. It had rained nearly all day and on my returning home after securing the loan of an overcoat from a family by the name of Fiske, with whom we were well acquainted, on reaching the "big slough" a half mile from home, I found confronting me a veritable river, several hundred feet across. As I felt certain there were no sink holes about I holdly waded in and reached home safely, though wet to my waist. Reaching into my pocket after getting home I was astonished to find therein a handful of clay. It was all that I had left of the marbles I had played with a few hours before.
During that summer I accompanied my father on one of his trips to town and when a few blocks from the river on the east side we found our way barred by a lagoon of back water from the Cedar, which it was necessary to cross in a boat. Here I got the scare of my life, for the boat was loaded as full as it could possibly carry and then someone carelessly rocked it and it began to dip water. I remember yet how terribly frightened I was, though I do not suppose the water could have been over three feet deep.
I think it was this same year that our family came to town to enjoy the Fourth of July exercises and were obliged to wait until afternoon before an approach could be built so we could get onto the boat from the east side. The exercises were in Mullan's Grove, and speaking of that boat, will I ever forget how near our family came to being wiped out in the twinkling of an eye. The boat when in use was open at both ends-no bar or plank to prevent a team from getting off either at the front or rear. It was propelled by steam, had great paddle wheels at either side, and on this particular occasion, when those wheels started, the horses suddenly took fright and began backing away from the great blades as they began to move. Father jumped out and seized the horses by their heads, but was power- less to prevent the backward movement ; mother was in the buggy with the reins in her hands, and an infant in her arms, with my sister beside her. I jumped out when the team began to back, but that was all I could do. The fortunate circumstance that one horse backed more rapidly than the other and cramped the wagon around so that one wheel struck the side of the boat was all that saved the family. Another foot farther and mother, sister, brother and team would have been engulfed in the swift current and doubtless all would have been drowned. What the fate of that old ferry boat was we have all forgotten, but we believe it twice went over the dam that year by the breaking of the cable which held it in place. This, however, was not such an alarming event, as the dam then existing was a brush affair, not anywhere as high as the present one, and with the great quantity of water running over it its presence could hardly be detected. If we mistake not the old boiler from that boat lay for several years on the river bank before being consigned to the junk shop.
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In August of that year occurred the drowning of two very prominent young ladies who, with a young man, were out pleasure riding. Their boat ran onto the submerged roots of a tree on an island where the railroad bridge now crosses the river, was overturned and both perished, the youth hanging onto a tree until help came. No event in the early history of the city ever caused such a profound sensation as the drowning of these two young ladies. Months afterwards their remains were found, partly covered by sand and brush, some five or six miles down the river. Their clothing had been washed from their bodies and they were not recognizable, owing to the bloating induced by the water action.
At another time our family came to town to attend church, crossing the river on the ice, which then seemed sound. When the services were over we found the river had broken up and we were unable to return home. Father found a boat- man named Williams, a skillful oarsman of that day, who rowed him across in a skiff just above the dam at Second Street. I remember seeing father push cakes of ice away from the boat on their journey across. The family were obliged to seek refuge with friends for several days before returning home.
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