USA > Iowa > Butler County > History of Butler County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 4
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So before the forces of Nature and the progress of civilization, aided by the deadly rifles of the mmters and the snares of the trappers, the wild life of these woods and plains rapidly, but most reluctantly, retreated. The resounding echoes of the woodman's
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HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY
ax and the carpenter's hammer and mallet and the crack of the pioneer's ox whip succeeded the crack of the hunter's rifle. An age-long era in the history of this land ended and a new era of progress and civilization began when the first lofty walnut, hick- ory and oak trees were felled to be converted into cabins and barns and fences for the new homes of the pioneers and their families.
SETTLEMENTS IN TIMBER LANDS
This necessity for utilizing the standing timber for the con- struction of the first homes of the pioneers accounts in part for the fact that the first settlements in Butler county and in all the western prairie country were made along the timbered streams. A careful examination of the earliest records of the original entries of land in Butler county reveals the fact that the first lands selected for homesteads were uniformly covered wholly or in part by timber. Another consideration which influenced this choice was the necessity of locating the home near an unfailing supply of good water, which as a matter of course could only be found in a spring of running stream, almost all of which were sur- rounded or bordered by timber.
In common, however, with the ideas of their generation, the earliest settlers considered the soil of the timbered lands of a quality superior to that of the timberless prairies and so they laboriously cut the trees and cleared the stumps from their claims, leaving ofter untouched by the plow the vast areas of open prairie land, almost within a stone's throw, land which we know today to be of far greater fertility than any of the lighter sandy soils of the river valleys.
THE PIONEER LARDER
The woods, too, contained thickets of wild plums, tangled clus- ters of wild grape vines, hazel brush, hickory nut and walnut trees, choke cherry trees, wild currants and gooseberry bushes, all of which added to the sometimes monotonously meager contents of the pioneer larder. These, with the wild game, most of which was found more plentifully in the woods and along the streams, formed the staple articles of subsistence, until the time when the first crops of sod corn, beans and potatoes could be raised. The corn thus raised was often erushed in home-made wooden mortars
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and so prepared to make the meal from which corn bread was baked.
In winter time the supplies sometimes ran low and the family diet was meager and monotonous indeed. As one of the pioncers tells it:
"One winter night our supply of meat, upon which we had largely depended for subsistence till spring, was stolen from the little lean-to shack where we kept it. Wild game had ceased to be plentiful and my father was compelled to take the long journey to market to replenish our supply of provisions. We were fortu- nate enough to have a cow and a fair amount of corn meal. Father was delayed by storms and bad roads and was gone for several weeks. Until his return it was mush and milk for breakfast, mush and milk for dinner, and mush and milk for supper every day for six days in the week except Sunday-and then we had milk and mush."
GOING TO MILL
After a year or two some wheat began to be raised and a very few families were able to enjoy the luxury of flour and wheat bread. Not many enjoyed this privilege, thoughi, and those who did had to pay a high price in labor for it. At first the nearest flour mills were at Cedar Rapids and Independence. The trip could be made with a four-horse team in a week when the weather and other circumstances were favorable.
Van E. Butler, in an article published some years ago in the Clarksville Star, said: "This history would be incomplete with- out reference to the first settlers, who dared the trials and hard- ships of pioneer life, when they were obliged to haul their supplies from Dubuque or Iowa City. The nearest grist mill was at Inde- pendence or Quasqueton, when a barrel of salt was worth $9, a bushel of corn $1.50, and a pound of bacon 25 cents. Our people were then compelled to accept what they could get from the mill owners and post agents, who supplied us with the necessities of life, and it was frequently very light returns, as was the case on one occasion, when Phillip J. Ebersold, of Dayton, in company with Charley Angell, of the same town, came home with the grist of twenty bushels of wheat-consisting of only three sacks of flour, and Charley remarked, jocosely, "'You're lucky they didn't chase you clear home for the empty sacks.'"
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Later a mill was built at Cedar Falls and it is stated that when it was possible to secure flour so near at home the settlers were "a happy people." The Cedar Falls mill, at first, was provided with machinery merely for grinding the wheat, the bolting or separating the bran from the flour, having to be done at home by hand.
In 1856, the first mill in Butler county was erected at Clarks- ville. The stones for this mill were brought from St. Louis, the balance of the machinery being obtained at Rock Island. After several changes of ownership this mill passed into the hands of Thomas Shafer, grandfather of the present sheriff of Butler county, T. J. Shafer, by whom it was owned and managed for many years, and then it passed into other hands. The comple- tion of this mill marks another important step in the progress of the frontier community toward modern civilization. Thereafter some, at least, of the raw materials prodneed on the farms could be transformed into the finished product without dependence upon outside agencies.
DANGERS AND PRIVATIONS
Toil had no terrors for these pioneers; all were of necessity workers. The very conditions of their life eliminated the unfit. The women, too, were constant toilers. In addition to the house- work that is the common lot of woman, they had to spin and weave and ent and make the family clothing. They were artisans and manufacturers as well; and often they were the only teach- ers of the children.
There were other dangers and privations than those already mentioned. The narratives of the lives of the early settler make frequent mention of siekness. Death from disease all too soon made necessary the founding of eities for the dead alongside of the dwellings of the living. The prevailing form of sickness was "fever and agne," a malarial fever caused, doubtless, by the decaying vegetation and the lack of adequate natural drainage. Several severe epidemies of typhoid fever also are recorded. When sickness came, neighborly help and kindness had to supply the place of the skilled medical aid and the seientific nursing of modern times. The nearest physician was usually too far away to be of assistance except in cases of severe and prolonged illness. When death came, as it often did, and cast its dark shadow over
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the stricken home, willing hands and warm hearts ministered to the bereaved family and tenderly performed the last sad offices for the dead. A rude box, hastily constructed by a frontier car- penter, formed the casket, which was borne by neighbors to a lonely grave. "Often there was no minister, no music, no flowers. No carved momment told the name of the dead; the sturdy oak or lofty elm cast a grateful shadow over the grassy mound that alone marked the last resting place of the departed pioneer."
The winters during this pioneer period were, most of them, very severe, much more so than the winters of the present day. Although in part, no doubt, this impression arises from the better means we have today of combating the cold through better houses and better heating facilities, still it remains unquestioned that a certain degree of climatic change has gradually taken place to make our winters less severe and the amount of snow fall much less plentiful.
BLIZZARDS
Then hardly a winter passed without its blizzard. This dan- ger no human foresight could guard against. The roads of those days were mere trails winding over an otherwise trackless prairie. The first fall of snow obliterated every trace of the road. And vet journeys to the nearest trading place, for supplies, or to the timber for fuel had often to be made by one man alone. Many such a man perished a victim of the blizzard in the early years of the settling of the prairies. They came without warning, an ever-increasing northwest wind driving particles of flint-like snow resistlessly before it. The temperature fell rapidly to a point many degrees below zero. With the sun obscured and a changing wind, with no landmarks to guide him, God pity the hapless man at the mercy of the pitiless storm!
One of the best accounts of a blizzard in the early history of Butler county is given below from the pen of Dr. John Scoby, a pioneer physician of Shell Rock :
"On the 14th of January, 1856, carly in the morning. I started as usual to visit a number of patients up the river, some fifteen miles away. The northwest wind was blowing very hard and cold and the snow flying. My first call to be made was at Mr. Martin's, east of Turkey grove, five miles away and two miles east from the Clarksville road. No track was to be seen after
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leaving the main road. Fanny plunged ahead until we came to the slough, some twenty rods from the house. She could go no farther. I tightened the reins and covered her with blanket and robe. I wallowed across the slough, found the house and pre- scribed for the patients. Mr. Martin asked me to step with him to his yard, where I think I saw six dead hogs, which had chilled and were frozen by coming out of their pen to eat corn. He showed me a pair of oxen that were chilled badly in their stall. The wind was veering and the air full of snow. I could not see six feet in any direction. I crossed the slough. My sleigh was not there. I traveled, as I supposed, up the slough, down the slough, up and down a number of times, the snow up to my waist. Fanny was not to be found. I stopped, kicked the snow away and stamped my cold feet. Where was Martin's house ? I eould not see it-in what direction I did not know. My hopes were gone. A cold snow-drift would be my winter tomb ; the prowling, hungry wolves would feed upon my physical form. Good-bye to my family and friends. I straightened up and tried to look around. Naught could I see but flying snow.
"Oh! for one glimpse of beacon light for me to steer,
To cheer me in my last, my hopeless fear.
"In those eternal moments of dark despair, had I owned this globe and the revolving worlds in the solar system, I would gladly have given them all for the privilege of stepping into my sleigh behind Fanny.
"In those moments of intense thought that seemed to embrace an eternity of time, all the acts, thoughts and deeds of my past life-of three seore years-were presented to my mind. My thoughts did not peer into the future : I saw but the past and the present. A thought came: I would start for Martin's though I perished in the attempt. As I was lifting my foot to take the first step, Fanny whinnied not more than one rod from where I was standing. It was a melodious sound that burst upon my ear through the whirling snow-flakes. My flagging energy revived : I skipped to the sleigh, helped Fanny turn it round, and I stepped in. Fanny would soon reach the Clarksville road in the timber. I was now monarch of all I could see: there were none to dispute my right but old Boreas. He may rage with all his power in his hydrophobie whirls, and drive his snow minions into fits of desperation, but Fanny and I will win the race with- out my giving a world or a dime. The road being found. I passed
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HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY
up the river to Clarksville, and went several miles above, making frequent calls to see the sick. In the evening I returned safely home; I enjoyed a quiet rest and started on another pilgrimage the next morning
PRAIRIE FIRES
Another danger that was encountered by the first settlers in the county was from the annual prairie fires. From midsummer on until snow fall there was constant danger from this source. The heat of the August sun and the early frosts of fall would kill the prairie grass and make it as dry as timber. Many of the recent settlers, unaware of their danger, neglected to take proper precautions for the protection of their buildings and stacks, and even of their families. The wiser and older settlers were accus- tomed to plow a few furrows around their homesteads as a fire break but even these often failed to stem the tide of destruction. There is not an inhabitant of this county of more than thirty years' residence who cannot recall with greater or less vividness the picturesque but awful grandeur of the approach of a prairie fire at night. These fires were often caused by thoughtless emi- grants who carelessly left smouldering camp fires to be fanned into flame by a rising wind, and sometimes such carelessness was paid for by serious loss and even death.
The worst of these fires swept over the southern tier of town- ships in the fall of 1856, as a result of which a little daughter of Jacob Codner was burned to death. This fire started somewhere on the prairies of Grundy county. The hurricane of fire, driven by an ever-increasing wind, swept northward with the speed of a race horse, reaping a swath of destruction miles in width. Escape for man or beast would have been impossible if back fires had not been started in time to meet the advancing tornado of resistless heat that could be stayed only by a counter fire. It was literally fighting fire with fire. Houses, barns, stacks, fences, bridges and much stock were destroyed and the ground left a blackened, blistering waste of desolation. The fire burned into the timber around Parkersburg and killed a large part of it. Mr. Curtis, who kept the ferry across the Beaver just north of Parkersburg, had a hard fight for his life against it. It jumped the Beaver and swept on to the north, leaped the West Fork south of Butler Center, where a man named Samuel Gillard was
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nearly burned to death. It then passed on and finally burned itself out somewhere in the comparatively uminhabited timber to the northwest of Butler county.
COMPENSATIONS
There were compensations, however, for the privations and endless toil of the pioneers. Hospitality was nowhere more gen- eral or more genuine than among the early settlers. Enter- tainment of newcomers was generally free and cordial. The one-room cabin was never too full to furnish shelter and food for the traveler. Neighborhood corn-huskings ending with a dance for the elders and a frolic for the youngsters gathered the settlers for miles around. Shooting matches, with turkeys for prizes, were often held, and many a rifle that had winged its message of death to far larger and wilder game won for its owner these humbler prizes of his skill.
CAMP MEETINGS
The religious fervor of the pioneer found expression in camp- meetings held in some grove by the Shell Rock by the light of blazing log fires, where young and old assembled to listen to the rude but fervid eloquence of frontier preachers, sermons livid with hell-fire and brimstone and filled with endless wrath and eternal damnation for the unregenerate sinner. One of these early preachers possessed such a degree of diamatie intensity and hypnotic power of suggestion that he is said actually to have been able to open for his hearers the very gates of hell and as he meta- phorically cast sinner after sinner into the fire that dieth not, his auditors would be roused almost to a frenzy of awe and terror until shrieks and groans would fairly drown the preacher's voice. But all this suited the sturdy pioneers. The sugar-coated religion of today would have seemed insipid enough to their more hard- ened emotional natures. Many a man and woman quiet and retir- ing in daily life, lifted a voice eloquent in prayer and exhortation at these meetings. and old and young alike joined in singing the grand old hymns with a fervor that roused enthusiasm to the high- est pitch and made the woods ring, and the hills and valleys echo and re-echo to a sound that must have struck with strange dis- sonance upon these sentinels of Nature after all the silence of the centuries.
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In the annual Fourth of July celebration, opportunity was found for the expression of the patriotism that was rampant in the breasts of these truest of Americans. Poor, indeed, was the community that could not raise its Liberty pole on the birthday of the country's freedom and listen to some rising young politi- cian as he twisted the British lion's tail and recounted the glories and wonders of the new democracy of the western world.
So out of this warp and woof of variable conditions of life, with toil and hardship and privation, but withal with hospitality, and good fellowship and a genuine joy in living was spun the mighty fabric of our civilization today. Life was lived then more in the open. There was little of pretense and less of foolish pride. To most of us today, it would seem crude and raw in the extreme. But underneath it all there ran the current of true manhood and womanhood, of courage in the face of danger, and determination in the face of misfortune that alone made it possible for these pio- neers to build so broadly and so surely the foundations of civiliza- tion upon which we of a later generation have often unknowing builded. Theirs be the honor and the glory. Let every man and woman of today stand uncovered before the memorial of venera- tion and regard which we have built in our hearts in their honor.
CHAPTER VI EARLY SETTLEMENT OF BUTLER COUNTY
CARPENTER'S GROVE
Of the earliest settlement of Butler county a former historian says: "There are differences of opinion as to who was the first to make permanent settlement in the county, and it is a hard matter to settle conclusively, as there is no one now living, who can be interviewed, who positively knows. It can only be given as tradition hands it down.
"Late in the fall of 1850, two hunter brothers, Harrison and Volney Carpenter, and D. C. Finch, wended their way up the val- ley of the Shell Rock in quest of game. They had come from Linn county, where they had also stopped for a time. It was a magnifi- cent country, and game of all descriptions abounded. Upon arriv- ing at the point on the river where the village of Shell Rock now rests, they determined to make that spot a temporary home, while they scoured the country for game. A little log cabin was accordingly erected, in which they took up their abode, and for about one year made this a sort of a 'huntsman's rendezvous,' when Volney, who was a married man, moved his family there. The whereabouts of any of the party at present, or whether they are yet alive, we are unable to state. The grove afterward took the name of Carpenter's Grove."
This statement of the earliest settlement is commonly accepted as correct and is so given in Gue's History of Iowa, and in official publications of the state in regard to Butler county. There is little doubt, however, that there were many other pioneers whose names have never been recorded. They were nomads, and after sojourning a little while along the streams and in the groves of Butler county, they took their departure, leaving no record or memory of their settlement.
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COON GROVE
The Carpenters do not seem to have remained long in their new home in Butler county, for no other account of them is to be found and their subsequent history is unknown. The honor of being the first permanent settler is ascribed to Joseph Hicks, who in December, 1850, came from Roek county, Wisconsin, and located a claim near the present site of Clarksville. His log cabin was built in a grove which stood on the site of the gravel pits west of Clarksville.
This cabin became the nucleus of a settlement here and for a time gave promise of becoming a town. The grove in which this cabin was situated was for some unknown reason called Coon's grove, and the open country to the west was called the "Coon Prairie country." Here in Coon's grove in 1853 was established the first postoffice in Butler county, with Abner G. Clark as the first postmaster.
With the Hicks family came Robert T. Crowell, later the first sheriff of Butler county. Crowell, however, returned for the time being to his old home in Wisconsin. Two years later he came to Butler county again and settled upon a claim near Hicks. Until the spring of 1851 the Hicks family were alone in their enjoy- ment of the new land, their nearest neighbor in the valley being the family of James Newell, who had settled on the Cedar, in Black Hawk county, about thirty miles to the southeast, near the junction of the West Fork and the Cedar. During the winter of 1850-51. Hicks was obliged to carry his provisions overland on his back from Cedar Falls, then the nearest trading point. These were supplemented by what he could secure in the way of game and fish, by hunting, trapping and fishing. In these latter enter- prises he is said to have been ably assisted by his good wife,-a typical pioneer woman, who could handle a rifle as well and shoot as straight as any man.
In the spring of 1851, Henry J. Hicks, father of Joseph, came from Rock county, Wisconsin, and erected the first blacksmith shop in the county near the home of his son. Here was forged the first iron in the Shell Rock valley. Henry J. Hicks entered claims on sections 12 and 13, in Jackson township, on June 24, 1851, his claim being the fourth to be entered in Butler county, and prob- ably the first to be entered by an owner actually in occupation of the premises. Henry Hicks died in the winter of 1854 and was
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buried on his home place. Ilis remains later were removed to Lynwood cemetery, near Clarksville. Another son, John B. Hicks, came with the father from Wisconsin and settled on a claim in Jackson township. One of his daughters, Ida Hicks, married Henry Wamsley.
This spring of 1851 was marked by the arrival of the Wamsley brothers, Malon B. and William S., who came from Ohio and set- tled a short distance northwest of where Clarksville now stands. M. B. Wamsley settled on a claim in section 1, Jackson township, previously taken up by his brother, John Wamsley. Mr. Wamsley commenced to build a log cabin, broke a piece of land and during this first year raised a crop of corn, beans and potatoes, sufficient for the family use. The family, consisting of himself, his wife and two children, in common with the other early settlers, suffered from ague. They were of true pioneer stuff, however, and stayed by their claim, steadily improving it, and within a few years the log cabin was replaced by a substantial dwelling which remained the family home for a number of years. Mr. Wamsley's health failed him about the year 1870 and he retired from active farming, later removing to the town of Clarksville. With this community he was identified from that time until his death. He was one of the incorporators of the Butler County Bank, and was its presi- dent for ten years. Mr. Wamsley was the first justice of the peace in Butler county, having been appointed to this office in the fall of 1853 by the county judge of Black Hawk county, to which But- ler was then for judicial purposes attached. He died Sept. 9, 1887.
William S. Wamsley was a younger brother of M. B. Wamsley. mentioned above, both being natives of Adams county, Ohio. Thrown upon his own resources at an early age, he worked for a time at farming and subsequently entered the employ of the owner of a steam sawmill, with whom he remained until he was twenty years of age. At that time, with his brother, M. B., he purchased a half interest in the mill but as this did not prove entirely a suc- cess, in 1850, accompanied by a younger brother, John N., he boarded the steamboat at Cincinnati and started out in search of a new home somewhere in the boundless West. They traveled by steamer down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to Dubuque, from which point they set out on foot to explore the country to the west- ward. After some rather futile wanderings in search of a satis- factory location, they came upon Henry Moore, son of Aaron
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HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY
Moore, better known as "Uncle Aaron," an early settler of the Shell Rock valley. Mr. Moore was looking for some one to help him take a drove of cattle up into Bremer county. As he was enthusiastic in his praise of this section of the country, the Wams- leys agreed to accompany him. Arriving in Bremer county, they assisted in the building of the first cabin in the vicinity of Waverly. Here they heard glowing reports of the fertility and wonderful opportunities of the land to the westward, on what was known as "Coon Prairie." They started out on horseback and after a few hours' ride reached a point on the Shell Rock river. They found the country fully equal to the reports and at once concluded to settle there.
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