USA > Iowa > Carroll County > History of Carroll County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 21
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"The bodies of the Bruner boys were found on the old mail road from Carrollton to Hillsdale, several miles from where their companions were found. They had left the sled together and were driven by the storm toward the road along which ditches had been plowed and there was some grading to mark the way. When found they had separated. The weaker brother had fallen and struggled to his feet and fallen and struggled again. The tracks showed that his brother had helped him. But when he could go no further the other pushed on and his body was found a mile beyond on the way to Carrollton, with sustenance and safety still ten miles away.
"The Bruners had evidently remained with the sled until daylight and had perished early on the second day of the storm. If they could have faced the storm for the same distance they traveled toward Carrollton, both would have been saved, for the road would have taken them to Hills- dale. But it was not in the power of human strength to face such a storm.
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"The bodies were taken to the Horn and Shellenberger place," resumed Mr. Todd. "They were laid on planks around the red hot stove and I was left to act as fireman and watcher for the night. I would not want to go through the same experience again. Frequently, as the bodies thawed out, they would move, and a good many times that night my old hair stood straight up. That was the longest night I ever put in."
And Mr. Todd scratched his now denuded crown reflectively.
CHAPTER XVI.
LAD'S FIRST IMPRESSION OF CARROLL COUNTY-DREARY RIDE FROM RAILROAD TO NEW HOME IN GLIDDEN TOWNSHIP-CARROLL COUNTY IN 1868-THE EARLY SETTLERS-HOW THE YOUNG PEOPLE ENJOYED THEMSELVES-DR. MILLER'S TOP BUGGY-THE FIRST GOLD WATCH IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD -EXCITEMENT OF EARLY POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS-EARLY RELIGIOUS OB- SERVANCES-LAND VALUES IN 1876-CROP FAILURES AND GRASSHOPPERS -SCARCITY OF MONEY AMONG THE SETTLERS AND HIGH INTEREST RATES -FUTURE DEVELOPMENT AND WEALTH NOT AMONG THE DREAMS OF THE PIONEERS.
BY GUERDON W. WATTLES.
In the early spring of 1868 I first saw Carroll county. My first impres- sions were received when I alighted from the train on a large snow bank by the side of the railroad where the Glidden depot now stands. At that time two houses, one store and a box car were the only visible signs of the city, while a vast expanse of uninhabited and uninviting prairie stretched in undulating hills and valleys like the billows of a great ocean in every direction. After a night spent in the attic of the one-story store building I started with my father and mother, brothers and sisters and all our earthly possessions in an open wagon across the bleak prairie for the North Coon river. There were no roads, no bridges nor houses between Glidden and Kendall's bridge, except one log cabin in which Enos Butrick lived, and which a few years ago was still standing and in use as a part of the granary on the old farm near Dickson's schoolhouse. After ford- ing streams swollen by the thawing snow we finally came to the first signs of life, a settlement at Kendall's bridge. Near this bridge was the home of the then widow Kendall. Her husband, William Kendall, had died a few years before, and she was maintaining the family and conducting the farm, which formerly had been the home of the first settler in that part of Carroll county, Mr. Enos Butrick.
In 1868 the settlement in the northeastern part of Carroll county was confined almost entirely to the North Coon river and its tributaries. It was believed by many of these early settlers that it would be impossible to live on the prairies during the long, cold winters, and therefore the houses, most of which were made of logs, were erected near the timber along these streams. In Glidden township the principal settlers, as I recall them, were as follows :
In section I there was no settler until the fall of 1868 when my father, Mr. James Wattles, built a house in the grove on Purgatory creek.
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In section 2 lived Thomas Hirons, Uriah Gibson, John P. Williams and Samuel Duckett.
In section 3 lived Martha Kendall, and soon after that year C. H. Lizer, W. H. Drew and S. W. Lauck.
In section 4 lived Robert Dickson and in section 9 Enos Butrick. There were no settlements in sections 10 or II. In section 12 soon after 1868 A. J. Loudenback built his home.
In Jasper township along the river lived Henry Ochampaugh, Levi Hig- gins, with one or two brothers, John McCoy, Daniel Cooper, Levi Thomp- son, Thomas A. Cochran, O. M. Mosher, T. B. McClew, J. W. Hobbs, and soon thereafter came George and Joseph Toyne, George Stalford, Henry . Winter, John Morlan and many others.
I think a majority of these early settlers came from Michigan, although among them were those from several other states. There were in those days two schoolhouses in that part of the county, the Dickson school and the Higgins school. In the winter of 1868 M. W. Beach, later a prominent lawyer of Carroll, taught the Dickson school, and Morris Kimball, later a resident of Carroll, taught at the Higgins school. My brothers and myself first attended the Dickson school four miles distant from our home, and later, when the Higgins school commenced, we attended that school. Among the boys and girls that I remember who attended school in those days was Oscar Mosher, then almost a young man, several Higgins boys and girls, the McCoy boys, the Gibson boys, and Kendall children, the Ochampaugh boys and many others.
Distance in those days did not prevent the free communication between neighbors and their families. It frequently happened that the young people, especially in the winter, attended parties ten or fifteen miles distant from their homes, and on occasions they went as far as Carrollton, twenty miles from Kendall's bridge, to attend dances, which were the principal enter- tainments in those days. In the winter of 1870 a dancing party at the Wattles' home was attended by young people from Horseshoe Bend in Greene county, five miles to the east, and by many of the young people along the North Coon river as far as Lake City on the north.
Dr. Miller, who lived in Greene county, was the only physician in those days for many miles around. He had a top buggy, the only one owned in that section of the country, so that whenever we saw a top buggy driving by we knew that it was Dr. Miller. He attended the sick from Lake City on the north, to Carrollton on the south and Jefferson on the east.
Every small occurrence out of the ordinary was known and discussed by those early settlers who did not have much to relieve the monotony of their lives. Oscar Mosher brought the first gold watch into the neighbor- hood. He traded a team of horses and gave something in addition for what was said to be a pure gold hunter's case. It was a curiosity and the envy of all the young men, who were only allowed to look at it, while the girls were permitted to hold it in their hands. The first sewing machine that came into the community was purchased by Dan Cooper. It was a Wheeler & Wilson, and I think the price was $285. The neighbors for
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many miles around gathered to see it, little dreaming that they would live to see the time when sewing machines would be sold for $25 cach and owned by every housewife in the county.
The political campaigns of those early days furnished excitement fully equal to any that followed when population had increased. The contests were often exceedingly close, and the success or defeat of a candidate was accomplished by only a few votes. W. H. Price was a favorite among the North Coon settlers, and later on William L. Culbertson, who, by force of his ability, was elected auditor and later treasurer, became a prime favorite. Dan Cooper held the position of county commissioner for many years, and William Gilley, his strong friend and associate, had many sup- porters among the early settlers in Glidden and Jasper townships.
On Sundays church services were conducted in many of the school- houses and were attended by nearly all of the settlers, men, women and children. The itinerant Methodist preacher went from one neighborhood to another holding services, and in the winter time it was quite usual to have a genuine religious revival in each neighborhood. It frequently so happened that nearly all of the pioneers and their families would join the church during these revivals, frequently to backslide during the summer months, only to become active members again at the next annual revival meeting.
The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints as they were called, early secured a foothold on the North Coon river. They were the followers of Joseph Smith, Jr., and did not believe in nor practice polygamy. The ministers of this sect came from all parts of the country, and quite a large congregation was established in the neighborhood of Kendall's bridge.
Land in Glidden and Jasper townships in 1870 was valued at one to two dollars per acre. There were still some homesteads to be obtained in Sheridan township, and much government land remained unentered in ad- joining counties. There was not ready sale for land for many years after this date, and only an occasional farm changed hands. I remember well when a man by the name of Ira Scranton from Illinois came into the neigh- borhood. It was reported that he had $2,000 in cash which he desired to invest in land. Men and boys went for miles to the schoolhouse where he attended church, that they might see this man of great wealth. He was looked upon in those days somewhat in the same manner as we would look on Rockefeller or Carnegie at this time.
The season of 1868 was propitious and good crops were raised. I re- member well of the wheat crop raised by my father on the farm he had rented in Greene county. We had, as I recall, thirty bushels of wheat to the acre and sold it at Jefferson, the nearest market, for $2.50 per bushel ; but in 1869 and 1870 crops were a failure, on account of the grasshoppers that came in great numbers and destroyed them. During that period many of the settlers in counties to the north and west abandoned their farms and came back in covered wagons through our neighborhood. They had decided that Iowa would never become a farming state and were return- ing to their old homes in Missouri or Illinois. For some years after 1870
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crops were not good and prices were low. The panic of 1873 left these early settlers in a very bad condition. I distinctly remember that in the entire neighborhood on the North Coon river no one could be found for several months who had a dollar in actual money. At a great religious gathering in Horseshoe Bend, at which the presiding elder was present (an occasion of unusually great importance), the entire collection amounted to less than one dollar.
During the long, cold winters, hunting and trapping were followed by most of the male portion of the early inhabitants, not for pleasure, but for profit. Muskrats, mink, a few beaver, and deer and elk were the principal game to be found. In those days many great ponds were in existence that have long since been drained or have dried up on account of the cultiva- tion of the land about them. In these ponds muskrats built their houses. and when the ice was frozen, traps were set in these houses of weeds and grass, and during the winter months many peltries were accumulated. which were sold to traveling purchasers in the spring. Deer were quite common and came to the groves along the streams in droves of two to a dozen. They were shot for meat, and venison was more in use by the settlers than was beef or pork. A few years before the last buffalo to be seen in that section of the country was killed near Kendall's bridge.
A few strolling bands of Indians camped in the winters along the streams, but beyond stealing an occasional pig and begging for bread and clothes, they did little damage to the community.
During the summer months the settlers were busy in breaking prairie and raising crops. There was not much social entertainment. Parties and spelling schools and exhibitions were only conducted during the winter season, so that beyond the Sunday schools and churches held in the school- houses there was little diversion, and to those who had recently arrived from cities or more populous communities the loneliness of those early days was almost maddening. Many of the first settlers did not remain, but went back to their old homes. There was not much beyond a local market for grain and farm produce for many years. There did not seem to be any opportunity for making money until in later years elevators were built at the railroad stations, and traveling stockmen came to purchase cattle and hogs. The principal source of revenue from the farms was raising hogs, and many of the first settlers paid for their land and buildings from this source of revenue.
Rates of interest were very high. Three per cent a month was a com- mon rate charged by the first bankers and money lenders who operated in the small towns, and the supply of money was never equal to the demand. About 1875 some enterprising agents at the county seats were able to place farm mortgage loans of about $500 each on a quarter-section of well im- proved land at the rate of 10 per cent per annum and 10 per cent com- mission for securing the loan.
For some years after 1870, settlement in the northeastern part of Carroll county was slow, but finally the settlers came in with a rush, taking up the prairie lands which had been considered by the first settlers as worth-
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MAIN STREET. GLIDDEN
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less. I remember one of the first settlers to go out on the prairie was Mr. Lombard, who opened a farm on section 9 in Glidden township. The prophecy was freely made that after the first winter he would move in from the prairie, but he did not, and others soon followed his example, until we could no longer drive in a straight line across the prairies from Kendall's bridge to Glidden, but were obliged to go on the section lines, a great annoyance and inconvenience until the roads were established and bridges built.
In the autumn the boys and young men spent their time in gathering nuts. Walnuts and butternuts by the wagon load were brought in. Hazel- nuts and hickorynuts were to be had for the picking, and every settler's house was well stored with nuts for the winter.
And thus the time was spent by these early settlers, until gradually greater population came and values of lands and products became estab- lished. I cannot say that those early days were without enjoyment. At times of sickness or disaster the neighbors were kind and helpful. A closer friendship and communion was maintained than is common in more populous communities. Every man knew every settler for miles around by his first name and knew every member of his family, while the average politician had no difficulty in recognizing and calling by name every man in the county. I cannot say that the early settlers in the northeastern part of Carroll county had any different or more difficult experiences than in other parts of the county. In fact, I believe their lives were made more comfortable than those who settled first on the prairies. In the early days there was much timber along the North Coon river and its tributaries. Wood, nuts and game were abundant, and the birds and flowers, the fish and the game furnished amusement and occupation for the boys and girls who might otherwise have suffered from loneliness and want of companion- ship. One thing is certain, that no one dreamed of the future development and wealth that was to come to all who toiled and suffered privation and practiced economy and frugality with patience and fortitude, until by the increase of population the blessings of society, with all its manifold duties and opportunities, was established. As time went on some of the young men went out into the world from this part of Carroll county to make their life work in other fields. A number of them have been successful and only a few have failed, and it is my judgment that the early experiences and lessons in economy and frugality which were taught by necessity in those early days have had much to do with their success in the world of business where some of them may now be found.
CHAPTER XVII.
ORLANDO HI. MANNING POINTS OUT FEATURES IN WHICH CARROLL COUNTY IS FAVORED BEYOND OTHERS-THE AFFINITY OF THE LOESS OR BLUFF DEPOSIT TO THE SOILS OF THE RHINE, NILE AND YELLOW RIVER VALLEYS-THE GREAT DEPTH AND PERMANENT FERTILITY OF THE MISSOURI RIVER ALLU- VIUM-THE ADVANTAGES OF THE COUNTY DERIVED FROM SADDLING THE TRANS-CONTINENTAL DIVIDE-THE LOSS TO EASTERN AGRICULTURAL LANDS FROM THIE TRITURATING ACTION OF RAINS AND FLOODS-CORN AS KING OF AMERICAN CROPS AND THE UNDEVELOPED USES TO WHICH ITS PRODUCTS MAY BE APPLIED-MR. MANNING PARTLY APPLIES OLD "MIS" MEANS' AD- VICE : "GIT A-PLINTY WHILE Y'U ARE A-GITTIN'."
The following letter from among the correspondence of the late Judge Geo. W. Paine, from the pen of the late Hon. O. H. Manning, is an expres- sion of candid judgment upon the subject to which it relates from an unbiased and fully disinterested and most intelligent observer. An observer, by the way, whose attachments to Carroll county in any other than a senti - mental sense,-since it was the scene of the beginnings of a career, both useful and distinguished, of the writer himself-had long since disappeared. The document, as a part of a personal correspondence, was written with no intent to the end to which we apply it or to publicity in any form.
NEW YORK CITY, May 1, 1907.
Hon. Geo. W. Paine, Carroll, Iowa.
MY DEAR JUDGE: Thanks for your letter telling me of the rapid rise in price and selling values of Carroll county, Iowa, farm lands. I am not sur- prised. I always was an optimist in regard to Carroll county ever since I went there just thirty-nine years ago this month, a poor boy, to seek my fortune and grow up with the county and its people. I am as enthusiastic about its future to-day as I was then and with more reason, for I better appreciate the intrinsic values in its lands and soils than I did then.
I think that in many respects Carroll county is favored beyond any other county in Iowa. It lays astride of the great divide in western Iowa which parts the waters which seek the Missouri river from those that flow to the Mississippi and its tributaries to the east. It thus lays higher up than the counties to the east and north, and has better drainage and has been saved the enormous expense entailed upon the people of these other counties for tiling, ditching and draining in order to get their lands up out of the wet. while at the same time the lands on the western slopes of Carroll county are less rolling and steep than those in the counties to the west and south, where the streams cut deeper into the land and the slopes are more precipitous.
I do not think there are any better lands or richer soils on earth than in the region around the town of Manning in Carroll county and. in fact,
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all of that part of Carroll county which has the so-called "Bluff deposit" or loess soils. The loess of western Iowa was undoubtedly a deposit made by the Missouri river when it was in such enormous flood that it spread out all over western Iowa clear up to where now runs the South Raccoon river. If you will go up to the Bad Lands in western North Dakota and eastern Montana you will see where the Missouri river ages ago robbed the region of its friable soils which it transported down stream and laid all over west- ern Iowa in a deposit twenty-five to two hundred feet in thickness. This "Bluff deposit" or loess is identical in its characteristics and mode of origin with the soils in the valleys of the Rhine in Germany, the Nile in Egypt, and the great rivers of China.
Professor Fletcher, of the Michigan Agricultural College, in his work on soils just published (1907) says of the loess soils : "The name loess is applied chiefly to large areas of soils that have been carried to their present resting places by water. There are large deposits in the valley of the Rhine, the famous Steppes of Russia and the inland plains of China. Loess sons are noted for their great depth and remarkable fertility. In China they have produced bountiful crops for over three thousand years with little apparent diminution of fertility. The richness of our own loess soils in the central west are well known."
It seems to me that the owners of lands in the counties in western Iowa like Carroll county, who are selling their lands at the prices you name (around $100 per acre) are even now making as great a mistake as I did when I sold Carroll county lands a third of a century ago at $10, $15 and $20 per acre. The land owners in western Iowa will some day wake up to a realization of the fact that there is a mighty force at work which is slowly but surely working the ruin and destruction of the farm lands of this country from the disastrous effects of which their lands are exempt and free to a large extent at least.
What has ruined the farm lands in New England and the southern states cast of the Mississippi and is depreciating farm lands almost everywhere outside of the newer lands of the west has not been their constant tillage and repeated croppings for the last century, but the constant washing away of the soil by the annual rains and floods. The soil of our American farms is being constantly washed out and denuded by erosion. It is being carried from the fields into the streams and by the streams into the rivers and by the rivers is carried into the sea. Outside of the valley lands and farms there is hardly a farm in the United States east of the Mississippi river but what loses a part of its value for productive purposes with every rain. W. J. McKee, one of our United States geologists, estimated that in some of the states east of the Mississippi the annual loss in real estate from the washing away of the soil by rains and floods had in the last quarter of a century equaled the annual products of the soil for the same time.
Fletcher in his new work on soils says that "We have thousands of square miles of lands in the United States that are rapidly approaching desolation by erosion, over a large area the work of destruction has gone so far as to make it impracticable to save the land for cropping."
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My travels and studies have led me to believe that this factor of the great annual loss of the soils from the farm lands of the country will tend to make the farm lands least subject to such losses the most valuable farm lands in the country, when this factor becomes fully realized.
The lands of western lowa are covered by a water-borne deposit of from twenty-five to two hundred feet in thickness. They are free from boulders and almost free from gravel, sand, pebbles or clay. They are of the same consistency from the top to the bottom, possessed of a tenacity which prevents serious washing or erosion, and they absorb the water instead of being carried away with it. They will stand the erosion of thousands of years as they have on the Rhine and in China and still remain rich in all the elements of fertility and chemical plant food. A man who buys a farm in western Iowa covered with its deep, thick covering of "loess" can do so with the assurance that after one thousand years of rain and frost and floods have done their best or worst to rob it of its soil and carry it away, there will still remain a farm as rich and as productive as when it was first devoted to the raising of crops by the pioneer who first turned over the prairie sod upon its surface. There is no other investment I know of on earth which possesses an equal assurance that it will be as good in one thousand years as now, as a western Iowa farm, and I base that judgment largely on the fact that these western Iowa lands are covered so deeply by their covering of soil that they will endure the constant washing and erosion of centuries and still remain fertile as similar lands in China and on the Rhine have done.
Another thing, I, too, am of the opinion, advocated by Tama Jim Wilson, secretary of agriculture, that corn is to be the king of all the American crops. These western Iowa lands are the best corn lands on earth. Corn not only means meat and milk and butter, but it has been found to furnish more useful products than any other article of plant growth. It is liable to furnish the fuel, light and power of the future. The time will come when it will be safe to let the Iowa farmer turn his corn into alcohol without the fear that he will drink the product and start a riot. He will find a better use for it. He will light and heat his house with it, and, putting it into a motor, will turn it into force and power that will propel all his farm machinery, do his plowing and cultivating, haul his produce to market and propel his carriage when he takes his family and goes to town. I am an optimist on Iowa corn lands and I believe the reasons for my faith are founded upon a rock. Take my advice and get all the western Iowa corn lands you can, and as the old woman said, "Git a plenty while you are a gittin."
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