USA > Iowa > Clayton County > History of Clayton County, Iowa : from the earliest historical times down to the present : including a genealogical and biographical record of many representative families, prepared from data obtained from original sources of information, Volume I > Part 2
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Perrot, Nicholas
19-20
Pictured Rocks 300
Pike, Lt. Zebulon M. 28
Pike's Peak
300
Pike's Peak, Rush to .. 138
Pioneers of Clayton County 47
Pioneers 1840-1844 59-60
Pirates Captured
120
Place, R. C.
270
Pond, Peter 22
Politics in 1854.
Politics, Conventions of 1854. 97
Politics, Influence in State. 101
Politics in 1856
109
Politics in 1857. 116
Politics, Campaign of 1858. 121
Politics in 1859
128
Politics, Campaign of 1860. 130
Politics in Wartimes
182
Politica, Campaign of 1862.
184
Rivers and Streams, Origin
of
Politics, Peace Party 1863.
184
Names .
431
Politics-Second Lincoln Campaign
185
Rounds, J. C ..
271
Politics, Campaign of 1865.
186
Politics After the War.
208
Sacs and Foxes.
32
Political Campaign of 1868
204
St. Olaf, City Government
361
Politics, Campaign of 1869.
205
Sanitary Fair
152
Politica, 1870-1880 212
Politics, 1872
218
Politics, 1873
818
Politics, Hays-Tilden Campaign .. 214
Politics, People's Party in 1874 214
Politics, Greenback Party. 215
Politics, 1880-1900
240
Politics-Free Silver Campaign ... 214 Politics of the 20th Century. 307 Politics-Roosevelt Campaign. 308 Politics, Election of 1908 309 Politics, Primary, First. 309
Politics, Murphy-Haugen Contest. 310 Politics, Campaign of 1912. 310 Politics, Election of 1914 311
Politics, Primary of 1916. 311
Politics, Suffrage Election 812
Poor Farm Murder.
219
Potter, Murder of. 124
Potts, John W. 224
Prairie La Porte-
First Commissioners Meet at ...
61
First County Seat
64
Prayer. Day of.
146
Price, Eliphalet, 49, 67, 68, 95, 112,
.. 148-183-265-394-428-431-446
Price, Mrs E., Death of ..
193
Pritchard, Murder of. 203
Primary, The First.
309
Prohibition Amendment Election. 241
Quigley, Jos. B.
268
Quigley, Rev. J. J ...
270
Railroad, Davenport & Northwest- ern 210
Railroad, Iowa Eastern .... 208-211-261 Railroad Projects, 1857. 112-201 Railroad, Reaches River. 115 Railroad, River Road Constructed. 207
Railroad, West of McGregor 176 Railroad, Volga Valley Line. 210 Rangers Go to War.
Read, Robert R .- Appointed Clerk 65
Death of
190
Read, Mrs. R. R., Death of
197
Read Township .. 104-821
Rechfus Murder
25.5
Reese, Polly, Auction of
65
Reugnits, Carl, 8r.
266
Reugnitz, Chas.
307-240
Reuther, Louis.
227
Reminiscences of Pioneers
418
Reynolds, "Diamond Joe" 178
Richardson, Col. A. P.
108-120-131
Richardson, Rufus
371
Ringling Bros.
Sanitary Society
150
Sand, Mosaics
299
Schneider, Hy ..
267
Schoch, Chas., Sr ...
272
School System, Progress of ...
181-287
Schuette, H. L.
266
Shelhammer, J. B.
277
Osterdock City Government 360 Price, R. 242
Rural Free Delivery 286
XV
Sherman, Edward 271
Sherman, F. W. 262
Sherman, M. B. 276
Shoulte, J. H ...
276
Stoneman, J. T.
.131-216
Sigel, P. O. Established.
190
Skinner, W. A ..
Smith, Rev. W. B.
278
Stuben Guards
148
Supervisors, First Board of. 135
Supervisors, List of .. 189-491
Supervisors, System Changed. 187
Sweeney, Mildred, Death of. 291
Taft, George
266
Tapper, James
269
SOLDIERS, RECORD OF-
3rd Infantry
157
9th Infantry
158
Telephones, First
259
12th Infantry
160
21st Infantry
160
Third Iowa Infantry, Dept. of 142
Thoma, Fred
271
Thoma, J. P. 266
Thoma, William
221
Towns, 1880-1900
258
Towns, When Platted.
492
Townships, Organization
52-58
Townships, Early Precincts
Townships, Ten Named. 72
Townships and Towns Beginnings of 313-328
Traders. Early American
21
Turkey River, Steamboats on
96
Turkey River, Navigation of ... 195-446
"Union Party"
182
Uriell, Michael
411
Updegraff, Thos,
104-124-147-186-
213-215-408.
Volga City. 1853.
85-189-322-368
Volga Township
322
Volunteers at McGregor
141
Volunteers, Response of.
189
Wagner, P. O. Established. 1.90
Wagner Township
322
West McGregor
297-820
Wayman, W. W.
62-68
Windsor, Founding of 105
WINNEBAGOES-
Origin
Treaties with
42
4th Missouri Cavalry
170
In Iowa
18
5th Missouri Cavalry.
170
Winkley, Alonzo
266
12th Illinois Infantry.
170
43rd Illinois Infantry 170
2nd Kansas Cavalry. 170
6th Wisconsin Infantry 170
7th Wisconsin Infantry
171
U. S. Colored Infantry
171
Soldiers' Relief Work.
118
261
Soldiers, Roll of Honor
171-174
Spanish-American War
264
Sperry Township
322
Sterns, Elder D. M. 267
Stephens, W. H. 269
Stewart, E. W.
276
Strawberry Point. . 104-189-212-314-362 Street, Joseph M. 11-2
Snedigar, Fielding
270
Soldier, First Killed.
145
Soldiers' Cenotaph
197
Soldiers' Cenotaph Society 148
Soldiers, Homecoming of 154
Soldiers' Monuments
285
Tax Ferrets
282
Teachers' Institutes. 124-202-212
6th Cavalry
166
7th Cavalry
167
8th Cavalry 168
2nd Infantry
168
2nd Veteran Infantry
168
5th Infantry
162
6th Infantry
169
13th Infantry
169
15th Infantry
169
16th Infantry
169
34th Infantry
169
37th Infantry
169
38th Infantry
169
44th Infantry
169
46th Infantry
169
47th Infantry
169
48th Infantry
169
2nd Cavalry
169 169
6th Cavalry
169
9th Cavalry
170
1st Battery
170
3rd Battery
170
4th Battery
170
Engineer Regt. of West. 170
15th Missouri Infantry 170
Brd Missouri Cavalry 170
Winter, Ira P.
270
Williams, Judge E. H ... 78-123-210-390
Wilson, Henry, Death of.
297
Wilson, Judge T. S.
57
Witmer Homestead Case
265
Women in the War ...
146
198
Woodward, John, Death of
189-267-415
Woodward, S. T ....
Yankee Settlement, Founding of ... 104
In 1865
189
Young, P. C.
269
Temperance Issue, 1875. 214
27th Infantry
163
1st Cavalry
165
4th Cavalry
Soldiers' Reunions
INDEX
269
CHAPTER I
EARLIEST HISTORY-1673-1833
PERE MARQUETTE AND EARLY EXPLORERS-UNDER FRANCE AND SPAIN- FIRST AMERICANS-THE GIARD GRANT-FREEDOM OF THE MISSISSIPPI -LOUISIANA PURCHASE-UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES-BIRTH OF IOWA-INDIAN HISTORY-FUR TRADERS-INDIAN WARFARE-NEUTRAL GROUND-BLACKHAWK PURCHASE-SETTLEMENT OF IOWA.
W ITH swift, strong paddle strokes, two heavily laden birch bark canoes glide down the broad current of the Wisconsin. It is the 17th of June, 1673. The sky is fair, the hills on either side are covered with thick woods, the grass is bright with a myriad of flowers. Day after day, the explorers had pursued the journey, led on by the vague reports of Indian warriors, of a great river, the greatest river of them all, that had its sources in the frozen northland and emptied into some unknown sea.
In the prow of the foremost of the frail craft, sits a Father of the Brotherhood of Jesus Christ. He is a young man, but frail, and, with his priestly garb, his mild and not un-Christlike face, he seems strangely out of place in this rough wilderness. The leader of the other canoe is his exact antithesis, alert, wiry, inured to hardship, versed in all the skill of woodcraft; an ill-assorted pair, perhaps, but combining just the qualities which were to give their beloved Church and their beloved France the most fertile empire the world has ever known.
Suddenly, a shout of joy and praise arises, for, before their enraptured gaze, appears the river of their quest; broader, swifter, stronger than even they in their fondest dreams had imagined; the mightiest river in the world. And as they looked over the broad expanse their eyes rested upon mile after mile of great majestic hills, rising sheer from the water's edge, with wooded slopes and crowned by sentinel rocks, towering like castles on the Rhine. Then it was, that for the first time, the eye of a white man beheld Iowa, the Beautiful Land, and, at that moment, began the known history of Iowa, and of Clayton county.
In the great river, Father Jacques Marquette and his companion, Louis Joliet, saw the fulfillment of their mission, and knew that they had opened to the world, a new and wonderful field of endeavor, but even they could not have foreseen the splendid civilization which,
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MEMOIRS OF CLAYTON COUNTY
to-day, has transformed this wilderness into a veritable paradise of happy homes.
Urging his boatmen, and directing their course across the more than mile-wide river, Marquette stood in the canoe, gazing upon the approaching shore, and, in mid-stream, he raised the emblem of the Cross, and gave to the river the name so near his heart, the name so often on his lips, and called it the river of the "Immaculate Concep- tion." They disembarked on the opposite shore, a short distance below the mouth of the Wisconsin, and thus, in Clayton county, was set the first white foot that ever trod the soil of Iowa.
It is not the purpose of this work to relate the history of America, or of the United States or of the state of Iowa, except as they relate, directly, to the history of Clayton county. Nevertheless, so closely interwoven is the history of Clayton county with the history of the United States, that it will be necessary to dwell upon those facts which shall fix the relationship of the county to the nation as a whole. Again, all the changes in government, all the great events of national history, affected, intimately, the lives of the pioneers, and Clayton county's proper place in history cannot be appreciated without some knowledge of the larger events which brought it into being and con- trolled its destiny.
Marquette and Joliet lingered but a short time upon the shores of Clayton county. They encamped, killed game and caught fish. They climbed the rugged bluffs and saw, spread at their feet, the wonderful panorama of the Upper Mississippi. Opposite them, on the Wisconsin shore, were rolling prairies covered with tall grass that waved in the June breeze. Deer and elk were grazing on the meadow. Around about them were lofty, wooded, rocky hills and deep gorges, gay with rich foliage and flowers; chasms cut by the gushing torrents of pre- historic times. In the river were beautiful, low-lying islands, gleam- ing in the bright sunlight like emeralds upon the bosom of the waters. Back of them, the wavering lines of trees and bushes marked the courses of creeks and streams which cleft the billows of the broad and ocean-like expanse of prairie.
Father Marquette, speaking of this expedition of discovery, tells of the "joy which he could not express" and describes the Iowa high- land as "a large chain of very high mountains."
For the purpose of this history, it is needless to follow. Marquette and Joliet in their long journey which took them to the mouth of the Arkansas river and back to the Great Lakes by way of the Rock river ; Marquette to remain with his beloved Indians for the short span of life remaining to him and Joliet to return to Montreal in a perilous journey, during which the priceless records of the expedition were lost.
Marquette represented the highest type of the Christian mission- ary and pioneer. He came with nothing but love and friendship in his heart and it is to the credit of the aborigines that they met him in the same spirit, and that, in spite of their savage state, their natural fear of these unknown whites and the bloody wars in which they were engaged among themselves, they greeted the great missionary with hospitality and warm expressions of friendship.
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EARLIEST HISTORY-1673-1833
One can but feel that had all the white men come into the west with the same high purpose shown by Marquette, the frightful tales of bloodshed, and of massacre need never have been told. In the light of subsequent events the words of the Indian chief in welcome to Marquette are pathetic. The chief said: "How beautiful the sun is, O Frenchman, when thou comest to visit us. All our village awaits thee, and thou shalt enter all our cabins in peace. How good it is, my brothers, that you should visit us."
There is something pathetic in this welcome, when the squaws hastened to build the fires before the tepee doors, when the venison steaks were broiled, when the pipe of peace was presented, and, in the name of the Great Spirit, the chiefs welcome their white brothers to their homes. Could Manitou have told them what the future had in store, could they have foretold that their tribes were to be scattered, that their council fires were to be quenched, that the wild deer were to be driven from their hunting grounds and that, at last, they were to remain a beggarly, illkempt, despised remnant; living, without hope, upon the generosity of a conquering race, what would their reception have been?
The next traveler along the shores of Clayton county was Father Hennepin, who, under the direction of La Salle, explored the upper reaches of the "Meschasipi." The members of this expedition fell into the hands of the Indians but were ransomed by Du Lhut, the great wood ranger, and conducted, by him, back to Montreal by way of the Wisconsin river. While Father Hennepin was a great missionary, this party, under the auspices of La Salle, went largely for the purpose of exploration and for trade with the Indians. This was in the year 1680.
The vast regions of the northwest were of no value to the white man except for the rich furs obtained from the Indians in trade. This fur trade was highly profitable, great companies, backed by large capi- tal, being formed in France, in England and later, in America. They obtained grants and concessions which made them almost absolute monarchs of the western country. These powers, they, in turn, dele- gated to their representatives who sent traders and voyageurs to the very limits of the continent, into the frozen northlands, beyond the Arctic Circle, throughout all the woods of the lake region, up and down the Mississippi, across the prairie, ascending the Missouri until the Rocky mountains barred their path.
Over the red men, these traders and factors held, virtually, the power of life and death. According as they were honest or dishon- est, just or unjust, scrupulous or unscrupulous, depended the Indian's fate. Nicholas Perrot was appointed "Commandant of the West" in 1685. He came to the upper Mississippi by the Wisconsin river route, established forts, opened trade with the Indians and, on May 9, 1689, took formal possession of this region in the name of the King of France. Some writers claim that he established a post on the western bank of the Mississippi, some twelve miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin river. To him, also, came reports of rich lead mines located in the Dubuque-Galena district, and it is certain that he established a post in that vicinity. These things indicate that, more than two cen-
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MEMOIRS OF CLAYTON COUNTY
turies ago, the Mississippi river, along the stores of Clayton county, was the great highway, a center of trade and traffic and that Indians from many leagues around glided down the waters of the Turkey and the Volga with canoes heavy laden with the rich pelts of the many wild animals with which the woods abounded.
Pierre Charles Le Sueur was another of these early adventurers. He came first to this region in 1683 and, again, in the summer of 1700. On this journey he made the voyage up the Mississippi with a felucca and two canoes manned by nineteen persons. One of the members of this party describes the voyage, and, concerning this dis- trict, he says: "We found upon the right and left mines of lead which are called to this day the mines of Nicholas Perrot, which is the name of the man who discovered them. Twenty leagues higher upon the right, we found the mouth of a big river called the Ouisconsin. Oppo- site its mouth there are four islands in the Mississipy and a mountain opposite to the left, very high, half a league long." The name "Perrot's Lead Mines" was applied to a large region, long after the discoverer's departure from the west, when trade was diverted south- ward down the Mississippi to the loss of the Canadian traders.
Another traveler in this region was Baron Lahontan. He also traveled the Wisconsin river route and the Munchausen-like account of his wonderful discoveries was a "best seller" in Europe in about the year 1700. Another interesting relic of the early days is a map of Louisiana and the course of the Mississippi, published by William De L'Isle, the French map maker, in 1703. This map indicates, by two fine parallel lines, a trader's trail, commencing at the Mississippi river, a few miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin river, and run- ning westward across northern Iowa, through the Iowa lake district and as far, probably, as the present city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Up to this time, the traders and explorers along the upper Mis- sissippi had been directed from Canada, but, in 1699, Pierre Le Moyne D'Iberville arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi and became the father and the Governor of Louisiana. His kinsman, Le Sueur, was perhaps the first French voyageur to ascend the Mississippi from its mouth and, in the years that followed, a bitter trade was carried on between French traders, having St. Louis and New Orleans as their base and French traders hailing from Montreal. This situation was complicated by an uprising by the Renard, or Fox, Indians, who opposed the encroachments of the French and who, for the next fif- teen years, pillaged and harassed the traders and made their business unprofitable by preventing friendly Indians from trading with them.
UNDER FRANCE AND SPAIN
In 1712, the French Government, finding this new world only a source of trouble, conferred on Crozat, a rich Parisian banker, the exclusive trade of Louisiana and, for five years, this territory, of which Iowa is but a portion, was under the control of one man. Crozat made some attempts at colonization, but, in 1717, he tired of his bargain and gave up the privileges conferred upon him. John Law, with the famous "Mississippi Bubble," with which he gulled the people
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EARLIEST HISTORY-1673-1833
of France, created an era of wildest- speculation and finally bank- rupted a nation, was the next ruler of the Mississippi Valley. The colony then fell into the hands of the "Company of the Indies" and, in 1731, it reverted as a direct dependency to the King of France.
Louis XIV dreamed vague dreams and squandered fortunes for the establishment of a mighty empire in the western world, but he was hampered by the great and growing unrest in his own country and by continual war with other countries, so that, at one time, all the sta- tions on the Mississippi, from the south, were abandoned and even the traders returned to their far Canadian homes, leaving this territory in the undisputed control of the Indians.
In 1727, the governor of Canada authorized Boucher to establish a trading post in southern Minnesota. Together with Fathers Michel Guignas and Nicholas de Gonnor, Boucher came, by the Wis- consin route and ascended the Mississippi and one of the expedition describes the river as flowing "between two chains of high, bare and very sterile mountains." Boucher became involved in many difficul- ties with the Indians. There were massacres and much fighting and, in March, 1729, the French abandoned their post and, as soon as the ice disappeared in'the Mississippi, withdrew in their canoes, accom- panied by seven pirogues of Kickapoos. The Foxes were at this time at war with all their neighbors and the Sac Indians were also in a desperate condition. This caused them to unite their forces and to seek refuge across the Mississippi, in this district. Their main village was at the mouth of the Papsipinicon river and they hunted through all this country.
We will not attempt to follow all the ups and downs of Indian tribal warfare. Suffice it to say that the whole country was in turmoil and the lives of French traders and the interests of France were so endangered that the Governor General sent Pierre Paul, Sieur Marin, into this country to restrain the Indians. There is reason to believe that Marin built and maintained a fort, from 1738 to 1740, below the mouth of the Wisconsin, at the head of Magill's Slough, on the Iowa bank of the Mississippi : early French settlers knew and spoke of it as Marin's Fort. Marin remained in this region, and was its virtual ruler, for a number of years. Fort Beauharnois was built in the Sioux country, was abandoned, rebuilt and finally deserted in 1756, when all French troops were needed to fight the British. By 1760 all this region had been abandoned by the French.
In 1759 the great stronghold of Quebec was captured, France was humiliated, the Canadas were lost, and it was feared that an English fleet might capture New Orleans and thus take away the last vestige of French control in America. To prevent this, Louis XV made a secret treaty with Charles III of Spain by which New Orleans and all the country west of the Mississippi were ceded to the latter govern- ment. This treaty was made in 1762, but not acknowledged until the treaty of Paris, January 1, 1763.
FIRST AMERICANS
It was in the last years of the French occupation, that the American colonists made their first appearance in the Mississippi Val-
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MEMOIRS OF CLAYTON COUNTY
ley. As early as 1760, before the appearance of British troops, English colonial traders established themselves on the Rock river and, four years later, thrifty Dutchmen, from Albany, were prospecting for trade in the Wisconsin country. Jonathan Carver, a Yankee shoe- maker from Connecticut, was one of the first Americans to operate in this region. He reached Prairie du Chien in 1766, and tells of that place as a "great mart, where all the adjacent tribes, and even those who inhabit the remote branches of the Mississippi, annually assemble, about the latter end of May, bringing with them their furs to dispose of to the traders."
This brief description gives us a vivid picture of Prairie du Chien as the great trading center and one may well imagine the river dotted with Indian canoes and the smoke rising from scores of Indian wigwams on both sides of the Mississippi. Carver, indeed, saw the advantage of trade on the Iowa side and he made his residence upon the banks of the little stream which the French called "Le Jaun Riviere" and which Carver translated as "Yallow river." He spent two years in this vicinity and afterward published an account of his travels.
Another American trader, a Yankee, and likewise an historian, was Peter Pond. He followed the Fox-Wisconsin waterway and reached the Iowa shore in 1773.
Pond gives a picture of Prairie du Chien as a place where "the French practiced his billiards and the Indian his ball. Here the boats from New Orleans come. They are navigated by thirty-six men who row as many oars. They bring on a boat sixty hogsheads of wine on one, besides ham, cheese, etc .- all to trade with the French and Indians."
These were the years just preceding the American Revolution. The British had acquired Canada and were pushing their garrisons out to command the frontier. The Mississippi was the western boundary of their domain. The Spanish had just come into the pos- session of Louisiana, which included everything west of the Missis- sippi. The American colonists, as we have seen, were beginning to send forth adventurous spirits into the western wilds. The French still had the largest control of the commerce of the country, but had no government back of them and yielded scant loyalty either to England or to Spain. The Indians were still in their original state. They had not become so debauched by whiskey as they were at a later date. Their condition was, however, most unfortunate; they were at war among themselves, were easy victims of the epidemic diseases and were considered legitimate prey to be robbed and cheated, disciplined and terrorized, by Britons, Yankees, French and Spaniards alike.
It was not until 1768 that the Spanish made any real effort to strengthen their hold upon their newly acquired territory of Louisiana. Posts were established at the mouth of the Mississippi and they made efforts to prevent the encroachments of the British ; who, in turn, were doing all in their power to win the Indians away from Spain. Within a few years the colonists were at war with England and the Revolution reached even to the shores of Iowa. The British attempted to enlist the Indians against the "Bostonians" and, in 1779, Gautier, a French
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EARLIEST HISTORY-1673-1833
Canadian, headed a command of two hundred and eight Indian allies in an attempt to drive the Americans from Illinois. In this year, also, Spain declared war against England. The English now proposed a campaign with a double purpose, one to harass the Americans and the other to drive the Spanish from the Mississippi and their great trading post at St. Louis. Accordingly an expedition of seven hundred and fifty men ; soldiers, traders, and Indians, proceeded down the Wiscon- sin to Prairie du Chien. Here they were joined by other traders with bands of friendly Indians. That this warfare extended to Clayton county is evidenced by the fact, that, in April, 1780, an American trad- er's armed barge-load of goods and provisions, with twelve men was seized and plundered off the mouth of Turkey river on the Iowa side. The Indian allies soon deserted the British, however, and the proposed attack on St. Louis never developed into more than a foray which terrorized the upper valley of the Mississippi.
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