USA > Iowa > Delaware County > History of Delaware County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 22
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EARLY MAILS
Our first mails were carried mostly upon horseback and came once a week. The carriers did not have as much mail as one of our rural carriers have now every day. The route was from Dubuque to Elkader, about sixty miles. . Daily papers had not come into use among us, and there were but few weeklies. One paper was passed around among the settlers and served several families, as a matter of economy.
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GAME PLENTIFUL
Wild game was very plentiful. Bear, deer and elk were killed by the settlers and the meat and hides were sold at Dubuque. A bear skin brought $10. Quite a number of bears were killed in Turkey Timber. Elk and deer were about as plentiful as sheep. A deer skin brought 50 eents. Wild turkeys were numer- ous, also prairie chickens, pheasants and quails were in unlimited numbers. Our people were well provided with meat, as wild game was so plentiful that it was had for the killing of it. Wild bees were found in every tree that had a cavity in it sufficient to hold a swarm. We were well supplied with honey
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from the forests and with maple molasses, which we made from maple trees that grew in our forest.
MONEY SCARCE
Money was a scarce article. Deer skins, other hides and furs were a medium of exchange. If a man had anything to sell he managed to exchange with his neighbor at the price a fur buyer would pay for hides and furs when he came in the spring. Notes were given and they were used in the place of money. One of our neighbors had a yoke of oxen to sell. He made the sale to another man, the payment being in notes and deer skins. Among the notes was one for $5.00 that the man who sold the oxen had given to another party, and when it came to accepting his own paper he said, "Hold on; let me see the paper." After scrutinizing it for a moment, he remarked, "O yes, that is a good note. I can make something out of that." As the note had not been mutilated or torn, he was perfeetly willing to accept it, considering only the value of the paper on which it was written. Had the note been torn he would have raised the objection that he could not pass it on account of it being mutilated.
PRICES LOW ON FARM PRODUCTS
Prices of our prodnee were very low. Corn was sold for S and 10 cents per bushel; oats about the same; wheat sold for from 25 to 35 eents per bushel and some of that wheat was handed with ox teams over one hundred miles, to the markets on the Mississippi River. Dressed pork brought from 1 to 116 cents per pound. Sheep brought 50 cents per head and the young lambs were thrown in to make the bargain good. Labor was a very cheap com- modity-from $5 to $S per month was the scale-and in winter a man worked for his board. Cord wood was cut on the bluffs of the river for 25 cents per cord and sold to the steamboats. Cows sold for from $5 to $S per head and other things in about the same ratio.
BARTER AND EXCHANGE
Money was so searee that a goodly part of our business was barter and exchange. We were almost destitute so far as money was concerned. Yet we had plenty of the necessities of life at that time, for the demand upon society was not to be compared with the present day. The first money that we had. that amounted to anything like a surplus, was obtained upon the return of the miners, who went to California in 1849 and 1850. About twenty-five men went to the gold mines in the two years mentioned ; some remained and made their homes there. Several died of disease and exposure, while others returned, but only three of them brought any money. The amount that came into Colony Township was about $30.000, which, when it came to be used in our community, started us on the road to prosperity. The California emigration started a rise in the price of our cattle, bringing as high as $150 per yoke. Cows were also yoked and driven across the plains to the Pacific coast.
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LARGE NUGGET OF GOLD
The writer remembers one nugget of pure gokdl. free from dross, quartz or any foreign material, that was brought to the Town of Colesburg by Horace Mallory : it weighed over 412 pounds and its value at the Philadelphia mint was over twelve hundred dollars. The people named the nugget Solomon's Moccasin Sole, it being shaped like the sole of a round-toed shoe. As gold was given in California by the ounce in exchange for miners' supplies, the Government coined at the San Francisco mint a $50 goldl piece, for the convenience of handling, guaranteed to be so many ounces of fine gold of the value of $50. This was not a Government coin, as it did not contain any alloy. It was only guaranteed to be so many fine ounces. The piece was octagonal in shape and was called by our people a "sing." Some of those slugs were brought home by the miners.
FINANCIAL CRASH OF 1857 AND WILD CAT MONEY
But alas: Our prosperity, after Hourishing a few years, came to a sudden halt. The great financial crisis of 1857 stopped all progress. It seemed the gold and silver had taken wings and flown away. Our country was flooded with worthless paper currency, issued by private banks that had sprung up like Jonah's gourd. All over the then western states private banking, then not re- strieted by law. issned an unlimited quantity of paper money. It was brought from the states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois, scattered over Towa with no security behind it and no law by which the guilty parties could be punished. So that. we found ourselves stranded and it was quite a task to get hold of gold or silver to pay taxes, which had to be paid in coin of the country. All articles of manufacture remained unsold. Products of the soil were disposed of for less than nothing or were not sold at all. All manner of business came to a stand- still. Little improvement was made within the state. It was about all a man would do to make a living and hold on to what he had. Up until the Government issued currency to carry on the war of the great rebellion. prices remained very low. Just before the elose of the war, in 1864 and 1865, prices of every- thing went skyward. Hogs sold as high as $17.35 per hundred, and cattle. horses and sheep at about the same ratio. Common calico reached the enormous price of 60 cents per yard ; coffee, 65 cents per pound, and sugar, three pounds for a dollar. Gold and silver were not in circulation. The Government resumed specie payment in 1879. when everything dropped to the lowest possible price : again our people labored under adverse conditions for some six or seven years, or until the silver coinage by the Sherman Act relieved the situation.
In 1893 our people went through another financial depression, which closed our factories and stopped the consumption of our products. Until 1896 the same conditions continued; then prosperity reigned until the present time, October. 1907. Now. again, we are going through another similar condition and we cannot tell when there will be another rally in prices. The writer predicts that the financial crisis will rival the condition of 1857. I have followed the various conditions down to the present time, in order to show how regularly they have occurred-1857, 1863, 1893, 1907. Four great financial crises that have existed in the last fifty years! Is there no remedy ? Val. I 13
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CHARACTER OF DWELLINGS IN THE SETTLEMENTS
Our houses were built of logs that were ent from the native timber which grew along the streams. Logs for the cabins were notched on the corners and laid one upon another. The cracks between the logs were filled with pieres of split timber. the size required. These were driven between the logs and the space left was daubed full of mud, which had straw or hay mixed with it to keep it from erumbling and falling out. In this way the cabin was made comfortably warm during the long cold winter. The floors were made of split bass wood logs, with the flat side laid up and the uneven places dressed with a foot adze. There was, generally, only one window on the south side for lighting the mansion. The door was hung on wooden hinges that reached across it. Holes were made in the end of the hinges ; the door was then hung on wooden pins driven into the logs. The latch was a short strip of wood about one foot long, which was Fastened on a pin on the inside of the door. This was movable at one end and dropped into a wooden catch that was fastened to the logs at the inside of the door. A hole was bored through the door above the latch and a string was tied to the lateh. This string ran through the hole in the door and hung down on the outside. Hence, when you wanted to enter the house, you pulled the string, the lateh would come up out of the catch and the door would open. If you wanted to lock your house, you pulled the latch string on the inside and. your door was bolted. From this we have the old expression, "you will find the latch string out." when one neighbor was requested to call upon his friends.
One end of the house was occupied by what was called a fire place, which was built of stone and held in place by a wooden frame of logs on the outside. This fire place was constructed by cutting out the end logs of a part of the cabin and working from the outside at the end of the house. the stone work facing into the room. A large flat rock in front of it, called a hearth stone, came level with the floor, upon which, if any brands of fire rolled out, they would not burn the floor. The cooking was done over the fire. The baking was done over a bed of hot coals drawn out on the hearth stone. A cast iron oven, circular in form. was placed on this bed of eoals and a lid was placed on the oven, upon which more hot coals were placed. In this, bread was baked to perfection. On top of the fire place was built the chimney, which was made by laying a frame of split sticks and danbing them inside and outside with mud. made from water and clay. On one side of the fire place was attached an iron crane, that swung in or out over the fire. It had a hook at the end. Upon this hook the dinner pot was hung and swung back over the fire. To build a fire, a large log was rolled into the back part of the fire place, against which two three-legged irons, called dog irons, were placed. Upon these iron supports smaller pieces of wood were placed on the under side of which the fire was started. The blaze, striking against the large back log, soon had it burned into a bright glowing coal, which kept up the heat during the long, cold winter night.
These log houses were built about sixteen feet square and on the side, or end. a lean-to was built. The house was then covered with what was called "shakes. " or clapboards, which were about three feet long, split out of straight-grained timber and held in place on the roof by a long pole, which reached the full
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length of the house. This was called a weight pole. Nails were used to hold the clapboards in place. The cabins, as a rule, contained one room, which served as dining room, kitchen, sitting room, bed room and parlor. The loom, spinning wheel, chairs, beds, cooking utensils and other furniture were all arranged in this one room.
THE SPINNING WHEEL AND LOOM
All of our clothing was made from the raw material. The wool was first carded into rolls, with hand cards about one foot long, then spun into yarn, which was knit by some member of the family into stockings, or woven into cloth for elothing. This was all made at home, either out of flax or wool. The flax was grown, pulled by hand and rotted in the field until the woody part of it was brittle. It was then bound in small sheaves, put through a machine, called a flax brake, and worked by hand. This machine broke the woody part of the stoek, which was then put in bunches or "hands," as they were called. Each "hand" was placed across an upright board about eight inches wide. The flax was then whipped over the sharp edge of the board with a large wooden knife. called a seutching knife. This operation cleaned all the broken woody part from the fiber, which was then pulled through what was called a hackle. The hackle separated the fine linen from the coarser, called tow, and from this sacks and "pants" were made. After it was woven the fine linen was made into tablecloths, fine shirts, towels, etc. This work was all done in the home, each member of the family taking a part. The cap maker, or hatter, came to the home and made the caps for the family. The dressmaker came and cut and fitted garments for the women, and the tailor came and made clothing for the men and boys. Such was the mode of life and the conditions of the early settlers as I recollect them in early life in Delaware County. Everything we wore, in the way of clothing, was made at home. Our hats for summer wear were made of wheat or rye straw, taken from the fields just before the grain ripened.
METHOD OF CUTTING AND THRESHING GRAIN AND UTENSILS USED
Our small grain was cut with eradtes, these being something like a mowing seythe, with a frame work of long slender fingers made of hickory wood. The length of the seythe held the grain as it was cut. It was swung to one side and left the grain in swaths on the ground, to be raked together and bound with a band of straw. Sometimes hand sickles were also used to cut the riper and tallen down patches of grain in the field. The wages of a strong man, to swing one of those cradles, was $1 per day. That was from sun up to sun down. Our threshing was done by hand with an implement called a flail, which was about the size of a pitchfork handle, with a billet of wood, fastened on the outer end of the handle by a leather or buckskin strap about three or four inches long, and as you whirled the staff or handle in your hand the billet of wood came down with a heavy thud on the heads of the grain, which was arranged by placing the sheaves in two rows with the heads of the grain in the center, six sheaves on either side. After the grain was threshed the straw was removed with
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a pitchfork, the grain settling to the bottom on the ground. The wheat and chaff was then taken up and held about six feet above the threshing floor. It was then slowly poured on to the floor so that the wind blew the dust and chaff away and the grain lay on the canvas perfectly clean. As our wheat crops became large we threshed by placing the sheaves on a circular floor, abont twenty feet in diameter, and tramped the grain from the straw by driving horses and cattle over it, then winnowed, by pouring chaff and grain from a bucket, letting the wind separate the grain from chaft and dirt. The first threshing machine that came into Colony Township was hanled by horses from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The first reaper was brought from Freeport, Illinois, by wagon, as that was the end of the railroad from Chicago west at that time. It was called the Chicago & Galena Railroad. This, a McCormick reaper, required four horses and two men to operate it. It ent a swath five feet wide. The grain was raked from the platform with a long-tooth rake by hand and left in sheaves, or bunches, on the ground. It was then bound by hand into bundles, which was heavy and laborious work. Other different patents were introduced to our farmers, one of which had a self rake and required only one man to operate. Now the self binder does the same work at less than one-fifth of the expense.
DOMESTIC ANIMALS ROAMED THE PRAIRIE
C'attle, horses, hogs and all domestic animals ran at large, hence the grain fields had to be fenced. Our cattle roamed the prairie. During the summer season we out the native grass, from which we made hay to feed during the winter. Our hogs run at will in the timber and some years were fattened on acorns and nuts that grew in the woods. Sometimes the hogs, not seeing any person for some months. would become wild and after the first snow storm they could be tracked to their haunts and shot. Every settler had a brand recorded. and when young, the calves, hogs and lambs were marked in the ears with the brand. In this way every man knew his own property. The price of live stock was very low. A fat five-year-old steer would bring the sum of $8. Dressed pork brought from 1 to 112 cents per pound and then only one-half was paid in cash at the time of the purchase. The other half either had to be taken in trade of some description, or the settler waited until the return sales were made. The market was on the Mississippi River at Dubuque and when navigation closed on the 15th day of November. our markets were very slim until navigation again opened on the 15th of March following. Our cattle were sold to what we called drovers, who bought them during the summer and drove them to the eastern markets. Cattle were driven from lowa to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. to market. As soon as the people began to settle on the prairies it made a home market and also railroad buikling consumed all we had to sell at a home market.
VENOMOUS SNAKES \ MENACE
The early settler also had to contend not only with Indians and wild beasts but with the venomous rattlesnakes, which were quite numerons in the timber as well as on the prairie. We had a short. thick, black rattler called the Massasauger, or Prairie Rattlesnake. It was more daring and would bite
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quicker than his timber brother. Horses and cattle were very shy of them, detecting them in the grass by their sense of smell. We had one man who could also detect them in the same way. I was with him one time when we were picking gooseberries and he called my attention to the fact that he could seent a rattler. He ent a stiek about six feet long and after a few punches with it we discovered the snake within a few feet of where we were picking berries. Snakes were so immerous that in the early spring men gathered in companies and made regular hunts for them along the rocks and bluffs near the water courses. As they are quite feeble and sluggish when they come out of their winter quarters, they were killed by the hundreds. The hogs that ran at large in the timber also destroyed the snakes in great numbers, as the virus of the snake did not affect the hog if bitten. The Massasauger has beeome extinet here. but we occasionally kill a few of the big yellow variety. Every year quite a mimber of people were bitten by snakes, but only one death occurred from the effect of the poison. This was a woman who was bitten on the wrist while picking wild strawberries. She became blind and unconscious in less than thirty minutes and died at the going down of the sun. She was so badly poisoned that she did not regain consciousness and wanted to bite everything near her. The attendants at her bedside had quite a contest to keep her from biting them. After her death the color of her body was variegated by the blood settling under the skin in the shape of spots on a rattlesnake. They were of a dark blood-shot color resembling those of a rattlesnake.
HOWLING AND PROWLING WOLVES IN EVIDENCE
Wolves were numerous. The large gray timber wolves were very destructive. carrying away lambs, pigs and calves and often they attacked full grown domestic animals. The lynx and panther had their abode among the rocks and bluffs along Turkey River. The bowl of the wolf and the screech of the panther could be heard on a quiet evening near our cabin home, as these animals roam at night. We were very careful to have everything closely housed in our log barns or stables. Deer and bears were hunted for their hides. The hind quarters of the deer and the hide were all that were taken when the animal was killed. The balance was left for the erows, as the fore quarters were not salable.
SOME BEAR STORIES
The bears were the large black variety weighing from four to six hundred pounds. The Indians killed a bear about one mile east of Petersburg in Bremen Township. The den in the cleft of rocks was so small that there could not enough Indians get into it to get the bear out, so they had to ent the brute into pieces in order to get it into the open ; hence, the grove of about one hundred aeres was called Bear Grove, and the stream of water that ran near by was called Bear Creek, its source being near the Town of Colesburg. Running in a sontheasterly direction, it empties into the north fork of the Maquoketa near Dyersville. This is the way the grove and stream got their names. Two large bears were killed northeast of Greeley. near the Fountain Mill Springs, by Missouri and Samuel T. Dickson. Their hunting camp was at the spring and
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they discovered the den by the spring that came up through the long blue joint that grew on the side of a sink hole. The snow having lapped the grass down, the warmth from their bodies had melted the snow in a small spot, from which emitted steam. The day being very cold, this was plainly visible. These men raised up the long grass and there lay the bears, in a small cavity which they had dug in the soft earth on the side of the sink hole. Both were sound asleep. One of the men held up the long grass with the muzzle end of his gun and the other man shot into the nest, guessing as nearly as he could where the head of the bear lay. The bullet broke the under jaw of the bear and out it. eame. knocking the only loaded gun down into the bottom of the sink hole, where the bear in his frenzy had rolled. The other bear was killed with an ax. By this time the dogs were there and the wounded bear and dogs began fighting. The other gun was now loaded but the men were afraid to shoot, fearing they might kill the dogs. The battle between bear and dogs waged until the former. becoming too minch for the dogs, gave up; the bear was then shot. The men also killed two other bears on this hunt near the ice cave at Rigby's Park, from which Bear Creek, in Clayton County, got its name. It may seem singular to some that these bears could be approached so closely. In cold weather they hibernate, and I have been told by those who have had experience in hunting them that they will not waken from their sleep until they are shot ; that they roll up in shape of a ball, their paws in their mouth, and in this manner they sleep during the winter. This is why the hunter could not tell where to direct his aim so as to hit the animal in the head; and for this reason hunters always carried an ax and a large knife, and often killed the bears in their den. Bruin will not fight a man from his den but will use every effort to get out and when once on the outside is ready for a fight. A. II. Mallory captured a young bear and kept it until it was two years old. In the spring of 1849 Mr. Mallory went to California during the gold excitement on the coast, and after he left the bear refused to eat and became so vieions that it had to be killed. The loss of its keeper seemed to arouse all its wild, vieious nature and it became unmanageable. but prior to his departure it was perfectly docile and would eat from Mr. Mal- lory's hand and would play and wrestle with him, seeming to enjoy the sport.
RAILROAD BUILDING WARMLY DISCUSSED
Railroads were not thought of by our people until about 1850; and when the question of railroad building in lowa was discussed there were many anmsing arguments advanced, some declaring that railroads if built across our western prairies would have nothing to haul, as no one was living there and that it never would be settled; that it would be a useless expense and that capitalists would not put their money into so foolish an enterprise as to build a railroad where there was no one to patronize it. An Irishman, who was assisting at a house raising, suggested that there would not only be railroads built aeross lowa. but, said he: "I will tell ye, gintlemen, some day some venturesome fellow will build a railroad across the plains to Californy." They all laughed and wanted to know how it would be possible to get a train over the Rocky Mountains. He replied : "A large engine will be placed on the top of the mountain and while it is hauling up one car it will let down another car on the opposite side of the
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mountain." However, railroad building began about 1854. The Dubuque & Sioux City Railroad (now the Illinois Central) was completed to the Town of Dyersville in May, 1856, and this remained the terminus of the road for about fifteen months. As this was the end of the road everything going west from Dyersville had to be hauled by wagon, drawn by either horses or eattle. The travel by rail was very slow compared with the present rate of speed upon railway trains.
I will relate an incident of one of our neighbors who owned and operated a threshing machine. He broke one of the planet wheels of his horse power and, as there was a foundry at Dubuque, he knew that by going there he could get another wheel cast. He rode on horseback to Dyersville, his dog following him to that point. He left the dog. as he supposed, at Dyersville with his horse, but when he stepped off the car at Dubuque the first friend to greet him was his dog. It had kept pace with the train-a distance of about thirty miles: While this may seem to some slow traveling for a railway train, it is not quite so slow as the train traveling through Arkansas, where the conductor had to take the cow catcher from the front of the train and attach it to the rear to keep the cattle from running against the end car. We now have two main lines crossing the county from east to west, also two lines north and south, as well as the Manchester & Oneida-eight miles in length -- built with Delaware County capital and Delaware County enterprise.
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