USA > Iowa > Franklin County > History of Franklin County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 16
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There had been a heavy snow on the ground, which had become crusted, and then there came a heavy snow storm with extremely cold weather, and as soon as the snow was over he resolved to go to see what had become of his team and the family. The snow had then become three feet deep, with a crust about one foot below the surface of the snow. He expected to start in the morning and when morn- ing came, Mr. Main persuaded him to remain and make a pair of snow shoes before starting, saying that it would be impossible for him to travel without. He consequently set about making the nec- essary snow shoes, which took both of them until noon. After dinner he started, intending to reach Boylan's Grove by night, which is two miles west of the town of Bristow, although there was no Bristow there then. Two of the Boylans lived at the grove. After traveling a few miles, the snow crust had cut the whangs of the raw elk skin so that they gave out and he had to abandon the snow shoes. He still made his way as best he could until his strength failed and night came on. He then trod down the snow for a little space and broke brush from the bushes which had been killed by fire, and pre- pared to camp for the night. Having but one match in his pocket, he took the precaution to tear off a shirt sleeve to make sure of catch- ing his fire. He stamped around his little fire, breaking brush, for he had not even a jack-knife with him, until at last he could move no longer, and sank down by the embers to await the coming of day- light. At daylight his feet were so frozen that he could not walk. Then he started on his hands and knees and covered the three miles to Boylan's in that manner. Arriving at Boylan's he found his team left by Phelps, who had met an opportunity to ride with another man the rest of his journey. There being no way of treating his frozen feet there, he drove to Janesville and stayed with John Barrick, who cared for him until he was able to return to Franklin county. While my brother was stopping at Janesville, he wrote me a good descrip- tion of the country, particularly Franklin county, upon which I de- cided to join him and started in March, 1853, arriving at Main's Grove early in April, finding my brother yet with very sore feet. He had said nothing of his hardships or frozen feet in his letters. He said he would not have mother know it.
Mr. Main and my brother had gone down stream trapping for beaver and otter, when I arrived. I found Mrs. Main and her little girl, Julia, alone in the cabin, and the next day I went in search of
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the trappers and found with them Mr. Townsend, who lived on the Iowa river, in Hardin county. I bought the traps and good will of Mr. Townsend for $24 in gold and became a member of the firm, and he went home. I was appointed cook of the company and pro- vided regular meals of corn bread and roasted beaver tails. We continued trapping six weeks and during the last week my brother went to Cedar Falls for supplies and brought up forty-eight pounds of bacon and two pounds of sole leather. Then we broke camp and returned to the grove, and found Martha and Julia well and happy. Then Main went down to the settlement after his oxen and plow, while James and I commenced splitting rails to fence the field.
On the return of Main we found our provisions again short and it was decided to go to Cedar Falls for supplies. James and Main were to go with two yoke of oxen and wagon, and I was to remain and continue splitting rails. We took an invoice of our stock of provisions and decided that it would be sufficient for a week, and they said they could make the trip in that time. Toward the last of the week the shoulder of bacon grew short until only the rind was left, and the sack of meal was getting low. We put ourselves on short rations and peered through the timber to catch a glimpse of the returning party. At the end of the week they had not returned and our meal was gone. Mrs. Main reluctantly and with many expressions of regret, opened the little sack of beans-about a pint --- which had been procured for seed, and put a small handful in the kettle with the rind of bacon and made a dish of soup. She repeated this, boiling the same rind and adding less beans from day to day until, when the provisions arrived, the beans were gone and the rind was well bleached out. They had been some days over the week in making the trip. The oxen, having been cheaply wintered, had not strength to make the trip in the time they expected they could. We commenced breaking along the north line of James Reeve's claim, a strip eighty rods in length. When we had plowed there one week, Main and I went on to his claim on the south of the grove, and plowed a week for him, and James went to the Cedar river to get, if possible, another yoke of oxen, as our team was not strong enough for the work. During his absence one day, after eating our dinner on the prairie where we were plowing, I took my usual look over the country and away to the southeast I saw objects moving. Calling Mr. Main, I asked him what it was. He looked and decided it was a party of elk. "Yes," he said, "I can see the gray on the rumps and I am sure I can see young elk there." Immediately it was decided to make an
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effort to capture some of the young elk. Main directed me to go to the cabin for the dog and gun, while he peeled some basswood bark to secure the young elk with. This being done, we went forth with high anticipations of capturing some fine young elk. As we neared our game, we would see plainer from the top of each roll of the prairie that it was elk and that we were not mistaken. At last we had passed a long stretch of prairie and rose again to high ground; we were within eighty rods of our game and all had changed. Where we had seen the old elk with brown backs and young elk with red coats, we now beheld five emigrant wagons with men, children and dogs in the procession. We met them and piloted them to the grove with more pleasure and satisfaction than we could have felt with as many young elk. The party consisted of George Sturm, wife and two boys, Solomon Staley, one boy and two girls, James Fairchild, mother and two children, Bob Stevens (do not remember his family), Henry Garner and wife. These families all took claims, west, north and south of the cabin, and each set about building.
On the return of James Reeve with his oxen, he was accompanied by Job Garner, who settled at the east end of Four Mile grove by a big spring. He soon sold his claim to Martin Boots and took another claim where your beautiful city of Hampton now stands. He built his cabin by a spring near where James VanNuys now lives. In June the land here was to be in market and we started for Des Moines for the land office to make our preemptions. In the party were James B. Reeve, John Main, Job Garner, George Sturm, Solomon Staley, James Fairchild, Robert Stevens, Henry Garner and Leander C. Reeve. This party comprised all the men that I know of as living in Franklin county at that time. We camped the first night at Hay- den's mill, where Hardin City is now located. Mr. Hayden, who had put up a sawmill on the river, was the only inhabitant of the place. On reaching the land office, we learned that the lands had to be offered at public sale for three days before it was subject to private entry. The whole party could hardly afford to spend three days at Des Moines, so they deputized James Fairchild and Leander C. Reeve to stay and make the preemptions for the party.
James Fairchild had his house covered sooner than any others of this party. The first religious meetings were held in his house. Mr. Fairchild was a man of good breeding and gentle manners; but he made a very serious mistake by giving a speculator the numbers of John Main's claim. The result was that Main lost his claim. As soon as this was ascertained, James Reeve called a meeting of all
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the men in the settlement and held a court under the "unwritten law." The unanimous verdict of this jury was that James Fairchild should leave the county within twenty-four hours or be shot. He preferred to leave and James Reeve waited on him to Cedar Falls, where I saw him the next winter and had a talk with him about the affair.
The first sermon preached in the county was by Job Garner. I had been holding a claim for a friend who had promised to come out from Ohio and take it. It was north of Judge Reeve's where Sam Garner settled. Job had been several times asking me to let him have it for his son Sam, and at last, thinking I could not hold it much longer for my friend, I told Mr. Garner that I had held it now until the claim was valuable and I should want something for it. He asked me what I thought it worth and I priced it at $300. He thought it too high and I told him I would make the payments so that he could meet them easily. "How is that?" he asked. "I understand that you are a preacher," said I. "Yes," he said, "I preached back in Indiana." "Well, if you want this claim for $300, I will take it all in preaching." The contract was closed and he was to preach his first sermon in the James Fairchild house as soon as the roof was on. The next Sunday the house was covered and word had been given out of the meeting, and every man, woman and child in the settlement was there to attend church. If I get no other men- tion in the history of the early settlement of your county, I desire the distinction of having been liberal in sustaining the gospel. Job Garner was a Campbellite preacher and held meetings regularly until the Methodists became strong enough to sustain a church of that denomination.
As it is not my purpose to talk to you of things that you have already recorded in the history of your county, perhaps you will pardon me if I relate an incident of the difficulties of travel in those early days. About the first day of May, 1855, I had occasion to go to Des Moines to the land office. I went on horseback and crossed the Iowa river in a skiff, leading my horse behind, crossing the river at Marietta, the county seat, six miles above the present city of Mar- shalltown, stayed over night at Marietta and the next day reached Cory's tavern at Iowa Center. From there I started by sunrise and soon came to Indian creek, which I found very high from the spring freshet. The ford showed plainly and I rode in thinking of no danger as "Bill," my horse, was an experienced swimmer. A few steps brought us where "Bill" had to swim and I sat up to my waist
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in water. In order to make the ford we must turn to the right which would bring us against the current, which I could not persuade "Bill" to do. He would go straight across the stream and if I should pull him upstream it would turn him on his side and that would not do. So as he was making square across the stream, I planned to leap from the saddle on to the grassy bank which was two feet above the water and lead him up the stream to the ford. My bridle had a double rein, one rein through the martingale and the other through the gag-runners and coming together at the hand piece, consequently, I could not carry the rein over his head as I left the saddle but thought I could take him by the bit and lead him up to the ford. The instant I left the saddle he turned and I missed his bit and he started to swim back across the stream which was then double its usual width. Becoming exhausted, he let himself float in the middle of the stream. I walked along the bank abreast of him, thinking he might drift to shore, but soon further down I saw a drift of trees, which had been undermined by the freshet, washed down and lodged, and the water was sucking under this drift like a maelstrom. Then I thought "Bill" was lost, but the noise of the water startled him and he lifted his head above the logs and struck his breast. Then he was so frightened that he tried to swim out but his stirrup was caught in the drift. Then he realized his undone condition and gave me a look that plainly asked for assistance. I did not dare to venture out on the drift with my clothes on and $800 in gold in my undershirt pocket. I quickly laid down my clothes and the weight that "does so easily beset us" and made my way to the middle of the stream on the logs and limbs, many of them sinking when I put my weight on them, and I had to step quickly to another, and by reaching down into the water I unfastened the stirrup and "Bill" swam squarely against the current until he was beyond any danger from the drift and then went out on the east bank, leaving the flood between us. On examination I found that the drift reached the other shore sev- eral rods below. I got back to where my clothes were and bundled them up with the gold in the middle, wondering whether the clothes would float the gold in case I should lose them, then by cautiously picking my way I reached the other shore a sad, but happy, boy. Going back to Cory's, I borrowed a suit of clothes and dried mine, and after dinner rode seven miles up the river to Nevada and crossed on a bridge.
On the return from Fort Des Moines, I thought the river would have gone down so that I could ford it all right, but it had not, and
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"Bill" would not go into the water by any possible persuasion and I got a man and boy to assist me, and after taking off his saddle we shoved him off the bank and he swam to the other shore; then they sent me over in a skiff. In the winter of 1855 settlers had come in and many of them with little or no means for their support through the long winter before us. Judge Reeve, foreseeing the suffering that must arise from these conditions, proposed that we go down to where we could find some wheat and prepare to supply these people and prevent suffering. We drove about eighty-five miles east before we found wheat that we could buy. We bought two loads of wheat and took it to the gristmill at Quasqueton, on the Wapsipinicon river, and found that we would have to wait a week for our grist, so we bought each a load of flour and returned. The last day of the return trip we started from William Peck's, where now the town of New Hartford stands. Thinking that four tons of flour which our four loads would make, would be more than would be needed in our settlement, I took my load to Hardin City and sold it. This caused us to make different roads that morning. About the middle of the afternoon we met a fearful blizzard. This storm was so terrible that it was nearly impossible to drive against it. I reached a house four miles from Hardin City, where I stayed until morning. My brother's course took him over a long stretch of open prairie and when the storm struck him it was nearly im- possible to keep on his course; when darkness came on he lost his bearings. He still drove on, not having any way of guiding his course, until at last he came to Quin Jordan's rail fence at Four Mile grove. Following the fence, he found the house and secured shelter for himself and team. This was at the Rufus Benson place. In all probability he would have perished in that storm before morning if he had not struck the fence. The next week we made the second trip to Quasqueton for the balance of our flour. There were three tons of flour that we dealt out to the people of Main's Grove that winter, and in the spring it was all gone. The flour was stored in the chamber of my log house and whoever came for it had it. regardless of whether they had money or not. But I be- lieve every sack was paid for sooner or later. Those early settlers were honest and true men. In the early summer of 1855, Mr. Car- baugh came in and settled on the north side of Main's creek, about four miles below the grove. He had a family of children and in the winter he hired my brother, Col. Arthur T. Reeve, to keep school in his family. I believe that Miss Octava Smith, afterwards
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Mrs. Hial Mitchell, was the first teacher in the county, having taught in the Phelps house after Judge Reeve had moved out of it. In the early summer of 1854 there was also a Miss Scott who was a teacher. She stayed at Henry Smith's, but I have no recollection whether she taught any place in the winter of 1855 or not. In the summer of 1856 we built a log schoolhouse near the burying ground at Main's Grove, and Octava Smith taught there through the sum- mer and a Mr. Boyle taught in the winter. Mr. Carbaugh brought in a horse gristmill, with which he ground corn and buckwheat.
The winter of 1855-6 was terribly severe and the gristmill standing on the prairie would be packed full of snow every morn- ing, and his customers would dig the snow out of the mill and also the horse-power before it could start, which usually took until noon. Then after dinner Mr. Carbaugh would harness up his twelve horses and grind out the grist. The next morning the same opera- tion would have to be repeated, as the snow packed in through the night, but we were glad to get our grinding even under these diffi- culties.
CHAPTER XI
WHAT THE YEARS HAVE SHOWN-WILD LAND CHANGED INTO VALU- ABLE FARMS-GOOD ROADS, SPLENDID COUNTRY HOMES, ABUNDANT CROPS-BEAUTIFUL STREAMS AND GROVES.
Many changes have presented themselves to the people of Frank- lin county since the first white man staked his tent in this fair land and began the erection of a crude log cabin to secure a habitation for himself and family, while he felled timber, split rails, cleared the ground of underbrush and plowed the rich soil between the stumps, making ready for the seed, that sprung up in good season and gave him gratifying returns for his labors. Other hardy men and courageous women became the pioneer's neighbors ; all of them, how- ever, could not secure land for cultivation along the streams, where the timber abounded, much as they desired this consummation, for it was then the common opinion that the open prairie was hardly fit for cultivation. But "needs must when the devil drives" was an aphorism that confronted the homeseekers at this period and with hope and courage in their hearts the newcomers put oxen and plow to the tough but fertile furrow of the virgin open soil and were happily surprised and amply rewarded for their temerity and the intense toil expended.
With but little to do with, coming from comfortable homes in thickly settled regions of the Eastern states; confronting new con- ditions, hardship and dangers, the men and women of the local primi- tive days knew no fear and scoffed at fatigue. Their purpose was to make for themselves and their posterity homes, schools, churches; highly cultivated and improved farms, towns and cities; in short to bring order out of chaos and emulate the performances and suc- cesses of the builders of prosperous communities in their home states. They met and surpassed all anticipations. They have con- tributed toward the bringing of Iowa into the front rank of produc- ing states of the Union. The reader of a careful and analytical mind should keep ever before him the remarkable growth and advance-
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ment of Franklin county's people. The farms upon which a ma- jority of them live have been metamorphosed from wild timbered and virgin prairie lands into broad acres so fruitful in production as to send their marketable value up in the scale, until today many Franklin county farms are held at $200 per acre and more. One farm was sold in the fall of 1913 at $208 an acre and is worth the money.
The improvements in this county have been going along steadily from the beginning to the present; and judging from the past, the future has much of all that is good in store for this thrifty people. Towns-splendid little trading points-are dotted here and there in the county and Hampton has grown steadily, substantially and beau- tifully the while.
But the meanderings over the county in 1904 by a keen observer and lucidly descriptive writer, in the person of R. G. Miller, was the means of bringing before the public a concrete view, in a general way, of Franklin's fine farms, beautiful rural homes, substantial, commodious barns and other outbuildings, good fences, well-kept roads, telephone conveniences ; daily free rural mail deliveries ; labor- saving machinery, fine graded stock and the automobile, now a com- mon conveyance of the farmer. Mr. Miller made it an object to see these things and tell of them. See what he had to say :
If one wishes a day of real enjoyment, an opportunity to see the face of the country at its best, and some of the things which make the name of Iowa famous throughout the length and breadth of this land, he should take a drive as I did last Monday and just drink in the beauties that are always and everywhere spread out before him. It was an ideal summer day and the August sun was doing its great office work, bringing the crops further on to maturity, and bringing pasturage out of the moist earth as fresh and bountiful as it was in June.
If anyone has any doubt as to whether this county will have good harvests this year, he may have it dispelled, so far as the east part of the county is concerned, by a little half-day's drive out that way. The high wind of a couple of weeks ago did bad work for the oats in some places. I noticed a field on J. C. Peck's farm ten days ago where the grain lay perfectly flat, but Monday it was in the shock and appeared to be in fine condition.
This same is true of most of the Iowa grain. By the way, the. quarter upon which Mr. Peck has his home, is, I think, as good a quarter section as can be picked out in Franklin county. There does.
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not appear to be a single foot of it either too high or too low for good crops in any sort of season. And what a splendid home he has there, good buildings, groves and orchards! I thought it would be a good idea to give farm homes of that rank a special name. Fair- field farm, or Plainfield place would suit it well, and in time it might go by the name throughout the county.
On William Seeger's farm I saw the first stacking and the oats seemed good for forty bushels at least.
If one wants a forcible example of what a little plant will do, he should see John Blum's farm buildings four miles southeast of Hampton. He has a fine farm home. The lawns were well kept, fences neat, trees trimmed, and everything as neat and orderly as the average town home. And doesn't it pay? To say nothing of the satisfaction it must be to his family to have such pleasant surround- ings, it compels those who see it to place a higher estimate upon the value of the place.
All the foregoing might be said of the J. E. Marty place, just east of Blum's. And as for location, I do not think a nicer one could be found for a building site in the county. He has a splendid view of the country clear down around Geneva, five or six miles, and north beyond Hansell; and to say the country is beautiful, with its splen- did fields and groves and farm homes, does not express it.
William Savidge has a very fine farm out that way. His new barn of late design, stockyards and windbreaks, and the house lately remodeled, make a fine place. Why doesn't he give it a name?
A. M. Mott's farm makes a pretty picture, viewed from the west. He has a large field of oats that seem to be the heaviest I saw, and beyond were herds of cattle feeding over a level pasture. That bot- tom land over east has crops of hay, oats and corn that would be very hard to beat any year. The best corn I saw was there. "One 80-acre field is earing out and if I said how high it is some folks wouldn't believe me.
And there's a schoolhouse over there, not half a mile from native groves, with not a tree-not even a switch that promises to make a tree-growing on the grounds. They say they have excellent schools there, so perhaps it has been found necessary to keep the limbs trimmed off so close that the trunks perished. But there's one good feature to it. When consolidated schools are the order, the ground can be plowed.
Two of the nicest improved farms in this section are those of Will Arthur and W. C. Tucker. That second bottom land will pro-
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duce anything, and the appearance of these farms shows it. How easy it is to pick out the rented farms. Somehow they will run down. And what wonder? Every renter is looking forward, straining every nerve, and hoping for the day when he can buy a farm, and, to do that, he must put in every lick where it will make for the most profit; so the fence, yards, groves and buildings are more or less neglected.
Riding any distance one notices some things go in streaks. For a time you will notice all the lanes and fence rows mowed and raked clean, then perhaps for awhile you will see the sides of the road grown to rank weeds and the fences hidden by vines and bushes. The time is coming in this fair county when the country lanes will be parked and kept in order, when thoughtless road-makers will cease to dig deep holes here and there to mar the beauty of the country street, but some reforms come slowly and we may not live to see that time.
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