USA > Iowa > Jackson County > History of Jackson County, Iowa; Volume I > Part 48
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The hog was dressed and hung up in a cool place, and then Dunham asked Ance to go with him after some bees that he had previously captured. Ance objected on the ground that bees had a particular spite at him and that he could never go near bees without gettting stung. Dunham promised to secure the bees so they would not hurt him and they went out on horseback, their route being through heavy timber and over hills and hollows, to the place where the bees
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had been hived. There were two swarms in gums or hives made from hollow trees. Dunham had taken quilts with him with which to secure the bees. He spread a quilt upon the ground, placed a gum or hive on it and pulled the quilt up over the top, fastening it so the bees could not get out. After securing the bees, one hive as handed up to Ance, the other Dunham took up in front of him- self on Salem, and they started for home. The night was extremely dark and it was a hard problem to make their way through the forest. Ance said he noticed Dunham keep slapping Salem, first on one ear then on the other, and he asked him what he did that for. "Well," he said, "Salem knows the way home better than I do and I am slapping him to make him go home." They reached home in safety with the bees and had a bountiful supply of fresh meat, which was a great treat for Ance. Next morning Dunham split the hog from nose to tail and gave Ance and his neighbor half of it to take home, and of course they lived high while it lasted.
Dunham was a widower and had four children. He got acquainted with and made arrangements to marry a widow in Fulton, Illinois, who had four children. On his way to Fulton to get married he stopped with Mr. Wilson over night; as stated previously Dunham had a bad habit about scratching, but he had a worse habit still, that of talking in his sleep. Ance said to him next morning, "Dunham, you had better stay in Lyons tonight and cross over tomorrow and get married, and then you will be sure of your wife, for if she ever hears you talk in your sleep as you did last night before you are married, you will lose her." Dunham took the advice and secured the widow. A lady sometime after asked him how many children he had. He said, "I have four and my wife has four and we have one that belongs to both of us." The lady was somewhat puzzled, but an explanation set things right.
The first grist mill in the Maquoketa Valley was built in Maquoketa and oper- ated by horse power. The mill was afterward set up on Mill Creek, and was sold to a man by the name of Doolittle, and Levi Decker was the miller. In 1839 or 1840, Ben Hansen took a half a bushel of corn to the mill to have ground, but the capacity of the mill was very limited and Hansen could not get his grist the same day. The next Sunday he went back and Abb Montgomery, a neighbor, went with him. The mill was found to be locked and Hansen was for returning home without the meal, but Montgomery insisted there was no use in doing that. The log mill was built upon stone corners and piers four or five feet from the ground and only a small portion of flooring was laid. Montgomery crawled under and got the meal. When Decker came to the mill he missed the meal and on making inquiries he learned that Hansen and Montgomery had taken it out. He swore out a warrant from Squire Clark and gave it to Lyman Bates for the arrest of Montgomery. Bates made the arrest, but there was no jail and it was an im- portant question what to do with the prisoner, but Montgomery promised to be on hand at the time set for trial and was allowed to go home. Decker had retained as counsel Platt Smith, the only lawyer in the locality. When the day arrived for the hearing of the case the prisoner came and surrendered himself to the constable, but in the meantime the friends of Hansen and Montgomery has held a confer- ence and decided on a line of action.
A little man by the name of Smith was staying with Montgomery, who would seem to have been one of the leaders of the conference, he said "I am the smallest man on our side, Platt Smith is the largest man on the other side, when the candle is blown out I will take care of Platt Smith, and each of you pick your man." When they came to Squire Clark's place the squire was posted to get under the bed when the trouble commenced.
Platt Smith opened the case and described in his own inimitable manner the terrible crime which had been committed in breaking and entering the mill. As Montgomery had no lawyer, Shade Burleson undertook to defend him; he ex- plained the condition of the mill, and showed it was not necessary to break into the mill as they could reach in and get the sack without entering the door.
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All this time during Burleson's talk, Smith kept interrupting him, saying that this was not law or that was not law. Little Smith, who had tied his handker- chief around his waist and rolled up his sleeves to the elbows, stepped up to the lawyer and informed him that if he interrupted Burleson again he would break his jaw. The atmosphere was getting warmer in the squire's office all the time until finally the candle was blown out, and the squire went under the bed and the plaintiff's party was routed, and the case of the United States vs. Montgomery was never brought up again. This was the second law suit held in Maquoketa Valley.
A. H. Wilson says the first settlers of the Maquoketa Valley experienced great difficulty in getting plows that would scour in the black loam of the Maquo- keta Valley. In 1840, he and Mr. Jason Pangborn went to Dubuque and found a man making plows that they thought would work all right in the valley. They bought one for a model and came home and went to manufacturing plows, Wil- son doing the woodwork and Pangborn the ironing. The plows worked to perfec- tion and Mr. Wilson says there was never greater cause for rejoicing than when they turned out the first plow that would scour in the rich bottom of the Maquoketa.
Anson H. Wilson, the oldest pioneer of the Maquoketa Valley who came here of his own accord, was in town one day in 1906, looking hale and hearty for a man of eighty-nine years. Mr. Wilson remarked : It is sixty-five years ago to- night since I slept in the widest bed I ever saw. It was in the then new capital of Iowa Territory, at Iowa City. I had the honor of holding an end gate to a wagon for Governor Lucas to write his proclamation on, announcing terms of sale of lots in the new capital.
There was no table convenient, so I took the end gate of a wagon and resting one end on the wagon, I held the other while the governor wrote with a red lead pencil. Colonel Thomas Cox and J. G. McDonald, of Jackson county, were sur- veying the new town site at the time. I started for Iowa City on foot, on the IIth of August, 1839, reaching my destination on the 16th. The first day I got to the Wapsie after dark, at a point opposite the present site of Massilon. There was a cabin on the opposite side of the river, but the river was up and I was afraid to try to swim over in the dark, so I put up for the night on the body of a fallen tree and next morning swam over, got my breakfast and a lunch to take along.
My next stop was at a cabin at Onion Grove. The family had been there only two weeks and had not completed their cabin. It was without floor or win- dow, but I was heartily welcomed to such fare as they had. My next stop was at a cabin at Oak Grove, eighteen miles from Onion Grove, where a man by the name of Dallas lived. He had got quite a start and had cows, milk, butter and potatoes, and here I got my first drink of buttermilk in the Territory of Iowa.
I went from there to Washington Ferry on Cedar River, found the scow on the other side and the ferryman shaking with ague ; so I could get no help to cross from him. While I waited, a man came along with a team and he, too, wanted to get across, so we concluded to make his wagon answer the purpose of a boat. We tied the box to the running gears and swam the team across, then I went on to within five miles of Iowa City, and stopped with two boys who had been there but a short time and had a very small cabin only partially built. I spent the night with them, partaking of such fare as they had, and next morning completed my journey, arriving at my destination about 10 a. m.
The father of John P. Irish had made arrangements to take care of the peo- ple who came, and fed them well for so new a country. A bed had been provided by sewing together a good many cotton ticks and a bolster stuffed with prairie hay. The full length of the bed answered for a pillow, and the quilts were fastened together and reached the full length or width of the bed. Nails were driven into the wall to hang clothes on, and each one hung his clothes near the place where he crawled into bed. Sixty slept in this wonderful bed, others slept
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in wagons and some stayed up and played cards all night. I did not meet a per- son on the route to the new capital, and the man I crossed Cedar River with was the only human being I saw en route except those at the different cabins above referred to. There was not a bridge, and the only ferries on the route were an old scow on the Cedar and an old basswood log used for a ferry at the Wapsie. Walking was bad and twenty-four hours of the time while going I had but one meal, and that was sweetened water and corn meal mush. The settlers on the route were very hospitable and gave me something to take along, but I could not well carry mush and sweetened water.
Mr. Wilson has lived on the same farm since 1839, is tall and straight as an Indian and has been an active business man all his life. Coming to this country in 1839 a full grown man with more than average skill and ability and with a wonderful memory, he knows more of the early days of Iowa than any other living man. He receives marked attention when he comes to town dressed in the style of sixty years ago and wearing coat and vest buttons that he bought in 1842. Uncle Ance will be greatly missed when he is gone.
Anson H. Wilson, a pioneer of Maquoketa, who came here in the spring of 1839, and the only person living who came here in the thirties as a full grown man, is still hale and hearty, though past ninety, and is full of reminiscences of early days in the Maquoketa Valley. In a conversation with him on the 23d day of April, 1906, the writer asked him for his opinion of W. W. Brown, the principal victim of the Bellevue mob in April, 1840. Mr. Wilson said: I knew Brown and his wife well. I stopped at their hotel frequently on my trips to and from Galena. I helped build several mills and frequently went to Galena for supplies. Brown was a fine looking man, tall, well built, dark complexioned, of genial, pleasant manners, and a perfect gentleman in every way. Mrs. Brown was a small woman of neat appearance, with a winning way, that made her very popu- lar, and a suitable helpmate for her husband. Brown was an all around hustler, conducted the best hotel in the country, some said on the Mississippi River ; had a wood yard, a general store, and was interested in a meat market. He trusted everybody and gave everybody work that needed it. He employed a great many men to cut wood in the winter season, which he sold to the steamboat companies in the summer. I never heard that Brown was accused of committing any crime himself. The worst said about him was that he had a tough set of men about his hotel. I never knew of any one getting bad money at any of Brown's places of business. Brown always said if any one got bad money at his house or store he would make it good. Some time in February or March. 1840, Colonel Cox came through this part of the county trying to get the people to turn out and drive Brown and his gang, as he called them, out of the country, but he got no help from these parts. Mr. Wilson says he sold Cox that he would have nothing to do with such an undertaking and that he thought Brown would be a fool to surren- der to a mob. He said Cox threatened him that he might be the next victim after Brown. He also thinks that the mob was quite largely made up of men from the lead mines near Galena. He says that Tom Welch, the young man mentioned by Joseph Henri, who worked for Brown as stable boy, who was badly wounded in the fight on the Ist of April, 1840, and who Charley Kilgore tried to finish by emptying all the barrels of his pepper box pistol into Tom while standing over him, was saved at the intercession of Warren and Kirkpatrick and sent to friends in the forks and afterward lived with Mr. Wilson and gave him many particulars of the conflict. Mr. Wilson says the talk about so much crime being committed in the county at that time was greatly exaggerated. There were no horses stolen in this county, and if Brown and his boarders were banded together to rob, steal horses and pass counterfeit money, they must have done their work in some other locality. Mr. Wilson was a warm friend to Colonel Warren, but blamed him for his action in mobbing Brown, who considered Warren a true friend to him to the last. Mr. Wilson was quite familiar with the trials and troubles his neighbor Shade Burleson had in trying to settle the Brown estate, especially in his efforts
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to collect on notes and accounts. The probate judge had been Brown's worst enemy, while living, and had been a leader in the mob that killed Brown, and nearly every man that was sued demanded a jury which was always largely composed of members of the mob, and in every case a verdict was given for defendant. Mr. Wilson said, "I once asked Burleson why it was that he could not get a verdict against men of whom he held their promisory note." Burle- son's answer was characteristic of the man. He said, "If you sue the devil, and have the trial in hell, what show have you got for a favorable verdict?" Mr. Wilson says that the people of this side of the county were never friendly to Colonel Cox after the killing of Brown-that he never was invited, nor attended any of the Fourth of July celebrations or other public functions, in this locality. He describes Colonel Cox as being over six feet high, splendidly proportioned and all together one of the finest specimens of physical manhood he ever met. Mr. Wilson said that when the capital was established at Iowa City through Colonel Cox's influence, a Mr. Ball, of this county, got a job of cutting the stone for ornamenting the new capital, and his work was so well appreciated that Governor Lucas secured a job to work on an addition that was being built for the national capitol. The same Mr. Ball cut the stones to mark the graves of Mr. Wilson's first wife and daughter in Maquoketa cem- etery.
A HALF HOUR WITH UNCLE ANCE WILSON. (Seeley.)
Today if our fires go out a lighted friction match applied to a few shavings, or a little lamp oil is all that is necessary to bring desired results. But in pioneer days in Jackson county it was different. There were no friction matches in this country in those days and fire was attained by the flint and steel, and a little punk and gunpowder, and some inflamable substance, and then retained by banking the fire in the fireplace with ashes over night, or when leaving home for a day or such a matter.
In a conversation recently with "Uncle Ance" Wilson (who came here a man in 1839), he told about making a trip soon after he came here, up into the Canton region. Above the Cheneworth he crossed the South Fork of the Maquoketa at Lodge's Ford-so called after a settler named Lodge, who was there when the earliest settlers began to come in. Mr. Wilson stopped to talk with this old squatter, who, during his conversation, told about his fires going out while he was away from his cabin At that time there were no settlers in the country with "fire to lend," you may have heard your grand- father's folks tell about borrowing fire if their fire chanced to go out during the night or their absence. Well, Lodge couldn't do that because he was out of neighbors as well as fire- and he also chanced to be out of punk and powder though he had flint and steel to strike the spark with. But a spark needed a piece of punk to catch and hold it while the breath causes the small beginning to spread into a result. In order to obtain this vital substance (called punk in our grandmothers' days) Lodge had to go to Dubuque, forty miles through an unbroken forest and back again to his flint and steel and hearthstone. A stirring song is Auld Lang Syne, but there were some things in other days- not as handy as a match.
Cal Teeple's Trip to See a Girl and Some Things They Talked About.
As Uncle Ance Wilson and the writer sat in McCaffery's cigar store on a recent election day, having their old time chat, some word spoken about some pioneer would stir the waters of the old man's past, release the hidden springs of mind that set the wheels of memory going and open old forgotten graves. And the old pioneer of four score and ten, kindled with thoughts of the past would pass from one event to another either ludicrous, social or tragic as some mention or query brought him out. In. speaking of early social events,
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he remarked that when Joseph S. Mallard was paying court to Cadelia Cox (daughter of Colonel Thos. Cox), whom he afterward married, Calvin Tee- ple, who lived in the same neighborhood with Mallard (the Buckhorn region), conceived the idea of going down with Mallard and try and fan a flame in the soul of another daughter of Colonel Cox. It was Teeple's first acquaintance with Miss Cox, and shortly after the arrival of the young pioneers, Teeple asked Miss Cox if she was averse to having a little private conversation with him. (Didn't want Dan Cupid to be molested by any one, I suppose.) The young frontier damsel said, "Mr. Teeple, what private affairs do you wish to discuss with me." Calvin Teeple was never very easily nonplussed, but for a second or two this business method reply of Miss Cox put Cal at his wits end for an answer. But he soon pulled himself together and laconically an- swered, "I would like your private opinion on rats." Cal had his innings and all Miss Cox could say was she didn't know anything about rats. "Uncle Ance" said that the Cox ladies were handsome girls.
Mr. Wilson Speaks of Colonel Cox in His Narrative.
In speaking of the Cox family, "Uncle Ance" said his first acquaintance with Cox was made at Iowa City in 1839. He had gone to Iowa City to enter his land and Thos. Cox and John G. McDonald were there at the time, sur- veying the town plat of the newly located capital. The opinion he formed of Colonel Cox while at Iowa City was good. Cox conducted himself well there, so far as he saw, and was a splendid specimen of physical manhood with a per- sonal magnetism that drew men to him who liked physical courage and will force, but that he afterward killed himself with hard drinking and died on his claim northeast of Maquoketa some five or six years after coming to Jack- son county. I knew that at the time of the Bellevue war, Captain Wm. A. Warren, sheriff, claimed to have deputized Colonel Cox to help raise a posse to arrest Wm. W. Brown and twenty-three others, and that the so called posse as a mob scourged the prisoners by lash on the naked flesh and that Cox was the big mogul on that occasion and mention of the Colonel Cox family fath- ered the thought and I asked "Uncle Ance" (who Cox tried to induce to go and take part against Brown) if Cox, in any way, brought the impression to him that he was wanted to help enforce a legal arrest of Brown by warrant in the hands of the sheriff. He said, "No, his claim was he (Cox) was going to drive Brown out of the country as he was a bad man."
In speaking of Brown, Mr. Wilson said he come to know him as he often put up at Brown's Hotel while teaming from Maquoketa to Galena, and did not think there was anything wrong with Brown and so told Cox and refused to go, stating Brown would be a fool to surrender to a mob. Mrs. Brown, he said, was apparently a refined womanly woman, and at the time of the attack on the Brown party, she was cool and self-possessed and during the fight handed loaded rifles to the defenders. Mr. Wilson said, after the capture Mrs. Brown was taken to the river and was threatened with being lashed to a plank and set adrift if she did not tell where Brown's money was. She coolly told them that one hundred strong men could set a poor weak woman adrift, or kill her, as they had killed her husband, but they could not make her tell any- thing she did not want to, and they were compelled to let her go without the desired information. If that statement is true-and there is no question of it -it was a damnable transaction, as reeking with the odors of hell as the grave clothes of sin.
"Uncle Ance's" narrative seemed imbued with the idea that if Cox and Brown never had been political rivals, there never would have been any at- tempt to humiliate Brown-consequently no Bellevue war. And if it had not been for Colonel Cox's will with the force of a glacier, Captain Warren and some others would probably not have been so sagely confident of Brown's guilt. "Uncle Ance" got well acquainted with Captain Warren while teaming to Galena, and said of him :
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Bill Warren was a social fellow, and the right sort of a man for the country in those early days. While he was sheriff he took the census of the country and collected the taxes. There wasn't much tax to collect, to be sure, but there was some. No one had much money to pay taxes with. Warren would take peltry, cooperage-in fact anything there was any chance to convert into money or exchange, for county benefits. When going to Galena I used to cross at Bellevue and go up on the Illinois side and quite frequently Warren would go up with me. He was an inveterate smoker and in those days always smoked a clay pipe with a stem not to exceed an inch in length. There were no matches at that time, and a coal had to be used to light up with. One trip going up Warren had me stop where an Irish woman was boiling soap, so he could light his pipe. He stood near the fire, rubbing up a little natural leaf and packing it into his stub of a pipe, when the Irish woman said to him, "Faith, mon, if that be the longest pipe stem ye hev never'll smoke inybody's chimney but your own."
A Corner That Stood Law.
"Uncle Ance" said when the country was setting up, he one day came to a couple of neighbors who were setting up some kind of a landmark and upon asking them what they were doing, received the reply from one of them, "We are establishing a corner." "But," said Mr. Wilson, in a jocular way, "it won't stand law," and received the prompt reply, "Well, it will if Uncle Kim and I say so." Mr. Wilson said although the government survey had located the corner several feet away, the one set up by those two neighbors was always considered as the boundary between them and has never been moved, which proves that there is a law higher than law.
A Well Preserved Red Oak Tree Thirty-five Feet Beneath Sod Never Turned by the Hand of Man.
After "Uncle Ance" had mentioned the laughable incident of Cal Teeple's visit to Miss Cox, and other matters mentioned, he said soon after he came to Iowa Territory, he and Mark Current Sr., dug a well for Teeple on top of the rise of land north of Nashville, where Calvin Teeple lived, and when they were down thirty-five feet they came to a red oak tree trunk some eight or ten inches in diameter, well preserved, and with the bark still on. The tree lay horizontally across the bottom of the hole where they were digging. They choppcd a piece out and dug about five feet farther and struck water in a bed of gravel and sand. Some force of ice, wind or tide must have scooped out the hole Nashville stands in and swept the dirt north, and buried that tree long before the red bones came to this country. If it didn't, what did, Mr. Geolo- gist?
Almost a Religious Indictment.
As "Uncle Ance" traveled in his mind from one milestone to another that maps the past, it was evident there were events in the little world of churches that were pioneering here as well as some other things. Some switch thrown on this line of reminiscence led him to speak of the coming of the Rev. Wm. Salter, who in 1843, founded the first Congregational church in the Maquoketa Valley, with seven members, consisting of Wm. H. Efner, Mrs. Sophia Shaw, Thomas S. Flathers, Eliel Nims, Elizabeth Nims and Mrs. McCloy and her husband, Joseph McCloy, who, on Mill Creek just south of the present limits of Maquoketa, built the first grist mill in Jackson county, that bolted flour and done custom work there for over half a century.
There came as missionaries with the Rev. Salter several others known as the "Iowa Band." About a year afterward one of them, that was located at Cedar Rapids, came to visit the Rev. Salter, who took him around to call on members of the church here. Toward noon they called at the McCloy home and Mrs. McCloy insisted on their staying to dinner. They accepted and said while she was preparing dinner they would go over to the mill and visit Brother McCloy. While they were there Mrs. McCloy sent a girl to the mill for
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