USA > Iowa > Jackson County > History of Jackson County, Iowa; Volume I > Part 94
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The effects of the storm on the stomachs of the passengers was readily infer- red by the slim attendance at the breakfast table. We lay at Cleveland a few hours for the wind to subside. Except having the same thing repeated on Lake Huron, which compelled us to lay by at Presque Isle four hours, we had pleasant sailing to Chicago, where we arrived Sunday at I p. m., and put up at a small two story tavern called the New York house. In the evening we attended meeting at the Baptist church, and heard Elder, Thomas Powell preach. The house stood on the lot now occupied by the Chamber of Commerce building.
This church building was built of boards and battens up and down, with no ceiling except naked collar beams, rafters and roof boards. The court house stood by enclosed by a common fence and ornamented with forest shade trees, looked like a five-acre lot with a brick court house way to the north side of it.
Monday we hired a man from Rockford, who had been in with a load, to take us and our goods to Savanna on the Mississippi River. It was a lumber wagon. After loading the boxes, the rocking chair we had brought from our New York home was fastened on top of one of the boxes, a little chair purchased at one of the furniture stores was fastened beside the rocker. My good wife cheer- fully mounted and took her seat in the rocking chair with the youngest child in her lap and the other one by her side remarking: "Now this is first rate." I took my seat beside the driver and with our feet resting on the whiffletrees, ready for a trip of two hundred miles to our future home in Iowa Territory.
We were fortunate in having a dry spring, and did not have to use the poles in the streets of Chicago to pry us out of the mud. We stopped the first night twelve miles out on the Elgin road. Second night stopped at a log tavern sixteen or eighteen miles west of Elgin at Pigeon Woods. Here a ravenous appetite was destroyed by badly tainted ham and in consequence of two stage loads of pas- sengers to provide for, our bed was on the floor.
Early next morning we proceeded on our journey and got breakfast at a small cabin tavern at or near where Marengo now stands. At noon we were at Belvidere, where we enjoyed a short visit with Prof. S. S. Whitman, one of our former teachers at Hamilton. Here too, we visited the public square and looked
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upon the stakes then standing of the burial place of an Indian chief. The Indian was gone but the upright poles and a few remnants of his burial dress yet re- mained-a sad memorial of the past. That evening at 9 o'clock we arrived at the west side tavern at Rockford. Our driver went to his home in the little vil- lage, and we to supper and rest, expecting to resume our journey in the morning. To our disappointment our driver had been subpoenaed in a suit to come off that week, and could not resume the journey until the next Monday. While tarrying we found a good home and kind friends in the family of the Rev. Solomon Knapp, pastor of the Baptist church. We preached for Elder K., the following Sunday- our first sermon in the West.
Monday morning we started in good health and good spirits on the Galena stage road to twelve mile grove, then directly west toward the Mississippi River ; good day, smooth roads brought us up to Mr. Crane's cabin in Crane's grove about sundown, and there we stopped for the night as it was eighteen miles to the next grove. Mrs. Crane, a woman in middle life, had just come in from the stable yard with a pail of milk. She was a Kentuckian.
In reply to the inquiry, if she could keep us over night, she replied, "O I reckon, though I'm mighty tired. The old cow gives a right smart of milk, nigh onto half a bushel." The next morning the teamster found one of his horses dead -had overfed with grain. We hired Mr. Crane to take us eighteen miles to Cherry Grove. We stopped over night with a farmer, Mr. Gardner, a brother- in-law of Mr. Crane, who took us next morning to Savanna.
We crossed over with our goods that night to Charleston-now Sabula-and put up at the tavern. Next morning we hired a man to take us twenty-five or thirty miles to our journey's end. In consequence of rain we did not get a very early start. At noon we stopped at a log cabin on the west side of Deep Creek for dinner. The woman had nothing but eleven eggs. These we boiled, but the children would not eat them, and we passed no other human habitation until long after dark and the children had cried themselves to sleep. At midnight we drove up to the cabin of Mr. C. M. Dolittle, the end of our long journey. The good folks got up, gave us our supper, then gave us their bed and the teamster a settee in the room for his bed, and Mr. and Mrs. Dolittle and the children, who had been in bed with them, retired to the loft.
Tired and worn by the long journey, especially the last two hundred miles in a lumber wagon, we retired to rest, four in a bed, and rested sweetly with noun- pleasant dreams. Our stopping place was about one mile south of where Ma- quoketa now stands, close by the old ford at the head of McCloy's pond. The country around, which we could not see by reason of darkness, we could not see the next morning by reason of a fog. As we were poor and our support, except the one hundred dollars pledged by the missionary board, was to come from the field, we made some inquiry about the church with which we were to labor. But to our surprise there was no church and the settlement was new and only a few Baptist members scattered over a large territory. The prospects that morning were not only foggy but somewhat blue, a feeling however, we deemed best to conceal. Our good wife did the same thing, made no complaint, nor expressed a word of regret. In the morning in the company with the brother of the log cabin. we called on some families two or three miles west or northwest. In our walk the wind breezed up, took all the fog away, and with it went all our blue feel- ings for a most charming prairie landscape was spread out to the south and south- west with the Maquoketa timber for a background on the north. The only draw- back to my good feelings was the thought-but how does my good wife feel about the prospects ?
This troublesome doubt was very soon relieved, for on my return the good woman met me several rods from the door with her bright cheerful face, and her words of greeting were, "Charles, we have come to Iowa to do good and will stay and trust in the Lord."
We met a cordial reception not only by the Baptist families, but by the set- tlers generally. We arrived on our field May 26, 1842, having been twenty-four
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days on our journey. An appointment had been arranged by the Des Moines association for a meeting at Iowa city commencing June 3rd, for the purpose of organizing a territorial missionary convention. As brother Dolittle had a large family our temporary home was moved to Brother Levi Decker's, a mile east of Wright's corners. Sister Decker very kindly offered to take care of the children and thus enable Mrs. Brown to go with me to the Iowa city meeting. We were furnished by Brother Dolittle a horse and wagon, a kind of half and half vehicle between a buggy and a lumber wagon. We started June Ist, and was directed to take a trail at the west side of Reuben Riggs' field which would take us to Ber- goon's ford on the Wapsipinicon River-no inhabitants on the route. We missed the trail but having a pretty correct idea of the direction, did not get lost.
When in sight of the Wapsie settlement we came up to one of those peculiar brooks from three to five feet wide and from three to four feet deep with per- pendicular banks. We tried to persuade the horse to jump but there was no go. He was willing to go back or in any direction rather than jump the chasm. But we were not to be balked in that-twenty miles on our road and on an uninhabited prairie. So I got Mrs. Brown across and the baggage, then starting far enough away to get the horse on a fast trot, gave him a smart blow with the whip on near- ing the chasm and over we went, while the seat and some other things left in the wagon took various directions, but mind you, the parson took the precaution to be on his feet when that run was made.
We got over and stopped at the first house for dinner. We left an appoint- ment for preaching Tuesday of the next week on our return, and proceeded on our journey and stopped for the night at Tipton, the county seat of Cedar county, where we left an appointment to preach on the following Monday evening. There was a log courthouse and a log tavern.
The next day (Tuesday) we arrived at Iowa city. There were no railroads then west of the State of New York. The western boundary of lands opened for settlement then, was about eighteen miles west of Iowa City, and the western border counties beginning at the south were Van Buren, Jefferson, Washing- ton, Johnson, Linn, Buchanan, Fayette with Clayton on the north. On return- ing we were on time to meet our appointment at Tipton on Monday evening and the Wapsie appointment on Tuesday, arriving home late at night and finding all well.
The next important temporal matter was to select a location and build a log house. Log houses were all the go in that region then as there were plenty of logs but no sawmills. Having become acquainted with the neighbors around Wright's corners, two and one half miles south of where some years later was lo- cated the village of Maquoketa, we concluded to locate there. Nobody need ask for better neighbors than we found in the families of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Wright, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Wright, Mr. and Mrs. Levi Decker, Mr. and Mrs. John Riggs, Mr. and Mrs. David Bently and others.
The settlers very generally and generously turned out, with teams and axes, and went five or six miles west to a small grove and cut and hauled logs for a house about twelve by sixteen or eighteen feet. In a week or two the body of the house was up, logs hewed on two sides. My neighbor, Mr. John Riggs, wish- ing some lumber, joined me in going up the Maquoketa River eighteen miles, for. some sawed timber must be had even for a log house. As we must raft the lum- ber down the river, we went on foot, made our purchase, and started down the river the next day, in the afternoon, with a steering oar in front and one at the stern. The river, at that time, ran through a dense wilderness with a thick un- derbrush, with two or three cleared patches in the whole distance. The river was low, and we had much trouble and hard work by reason of snags and sand bars, frequently having to jump into the water to pry the raft off these obstructions.
About sundown we came to a small cleared patch where an old hermit by the name of Lodge lived. We called at his cabin to see what the chances were for stopping over night, as the next clearing was several miles below. The cabin
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was eight by ten or twelve feet, with a crib made of poles for a bed, and a chicken pen in one corner of the room. We discovered at once that there was no show for us there, and we must try to get down to the next clearing or camp out. The night was cold for the season, and we were tired and hungry. Darkness in that dense forest was coming on rapidly and we finally concluded to risk a run on the river, and if we suffered shipwreck we could not be any worse off.
So we cut loose and let her drive, for it was not long before the darkness was so dense that the stern man could not see the one in front. The raft kept going, while every moment we expected to run foul of snags, or onto a sand bar. But to our surprise, it reached the clearing about 10 or II o'clock without any mis- hap whatever. We concluded our good fortune was because it was so dark we couldn't see to steer it onto logs and sand bars. We could see neither house nor house light, but calling obtained a response from a cabin some distance towards the north side bluff.
We found a comfortable cabin with an old fashioned fireplace with a good cheerful fire, but the inmates were in bed except the man who got up to answer our call. He gave us some bread and milk for supper, and then we began to cast about for a place to sleep. There were two beds in the small room on bedsteads, with three persons in one and three in the other when the man returned to bed, but there was a bed on the floor in the corner by the fireplace, and two men in that. The men very kindly proposed to wheel and lie across the bed, and thus make room for two more.
Tired as we were, we had a good sleep and a pretty good rest. The next day we very easily completed the river part of our homeward journey.
From the river landing we had to haul the lumber three miles to Wright's corners. Wright's corners were on the line between Jackson and Clinton counties, and our house was fifteen or twenty rods in Clinton county on the east side of the road running north and south, and the east fork of Prairie Creek in front on the west-the road between the house and the creek. With rough loose boards for lower and chamber floors and without doors or windows, we moved in. I had to go to Dubuque, forty miles, for stove pipe. But we were happy when we were settled in our own home, although without furniture except table, stand, stove, rocking and a little chair, and a few dishes, all of which we brought with us.
Our first bedstead was made of hickory poles. We fortunately brought a few carpenter tools along with which we could make such needful articles of furniture. With one of our boxes we made shelves for dishes; with another we made a cupboard for books, etc .; with another we made a place for the oldest little boy to sleep. We, including neighbors, went right to work and put up a log school- house. This was located a few rods south of our house, and before there were any floor, doors, or windows, we started a Sunday school with Thomas Flathers, superintendent.
This was the first schoolhouse built in either Jackson or Clinton counties, and this was the first Sunday school organized in Clinton county. This schoolhouse furnished a place for one of my preaching appointments. Brother Earle's house, five or six miles west of my house, was another. Brother Earle's house was just a shell of a frame-a lower floor in part-no stove or fireplace, the fire for cook- ing and warming was on the ground near the center with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out, but it did not all go out and the congregation were frequently in tears.
Another one of my appointments was at a private house twelve miles up in the timber on the ridge. A day or two previous to one of my appointments the owner of the house killed a monster panther nearby as it was trying to catch one of his hogs. The first sermon I preached in Iowa was in Mr. John Shaw's unfinished log house, where Maquoketa now is; the second at Iowa city; the third at Tip- ton ; the fourth at Bagoons' on the Wapsie; the fifth at the Methodist Episcopal quarterly meeting in their log meeting house over in the timber. This house had no floor and I think no windows. The light came in through openings between the
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logs. My preaching place where Maquoketa now is, was in a sod covered log cabin built for a blacksmith shop. During that summer I preached in Rock Island once, Davenport four times, Marion three times, Tipton once, Andrew twice.
In running our raft down the Maquoketa River, we passed the clearing where Jackson murdered Perkins. He had his trial at Andrew that summer, and was convicted and hung from the limb of an oak tree near the court house at that place.
The cash receipts on salary was confined exclusively to the one hundred dol- lars pledged by the missionary society and a heavy draft on our cash was the postage of twenty-five cents on nearly every letter received and if some friend enclosed a one dollar bill the postage was double. In a short time after moving in, our cabin was Bloomfield postoffice, and Elder Brown was postmaster, and received all his letters free. Yes, free. How good to get a letter from the old home without taking the last quarter to pay postage. We had a mail each way on horseback once a week.
On August 31st, a meeting was held at the house of Brother Earle for the purpose of organizing a Baptist church. The organization was effected and em- braced the following members : C. M. Dolittle and wife, Jason Pangborn and wife, Wm. Y. Earle and wife, Levi Decker and wife, Elder C. E. Brown and wife, Es- quire Taylor and wife, Mrs. Eliza Mallard, Mrs. Mitchell. The following are names of other Baptist members living in the region; Ebenezer Wilcox and wife living on Bear Creek, Mr. Woodworth living twelve miles up in the timber, Mrs. John Wilcox living at South Grove, Mrs. David Bently living at Wright's Corners, old Mr. and Mrs. Clark living a mile east of where Maquoketa now is, Mrs. Es- quire Palmer living at Andrew.
Brother Jason Pangborn came from northeastern New York. Sister P., a re- fined excellent Christian, was perfectly blind-became so before leaving the east- ern home. When he called on the family they were living in a small log cabin located at the extreme northeast corner of the quarter section on which the Mid- land depot is now located, and very near where the house now stands in which Brother and Sister Pangborn died. In that little cabin without the first comfort or convenience, with herself, husband and four small children to care for, this good woman with no word of complaint was with extended hands feeling her toilsome way in total darkness, caring for loved ones.
Several years afterwards we attended the funeral of her little boy. She had never seen his face. At the close of the service she wished to be led to the unclosed coffin. There she stood for a few minutes tenderly, and lovingly, with the tears fast dropping from her sightless eyes, passing her hands over the cold face of the dear little one, saying, "I have never seen my dear child's face, I must get an impression of how he looks." The dear mother has gone where she can see.
At the meeting in June in Iowa city, arrangements were made for a meeting the 16th of the next September at Davenport, for the purpose of organizing an association embracing all the churches on and north of the Iowa River. When the time came to go to Davenport, our good brother Dolittle would furnish us a horse, but the wagon we had for the trip to Iowa City had left the settlement. The horse I could ride but that would not fill the bill. All were anxious that Mrs. Brown should go, so I secured the loan of the hind wheels and axletree of a hoosier lumber wagon, went to the fence and got poles suitable for thills, and with a board on wooden pegs, we were soon ready for the forty mile trip. We had a bundle of oats for a cushion and enjoyed the ride across the prairies and through groves unmarred by the vandalism of man. The first human habitation we saw was at Point Pleasant, where we crossed the Wapsie River at Kirtley's Ford.
Although road carts were not as common and popular as now, we felt no em- barrassment in riding along the main streets of that young city-Davenport-and in driving up in front of the residence of Dr. Witherwax. The meetings were held in the chamber of a small frame building on Front street. The following churches were represented (the first organized in the territory) : Bath, now Le-
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Claire, organized June, 1839, with six members; Davenport, organized Septem- ber, 1839, seven members; Dubuque, organized August, 1840, eleven members ; Bloomington, now Muscatine, organized October, 1840, five members; Iowa city, organized June, 1841, eleven members; Forks of Maquoketa, organized August, 1842, with fourteen members; also the church of Rock Island, Illinois. Every church north of the Iowa River was represented except one on the line between Jones and Delaware counties.
The following winter, the longest and coldest, set in early in November by a heavy fall of snow. Our log house away out on the bleak prairie in an unfinished condition, was unsuitable to winter in. So, with the consent of the missionary board, we moved to Davenport with the expectation of moving back to Maquoketa in the spring. We at once engaged in the good work with the churches at Daven- port and Rock Island.
To save space and cost of printing in the annals of Jackson county, we must leave the interesting details of the Reverend's life work outside of his Maquo- keta field, and follow him only with a historical outline. For some reason he did not come back to the Forks of the Maquoketa for five years except at intervals. In the summer of 1843 he made several missionary trips up the river and or- ganized a church at Port Byron, Illinois, and another at Comanche. In that year he went to Dubuque-eighty miles-by land to attend the first annual meet- ing of the Davenport association. In one place he states: "Captain Wilson ran the ferry between Davenport and Rock Island and during the summer of 1843 substituted the horse boat in place of the little scow and yawl, a very great im- provement."
His next field of labor was at LeClaire, where he moved in 1844. In June of that year we find him going with two others (James Turner and Wm. Palmer) by horse and wagon to Mt. Pleasant to attend the second annual territorial mis- sionary convention. On account of high water in a stream, they were obliged to devise an impromptu ferry out of the wagon bed, and with a grape vine as anchor line run their wagon and their clothes across, after which the men and horses swam. Elder Brown had swam across first to land the ferry and its several cargoes. The Elder said: "Swim we must or go back; to go back was no part of the program." From another place we quote: "During our stay at LeClaire, a comfortable meeting house was built with a stone basement. The credit so far as human agency was concerned, for this house was due largely to Mrs. Brown. We spent the winter of 1844-45 in New York state, and during our stay Mrs. Brown collected nearly enough to make a good beginning, and encourage the church to build.
"The pastor quarried the rock and tended the mason. In the summer of 1845 Elier J. N. Seeley, pastor of the church at Muscatine, with a man and horse, towed a large river lighter, or scowboat, fifty miles up the river to Port Byron opposite LeClaire for lime to build a house of worship at Muscatine. I gave him lumber for doors and windows. That was the way meetinghouses were built in Iowa in early days." (The reader must not mistake the pastor, J. N. Seeley for J. O. Seeley who is only "Farmer Buckhorn" and not so much of a pastor as he is a pasture where newspaper publishers and historical societies too poor to buy literary grass can graze free.)
In 1847 we find Elder Brown moving back to his early field on the Forks of the Maquoketa, where he built a house on land donated to him by J. E. Goode- now, the same being the southwest corner of Platt and Eliza streets. While liv- ing there Nelson Walker (before spoken of) died at his house, and on June 9, 1848, the nine year old son of the Rev. Brown was drowned in the Maquoketa River. While here his appointments covered Lamotte twenty miles toward Du- buque ; Pence's schoolhouse, nine miles west on Bear Creek, formerly known as Shake Rag schoolhouse, now south edge of Baldwin; Burleson's or Buckhorn, six miles west; south settlement; Andrew and Cascade. Wouldn't that circuit wilt the collars of some of our brick pavement preachers ?
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It was at this time we find the Rev. Brown and wife doing noble work in behalf of the Maquoketa Academy, and going to York state to solicit funds to aid the enterprise. In 1850 the nearest stage route to Chicago was either via Galena or Rock Island. In June, 1850, he went to take J. O. DeGrush and wife, who had been out to make them a visit, to Rock Island and went with a lumber wagon so as to bring back a load of goods for some merchant, and coming home he was on the road the most of the night. There being a heavy dew, and cold for the time of year, he contracted inflammatory rheumatism which laid him up many months.
In 1851 he concluded to return to Herkimer county, New York, to recruit his health among his old friends and relatives. After some time, health improved, he accepted charge of the church at Norway, his earliest pastorate, where he and Mrs. Brown first set up housekeeping. Here he brought order out of chaos cre- ated by a former pastor's preaching too much anti-slavery doctrine from the pulpit. Elder Brown never mixed politics with his sermons. He was at heart, however, a strong anti-slavery man, and we find him in a 4th of July oration delivered at LeClaire, July 4, 1845, making an eloquent argument against slavery.
In the spring of 1857, he was sent by the Home Missionary Society to find a new field of labor in northeastern Iowa. "Glad indeed," he says, "to return to our beloved Iowa." He left Buffalo Tuesday evening, July 14, 1857, on the steamboat, "Southern Michigan" for Toledo and arrived at Toledo at 2 p. m. the next day. Left Toledo that evening on the Michigan Southern Railroad, ar- riving at Chicago at 8 a. m. the next day. Mrs. Brown and children went by rail- road to DeWitt, Iowa, and he waited in Chicago for his horse and buggy which was shipped by freight at Toledo. They arrived at 4 a. m., next day. He drove his horse from Chicago to Maquoketa where he found Mrs. Brown and the chil- dren well and happy.
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