History of Jackson County, Iowa; Volume I, Part 95

Author: Ellis, James Whitcomb, 1848-; Clarke, S. J., publishing company
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 730

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After visiting friends and relatives at Maquoketa eight or ten days, and leav- ing the family, he started for northeastern Iowa, July 30, 1857, via Dubuque and stopped at Dubuque the first night. From Dubuque for forty miles he traveled over the same road that he traveled when in company with Elder B. F. Brabrook in 1848 to Garnavillo, Clayton county, to attend a meeting on Pony Creek or in Port Hollow, to assist in organizing a Baptist church. This was about three miles north of Elkader, Clayton county. To attend this meeting, Elder Brabrook trav- eled from Davenport, one hundred and twenty miles, and Elder Brown traveled from Maquoketa, eighty miles. Pony Hollow was one of Elder Ira Blanchard's preaching stations. After leaving Dubuque he traveled to Rossville, Allamakee county, where he found Elder James Schofield with whom the missionary board had directed him to take council as to a field of labor. But the Rev. Schofield not being acquainted with the country west, left it to the Rev. Brown's own judgment. He went to Winneshiek county.

Next we find him helping to organize a church at Vernon, Howard county. Then we find him at Strawberry Point helping to dedicate a church, after which he traveled sixty-five miles back to Vernon where he had concluded to make his home. He says after arriving at Vernon, the next two days he helped Elder Whit- man stack oats, and on Sunday preached twice to two good congregations, and Monday mowed hay. Wednesday, September 2d, he started with two teams for Lansing on the river for his goods. Saturday, 4 p. m. he got back to Vernon and Sunday preached there. The next Wednesday he started with a one horse wagon for Maquoketa, one hundred and fifty miles, for his family, where they had spent the time while he was looking up his field of labor. Friday, September IIth, he , arrived at Maquoketa ; Saturday he rested, and Sunday preached for the pastor, Elder Holmes (another good old man, after Elder Brown's own heart; the writer knew them both well and Elder Holmes died in Buckhorn where he often preached).

The next Tuesday, the Rev. Brown started with his family of five with his one horse rig for Howard county and reached there the next Monday evening.

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In that vicinity we find him living and laboring the most of thirty years. In 1858 he was elected county superintendent of public schools, serving in that capacity for three years at a salary of one dollar and fifty cents per day and pay his own traveling expenses. We also find him teaching several terms of the Vernon district school at a salary of eighteen and twenty dollars per month and still going on with his pastoral work. In July, 1858, he organized the Lime Springs Baptist church. In 1868 he moved to Carroll county, Illinois, where he remained two years pastor of the York Baptist church, returning to Lime Springs, Howard county, Iowa, in 1870. In the spring of 1870 a Baptist church was built at Lime Springs, and he and an old brother Baptist called "Father" Buckland, eighty years of age, quarried the rock for the foundation and then made a "bee" to get them hauled.

In 1871 he built himself a house at Lime Springs. In 1875 he and Mrs. Brown spent a year at the old New York home, returning in 1876, when he again became pastor of the Lime Springs church. In 1877 he built another and his last house at Lime Springs, twenty rods south of the depot. In that house his dear com- panion died June 12, 1887.

In October, 1877, as we have before stated, he was elected state representa- tive of the seventeenth general assembly from Howard county. He was sev- enty-four years of age when Mrs. Brown died, after which he spent some time in his home keeping everything as near like she left it as possible, but finally went to his children dividing his time between them, and occasionally preaching here and there. He preached several sermons in Maquoketa and Nashville after he was eighty years old. We do not know how it is with readers, but we have followed the history of the old man's life work with interest and satisfaction.

JOURNAL OF A MISSIONARY IN JACKSON COUNTY .. IOWA TERRITORY, 1843-6.

BY WILLIAM SALTER.

Under a commission from the American Home Missionary Society "to preach the Gospel in Iowa territory." I left my father's house in New York City, October 4, 1843, and arrived at Maquoketa (then Springfield P. O.) on the 10th of November. In my journey I visited Niagara Falls ; spent a Sun- day in Buffalo at the home of the Rev. Asa T. Hopkins, pastor of the First Presbyterian church of that city. The next Sunday I was at Milwaukee in the hospitable home of the Rev. Stephen Peet, agent of the A. H. M. S. for Wisconsin territory, who discouraged my going to Iowa, saying that Iowa would not amount to much, as it had only a narrow strip of good land on the Mississippi River, and the Great American Desert was west of it, whereas Wis- consin had Lake Michigan on one side and the Mississippi on the other and would make a prosperous state.

The next Sunday I was at Galesburg, Illinois, having ridden over the prairies from Chicago to that place in an open wagon. The following Monday at sundown, I reached the Mississippi and felt the thrill and exhilaration the sight of the great river and of Iowa awakened in my mind. On landing in Burlington the next morning, James G. Edwards, editor of the Burlington Hawkeye met me and took me to his home. The next Sunday I spent at Keo- sauqua, on the Des Moines River, and preached in a blacksmith shop, the Rev. L. G. Bell, a pioneer preacher of the "Old School" preaching the same day in the same place; then I visited the agency, and was kindly entertained by the widow of the Indian agent of the Sacs and Foxes, General Joseph M. Street, and stood over his grave, and that of the Indian chief Wapello, which were side by side. The next Sunday, November 5, I received ordination at Denmark, at the hands of Asa Turner (Yale 1827), Julius A. Reed (Yale 1829), Reuben Gaylord (Yale 1834), and Charles Burnham (Dartmouth 1836).

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I came up the Mississippi with Alden B. Robbins, who then began his life long ministry at Bloomington (afterwards Muscatine), and with Edwin B. Turner, who was assigned to Jones county, and to Cascade, in Dubuque county, then the farthest missionary post in the northwest. Proceeding from Davenport, Turner and myself spent a night with Oliver Emerson in his cabin near DeWitt. We found him shaking with the ague. He asked a neighbor who was going the next day with a grist to McCloy's mill, to take us along. The journey was slow, and we were chilled and weary with the raw winds of the prairie. Reaching the mill an hour after dark, we left the grist, and went on to the log house of John Shaw, who made us welcome, and we soon lost our chill and weariness in the warm supper Mrs. Shaw gave us. In a part of the house partitioned off by sheets, we found refreshing sleep.

The morning showed us that we were on a gently rolling prairie, about a mile from the junction of the south and north forks of the Maquoketa River, and from the long stretch of timber between them. Across the road from Mr. Shaw's was a small log house banked with sod, the roof partly covered with sod. Built for a blacksmith shop it was used for school and public meetings. North of it was the cabin of John E. Goodenow, postmaster, emi- nent for his public spirit and generous nature, a descendant on his mother's side (Betsy White) from Peregrine White, who was born on the "Mayflower" in Cape Cod harbor in 1620. Next north was the claim of Zalmon Livermore.

Leaving Mr. Turner to preach in the schoolhouse, I went horseback to Andrew, where a Congregational church had been organized by Oliver Emer- son, the pioneer missionary of the whole region, December 26, 1841. The meeting was held in the upper story of the log court house. Deacon Samuel Cotton and family were there and gave me a cordial greeting. He was a descendant of John Cotton, the first minister of Boston, Mass., and possessed the sterling qualities of his Puritan ancestry. Mrs. Cotton was of the Bemis family, from "Bemis Heights," Saratoga, New York, where Burgoyne's army was defeated in 1777. Their house was six miles north of Andrew but the distance did not prevent their regular attendance at public worship, and I often shared the shelter and comfort of their home. In my first sermon in the county, I showed that the early churches in the land of Israel were edified and multiplied by "walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit," and I urged the duty of building up Christianity in the same way in Iowa. Pure and faithful churches, active in Christian service, are the saving salt of any community. A Methodist brother, a justice of the peace, greeted me, saying that he welcomed all preachers, "no matter what their tenements were."

I preached from the desk where sentence of death had been pronounced in the first judicial trial for murder in the territory, the previous year. The case grew out of a dispute about a land claim. Before the execution of the sentence, John C. Holbrook came from Dubuque and preached. The prisoner was brought into the court house in chains, and cried out in his anguish, "Oh what would I give to restore to life the man I killed," and "many a manly cheek was wet with tears" said Mr. Holbrook in his report of the scene.

At Andrew I made the acquaintance of Ansel Briggs, mail contractor on the route from Dubuque to Davenport and Iowa City, afterwards the first governor of the state (1846-50), a native of Vermont; of Phillip B. Bradley, a native of Connecticut, clerk of the county court, member of the territorial legislature (1845-46), of the state legislature (1846-49, 1878), also prominent as an adviser of Governor Briggs. Nathaniel Butterworth and his gracious wife made me welcome at their primitive hostelry. They were natives of Mass- achusetts.

Returning to Maquoketa, I took brother Turner sixteen miles west on his way to Jones county. Much of the country was taken by settlers, and their cabins and clearings showed industry and thrift. Reaching a cabin towards

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dark, we asked if we could stay for the night, but the house was full. It was some distance to the next house; growing darker, the road blind, and we felt in a quandary, when an old man, learning who we were, said that his min- ister at Crown Point, New York (Stephen L. Herrick), told him of a band of missionaries going to Iowa, and that he must look out for them. "You stop here" he added, and we were relieved. After supper, and a feast of soul with thanksgiving and prayer to "Jehovah Jireh," we found sound sleep on the cabin floor.

The next morning the old gentleman's son, Lorenzo Spaulding, offered to take Brother Turner on his way, and I returned to Maquoketa, and began a visitation of the people from cabin to cabin. I purchased a horse with saddle and bridle and saddle bags, and, as winter came on, accoutered myself with gloves of deerskin, scarfs, leggings, and buffalo overshoes. In a circuit of six miles I found fifty fam- ilies, some from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, more from New York than any other one state, and some from Canada. They represented every variety of religious opinion. A Methodist preacher (John Walker) had an appointment in the settlement. Charles E. Brown had preached his first sermon in Iowa the previous year, in the house of John Shaw. He or- ganized a Baptist church, August 31, 1842, but left the field in November following, finding the cabin he had put up on the prairie in the summer not suitable to winter in, and he moved to Davenport. A man of excellent spirits he was welcomed back to Maquoketa in 1847. Subsequently, a pioneer preacher in Howard county, he was a member of the house of representatives from that county (1878). His son, Wm. C. Brown, has gained eminence for efficiency in railroad management in Iowa, and is now vice president of the New York Central.

In my circuit I found six Presbyterian and Congregational families, and called them together on Thanksgiving Day, November 30th, for conference and prayer with reference to forming a church. They were divided on the question of govern- ment. Accommodation was necessary. The election of two elders to serve for two years was finally agreed upon, and William H. Efner, M. D., and Thomas S. Flathers were chosen. Both were of the "New School" which adhered to the plan · of union of 1801. Mr. Flathers was born in Kentucky, but lived from childhood in Indiana. He had not learned to read, he told me, until he was twenty years of age, when a passion for knowledge and a zeal for religion inflamed him, and he went to school and fitted for Wabash College, with the ministry in view, but chill penury had compelled him to leave his studies. On the Sabbath, December 10th, the church was constituted, the elders were set apart with prayer, and the Lord's Supper administered. During the previous week Brethren Emerson, Robbins, and Turner, and Jared Hitchcock, delegate from Davenport, had come to Maquoketa and we organized the Northern Iowa Association to embrace churches north of Iowa River. I favored the convention system (semi Presbyterian), which had been adopted in Wisconsin, but the other brethren preferred a distinctly Congregational organization.

Provision, however, was made to include the Maquoketa church. For the sup- port of the church a society was organized of which John Shaw was the most ac- tive and efficient member. They invited me to preach at Maquoketa half my time. Mrs. Shaw was a native of Oxford, Massachusetts, of the Fiske family, of Hugue- not stock ; she acted the part of a mother to me, and paid me the fine compliment that she knew I had a good mother.

In the Wright settlement, three miles south of Maquoketa, and at Burleson's, six miles west, I visited the schools and preached, as I did in every settlement in the county. Thomas Miles Wright was a native of Connecticut, had lived in War- ren county, New York, near Lake George ; Shadrach Burleson was a native of Ver- mont ; Anson H. Wilson, of Canada ; they all encouraged my work. In the Wright family were several sons of like spirit with their father. A daughter was the wife of John E. Goodenow ; she had all the fine qualities of the excellent woman in the last chapter of the book of Proverbs.

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HISTORY OF JACKSON COUNTY'

In the neighborhood of Maquoketa were a number of persons who had taken part in the Mackenzie rebellion in Canada, 1837. Among them was William Cur- rent, a man of bright and active mind, a friend of temperance and education, but not of religion, because of alleged discrepancies, contradictions, and unseemly to things in the Bible. I invited him to come to meeting; he said, "No," but that he would give me some hard texts for a sermon. I told him to do so, and I would come to his house and preach, which I did. I explained that the objectionable things in the Bible are records from the ignorance and coarseness of former times, that the Bible does not endorse all its records, and that the New Testament ex- pressly does away with much that is in the Old, and I quoted a number of the words of Christ in the Gospels, in proof that Christianity, according to the teach- ings of its author, is an absolutely pure and holy religion. Returning from that appointment with my trusty companion, Mr. Shaw, our horses lost the way, and we wandered round and round on the prairie until a glimmering light in a distant cabin window relieved our bewilderment.

Among other settlers from Canada was Samuel Chandler, but he came to Jack- son county by a very circuitous route. He had been sentenced to be hung as an insurgent in the "Patriot" cause, but the sentence (upon the intercession of his daughters) was commuted to banishment for life in the penal colony of Van Die- man's land, whither he was transported, via London. He had managed to make his escape on a Yankee whaler, and now found some of his old friends and one of his daughters who had secured the commutation of his sentence, Sarah, the wife of Jesse Wilson. Mr. Chandler was a man of firm religious principles, and a native of Massachusetts, a helper in every effort to improve the country.

The name of our postoffice was that of the postmaster's native town in Ver- mont, but, being that of many towns in the United States, letters were frequently missent, and I joined Mr. Goodenow and Mr. Shaw in a petition for a change of name to Maquoketa, which was made by the Postoffice Department, March 13, 1844. The word Maquo is Indian for bear, an animal that infested the whole region.

My cramped quarters in Mr. Shaw's house gave me scant opportunity for con- sulting my books or composing sermons, but I managed to write one sermon during the winter, sitting by the rotary stove, and preached it to a congregation of thirty who seemed to appreciate my effort. In my solitary missionary tours the illimitable stretches of land and sky often inspired thoughts of the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth and I heard the voices from above that speak "in reason's ear."

In the settlements about Andrew I found two interesting families, recently from Pennsylvania. They had been brought with their teams and belongings from Pittsburg to Bellevue by steamboat for twenty dollars a family. They were warm hearted Christians, of Protestant Irish stock.

David Young was of pronounced antislavery sentiments and had been a "New School" Presbyterian, but liked the Congregational way, and became an active member of the church at Andrew. He built a mill on Brush Creek, which was swept away in the freshets of 1844, a year of high floods in the Mississippi valley. Sixty-one years later, I met his son James at Maquoketa, and he recalled my visits in the old house and the family prayers and worship together, of which he said his mother spoke with fond recollection to the end of her days.

At a cabin on Farmer's Creek I was advised not to speak on religion in the next cabin or I might be put out, as the occupant had told a Methodist min- sister who called there, that he would throw him into the fire if he spoke a word on the subject. It was a rough region. Nature appeared illshapen in "Rocky Hollow." Coming to a large log house I found a friendly Scotch family living cheerily, no floor but mother earth. Mr. Sage was away at mill, but his wife made me welcome, and called in a few neighbors to whom I preached. She told me she had heard Thomas Chalmers and Edward Irving in Glasgow. A little distance north was another Scotch family (Alexander),

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but there was trouble between the two families over their respective claims. They were the only Presbyterian families I found in this visitation, and it grieved me to find them at odds.

I was perplexed on being informed that a member of the Andrew charge had fallen into shame. It was made my duty to seek the recovery of the woman to a correct life, and I was relieved to hear profession of sorrow and purposes of amendment. I at once spoke to her husband who was out at work, but he turned upon me with abuse and threats to the church.

One family that attended my services were used to "tokens" on sacra- mental occasions, and would not come to communion without them. While visiting at their house a young man seventeen years of age called, who said he was on a pedestrian tour, He had read Captain Cook's Voyages and Peter Parley, and told me that he knew a little Latin and Greek, and had learned the Hebrew alphabet from the 119th Psalm. He had walked from his home thirty miles west of Philadelphia and was still westward bound.

I spent the last week of 1843 at Bellevue making acquaintances and preach- ing in the schoolhouse, and in the house of Alexander Reed, three miles south, where one said it was a "divilish" sermon. Bellevue is beautifully situated. When Wisconsin territory extended to the Missouri River, 1836, it was pro- posed as a central site for the capital, in rivalry with Dubuque. The town was discredited by a sanguinary mob (April 1, 1840), or "war" as it was called, several person being killed on both sides and the county seat was moved to the geographical center, the people voting 208 for Andrew, III for Bellevue.

The Dyas family, who said they were the first family to make a home in the county, gave me a hearty welcome. They had lived in Galena and were warm friends of the Rev. Erastus Kent, pioneer missionary there. Many of the first settlers about Bellevue had worked in the lead mines, and had been in Colonel Henry Dodge's battalion in the Black Hawk war.

Wm. A. Warren, sheriff of Jackson county, was a native of Kentucky and came to Bellevue in 1836, had served in the Black Hawk war, took an active part in the Bellevue "war," was a member of the constitutional convention in 1857, and I resumed my acquaintance with him in July, 1864, at Stevenson, Alabama, where he was United States quartermaster, and I was in the service of the Christian commission, and he gave me his kind offices. As sheriff at Jackson county, he had collected taxes on coonskins at fifty cents, and sold them in Galena at seventy-five cents.

At Bellevue, Thomas Cox and John Foley were at home for the Christmas vacation from the territorial legislature of which they were members. On their return to Iowa City, Colonel Cox was elected president of the council. He had been an influential member of every previous legislature of the terri- tory but one. He promoted the removal of the capital from Burlington to Iowa City, and gave the name to the new capital. He was also one of the surveyors who selected the site on the Iowa River and laid out the town. He invited me to visit his family which I did later.

Mrs. Cox was a native of Rhode Island, of Quaker stock. She came in her youth with her parents to St. Genevieve, Missouri, and was a lady of gracious manners.

Upon the death of her husband, November 9, 1844, she sent for me, and I of- ficiated at the funeral in the presence of a large concourse of people. The grave was under a hickory tree near the house. In a few years the land passed into other hands and was a plowed field. Sixty years later the Jackson County Histor- ical Society had the body unearthed, and the bones were interred in Mount Hope cemetery, Maquoketa. where they set up a large and smooth faced bowl- der, and had his name inscribed thereon as "Pioneer Lawmaker." By invita- tion of the society, I took part in the ceremony and made a prayer at the unveiling of the monument, July 4, 1905.

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On the first day of May, 1845, I officiated at the marriage of Cordelia, daughter of Thomas Cox, to Joseph S. Mallard. It was the first marriage ceremony I per- formed. They went overland to California in 1849, and were among the early settlers of Los Angeles.

John Foley was a polite Irish gentleman, had been sheriff of Jo Daviess county, Illinois, a member of the first legislative assembly of Wisconsin territory, two sessions of which were held in Burlington, 1837-38. I also visited George Cub- bage and preached in his cabin. He was a native of Delaware and an intense Protestant. He had been clerk to Felix St. Vrain, United States agent for the Sacs and Foxes, whom they foully murdered at the opening of the Black Hawk war. Mr. Cubbage had himself been a captive in their hands. He taught the first school in Dubuque, was doorkeeper of the legislative assembly of Wisconsin ter- ritory at Belmont, 1836, and one of the commissioners under the act of Con- gress to lay out Dubuque, Burlington, and other towns, 1837-38.

A few weeks later I visited every family in Charleston, now Sabula. They were a friendly people, mostly from New England and New York; James Leonard from Griswold, Connecticut; Benjamin Hudson from Lynn, Massachusetts; Mr. Marshall from Goffstown, New Hampshire. A gray-headed man, learning I was from New York, asked me if I knew Dr. Joseph McElroy, pastor of the Grand Street Presbyterian church in that city. I told him that he was an eloquent preacher and that I had heard him preach. "He is my brother," he said. And I saw a re- semblance in their features. His name was Hugh McElroy. He came to Iowa in 1838 and made a claim west of Sabula; he had a large family and his oldest child was named Joseph.

I preached in the Exchange hotel at Sabula, and had a larger congregation than in any place before in the county. A church was organized there by Oliver Emerson, December 14, 1845.

North of Bellevue I preached in Mr. Potter's house on Tete des Morts Creek. I found some German families in the settlement, with Luther's translation of the Bible in their cabins. Some were beginning to learn English. I regretted that I could not preach to them in their own tongue.

The new year, 1844, opened with a heavy snow, and I was unable to fill my ap- pointment for the evening at Andrew, my first failure of the kind. During the following spring there were many freshets, and I could not always make my cir- cuit. In March I visited the people in the Forks. They had made clearings in the timber, thinking crops would be surer than on the prairie. One who came to my meeting told me that he had not heard a sermon in ten years. A young man of the house where I preached offered to conduct me to a wonderful cave and nat- ural bridge four miles away. The bridge is thirty feet long, about twelve feet wide, of limestone, solid, massive, covered with deep soil. Cave Creek passes under it. We clambered up the sides of the bridge and walked over it. I then turned with admiring gaze to the arch that from a height of more than one hun- dred feet slopes smoothly in a grand curve to the mouth of the cave.

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History of Jackson County, Iowa; Volume I, Part 95

Author: Ellis, James Whitcomb, 1848-; Clarke, S. J., publishing company Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Chicago, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 730

Author: Ellis, James Whitcomb, 1848-; Clarke, S. J., publishing company
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 730