USA > Iowa > Kossuth County > History of Kossuth County, Iowa > Part 14
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The name "Algona" had been decided upon for the new town before the Judge himself became a resident on the site. The name is one that had been suggested by Mrs. Call. It is an Indian word signifying Algonquin waters, or the lakes and streams that belong to the Algonquin tribes. Prior to the nam- ing of the town site the vicinity had been referred to since the fall of 1854, as Call's Grove; but that name soon went out of use after the site began to be called Algona.
The second cabin built upon the unsurveyed and unplatted town site was erected by J. W. Moore in April, 1855. This stood in what is now the alley between R. M. Gardner's residence and F .. A. Corey's brick house. Besides
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being used for a bach hall, it was the first building where public meetings and religious services were held. Moore came here with considerable money, bought the southeast corner of the site and speculated in claims. As his wife remained away for several months, he became one of the bachelor boys in his own cabin. These were the only two cabins built on the site during the year 1855, al- though the Blackford cabin just west of town was built that year.
The site where Algona was to be located, as has already been stated, re- ceived none of the 1854 settlers that year. During the year 1855, among those who came to settle thereon or to find employment while prospecting for claims besides Asa C. Call and J. W. Moore, were Jacob C. Cummins, D. W. King, Smock, William Preston, August Zahlten, Christian Hackman, Lewis H. Smith, James E. Hall, and Thomas Covel. A few also who settled near the pro- posed site were for the time being considered residents of the town site at Call's Grove. Among these were James L. Paine and F. C. Rist who located in the spring on section 12, on the southeast, and the Maxwell family who lived in the cabin near the river on the west. The line of work these men engaged in during the year having been previously stated, it is not necessary to repeat the details in historically treating this portion of the subject. The most of them were single, and some who had wives were here alone, their life partners be- ing far away in other localities.
There had been no sort of county organization until August, 1855, when the election to decide who should control the management of the county's affairs was held in the Joe .Moore cabin. The most important officer to be chosen was the county judge, for under the law then in force that official had all the power now lodged in the board of supervisors, auditor and district judge of probate mat- ters, besides being a local legislator and a czar in general over the county man- agement. For that position the Algona community placed in nomination Asa C. Call, and the Irvington settlers, Dr. Corydon Craw. An account has already been given of this close and exciting contest which resulted in the election of Asa C. Call as judge.
During the summer of 1855, Judge Call had several parties working for him in different capacities and they lived with his family at the cabin. D. W. King was running the breaking plow for him, and was what the boys called the steer puncher. Some were cutting timber and others doing work on the claims. The help slept in the upper story where with little ventilation it was very hot. Hack- man, Zahlten, King, Cummins and some times Ambrose Call slept there, though the latter usually made his home with his sister, Mrs. J. E. Blackford, when on the Algona side of the river. The heat was not the greatest trouble, but the mosquitoes were. They appeared to be of extra size that year, and to have a special fondness for attacking the two Prussians. Zahlten could speak Eng- lish only with difficulty, but while the mosquito pests were getting in their blood-sucking work he learned to say with grace and elegance, "Dees ees der werry debil."
One member of the J. E. Blackford family that arrived in the fall of 1855, was a little boy. That lad grew to manhood, got married and then settled down to business. He is still living in Algona and is widely known by the name of Ed. Blackford. Some time ago he entertained the Historical Society by read-
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ing the following account of the incidents of the trip and those occurring for a while after the family came as he recollected them:
"I have sometimes thought that the pioneer spirit was hereditary in some families. Be this as it may-in a very early day when Ohio was the farthest west, my great grandfather emigrated to that state to make his home in the wilderness. Years later when Indiana was the frontier my grandfather made his home in northern Indiana. And it was from this place in 1855 that my father, J. E. Blackford, decided to cast in his life with the frontier settlements of Northern Iowa. His choice of this particular locality was probably largely influenced by the fact that Asa and Ambrose Call, who were mother's brothers, had made a settlement here the year before and gave a good report of the land. In these modern days a journey of 500 miles is but a trifle, one or more freight cars are chartered and into these is loaded everything that it is desirable to take, even to live stock, and in two or three days the trip is over and the family follow in a passenger coach. This trip, however, was much more primitive and it took us more days than it would hours now. Father and mother must have spent long hours deciding what they must take and what they could leave- furniture, clothing, bedding, dishes-all the things that go to make a home must be taken, for there would be no chance to buy more perhaps for years, and all these must be condensed into one wagon load and still leave room for the fam- ily, which consisted of father, mother, my younger brother, J. Ernest, and myself.
"We had a canvas covered wagon in which to ride and sleep. Mother cooked our meals over an open fire out doors. We intended to camp out and did so through the entire trip with but few exceptions. Even the wagon would be a curiosity in these days, being of the linch pin style where the wheels were held to their places by an iron pin through the axle instead of the neat burr of the modern wagon. There being nothing to keep it in, the axle grease was con- tinually working out and required a lot of lubricant of some sort, and in those days nothing was considered quite so good as tar. Not coal tar, a by-product of Rockefeller refinery of today, but pine tar. Some of you remember that one question in the old Olney geography was. 'What is the principal product of North Carolina?' And the answer was, 'pitch, tar and turpentine.' Today if you wanted pine tar you would go to a drug store and buy it by the ounce. Then it was sold at every crossroad store by the gallon, and a tar bucket generally hung under the hind axle of every wagon.
"All preparations being made, early in September, 1855, we said goodbye to relatives and friends and started. We crossed the Mississipi river at Lyons and were in Iowa. The villages were gradually smaller and the settlements more sparse and further apart. There was a good deal of emigration and often for a few hours we would be in company with others moving as we were, but there was none to go with us, so we were usually alone. Our objective point now was Clear Lake, where father was to get more particular directions for the last part of the trip. On arriving at this point he was told that it would be impossible to go directly west, so we were sent around the south end of the lake, across the flat country that is around the sources of the Iowa and Boone rivers in Hancock and Wright counties. Here we had no roads, only a trail through the high grass, and when it was short on ridges or knolls, even that was hard to follow. The grass in those days was very luxuriant often in low places
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being as high as a man's head, and father had to keep a careful watch for best places to cross sloughs. We reached the Des Moines river at a place called in those days Miner's Point. I do not know where it was but probably about opposite Livermore. We kept on the east side of the river but crossed to the west side a short distance below the present town of Irvington, and from there up on the west side until we came to a cabin. A little girl called her father to direct us. He was Alex Brown, Sr., grandfather of the present A. J. Brown, and the little girl was his daughter, Jennie, now Mrs. Jacob Altwegg of Plum Creek.
"A short distance further along on where is now the Chubb farm we found Ambrose Call digging potatoes. His cabin was near by. We continued on our way, crossing at the old Call ford and up to the grove at father's place. In the south end of this grove Asa Call was building a steam saw mill. Right where father's house is now, was the Maxwell cabin, but we kept right along to the Asa Call cabin (that stood where W. C. Danson's house is now) and our long journey was done, October 10, 1855. So far we had seen two-thirds of the Algona settlement. The other one-third was the cabin of J. W. Moore, that stood in a little grove in the southeast part of the town, not far I should judge from the present residence of J. R. Jones. As to the people of the set- tlement at that time, remember that I was a boy of nine, and while I probably knew all of them at that time, I can recall but few. The women I remember well was Mrs. Call, Mrs. Maxwell and mother. Of the men, Asa C. Call, Am- brose Call, Aug. Zahlten, Christian Hackman, Lewis H. Smith, J. W. Moore, D. W. King, Levi Maxwell, Frank Rist, J. L. Paine. Captain Ingham had been here but had gone away temporarily, I think. Then there was Brown, Malachi Clark and Crose.
"An addition was built to the Call cabin and we lived there for the first win- ter, removing to father's present place in 1856. That winter we were visited by three Indians, the first I ever saw, Umpashotah and his squaw and a younger one that went by the name of Josh and who was concerned in the Indian trou- bles in Minnesota of later years. An item of a good deal of interest to me was the birth that winter of my eldest sister, Mrs. E. H. Clarke, the first white child born in Algona.
"As I remember it the winter of '55-6 was a severe one. All that were here stayed here, none came and none went away, and so far as we were con- cerned the rest of the world ceased to exist. The things of today that seem to be a part of our daily life, churches, schools, books, papers, lodges, clubs, and telephones were not for us and we did not gather at the postoffice and grumble because the mails were late, for the good reason that there was no postoffice and we knew there were no mails to come."
Prominent among the 1856 settlers on the site were: Rev. Chauncey Taylor, John Heckart and family, J. E. Stacy, H. A. Henderson and family, Jesse Magoon, Thomas Whitehead, Frank Harrison, Roderick M. Bessie, E. N Weaver, Orange Minkler, Charles E. Gray, Oliver Benschoter, Geo. A. Lowe, H. F. Watson and wife, Joseph Thompson and wife, Amon S. Collins, Amos Otis, Geo. P. Taylor and the Wheelock brothers. Luther and Sylvester Rist were also settlers of that year near the town on the southeast. Rev. D. S. McComb came also that year, and while he did not maintain a home in town
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he was there much of the time endeavoring to find material for organizing a Presbyterian church. His real home was on his claim on the Black Cat. The result of these arrivals was the building of a few more cabins in the spring and summer of that year and several frame structures in the fall and winter, after the mill had been started.
The third cabin was put up for John Heckart in May, 1856. On his ar- rival with his family that month, he found the building party raised. The family lived in with Judge Call's for a few days until the cabin could be com- pleted, as Mrs. Call was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Heckart. Mr. Heckart was the first cabinet maker in the county. He began doing something in that line soon after making settlement.
The fourth cabin raised was for H. A. Henderson during the latter part of May or the first part of June, 1856. This cabin was a story and a half, built on the present power house corner, and used as the first hotel-the St. Nicholas. Although the front door was on the end facing the street, there was no window on that end. The boarders, fifteen or twenty of them at times, went up Jacob's ladder to bed in the upper story. While getting the building ready for occupancy "Ki" Henderson and family lived in a large tent which he had pitched about three blocks east on Call street. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson were the parents of Mrs. Ambrose A. Call, who is still a resident of the town her husband helped to found.
The fifth cabin was raised for Rev. Chauncey Taylor on the spot where A. L. Webster's cement residence is located. This was done during the last days of June or the first of July, 1856. In the raising of the cabin, Lewis H. Smith used his ax and "carried up" one corner. In other words he was a "notcher" on the building. While the men were busily engaged placing log upon log in constructing the cabin, there appeared in front of it a fine team conveying Michael Reibhoff, William B. Moore and Robert Moore. The strangers de- sired to settle, but wanted some choice selections. They interviewed Judge Call, and after a little conference he introduced them to W. H. Ingham as the one who had just what they wanted. This resulted in a short time in Reibhoff and the two Moores becoming the owners of the major part of Mr. Ingham's valuable timber claim on section 24, on the Black Cat. Before Father Taylor's cabin was completed the mill had started at Irvington, so that he was enabled to have rafters, and boards for the floor and the gable ends. No other cabin had in its construction these lumber furnishings. With the completion of this humble home, the era for building log cabins on the town site entirely ceased. These five enumerated above were all the original cabins ever built in town.
Previous to there being any mills in the county the cabins were necessarily small and consequently crowded. That was particularly true of the cabins in town. The old Joe Moore cabin was always full of men doing their own cooking, mend- ing and washing. Some of the cooking, judged by the standards of later-day domestic science regulations, would not grade as number one. During the summer of 1856, when Joe Moore, Lewis H. Smith, Geo. A. Lowe, Gad Gilbert, Amos Otis, J. E. Stacy, Father Taylor and one Wheelock, were living in peace and harmony in the Moore cabin, Wheelock officiated as chief cook. It used to be said of him that after he had wiped his hands on his overalls and then run his fingers a few times through his hair, he proceeded to mix the biscuits, and when these came
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ALEXANDER BROWN (1855)
MRS. AMBROSE A. CALL (1856)
MRS. JOHN HECKART (1856)
OLIVER BENSCHOTER (1856)
PIONEERS TO THE ALGONA REGION
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out of the oven they were so full of saleratus that they were as spotted as a coon's tail. That was certainly an age of high living when no calico was to be found in the homes.
The town site was not surveyed until the spring of 1856. On the 19th day of April, when Father Taylor walked into town from Fort Dodge, he saw Lewis H. Smith doing the surveying, and then and there first made his acquaintance. While laying off the blocks in the south part of town, one line directly ranged the old Joe Moore cabin ; so the surveyor and his chainmen entered at one door, passed through the other and then went on their way rejoicing. The plat as surveyed was filed by Asa C. Call in the recorder's office December 2, 1856. There were eighty-eight blocks in all, number 19 being dedicated as a public square, and 39 as Maple Park. The north boundary of the original site as then.surveyed went to Lucas street or the next street north of North street, while the east boundary was Minnesota street-the one now leading to the fair grounds past H. F. Watson's residence.
Some of the streets were named after well known citizens; some after prop- erty owners, and still others after those holding high official positions. Asa C. Call, J. W. Moore, J. E. Hall, J. E. Blackford, Lewis H. Smith, Geo. A. Lowe, and Kennedy (who helped on the survey) were residents who were honored by having their names perpetuated in this way. The same honor was bestowed upon Col. E. Lucas and Major Williams, property owners, and also upon United States Senators Geo. W. Jones, A. C. Dodge and James Harlan and Congress- man James Thorington.
J. W. Moore owned the southeast forty acres of the site, comprising twelve blocks and four half blocks lying south of McGregor street, and evidently be- tween Minnesota and Dodge streets. His humble cabin, having been built before the survey, was found to be situated in the alley in block seventy.
The first government mail arrived in Algona March 9, 1856, and Joe Moore, who had been appointed the first postmaster, took charge of it in his cabin, Lewis H. Smith being his deputy. It was brought up from Fort Dodge by a young man by the name of Welsh. Through the influence of Judge Call, Charles Magoon became the first contractor to carry the mail between these two points. It is the general belief of many of the old settlers, however, that the judge himself had the government contract and sub-let it to Magoon. Up to this time there had been of course no need of a government postoffice in town. From the time the Calls made their first settlement in the fall of 1854, until the 9th day of March, 1856, any one desiring mail had to go down to Fort Dodge for it, or send for it by other parties. It was the custom then for anyone in the community going there for any purpose to bring back all mail intended for those in the Algona settle- ment. Irvington and Cresco also had the same arrangement.
The delay caused in hauling the heavy boiler and machinery from Illinois prevented Judge Call's combined saw and grist mill from being put into operation until the summer of 1856, although the two-story frame structure for its re- ception had been raised in the previous December. After the mill began turning out lumber the little village soon took on a different appearance, as frame build - ings came into view from time to time. A little board shanty, so temporarily constructed as to be unworthy of the name of house, first made its appearance.
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It stood a few feet west of the house in which Clerk O. J. Stephenson is living. and was the property of J. W. Moore.
The first two real frame buildings were raised on the same day in the fall of 1856. One was an office building for Lewis H. Smith and stood on the garage corner southwest of the courthouse. The other H. F. Watson had built for Major Williams of Fort Dodge. This structure was built where Capt. W. H. Ingham's residence is located. In fact the south portion of that residence has incorporated in it the old Williams building. The bach hall next appeared. That old landmark stood until Frank Dingley tore it down a few years ago to make room for erection of his modern home.
The town hall (on the John Galbraith corner) was the next to be built. It was controlled. and erected by the Town Hall Company, which was organized in September, 1856. J. E. Hall, James I .. Paine and Rev. C. Taylor were the build- ing committee, the first two named doing the carpenter work. The hall was finished except plastering during the winter of 1856-7. In the meantime Christ- ian Hackman had begun the construction of a dwelling on the spot where the Kain brick residence is situated. About this time also Oliver Benschoter built his house on the Doctor Fellows corner and constructed his blacksmith shop as well. Orange Minkler and Mike Fox also built houses a short distance north- west of Benschoter house. There were a few out-lying shanties built for the use of workmen at the mill and other places, but were hardly good enough to be classed as residences. The Mckinney shack, built on the corner now oc- cupied by E. J. Gilmore's residence, while never on the original town site, was so close to it that it was considered as one of the houses of the village.
The wife of Rev. Chauncey Taylor and son James became residents of Algona, July 15th. They had come from the East to make a more confortable home for the minister than he had had since he arrived, three months before. Their log cabin was not finished when they came, so Judge Call induced the family to re- main about a week at his cabin.
The two ministers who came that year received a generous welcome from all the settlers. Rev. Chauncey Taylor representing the American Home Missionary Society for the Congregationalists, walking most of the way from Des Moines with a hickory cane and with his pack on his shoulder, came into the village of two cabins on the afternoon of April 19, 1856. Rev. D. S. McComb, missionary for the Presbyerians, did not put in an appearance until about three months later The latter succeeded the next year in organizing his little church-the first of any of the denominations in the county.
Father Taylor, the next day after arriving, Saturday, April 20th, held services at the Moore cabin, where he had taken up his bachelor quarters with others. There were about twenty-five persons present, certainly a goodly number to con- gregate in a village of only two cabins. Besides preaching there regularly for some time after this, he held services in cabin homes on the Black Cat, in Cresco and in the Irvington vicinity.
This white-haired "Patriarch of the Prairies," who was then more then fifty- one years of age, was a classical graduate from the University of Vermont, and stands preeminent among the early settlers in the strength of his intellectual faculties. Most remarkable of all the early settlers is this man who came to the little frontier settlement destined to labor in the Lord's vineyard during the
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succeeding twenty years. The question used to be asked frequently: "Why did Father Taylor come to the county at such an early date?" Some years after the death of this patriarch, Harvey Ingham on a public occasion voiced the senti- ment of the large audience when he said: "It is easy to understand why the hope of accumulating property, especially vast tracts of land, drew men to this new country, but what of the coming of Father Taylor? He came seeking not wealth. not land, but without recompense he endured the privation and toil in this new country that men might be lifted out of the sordid life into the higher service. His was as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'prepare ye the way of the Lord.' Of those who came to this country in that early period to lay the foun- dations of this city of Algona, Father Taylor's work is the most enduring."
The memoirs of Father Taylor, which he compiled from notes jotted down from time to time in his diary, and which in after years he had published, make clear the reasons for his coming at that early period, and throw light upon the experiences he had in reaching the point of his destination. These memoirs are a valuable historical record, and one worthy of being preserved. As he was one of the prominent, 1856 arrivals, at the two-cabin village, the story of his coming will be presented at this point in the chapter :
"After leaving my old home in Crittenden, Vermont, in 1854, I felt a desire to come West and begin in some new place, the newer, the better, do what I could for the benefit of the people, physically, morally, and spiritually, build up a church, and possibly assist also in establishing a great institution of learning. At the same time I hoped to find a place where my children might find employ- ment at home or near us, so that the family might not be scattered to the four corners of the earth."
While he was preaching at Langdon, New York, in 1855, he had a lady parish- ioner who had two brothers by the name of Strow, living at Fort Dodge. He occasionally met these two brothers and they induced him to come to their vil- lage. It was then that he received his commission from the American Home Missionary Society to labor in Iowa. Leaving his wife and son, James, tem- porarily at Whitehall, New York, he started for the prairies of this state. He crossed the Mississippi on the ice on foot, March 20, 1856, as the bridge between Rock Island and Davenport at that time was not completed. From the latter place he went on the cars to Iowa City, arriving April 7th. There he took the stage for Fort Dodge by the way of Montezuma and Fort Des Moines. The stage was full of land seekers going to the western part of the state. The roads were so muddy that the passengers frequently had to get out and walk, and once they had to hire extra teams to take them over the Skunk Bottoms. By traveling night and day they reached Des Moines at sunrise. While there he learned that as the "hack went up to Fort Dodge on horse back," there was no chance for him to ride. He got a chance to ride northward about twenty miles and then walked the most of the remaining distance to Algona. He was not very favorably impressed with the prevailing conditions at Fort Dodge and decided to come on up to Algona. Following are his own words:
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