USA > Iowa > Poweshiek County > History of Poweshiek County, Iowa: a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume 1 > Part 7
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"13. That actual occupancy, or thirty dollars worth of work shall be done within six months after making and registering said claim; and for each addi- tional six months, thirty dollars worth of labor shall be done on said claim.
"14. That any person claiming the protection of this society shall, as soon as practicable, enter, or cause to be entered, said claim.
"15. That any person entering a lawful claim from another, shall, in all cases, render the aggrieved, full compensation for the claim and improvements, in cash, the committee being the judges.
"16. That any person failing to make restitution shall abide the decision of the committee.
"17. That the secretary of the former society shall deliver to the secretary of the Poweshiek Protection Society, the registry; and that there be a legal transfer of all claims by the secretary within thirty days hereafter.
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"18. That the secretary and committee receive fifty cents per day each, for their services, to be paid by the losing party; and that the secretary receive ten cents for recording each claim.
"19. That all acts and parts of acts, heretofore in force, in Poweshiek county, in regard to claims, are hereby repealed.
"20. That this act take effect, and remain in full force, herein and after its passage.
Attest :
H. M. TAYLOR, Secretary."
JOHN CASSADY, President.
This revision indicates that the original, unrevised articles were for a "club" association which might cover violent acts and policies, and, secondly, that they were, also, more or less offensive to some people.
We are well aware of that tendency in human nature that when setting out to right some wrong by force, even by force that may be legitimate, to go be- yond what is reasonable, this, doubtless, explains many a lynching with which an act somewhat just may have begun.
We find the following notice of that meeting given by one of its members : "Montezuma, Poweshiek County, Iowa, February 22d, A. D., 1851.
"At a meeting of the citizens of Poweshiek County, for a revision of the club laws, Benjamin O. Payne was called to the chair, James L. Trowbridge was appointed secretary of the meetings, when it was unanimously resolved that we deem it expedient to revise the claim laws.
"On motion of R. B. Ogden, a committee of seven was appointed to draft resolutions."
It will be noticed that the settlers themselves called the foregoing "a revision of the club laws." It must be admitted that action professedly under the claim laws may have been at times unreasonable and unnecessarily extreme, although we have found nothing to condemn in this county.
Some may wish to know what those who were in these "club" associations and their children thought of them. The man who was nearest to the events in this county is most emphatic in justifying these associations and their pro- tective measures.
A FEW INSTANCES MAY BE VALUABLE.
We have many traditions of what those associationists did in those early days. When land came into market by being surveyed, an unscrupulous fellow entered land that a neighbor had been preparing to buy and had made that purpose known. The loser heard of the entry, and informed the association of the fact. The culprit was called before them. He was given the option of abandoning his purchase or of giving the claimant one-half of it. He often chose the latter.
Hon. George E. Grier, of Deep River, informs us that H. R. Taylor, now of Lordsburg, California, was an early settler in Deep River, and that he writes that the Poweshiek county organization was called at first a "club law" associa-
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tion, and was changed to make it seem less like a mob. He gives an incident, however, that seems somewhat mobocratic. A certain Shrader entered another's claim west of Deep River. The adjusting company called on the gentleman at night. The door was barred and he threatened to shoot the first man who entered. A fence rail soon "unlocked" the door, and he was taken to a "certain place," where he surrendered the title. What they did in a "certain place" is not said, or how they reached there.
James W. Light confirms the account substantially, and adds that Mahaska and Keokuk joined Poweshiek in self-protection. He adds, also, that a "claim jumper" in Mahaska county escaped to friends in Oskaloosa, where his friends were too strong for the Mahaska association. Poweshiek was called on. The friends of justice captured the "jumper," tarred and feathered him and rode him on a rail until he gave up his title to the original claimant. When a group of men "ride a man on a rail" it is exceedingly rare that they suspend the exercise until he complies with their wishes, and the rider will do almost anything for the privilege of getting off. The ride is said to have been oftentimes very un- gentle. The evidence that would-be land thieves in this county took such rides is utterly unknown.
Ben B. Griffith tells an incident which seemed to call for some application, at least, of something adhesive where the culprit failed to get his deserts. Isaac N. Griffith, his father, an early settler, was requested by a stranger to sell his beautiful claim, but he declined. The stranger soon told a neighbor that he was going to the land office in the morning to buy it. The news quickly reached Mr. Griffith. The boy, Ben, was soon on his way to the land office and the boy was waiting on the office steps. At the earliest opportunity he asked for the legal papers to the homestead of his father, laid down the money neighbors had aided him in getting, and received the desired papers. Lingering a little while, the dishonorable stranger appeared, gave the numbers of Mr. Griffith's home and asked for the legal title.
"This boy has just paid for that and has the title," said the land officer.
"But that is my land," said the excited intruder. "It is mine."
"How is that, my boy?" asked the land agent. The little fellow told the story in detail. "All right, the right man has the patent," responded the officer, and the fraud turned away, cursing himself for talking too much in Jackson township.
Men in Montezuma would have liked to have had their hands on him about that time-but they didn't.
"But after the land was surveyed and in the market, why should not a settler pay promptly the trifling sum of a dollar and a quarter an acre?"-some may inquire. "Why leave it exposed to a jumper ?"
They had sought a region which they could make attractive by their own toil. They were willing to join with the penniless in breaking the prairie, in living in log cabins or dugouts, waiting for their cattle to multiply, for the arrival of others as poor as themselves, until children should be numerous enough for schools and population large enough for churches. It is possible that, now and then, one dropped down to contentment with a cessation of gain, but we are confident that few such came to this county.
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FARMS WITHOUT TITLE.
The United States law required that their lands should be surveyed before the government could give any title to them. Neither did occupancy give any title. Strictly speaking, no man had a right to locate on them before the survey was made. But when it was surveyed, when it was marked by section, and town- ship, and range, and meridian, any man who had the money could go to the land office and give the money for the spot that R. B. Ogden had occupied and im- proved since his first day on it in 1843, the land on which his house and barn were built, his well dug, fruit trees set out, and carefully improved through four years of diligent effort and all its products of labor, and march off with the government's best title to it in his pocket that could be given him.
We may say that would be unkind, ungenerous, and unneighborly, but what of it ; the interloper has the legal title in his pocket.
He could do more than that. He could buy every piece on which any man in the township lived and had lived for years, and place every man as to having a farm where he drove his first stake in the township.
What will those settlers do? Will they pack up, move off, and try another spot? They will do as the citizens of Iowa had done many years. They will organize into "Claim Clubs" and promise not to bid for land that a neighbor is occupying, and wants to keep till he can get the dollars to pay for it. Yes, more than that. They will agree that no one else shall bid on such a piece, or if he does, that he make the transaction thoroughly fair. They will freeze him out, at least, if he does not.
MORMON EXODUS THROUGH IOWA.
It has been the misfortune of few organizations to have so many diverse and contradictory accounts published concerning their founder and its beginning.
It is said that Joseph Smith, the founder of the sect, was an "ignorant man, a mystic, and a see-er of visions." He organized a church on April 6, 1830, at Fayette, Seneca county, New York. They accept the "Book of Mormon" as of value equal to the bible as a revelation and as supplementary to it. They be- lieve that Smith found a volume of gold plates, covered with writing in "Re- formed Egyptian," which Smith could read by using a pair of supernatural spec- tacles, made of two crystals, Urim and Thummim, set in silver bows.
Their missionaries gained converts. Strong opposition arose. Smith and others removed to Kirtland, Ohio. Their bank there failed. They went to differ- ent points in Missouri, became odious, and were driven out by the militia. Then they built Nauvoo, 1840, in Illinois, made a strong city by industry and political favor. Came into collision with one another in the city and with the state until Smith was imprisoned and brutally murdered, and the Mormons abandoned the region in the later '40s. Their great exodus began in February, 1846.
It was in February, 1839, that Governor Lucas was asked by Elder Isaac Galland, a Mormon elder, when Missouri was persecuting the Mormons, whether his sect would be permitted to remain in Iowa if they should buy land here. His answer was prompt, manly and befitting our first territorial governor: "They
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shall enjoy the privileges of American citizens." He would not permit rumor to create their reputation in Iowa, but leave them to create their own on this side of the Mississippi.
They plunged into Iowa, and in February, 1846, wallowed through it in the south tier of our counties until April 27, when they halted and founded Garden Grove in Decatur county. Another group stopped in Union county in June fol- lowing, but the third and largest number located in Mills and Pottawattamie counties. Rude graves and many of them, marked their routes through southern Iowa. Some of their caravans passed through our county in the early '50s, when an order came from Utah and Brigham Young that all should go to Salt Lake. Polygamy had been discussed and rejected by many who chose to remain in Iowa, while those who accepted it moved forward to Salt Lake, while the anti- polygamous Mormons made Lamoni, in Decatur county, their capital. Two of this latter group organized churches in this county, one in Sheridan, now removed to Tama county, and one in Grinnell, which does not maintain worship there now. These have never believed that each of their men could introduce several of their women into a better sphere in the next world by marrying them in this.
The atrocious charges of robbery and murder brought against the Salt Lake Mormons have never been brought against those at Lamoni, who are led by Joseph S. Smith, the son of the founder of the sect.
CRIMINALS AND THEIR CRIMES.
Who was the first criminal in this county? What was his crime? Who can tell?
Was there anything "bogus" about Bogus Grove, north of Montezuma ?
What crimes were committed in the wreck of the house which the early settlers thought they discovered in Jefferson township before it became a wreck?
Desperadoes appeared in other counties before honest white men came, and why may they not have been here? At any rate the first three cases called for trial here before our court were the trials of a single scoundrel who had been operating here, and in surrounding counties.
The court convened in the new courthouse, October 24, 1853, almost exactly ten years after the best known white man made his home here. Judge William Smythe was on the bench, and Robert Taylor, Allen McDonald, William Rankin, William C. Light, O. P. Maxon, Harvey James, Robert Manatt, of Bear Creek, William H. Moore, of Union, Albert Morgan, Stephen Moore, of Jackson, Timo- thy Parker, of Deep River, James Pearce, Thomas James, William J. Lyons and William C. Johnson, constituted the jury.
The first case called was The State of Iowa versus Jonas Carsner, an indict- ment for larceny. The record is, "This case came on to be heard, and the said defendant, though three times solemnly called, came not, but made default; and John MI. Parkinson and Jonathan Parkinson, sureties upon the bond of said defendant, were three times solemnly called and came not but made default, and were required to bring into court the body of said defendant and failed to do the same."
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The two other indictments against Carsner were for larceny. The cases were called but the villain did not appear. We will notice him again after a little.
Of the twenty-five cases of that first term most were for debt. Jonas Camp- bell was charged with selling liquor, Samuel Fleener was called on to give security "to keep the peace," and William F. Ayres wanted to "eject" Joseph Crews.
But Jonas Carsner was in some other county then, probably endeavoring to relieve some white man of his horses, since the Indians had taken their ponies to Kansas. Jonas had been conspicuous among the Indians as a horse thief about the time that Colonel Allen was placed in charge of the new fort at Des Moines. Carsner was a native of Virginia, lived a while in Missouri, and came to Iowa with tender recollections of his dear old father in Missouri, whom he often visited. Those who knew him noticed that when his father was sick, an Indian pony disappeared when he visited him. The absence of Jonas became a sure sign that some Indian would soon be hunting for a lost pony. He did not confine his attentions to the Indians. When he came to Jasper county he found a cabin whose owner was absent for a few days. Jonas and his brother-a bird of the same feather-went in and took possession. When the owner returned, they demanded fifteen dollars or they would remain. The lone man paid the money.
On another occasion two white men met an Indian at his cabin. Jonas Carsner came up soon. The white men withdrew. As they chatted by the way they said the old Indian would lose his ponies that night. Sure enough the old Indian called the next morning, saying his ponies had left and he had traced them toward and near the house where they then were, but had lost the trail. Again the poor old father in Missouri was sick and needed his lovely Iowa son !
We need give no further illustrations of the Carsners way of doing things. A while afterwards Carsner and the Indian were at the fort. The Indian pointed him out to the interpreter and told him the incident of his loss. That night a company of Indians-they looked like Indians-took him in hand and gave him a most fearful laceration. His curses were horrid. He "never stole a thing in his life!" The blows still fell till they all thought he wouldn't do so again, and he didn't just then. Perhaps he came to Poweshiek then.
His audacity was so colossal that we must give an anecdote to illustrate it. A man who was hauling supplies to the fort at Des Moines encamped a few miles from it. That night he lost his horses. One was found in the morning and mounted to search for the other. While following the trail of the others along a dense thicket out came Jonas Carsner on the horse the owner was seeking, and riding up to him, cut the saddle girth in a twinkling, gave the rider a quick push, man and saddle rolled to the ground and off Carsner rode with both of the stolen horses.
A single Jonas Carsner could keep a large community in perpetual fear until courts should begin to use heavy penalties.
"CUMQUICK."
Andrew J. Casteel and his wife left the vicinity of Lafayette, Indiana, to seek their fortune in Iowa. His brother had gone on in advance, expecting to
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HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
join his brother and wife on the way, but the brothers never met each other alive. This strange affair filled the papers and was a topic of conversation in Iowa as well as at their old home. The lonely brother settled in Boone county, but no dream came to him of his brother and his wife. No voice of man or angel brought him any revelation.
In the spring of 1857 a farmer, a few miles west of Montezuma, found a dead man in one shock of corn, and in another the body of a woman. He was alert, the story of the Casteels was in the public mind and it became known that their living brother was in Boone.
"Murder will out," and often in most amazing ways. About that time a miserable drunkard and a wife-beater went home brutally drunk and began his favorite amusement. His wife was feeling the worse for it, and at last said she would tell of the Poweshiek affair if he didn't desist.
The hoes? Somewhat better than the clumsy, heavy things the plantation negroes once made use of, but still too awkward and clumsy for a self-respecting man to put into the ground. The simple corn plow was a great improvement even if it should take a man and a boy and a horse to go through the furrows. Now a man and team will plow the corn several times as fast.
The planters? Boy to drop and a man to follow with his hoe. A "planter" no longer means a man, but a machine.
A "loader" a man then with a pitchfork and an aching back at night. An unloader used to be another man with another back in pain, and if the hay was to go much above the level of the hay rack it meant more than one man on another platform or more until it reached the "high mow." Now a large part of a load rises from the wagon to forty feet in the air if need be, and rolls away a hundred feet by horse or by steam power.
It is harvest time. Then a good cradler must be a strong man, and the raker and binder who could "keep up" with him must be very alert, and both knew where every muscle lies in their backs, long before night comes. The leader and the loader found a welcome years ago. Now, we seem far away from that hour of hardest manual labor. The reaper that would lay the grain nicely on a table and must be raked off by a man, a great improvement, even if the grain had to be bound afterwards. Now the iron and the wood and the horses cut, and bind, and push the bundles into a bunch for the shock.
But farming in that decade and in this county did not get far from the groves. W. B. Hawkins was a bold man when he pushed out from Montezuma upon the prairie to "survive or perish!" How the neighbors watched him, expecting him back again in the grove or near it. But he didn't come. His farm grew mellow and rich, and as light as an ash heap for hoe or plow. Not a root interfered. It was a pleasure to work it. There was no movement of our lone farmer toward the grove, but rather an outgoing from the grove to the prairie. Farms were opened there, autumn brought rich returns for the year, granaries and corn cribs began to flourish, the large red barn was increasingly large in evidence, and the frame houses were constantly improving in number and in comforts, and pockets became plethoric. And such was farming on the prairie !
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FRUITS.
The soil and climate so favorable to the wild grape is equally friendly to the Concord, or what is better, to the Werden and Moore's early. The Delawares are too tender for this region.
The first settlers found crabapples in abundance in the groves, also wild plums, and they enjoyed them greatly in the scarcity, or almost absence, of other fruits, yet were very willing to substitute cultivated apples like the Dutchess, or the Snow, or the Wealthy, and good as the wild plums were, and they are now growing in our gardens, they were glad to get some still better.
Peaches do well here occasionally, once in five years or so, and currants, gooseberries and strawberries usually yield well. -
SOIL.
From the last report of the Iowa state geologist we gather some statements of intreest. "The soils of Poweshiek county are largely derived from the Kansan drift which itself is rock debris from widely different sources, ground up and worked over in various ways, and distributed by the great ice mill, and later by aqueous agencies. The drift, in its origin, forms an ideal soil basis." Mark, he does not hesitate to say an "ideal soil basis."
"The upland soils of Poweshiek county have generally the Kansan clays as a basis. All that is necessary to perpetuate these upland drift soils is to return sufficient humus to them to compensate for that which is removed by cropping, and to utilize the clovers and other leguminous plants for their well known power of storing in the soil nitrogen compounds in available form for plant food. Rich as these soils were when first broken up as virgin prairie, there is no reason why, by proper tillage and management, they may not be made more productive.
"Loess forms the covering of the timbered hills very largely. There seems to be an adaptation of loess to forest growths. Some of the finest orchards in the county are found where loess is deepest."
CLAYS.
An inexhaustible supply of material for brick and tile exists everywhere within the county. It is found in the loess and in the shale which abounds at the site of the Petit coal mine and along Buck creek.
Peter Meyer is running a small plant for manufacturing brick and tile in Sugar Creek township. B. J. Broadston, of Montezuma, is doing a good busi- ness in the manufacture of brick and tile. His plant is equipped with a Bensing cutting machine and he can manufacture 30,000 brick a day. He has four kilns.
The Grinnell Brick & Tile Company uses the loess, and has a well equipped plant. Their material is unusually plastic and the products are said to be excellent.
COAL.
But little coal has been found in this county, and that not of the best quality. Along Buck creek, in Union township, some coal was mined fifty years ago.
THE FAT OF THE LAND
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The seam was about a foot thick at the cropping but was soon exhausted. The old Petit mine, on the northwest quarter of the southwest quarter of section 36 in Sugar Creek, was mined about fifty years ago, and gave a fair yield from a sixteen-inch vein, supplying the local demand. No coal has been taken out for a considerable time from that mine. A second seam has been sought for higher up the draw in which the Petit mine was located, but with no valuable result. The prospect is not encouraging, although there may be some "outliers" in that.
In the same township, west and south of Searsboro, some prospecting ha's been done, although it is not wholly unreasonable to anticipate the discovery of coal, especially by the use of the drill, at other points in or near Sugar Creek.
Poweshiek has hardly shown us enough coal to call it a coal producing county. None has been mined for several years.
AN EXPERT'S OPINION.
Professor W. I. Chamberlain, of Ohio, who had a rare chance to know, having been president of the Iowa Agricultural College, said: "One thing has surprised me each spring and summer, namely : that the spring is considerably earlier here than it is a hundred miles south in Ohio, and the summer is much hotter and surer to mature the corn crop before frost. The proportion of clear sky and hot days and nights is far greater and the power of the sun's rays upon black soil is immense. I believe Iowa to be, on the whole, the best and surest corn state in the Union. The surface is more rolling, the soil more porous and sandy and better drained by nature/than most of the prairie soils in other states. Hence, the corn is not so subject to damage (from too much rain here as in Illinois or Missouri. It dries out for cultivation quicker."
AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES OF POWESHIEK COUNTY. 17
The first agricultural fair appears to have been held at Brooklyn in 1865. J. P. Woods was president; J. M. Talbott, vice president ; James E. Johnson, secretary ; Limson Snyder, treasurer. In the report to the State Agricultural Society, mention is made that there were "two flouring mills and one woolen factory in the county and more needed."
At that period the average price of improved land was given as $25 per acre ; unimproved, $8. Coal at Brooklyn sold at thirty-five cents per bushel. In the report mention is made of a flock of 7,000 sheep, owned by the Hon. J. B. Grinnell. The average price of horses was placed at $150; mules, $200; beef cattle, six cents per pound.
The report of the society for 1866 gives the total receipts at $649.93; premiums and expenses, $937.10, making a deficit of $287.17. The question of making the fairs self-supporting was a perplexing one. Fairs appear to have been held at Brooklyn up to the early 'gos, when they were abandoned.
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