USA > Iowa > Story County > History of Story County, Iowa: A Record of Settlement, Organization. > Part 18
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Mr. Spring's share of this outfit was a single horse, one cow (which soon went dry), a yoke of two-year-old steers, a few housekeeping articles, and $2.50 in cash which latter went for ferryage before they were out of Indiana.
The journey was little more than begun, when Mrs. Spring was pros- trated with fever, and from that time she was not carried from the wagon till the train had reached Saylorville, in Polk County. Meantime this fever having deprived the babe of nature's food supply, trouble was doubled. Baby foods which stock the market now had not been invented, and the best substitute which emergency could supply was corn bread soaked in coffee. But the baby throve, and continued to develop beautifully till, when it was two years old, an attack of membranous croup proved too much for the best efforts of Dr. Carr of New Philadelphia, and carried the little one off.
Mr. Coffelt killed a deer on the journey to Iowa which helped out the meat supply.
The company landed on the bank of Squaw creek, November 15, 1855, and the Coffelts and Springs prepared to become residents of Story County.
GETTING A START.
Without money enough to buy a meal, in a new land and returning strength still scant, the planting of a home at the beginning of winter was exceedingly difficult and its best results were very primitive. Poles driven between the logs of the cabin served for a bedstead whose ridges a thin feather bed only partially disguised, a bed covering all too scant in supply, was far from affording proof against cold. And O, the problem of sub- sistence! Mr. Spring remembers that corn bread was the staple, that there was no meat but wild meat, and no milk or butter. What a tale Mrs. Spring might tell of the perpiexities of the housekeeper in those days! Spring- time brought wild onions, and slight variation in fare which was wel- comed indeed. But the health of Mr. Spring came back, and through- out the spring he, like Abraham the Good, split rails. He received fifty cents per hundred for his work, and once only accomplished the splitting of 500 rails in a day.
After that his main work for about eight years was breaking. He broke nearly all of the area which Ames now covers, using from four to seven yokes of oxen before a twenty-seven-inch breaking blow and wading some of the time through water up to his knees. He turned the prairie sod of the agricultural college farm, of the state fair ground at Des Moines, and of many another tract now covered with fine improvements.
Mr. Spring does not seem to have been passionately fond of hunting, but the hunting microbe did work in his blood on one occasion, and with a squirrel rifle and his obedient dog he set out to find a deer whose big tracks were evidence that if he could be brought down he would be game worth having.
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The dog got the scent and led in the hunt for a mile or two along the timber skirting Squaw Creek. His master had difficulty now and then in control- ling canine enthusiasm, but was successful until all at once out came a sharp yelp. Then lo! from a thicket close at hand sprang the identical object of their search, and, both dog and man being now silent and motionless, the magnificent fellow with great branching horns, turned and seemed to make a study of them. He was less than 50 paces away, but surprise, wonder and admiration engrossed the hunters, and the gun was not thought of. Dog instinct resumed activity before the hunter's did, and a second yelp sent fleet-foot bounding up to the brow of the bluff. There he turned to ob- serve his pursuers again, and the hunter sent a shot after the fellow. He was hardly sorry it was not effective, and that the grand creature retained his God-given liberty. It was Mr. Spring's first and only shot at a deer.
For the first three years the new settlers went to New Philadelphia for their mail. Between them and Nevada the awful Skunk intervened, and miles of prairie travel were not comparable to the crossing of the river bot- tom in time of high water. The mail went to New Philadelphia however by way of pony express from Nevada, unless the Skunk blocked its passage. Such a time occurred in the spring of 1857. For three long weeks no mail had crossed westward, and all of this time Mr. Spring had anxiously awaited the receipt of $50 which was to come from his father in Ohio. The sum was to help the young pioneer on to his feet, and he chafed at delay.
"The worst 'll be over in another week of two," comforted the P. M. at New Philadelphia.
"You give me an order on the postmaster at Nevada and I'll have the worst over in less time than that," answered the impatient settler.
The order was given and Mr. Spring started the next morning to execute it. Tramping northward from his home as far as D. R. Craig's, he was rowed across the river in Mr. Craig's canoe; then he came southward to Milo McCartney's and there passed the night. He came to Nevada the next forenoon, presented his order to Postmaster Alderman and received the mail. The letters were consigned to him in an old oil-cloth satchel of which the postmaster kept the key, and the papers were in a common meal sack. Nevada's attractions were not sufficient to overcome the urgency of business, so he soon took the trail back to McCartney's, where, the hour being too late for undertaking the perilous crossing, he again spent a night.
McCartney had no boat, but by daylight he was able to point out a cross- ing place which would save the round-about journey by way of Craig's. Flood covered, but did not wholly hide, the footlog which spanned the main channel of the Skunk. This Mr. Spring crossed without accident, and then he struggled across the three-quarters of a mile of river bottom, through water waist high, the sack of papers reposing on his head, and the satchel of letters held aloft in one hand.
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"I kept the mail dry though," he says with satisfaction, "and the next day I crossed Squaw Creek in my own log canoe, took Uncle Sam's pack- ages to Ontario, and got my money."
REMINISCENCE OF NEVADA'S FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE.
"The ferry," he continues, "was mighty handy in those days of high water and no bridges. The canoe which I had made out of a hollow log served good turns to many besides myself, and I did quite a business in the ferrying line for a few years. George Drake of Swedes Point was the builder of Nevada's early school house-the brick one which stood east of the present Lockridge residence. I used to ferry him across twice a week, on his way to and from his work, the team swimming.
"Speaking of the Nevada school house reminds me that I furnished the shingles for its roof. I helped myself to a tree after the manner in vogue among settlers in that day, and Father Coffelt sawed it in his shingle mill.
"Then I hired Dolphus Kintzley to help me draw the shingles to Nevada all in one load. We had not only a big load, but a big time. The roads were simply awful. I had three yoke of oxen and Dolphus two; we got Thomas Black's big, wide-tired prairie schooner to complete the outfit, and my two brothers-in-law and Kintzley's brother came along to help through emergencies. When the shingles had been delivered at the building site, the boys began celebration of their achievement in frontier style. There was some remonstrating but it did not prevail. Dr. Adamson was the county agent for selling the 'o-be-joyful' and to him went a certain long-necked bottle several times, besides the last time, when, in disguise, it went minus its neck. Of course it was presented by a different messenger each time.
"The return trip was slightly hilarious, but good fellowship rather than ill humor prevailed; and this fellowship found vigorous expression over on the McCartney hill where an emigrant outfit was found stalled. The boys and two or three yoke of cattle made a jolly job of relieving the troubles of the mover and starting him off on the firm turf rejoicing."
MRS. HARRIET STULTZ-1857 AND LATER.
"It is just fifty years since we came to Story County," remarked Mrs. Harriet Stultz reflectively, as she sat before the fire in the living room of her comfortable cottage at the corner of Court Avenue and Chestnut streets, where she and her daughter, Ida, who had lately become Mrs. Wood, have resided for the past fifteen years. Fifty years means a great deal in a hu- man life, and a great deal in the changed conditions of a frontier state.
Harriet Mathers first saw the light on a farm near Orleans, Orange county, Indiana. She was the youngest of nine children, and March, 1857, she was wedded to her neighbor, young Daniel Stultz, who had grown up on a nearby farm. The bridegroom, having sometime before imbibed the west-
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ern fever, had spent a summer over in Iowa and had located a forty-acres near Story City, in the county of Story, on which the hopes of the young pair were doing such castle-rearing as was appropriate to youthful prime.
In April, five weeks after the wedding, they set their faces toward their destination. Their outfit consisted of a team and wagon, their clothing, beds and bedding, $200 in money, and cooked provisions to last them on the road. They rested Sundays and made slow progress week days, for flats were yet soft with the spring deluge, streams were high and bridges rare. They fre- quently made but twenty-five miles a day. They crossed the Mississippi by ferry at Keokuk, then made their way over fair plains garlanded with tim- ber and checkered with prairies and "island groves," till the line between Marion and Jasper counties were reached. Here they tarried through the summer and raised a crop on hired land. In the fall they completed their journey to Story City, and prepared to grow up with their adopted state.
Story City did not then exist. The little settlement was known as Fair- view, and comprised only John J. Foote, Noah Hardin, William Wier, L. R. Larson and F. A. Rhoades and their respective families. The first school house was being erected. The church of that vicinity had been built by the Norwegians about a mile away in the edge of the timber on the east side of Skunk river. Some time later it was torn down and rebuilt at Story City.
The Stultzes found shelter at Fairview till, after several months, they bought a small house of somebody and removed it to their little farm. Then with their own roof above them they were truly at home. But upon the happiness of this first home on their own acres, a shadow quickly fell, and the first spring there was the darkest time that is chronicled in Mrs. Stultz's recollections of pioneering. One of their horses slipped, broke his leg and had to be killed. The crop to be put in could not wait, and they had no money. Their extremity was great. Then the kindliness which is char- acteristic of the pioneer community, found expression through Mr. Solomon Sowers. He had a horse of his own which his son Lindsey with whom he was living did not need for farm work, so it was generously loaned to fill the breach made by the loss of the Stultz horse. Thus pluck and neighborly kindness tided over one trial after another.
But after three years came a still deeper experience. Mr. Mathers, back in the old home in Indiana, was critically ill, and wished to look once more upon his youngest daughter. Of course she must go to him, though there were mountains to be overcome. To begin with, it was spring of the year and travel to Iowa City, the nearest railway point, was temporarily sus- pended. Delay was inevitable till passage with some teamster could be se- cured. In the second place, the Stultz family now comprised two babies. This complication was provided for by securing Mr. and Mrs. Lars Larson to come and keep the house, the husband and the elder babe. After a week's delay, the journey was begun, Mrs. Stultz and her infant being gratuitous passengers of Jason D. Ferguson, a young man whose heroism and death in the Civil War are now memorialized in the name of the Grand Army Post
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at Nevada. Ferguson and Asa Griffith were each with his team going to Iowa City for merchandise.
Mrs. Stultz's trip to Indiana being finished, she met the sorrowful fact that her father's earthly life ended the day her homeward journey began. She prolonged her visit with her kindred for over two months, and then safely wended her way back to the husband and little one from whom she had been separated. She took back, too, some temporal helps for increasing pioneer comfort-little aids to household convenience, money which bought back the wagon that had been swapped off for a horse to complete the team, and which also bought a timber lot. After this small boost things went easier. The original acres were subsequently sold and two or three changes followed which in 1875 established the family home on the 160 on Indian Hill in Milford township, on which the life of Mr. Stultz closed in 1881 and which is still the property of the Stultz family.
Still resources continued scanty for many a day. Children were not pampered. There was choice between no fare at all and the usual fare of corn bread and butter or gravy, vegetables and a bit of meat, washed down with barley coffee unsweetened, or with milk or cold water. The cookery of that time with no sweet at all except a little homemade sorghum, contrasted strongly with the culinary concoctions of today when the annual average consumption of sugar is seventy pounds per head. A little sugar did come to the local market occasionally, but the price was high and the pioneer had no money to buy with. However, plenty of fresh air and exercise, hope and endeavor, provided sauce for such dishes as were possible, and nature converted .the edibles into robustness and contentment.
Considerable ingenuity went into the manufacture of garments for chil- dren. Of course there was the utilization of every bit of cloth that still had wear in it, provided the thread supply held out; while, as to footwear, home- spun yarn was knitted into stockings; and wooden shoes of home manufact- ure for adults as well as children were often supplemented with rawhide or cloth moccasins. A prize for faculty in meeting the footgear emergency was due to Mrs. Newnum who herself whittled out a last and made shoes for her children out of old boot legs, using a scythe stone for a hammer.
The war brought trials that were sore. But prices were better, and Mrs. Stultz remembers corn bringing a dollar a bushel.
Mrs. Stultz now, in the serenity of her rest time, looks back upon the struggles of her early and middle life, with thankfulness for the discipline which developed appreciation and not bitterness.
MRS. JOHN MCCAIN .- HICKORY GROVE IN '54.
Mrs. McCain, now of Colo, was born Phoebe Catharine Wheatley, Jan- uary 20, 1847, in Hamilton county, Indiana. She came when a child of seven years with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Allen Wheatley, to Story County, Iowa. They arrived July 20, 1854, and settled on a farm then in-
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cluded in New Albany township, but now, in the southeast part of Nevada township, on the southern edge of what has been known as the Hickory Grove neighborhood. The Brouhards were already in that neighborhood, and settlement by the Thomases, Mullens, Johns, Waltzes, McGuires, Dyes and Fords occurred soon after.
Mrs. McCain remembers that there were only three houses in Nevada when she first saw the town and the same number in Iowa Center. Mr. Wheatley, her father, broke the sod of his farm with his oxen, and planted a home with hard work after the manner of pioneers in general. Alderman's store at Nevada afforded the settlers small supplies, but for lumber to be used in building and for flour, stoves and numerous other necessities there had to be trips to Des Moines or some trade center farther away. Fuel was supplied by the nearby timber and fencing was fashioned as Abraham Lincoln fashioned it. Farming methods were simple, hay being cut with the scythe, and grain, with the cradle.
The Wheatley cabin had but one room, but out-of-doors widened its capacity, and the various processes included in cloth manufacture, and in making up the garments of the family, were daily employments of the house- hold as much as was caring for subsistence. Sheep were kept, and subse- quent to shearing time came wool washing, picking and greasing; and after the carding had been done at Des Moines, the spinning, dyeing, doubling and twisting, knitting and making up, filled a large share of the year. Aunt Sally Mullin, Mother Spurgeon or Mrs. John Belcher generally helped out on the weaving, and sometimes wool was exchanged at the factory for cloth. Re- ligious services were attended occasionally at some home in the neighbor- hood, and sometimes in the school house at Iowa Center, transportation be- ing generally with the ox-team. The elder sons of the Wheatley family, James, Thomas and Luke, tramped to schools three or four miles away ; but Phoebe, the little daughter, had to pick up the fundamentals of an educa- tion at home excepting for a two months' term of attendance at the school which, after a time, was established in the home district.
Mrs. McCain says, "All went fine till the war came. Then there was sorrow. My brothers James and Thomas enlisted to fight for our country- and we said good bye to them not expecting to see them again. No one knows the trial except those who have experienced it. Our forebodings proved true in regard to James, as his life closed at St. Louis, Missouri, January 10, 1862; but Thomas lived to become a citizen of Nampa, Idaho, from which town he passed on January 2d, 1906."
Mr. Wheatley closed his life December 15, 1870, on the farm he had im- proved. Mrs. Wheatley survived till January 22, 1909, her last years hav- ing been spent with her daughter, Mrs. McCain.
CURTIS A. WOOD-BOYHOOD IN INDIAN CREEK.
Curtis A. Wood, former sheriff of Story County and now living in Chi- cago, was reminded of some boyhood memories when he first read the
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reminiscences, elsewhere noted, of his father, the now venerable W. K. Wood, who first settled, where he yet resides, on the east side of Indian Creek below Iowa Center, early in 1852. The son's recollections were of this order :
One of Curtis' most vivid recollections of life in the home log cabin per- tains. to his first pair of boots. He thinks he was six years old when they came. Up to this date his good mother had manufactured his winter foot- gear-a sort of moccasins out of cloth and skins. At other seasons his feet had been shod with only tan. There was not a pair of boy's boots in Iowa Center or vicinity, nor had the sight of a pair ever gladdened the child's eyes. Berch Young kept a very small store at the settlement then, but his stock was not extensive enough to include boy's boots. At length there came an auspicious day when the indulgent sire, on his return from Des Moines, presented his two eldest sons, Cory and Curtis, each with a pair of red-topped, copper-tipped boots. Jim, the toddler, must still wear moccasins. O, the delight of those boots! Cory said, "Now let's grease them good so as to make them last a long time." A lump of tallow was sacrificed and rubbed into the leather thoroughly and affectionately ; they were compared in all particulars to determine points of likeness and of difference; and then were set on the hearth before the fire to let the grease "dry in" and complete the work. The boys hovered around and watched in- tently till they thought the grease was "dry," and then took up the treasures to examine them. Lo, they were crisped, and ready to fall in pieces ! Never was disappointment sorer. Curt's eyes are dim even now when he remem- bers the grief of that hour.
He recalls a later date, when the boys of the neighborhood were Delos and Jeremiah and Hiram Shoop, Abner Moore, John and William and War- ren Maxwell, Dwight Sheldon, James White, Joseph McCowen, Clifford Funk, and Cory, Curtis and James Wood. These youths were scattered over adjacent farms within a radius of four miles. They thought nothing of footing it to the farthest of their homes after chores were done, to play hide and seek in the moonlight till eleven o'clock, then to tramp home and sleep in the barn so as not to disturb the folks. Now and then a horse was sneaked out of the barn and three boys rode off on its back.
The farmer had a good chance at the wide prairie. He could take as big a hay claim as he could manage. Most of the land was owned by non-resi- dents, and the billowy grass was beautiful. A man would mow a swath with a McCormick mower taking in as much area as he could use, then would cut the expanse across again and again to lay it off into "lands" and would harvest the grass at his convenience. Cattle and hogs ran at will. The cattle of the well-to-do farmer were rounded-up at night into pounds. The swine foraged in the woods till winter, and each owner's were marked. The ear mark known as "two swallow forks" told that the animal was Mr. Wood's, and "one swallow fork and an under-bit" said that it was Lot Morris's.
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Mr. Wood was a care-taker, the son testifies, and never let any animal suffer if he could help it. He would stay out all night attending a sick brute, and would carry a sack of corn on his back a mile to a swine mother with her little ones down in the woods. "And he was not less kind to his house- hold," is the filial tribute. "He never skimped anything for the comfort of his family."
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CHAPTER XVL EARLY DAYS IN HOWARD.
H. D. BALLARD-'57 AND LATER.
Of the old families in Story County none has been better or more favor- ably known in its time than the family of old Dr. Ballard, who settled in the southwest part of Howard township in 1857. To this family belonged Rus- sell W. Ballard, who was twice supervisor of the county, Mrs. Harry H. Boyes, and Mrs. H. F. Ferguson, both long residents of Howard township but now with their husbands, recently removed to Nevada; Deville P. Ballard, who was a captain in the 23d Iowa and was once elected county clerk, others also less known in the county, and Henry D., who after residing at Radcliffe and Webster City is now located in a pros- perous old age at Primghar in O'Brien county. There are few if any of the old-timers who are in better position than the last named to tell of the early experiences of the settlers in Story County in the '50s, and after quite a little persuasion was induced to furnish reminiscences as follows:
In the spring of 1857 my father left Frankfort, Will county, Illinois, for Iowa. He came on ahead of the most of us so as to get in some crop be- fore the rest of us arrived. He came through with a horse team and heavy wagon bringing some household goods; and mother, and my three sisters, (Sarah, Martha and Ruth) came in the wagon with him. It was a long ride but he arrived in time to get in corn by June sixth and it was a very good crop that year. My brother Russell (R. W. B.) took charge of the balance of the outfit consisting of four yoke of oxen, two heavy wagons, thirty head of cows and heifers with a small flock of sheep, (about forty I think) and we started about the first of May overland. It was a long journey and took us about two months. We camped out nights wherever night overtook us, sleeping in our wagons among the household goods as best we could. We did our own cooking. We had one cow that gave milk for us and we en- joyed it. The other cows' calves took what they had and did well.
We ferried across some streams and twice floated across on a raft we made. There were very few bridges in those days. We ferried the Rock river in Illinois, then the Mississippi at Davenport, the Cedar at Tipton. When we got to Tipton we heard the exciting news of five horse thieves
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ARMORY BUILDING, AMES
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being hung there a short time before by a vigilance committee. In those early times the people formed such committees for protection and all had horses to ride and hunted the thieves down and when they caught one his trial did not cost the county as much as it does now. Our stock lived mostly on grass the first few days of our long journey and the grass grew so fast that soon we fed nothing and the stock got plenty to eat.
When we reached Iowa City Russell's wife was there, she having come on the train that far with her one child, (now Mrs. J. W. Sowers) and from there she lived in a wagon and camped with us the balance of the way. We came through Homestead, Marengo, Indian Town, Marshalltown (that had just had a war with Marietta over the county seat) then Marietta, both small villages at that time, and on to Clemens' Grove. From Clemens' Grove there was not a house until we got to Indian Creek in Story County where a family lived named Pool. From Pool's place to Nevada there were two houses, from Nevada to where father and the rest of the family were was ten miles, and not a house after we got out of Nevada. Nevada was all on the south side of town near where the park is now, excepting the Court House. From Nevada it was ten miles to where we stopped.
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