USA > Iowa > Story County > History of Story County, Iowa; a record of organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 38
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In the decade following the war as before suggested, there was in this part of the country a very rapid development, and this development was the subject not merely of local enthusiasm but also of extended outside com- ment. Of the outside commentators none was better qualified to observe dis- criminatingly and to write instructively, than was Benj. F. Taylor of Chicago. In the Fall of 1866 he made a journey of observation through this section and his comments were published first in the Chicago Journal and soon after were locally reprinted under the title of "Lake Michigan to the Missouri."
Mr. Taylor was one of the most gifted writers and speakers that ever graced the American press and platform. fle was long connected with the Chicago Journal, which was then the leading Republican paper of the North- west ; he was actively engaged at times in lecturing, and a lecture which he gave in the regular course in Nevada in the winter of 1884 or 1885 is one of the best remembered of all the lectures that have ever been given here. He was also a poet, and one or two of his poems are among the pro- ductions that rank as the rarest in American literature. What such a man could see when he started out to cross Illinois and lowa by the yet incom- plete line of the Northwestern was therefore what could be seen by one of the best trained and worthiest observers of that time. It is in fact definite rec- ord from which to measure the general development of the country along the route as achieved up to that time, Mr. Taylor said :
WHAT BENJ. F. TAYLOR SAW.
Jowa. September, 1880. - A broad date; but you cannot better it; for taking its story and its promise, a man ought to be proud to live anywhere in lowa. A little while ago-hardly longer than an aloe is getting ready to blossom-there was a splendid wilderness of more than fifty thousand square miles lying between the two great rivers of the continent. It had magnificent woods that stood up grandly before the Lord; it had glorious rivers that flowed on idly to the sea : it had prairie- that undulated away. dotted with great island groves and spangled with jessamines, roses and vin- lets ; it had valleys fair as the valley of Sharon. It was a part of Louisi-
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STREET SCENE IN COLO
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ana, within the domains of New France and was laid down very dimly upon the map. It was not a state ; it was not a territory, but just a part of God's uninhabited globe waiting for the coming men. Ninety years ago there was not a white man in all its empire; in 1541 De Soto discovered it; in 1573 a man who could not speak the English tongue paddled along a river now called Des Moines-I crossed it an hour ago-and saw footsteps in the sand upon the shore and a slender trail drawn across the wilderness as if to score it out from the open book of civilization. He followed it and found a red man's dwelling. And so this empire was rediscovered. That man was Marquette.
About the last year of the seventeenth century Hennepin discovered it again ; and so it was born a third time upon human vision, and has never gone out of sight. Seventy-eight years ago the most gracious Castilian granted to Julien Dubuque the "mines of Spain," and strangely enough, they lay in the wilderness clasped hy the two great rivers, and a few pioneers burrowed like gophers in the mines of Spain. And they handed this domain about the mighty sisterhood, much as an admirable infant of our household. Louisiana passed it to Michigan Territory, and she took care of it three years. She reared it into two counties, each with one township in it. That was thirty-two years ago. It was too poor to be named, and Wisconsin took the motherless child and gave it a few laws of her own to use for lack of better. It was the Black Hawk purchase. In 1883 it was born a territory and twenty-eight years ago last Fourth of July it was formally christened Jowa-Iowa the Drowsy, some say, but not so. A band of Indians seeking that home beheld it and loved it and cried out "Iowa, Iowa, this is the place." And what a splendid vision! All the planet between the Mississippi and the Missouri north to the British possessions-195,000 square miles-and there it was fresh from the moccasined foot of the Sacs and Foxes. At length about the last days of December, 1846, an audible knock from hereaway was heard at the Federal door. Iowa stood upon the threshold, was admitted and became a sovereign state.
I took up a gazette the other day-true a few summers ago as the books of Moses-to find whither I was going ; and I read in types very small and very contemptuous : "Iowa-bounded on the north by the British territory of the Hudson Bay Company. The Indian title is not extinguished."
I learned too that Iowa had eighteen counties; that 355 souls were en- gaged in commerce throughout this empire; that 154,000 bushels of wheat had been growing at one time within its borders ; and twenty thousand cows came home to the milking; I looked for Clinton county and found it, but no accidental dot upon the map betrayed the existence of one of the towns and cities now strung like jewels along the Iowa division of the Chicago & Northwestern railroad and flung like a necklace across the state.
I am crossing this empire today; have looked upon a few faces of its 775,000, souls ; upon its growing corn ; have seen its pastures flecked with Vol. 1-22
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a million and a half of sheep. I number its two and a half millions of swine and its million cattle, whose delegations have gone squeaking and lowing across the continent from the Atlantic seaboard at the rate of twenty mile- an hour. 1 think of its two hundred thousand acres of meadow rippling in the sun its five millions of broad acres under the plow ; its twelve and a half million bushels of wheat ; its fifty million bushels of corn ; its heads of three hundred and ten thousand cows coming home to the milking; its daughters who made last year almost fifteen million pounds of butter -- enough to lubricate the axles of time-and a million pounds of cheese. 1 count its seven hundred and fifty churches, its forty colleges, crowning its heights like fair young queens upon their thrones, its seven thousand schools and their three hundred and twenty-five thousand young candidates for the kingdom of heaven. 1 treasure its hundred and twenty thousand homes, and I glory in this wilderness of Louisiana, this Black Hawk purchase, this sovereign state, white and a-flutter like a snowy day with a newspaper cir- culation of ten millions of copies. And so lowa keeps magnificent step to the march of empire ; and so I began with, "a man ought to be proud to live anywhere in Jowa."
But she has done more and more grandly ; for she has changed that step and there in the forefront has kept time to the music of the Union. Out of the breathless wilderness of ninety years ago eighty-four thousand and seventeen-I linger lovingly on the number-Boys in Blue have swelled the Federal legions. There has been precisely time enough since 1840 to grow one man to prime, and in that year of grace there were not so many human beings in all the state by more than forty thousand. She had forty-three thousand men, women and children, all told, in 1840, and seventy-one sol- diers in the army. Four batteries have spoken for her : eleven regiments of cavalry have heard the bugles and thundered to the charge ; fifty regiments of infantry have closed up the solid front and fifteen thousand fallen. And what heroes they were, and how splendid the record they have made for lowa, liberty and God! How rich the meaning they have lent the legend of their coat of arms: "Our liberties we prize-our rights we will main- tain." The grand staple of lowa never took root in her soil-Men. I can- not forget that when the call was made in December 1864 for two hundred thousand men, there were twelve thousand and eighty men to spare over all calls, that no such thing as a conscript ever hailed from lowa, that it raised a splendid harvest of soldiers, and they were all volunteers. Of a truth, those "mines of Spain" they told of are emblematic of the state : they have lead enough in their mines to persuade creation to be loyal-they have the lead and they almost take the lead.
But all these things have gone into history. They could never be evolved in a trip to Nebraska. They do not belong in a wayside letter at all. And yet, sitting here on the bank of the Missouri, and thinking over the way I have come across the Fox and Rock rivers; across the Mississippi ; across the Cedar; the Iowa, the Des Moines: across two states-thinking of the two
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days I rattled on by rail-Chicago and Northwestern all the time-, of being dropped helplessly at the present terminus of the road, two hundred and fifty-nine miles west of the Mississippi and three hundred and ninety- seven from Chicago, to find my way as best I could one hundred and twenty more to the Missouri; of the splendid wilderness you traversed, the un- fenced. unplowed, unparalleled world whose disc you move over-all day today and not a house-all day tomorrow and the next and not an engine in hearing to whistle civilization up. Thinking over all this you will almost wonder, as I did, how all that glorious thunder of battle could have broken out of the clear sky of Iowa, whence came all the wealth of flock, herd, har- vest and host that gives the state a place among the powers of the Northwest ; putting this and that together it had all the charm of a young miracle. The bottle with the giant in it was nothing to his wilderness with a world in it.
STORY COUNTY AS IT WAS.
About the same time or a little earlier a book was published by a General Wilson, entitled "A Description of Iowa and its Resources." The work notes the location of the county and its possession of the State Agricultural College and Farm and advises the world concerning the general advantages of the county as follows :
"The county is watered by the Skunk river, a fine branch nearly divid- ing the county, and the west branch of the same and Indian creek, with their various tributaries. Timber of many kinds is found in large bodies on the larger streams and numerous groves are distributed throughout the county. In the southern part of the county are numerous ponds which when improved will serve as excellent depositories for the surplus water of the rolling prairie lands, and give abundance of stock water. Much the larger portion of the county is prairie, the soil of which is deep, rich and very productive. The line of the Cedar Rapids railroad runs east and west through the county, affording excellent facilities for sending off surplus products. Stone coal is found in several parts of the county but in rather thin vein to be worked to advantage. Good building stone is afforded on the banks of the streams.
"Improved lands are held at from ten to twenty-five dollars per acre, unimproved lands, from three to ten per acre ; wages of farm hands, one dollar per day; mechanics from two and a half to three dollars per day.
"Nevada is the county seat, near its center on the line of the railroad ; and Iowa Center and Cambridge are the other principal towns in the county. A good newspaper is published at Nevada."
WHAT THE RAILROAD SAID.
Another view of this time, written apparently with a large measure of local intelligence, is taken from a work which but for the accompanying
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extract would doubtless long ere this been lost sight of. The work was entitled "Turner's Guide to The Rocky Mountains," and the extract indi- cates clearly that the purpose of the work was to write up the country along the line of the new Northwestern railroad and the regions in the farther west to which the railroad led. This work appears to have been prepared in 1868, about two years later than the review previously quoted from Mr. Benj. F. Taylor. Between its lines it is easy to read the exultation of the railroad management over the benefits which the railroad was bring- ing to the new country. But the statements are definite and, probably, to a large extent accurate. The extract relating to Story County is as follows :
"Leaving State Center we immediately enter the county of Story and passing the small depot town of Colo, reach Nevada the seat of justice of Story county, a pleasant prairie town of from ten to twelve hundred people. The county was organized in 1854, and the first house was built in Nevada the same year. The town was doomed to many years of languishment and to those untoward vicissitudes incident to an inland point without the means of egress to the outside world, when happily the railroad. now a part and par- cel of the great Chicago & Northwestern corporation, came, like a special providence, to its relief. The location was excellent, the surrounding coun- try beautiful and rich in organic function almost beyond comparison, hypo- thetical wealth and importance stood out in large proportions and colored with hues deeply tinted a la rose, yet ingress and egress were slow, expen- sive and altogether too occasional. Anon the railroad came with its pon- derous engines and sweeping trains, almost entirely annihilating distance and overcoming obstructions which had theretofore startled the traveler and retarded immigration. The golden moment was known to be at hand. Hope deferred became crystallized in pleasurable fruition. Story County, by this new order of things, experienced a sort of miraculous reconstruction, and Nevada, the county seat, was put in connection with the world of civili- zation. The town is peculiarly and particularly of the prairie order. The fecund soil will certainly cause grass to grow under the feet of the pedes- trian unless his steps are made to the measure of quick music. In this there is no respect paid to persons. The town has fair developments and fair prospects. Already there are four general stores, three drug stores, all of them are very fine, affording the only token that the place and county are not blessed with perennial health ; two grocery stores, one variety store, one clothing store, two harness stores and one leather and harness store. Hon- orable mention deserves to be made of the fact that this place. like Cedar Rapids, has no saloon nor any place where alcoholic liquors are publicly sold. There is a union graded school with buildings costing ten thousand dollars, free to all, which is in a very flourishing condition. The churches are Methodist, New School Presbyterian and Cumberland Presbyterian. which latter we confess to be an outshooting of evangelism beyond our knowledge or comprehension. Spiritualism has here no specific organiza- tion, but has some adherents.
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"The county of Story has not a large population, although it is gradually and surely adding to its numbers. Ten thousand is now the ultimate figure. It contains five hundred and seventy-six square miles or three hundred and sixty-eight thousand six hundred and forty acres of land. The inevitable prairie abounds, rich, black and productive, interspersed at intervals with fine groves of oak, hickory and walnut, with maple and elm along the streams. At least one-fifteenth of the surface is covered with timber. Nearly one-third of the county is waste, and wild, ready to be appropriated at moderate cost by new-comers. The soil, of sandy loam and vegetable mould, is everywhere with a subsoil of clay and gravel. Water is abun- dantly distributed by the Skunk river, East and West Indian and Squaw creeks and their numerous tributaries. Springs of pure, cold water are often met with. The surface is generally sufficiently rolling to afford per- fect natural, and in all places to make, easy artificial drainage. Some coal deposits have been found in the county, but none have yet been practically developed. There are several quarries of fine building stone. The climate is healthy and pleasant. Unimproved lands sell at from four to ten dollars per acre, and improved farms from fifteen to thirty dollars. Timber lands range from fifteen to sixty dollars per acre.
"Ames is in the western portion of Story County on the Skunk river. The first settlement was made in July, 1865, about which time the railroad was opened to the place. The population is now not far from five hundred. The business of the town is considerable. There are four general stores, one hardware store, two drug stores, three grocery stores and two lumber dealers. Messrs. Evans & Co. deal largely in grain and other produce and sell agricultural implements and farm machinery. Marshall, Drake & Rain- bolt have a real estate and collecting agency, and Mr. Rainbolt is an attorney at law. The town being within two miles of the agricultural college of the state, a special act of the legislature prohibits the sale of wine, beer or any spirituous liquors. As the general law does nearly the same thing the special one may be considered, perhaps as a work of supererogation. If both laws are not violated Ames may well claim the "crown of virtue," in Iowa. The liveliest interest is taken in schools and a fine union school house is nearly completed. The churches are Methodist, Episcopal and the Congregation- alist, each having a good house of worship. There are two hotels. Ames is directly north of Des Moines, the capital, and very near the geographical centre of the state.
"The Iowa Agricultural College, an imposing structure, is located on the state farm, about one mile and a half from Ames. The college is in plain view from the railroad. The officers of the institution are as follows :
Hon. B. F. Gue, President.
Hon. H. M. Thomson, Secretary and Superintendent of farm.
Maj. S. E. Rankin, Treasurer.
C. A. Dunham, Architect.
"The farm contains several hundred acres of land, selected with due
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reference to geographical position, timber, water and quality of soil. . \1l these conditions are happily blended. The college building is of brick, of ample dimensions and constructed with due regard to its prospective uses. It is nearly completed, and will be appropriately opened soon. This is an institution of great importance to the state of lowa, and cannot be too highly prized by the intelligent yeomanry of that State. It has taxed the time and energies of the best talent to bring it into existence and will, it is hoped, long stand as a monument to the names of its projectors. The col- lege is munificently endowed by an act of congress appropriating lands for such purposes."
AS SEEN BY THE IOWA STATE REGISTER.
Again in the early part of 1809, we find evidence from the Iowa State Register, which had become then, as it is now. the leading newspaper of the State, that Story County was regarded as worthy of somewhat extended notice. Accordingly the county was written up for that paper, not only in general but also in considerable detail. And the general statement affords quite definite opportunity for measuring progress made in some respects up to that time. The most available part of this statement is as follows:
"The county has one railroad, the Chicago and North Western, com- pleted, running east and west near the middle, and bringing every portion of it within from 12 to 14 miles of railroad advantages. On the line of this road are four shipping points within the limits of Story County, viz. : Colo. Nevada, Ames and Ontario.
"The lowa and Minnesota railroad is mostly graded from Ames south 10 Polk City, a distance of 18 miles, and will doubtless in due time give the people of the county a southern outlet.
"A Railroad Company was organized about a year ago called the Eldora. Nevada and Des Moines Railroad Company, and articles of incorporation luly recorded. A survey has been made diagonally through the county from northeast to southwest. passing through Nevada, and the citizens of that place are sanguine that his road also will be built. It will therefore be seen that Story County is not without excellent railroad facilities, present and prospective.
"The present courthouse is but a temporary building, but the question of building a $40,000 edifice is now being agitated. The county poor farm is situated two miles northwest of Nevada and contains 200 acres. About 60 acres is in good state of cultivation, with a frame house on it. This farm was purchased about a year ago for $16.50 per acre.
"An agricultural society was organized at Ames something over a year ago, and has held one fair at that place. The present officers are Wm. West. President ; Geo. Child, vice president ; and W. D. Lucas, Secretary.
"A proposition has been made to locate the fair grounds permanently near the center of the county, but as yet the matter has not been decided.
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Another organization has more recently been effected at Nevada, and a union of the two societies has been proposed.
"By the last October report of the superintendent we have the following statistics in regard to educational matters: Persons in the county of the school age, 3,505; attending school during last school year, 2,775; average attendance, 1,747; schools taught, 91 ; male teachers, 41, female teachers, 77 ; average compensation of male teachers, $9.96 per week ; average com- pensation of female teachers $7.59 per week; aggregate amount paid teachers during the year. $14,649; total number of school districts 75-two of them being independent districts; total number of schools houses 72, of which 4 are brick, 65 frame and three log; value of school houses $23.330.121/2 and value of apparatus $1,370.31. The school houses are generally good, and several of a superior grade were erected last year.
"Ames had a good frame school house, 30x50 feet, and two stories high, built in 1868. A fine school is now in progress, with about 120 pupils in charge of Henry May as principal and Miss Ella Fitchpatrick as assistant.
"Teachers institutes have been held annually for several years and are usually well attended .- At the last, held in October, 51 teachers were pres- ent. F. D. Thompson, the present superintendent is well advised in all matters pertaining to schools. Story county has the advantage of having located within her borders an educational institution next in grade and im- portance to the State University.
"The leading religious denominations of the county are Methodists, Presbyterians, (N. S.) congregationalists, Lutherans, Baptists and Chris- tians. In Nevada the Methodists have just erected a handsome edifice at a cost of $5.000. It is a frame building 36x60 feet and is supplied with a bell weighing 1,020 pounds, which was purchased at a cost of $403.73. This society was organized in 1856. The present membership is 140 with a Sabbath School also of about 100 pupils. The present pastor is Rev. B. Shinn.
"The New School Presbyterians have also a new church built last year. It is a frame 38x46 feet and cost $3600. This society was organized in the fall of 1864, by Rev. Isaiah Ried. who is the present pastor. The member- ship is now about 40 and a Sabbath School of about 100 pupils.
"The Catholics have an organization in Nevada, and as I learn are about to provide themselves with a church.
"Ames also has two good edifices for religious worship, belonging respectively to the Methodists and Congregationalists.
"The Methodist church is a frame building erected in 1866, and is 30x40 feet. This church has a large society, with many recent accessions, and a Sabbath School of 75 pupils. Rev. E. Kendell is pastor, Revs. Miller and Marshall are local ministers who have rendered efficient service here.
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"The Congregational church of Ames was erected in 1865 at a cost of $1700 and is 30x40 feet in size. There is a large membership and a Sab- bath School of 75 pupils. Rev. Simon Gilbert is pastor.
"The Baptists and Christian denominations also have societies at Ames. There are Lutheran organizations in several places in the county, with some two or three church edifices."
THE LOCAL EDITOR'S VIEW.
Some editorial comments of the .Egis, in May. 1869. afford still further proof that the time was one of rapid transition in the affairs and conditions of the county. An extended list is given of the names of men who were building residences at the county seat, and the more general condition is noted as follows:
"The country is the very place to depend upon and Story county is set- tling up rapidly. One cannot go any direction, for even a short distance, but he will find new houses and plenty of breaking. In conversation with Mr. Child, President of the Agricultural society, he informed us the pros- pect was that more breaking would be done the present year than the pre- vious six years. We were aware work was in progress, but did not set our figures quite so high. Mr. Child is well posted in such matters and no one will question his word in the least. The improvements are general throughout the county and are not confined to any one locality. Story is one of the best counties in the state and will be all right soon.
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