USA > Iowa > Washington County > History of Washington County, Iowa from the first white settlements to 1908. Also biographical sketches of some prominent citizens of the county, Vol. I > Part 21
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Our bar was not the wet bar you are thinking of.
Our brigade of High Foreheads, that is, of baldheads, have had a world of fun at court. It was quite like the stage, which serves up, in turn, tragedy, comedy, melodrama, farce. A breach of promise case, if the letters are ripe and juicy, is the funniest entertainment on earth. You can hear the smacks, feel the thrills, see them "set up" till 2 a. m., hear them say "good night," "good bye," plumb forty-five reluctant minutes by the watch. So absorbing, that housewives hurry breakfast, to get to court ; skip noon lunch, or take a cold bite, or stack the dishes to be washed later, or let the dog or cat lick them clean. The whole town is in the court room, and till the case is over folks forget religion, politics, education, finance, business, and loaf all day in the Temple presided over by an eye-bandaged goddess playing blind-man's- buff with sword and scales.
And the High Foreheads rock back and forth and wiggle with tickle that trickles tears in laughter, and think of the days in Auld Lang Syne, when their knighthood was in flower, and they were practicing, every one of them, the fine art of Lalligag with their select and elect bits of calico.
A bar association was formed February 9. '05, H. M. Eicher president, Col. Scofield vice, C. C. Wilson secretary. M. W. Bailey treasurer. On April of that year they arranged for the funeral of Judge A. R. Dewey, adopted a memorial and spread it on the records. On June 10, there was a like meeting respecting the death and funeral of A. H. Patterson, and on November 18, '05, they took suitable action concerning the death of the mother of President Eicher, and sent representatives and flowers to her funeral.
If ill health spoiled a lawyer in A. S. Folger, it made of him a notable manufacturer of sorghum, and the growing of cane that he stimulated in this county and region and the developing of sugar and syrup became a very con- siderable industry. His connection with the sweetening art began in Indiana two years before the war. Coming here in '75, he made in that year two evaporators for Christian Eicher and Elijah Noble. The culture continued till '85-6, when it almost entirely ceased. This year he is making two
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evaporators for large manufacturers in Nebraska and Missouri, and he expects that one will make thirty-five gallons per hour and the other one hundred and seventy-five gallons in twelve hours, and he may get an order for one that will make one hundred and fifty gallons per hour, tho' this is problematical. In the '70s, he thinks the local culture of the cane averaged one acre for every farmer in the county. He did realize a syrup that was smooth and wholly free from all acrid quality, a very nice dope or spread on bread and butter, that would slickly glide off and nicely trickle through the fingers and require finger bowls. Folger's sweetnesses competed successfully with those of girls. It originally cost two thousand dollars to introduce sorghum seed from China and France into this country, and the annual crop is still valued at one hundred millions of dollars, and grown on land generally unfit for aught else.
It was over-sight-Eardley Bell, Jr., of Wellman, should have been in- cluded in our bar. He was county attorney two terms, and covered the inter- vening eighteen miles in his own big auto, one of the earliest buyers.
The late R. S. Mills, once a legislator, was for many years a familiar figure in our courts. He attained high age, but was blind the last years of his varied career.
There were several ancient lawyers of whom no satisfactory knowledge can be gleaned. Mr. Bailey says there are papers on file in the court records that indicate he was a trained and clever lawyer in Auld Lang Syne,-a Mr. Harrison. And also a Mr. Conkling, Mr. Compton, Mr. Dinsmore. brother to the preacher. But their "I object" is fainter than the ocean's voice in a shell.
Churchman was the lawyer who got scared at Wassonville when there was an armed demonstration to rescue a white maiden from the Indians. He did not need to skedaddle home, for the Reds offered to surrender her if she wished to go and they would be good to her, and she did not want to go. Besides, he was the lawyer that Baz. Williams left stranded on a stump amid the wild waves of over-flowed Crooked creek.
W. J. Case, it is said, was the first lawyer here. in '39-40, and he pledged the two hundred dollars of untainted money, needed to bring here for a year Rev. Dr. Vincent, the first pastor. That was for that time equivalent to pledging one thousand two hundred dollars now. Who of our present bar would assume that obligation ? Not one, O ye of little faith. If, perchance. there is even one, Charley Wilson would be the most likely one.
He was not a member of our bar, but had been a lawyer in Burlington, a partner of his brother, and both members of the territorial legislature there
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in '37-8. and he became a Methodist preacher here and elsewhere, and so I may name him here, the eccentric man, Geo. W. Teas, father to our Lush. While a statesman he seemed to fall from grace, for he published this metrical card in the Burlington Gazette :
"Be it known from shore to shore That I'm a Methodist no more."-G. W. Teas.
Years later he went to preaching again, and some guy printed this on him : "Know ye from Georgia down to Maine. That I'm a Methodist again." -- G. W. Teas.
Can't you see heredity sticking out of Lush ?
Among the many activities of the late Jackson Roberts was the practice of law. Born very poor in a now deserted log house on a Vermont hill, that I saw a few years ago. he had been teacher there, a mercantile clerk in Boston, a miner and county judge in California, speaking but not walking Spanish, a grocer here and dealer in wild animal skins, broker, discounter of notes, buyer of tax titles and low wet farms and one of the first of the men sagacious enough to see that tiling would make them the most valuable farms, etc. But he never felt quite at home in the law, probably because he did not give his whole mind to it. He was a student of finance, a telling stump speaker on econ- omics, a racy story-teller, humorist, a wit, a good mixer, and in a few years he made a fortune counted large for this section. Take this many-sided man all round, he was the ablest, most versatile man in this county in the last forty years.
A great lawyer is the most signal man in the professions. A man in wide and varied practice should, must, and does know nearly everything, must be a constant student of all the 'ologies-psychology, physiology, anatomy : be an alienist, a specialist in neurotic diseases ; he must know everything that is likely to reveal the secret places where motives start and lurk, and the secret springs of conduct and conscience. A much narrower and more scantily furnished man may make a creditable preacher, doctor, teacher, editor, etc., but a great lawyer must have vast learning. Rufus Choate for two to three score years had a habit of buying one strong book per week, and mastering it, and remembering it, to apply its facts and principles in his amazing prac- tice. In the clerical ranks there was no man to match him as an omnivorous reader hut Theodore Parker, and in the other professions no equal. In any community, where you find an exceptional lawyer, he is casily the greatest man there, having no intellectual peer in pulpit, clinic, university chair, sanc- tum. Take a home man like attorney McJunkin,-what other man in Washing-
JAMES DAWSON'S ELEVATOR
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BUNKER MILI AFTER HAIL STORM
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATION
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ton, city or county, had a tithe of his tireless, incessant mental activity? His restless brain fairly oxidized his tissues-he burnt up long before his time.
A year before his death, after an illness, Col. Scofield discounted the tedium of a convalescent chamber, in Seattle, by writing on a tab, on his knee, in bed, his Reminiscences of our Bar, and they were published in the Washington Journal. The manuscript was not left with the clerk of the court, nor with the curator of the historical society. If the family survivors have it, it would be gracious in them to put it in the custody of one of those officers. His personal, actual and traditionary memory would well nigh cover the whole legal line. I do not recall the writing, but there was wide oppor- tunity for happy characterization, for sketches graphic, gay, just, true, all embodied in forms of literary charm.
Since the last paragraph was written, C. C. Wilson, secretary to the bar association, hands me that manuscript. The Colonel came here in '56, and covers the time thence to '61 when he enlisted. The lawyers here in '56 were Everson, Patterson, Jos. R. Lewis, county attorney, and John T. Burris, county judge. All had offices in the court house-but Everson, and he had been there, too, but had moved into the little, brick shanty on the Temple site. Besides the county officers, the said lawyers, tailor and shoe shops, Argus print shop upstairs, the Press office later, etc., that court house must have had a "bosom" as capacious as Abraham's bosoin, and its tenants were as thick as six in a bed. Clients being scarce, and the county rats not over-worked, all sat in the lower hall, fanned by the south breeze, and swapped lies and stories and stuffed the pin-cushion of leisure with yarns, personal confessions, expe- riences, and with talk of old times and earlier men.
Lyman Whitcomb told of the old shooting matches ; there was no money, and they shot for county orders that were well nigh worthless ; each marks- man had a hole in the ground to stick his won orders in.
When J. C. Conger was a shoe-maker in Ohio, he "allowed" that if he ever managed to get one thousand dollars ahead he would be content, his life not a failure. He earned honestly one hundred and fifty times that stake.
Joseph Keck owned to fifteen thousand dollars made in the cabinet trade, and said he was content. Was he? Scofield says he reached three hundred thousand dollars, but he "did worse than that." Before he began to distribute to children and grand-children considerable chunks of money, one who knew pretty well his status, said he could count up over four hundred thousand dollars, and that was not all of his stuff, either.
A. H. Patterson had come in '46, but went with his father to California in '49, the latter dying there. Joe Lewis had come in '55. McJunkin in '57. Nort P. Chipman had been a partner of Lewis, but G. G. Bennett took his
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place in the 'oos. In '56 there was a genteel lawyer named E. D. Luding- ton, a society man, and the ladies thought he was too sweet for any use, but he couldn't cut the legal melon, and went back east. In Highland was a lawyer, Fairchild by name, who was so cross-eyed he could see both sides of a case, very likely, tho' Scofield does not say so. He does say, however, that there were seven murders committed in this county, only one conviction, and no one punished. Patterson & Scofield had a collection on Ed. Clemons, whose titles were so clouded they could not fasten on anything. Finally, Clemons entered a lot of fine stock at the county fair, in his own name, and Patterson levied on them. Ed was mad, sought A. H. P., knocked him down, and beat him sore, and had the pleasure of paying fifty dollars for the fun. He thought it paid.
It was to Scofield, and perhaps not to Michael Hayes, though it might have been to both, to whom Everson got off his famous politico-ethical mot, when accused of lying, "this is a free country, and a man has a right to lie."
An Early Court Trial .- In '63, before 'Squire R. H. Marsh, suit was brought by Missouri slave owners to replevin a team that run-away slaves had fetched here and sold to John H. Bacon. Four of the jury, it is remembered, were Isaac Ditmars, P. R. McMillan. C. H. Wilson and Isaac Wagner. The jury could not agree. The case hinged on the point-Are these slave-holders traitors? Lincoln had proclaimed amnesty if southerners returned to allegiance in ninety days. It was figured that there were just eleven days of grace left, and while the lamp holds out to burn, the vilest sinners might return, don't you know? They were not technically traitors quite yet. So a jury in a tuppeny court of the justice of the peace gave the horses to the Pukes who could "show" they were "l'yal," as Mr. Dooley says. They did not care a tuppence for the "niggers." they said, but must have the team. Just what Bacon thought of it is not known, but he was never known to swear.
Accidents .- Among the shocking railroad casualties were the death of W. N. Hood: the rush of an engine into the buggy containing John Graham and his boy Sammy ; the collision of a locomotive with the vehicle in which John Vincent and wife and Mr. Gilmer were riding home; the sink- ing of the bridge near Ainsworth, killing several soldiers who had served thro' the war only to be destroyed in a creek within seven miles of wives, sweethearts and relatives ; the recent killing of Mr. Myers in a closed carriage on the tracks.
In the burning of the Richmond brewery May 3, '74, Mrs. Zahn was cremated. A worse calamity was the burning of the first county infirmary December 8, '78, when five poor creatures lost their lives, viz., Mrs. R. P. Disney, Mary Krofta, Henrietta Hagan, Anna Haberlick and Susie Hardy.
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Several of the deficients kept running back into the fire, while others were locked in a cage, cut off from rescue by smoke and licat. A snow storm was raging at the time. There were twenty-three patients in all. The institu- tion had been running four years. The buildings cost seven thousand dollars, were insured for four thousand two hundred dollars. The people voted for a fifteen thousand dollar brick building. the present structure.
On the 22d of May, '73, a tornado ravaged Jackson township. In the morning rain fell in torrents ; the air was sultry ; clothing stuck to fleshi. At 2 p. m. angry clouds formed mob-like in the southwest and northwest and approached in whirling volumes, black, yellow, glaucus in color ; hail fell ; there was a roar like heavy freight trains ; suddenly a black cloud, dirty as if filled with sucked-up dust, illumined by vicious lightning jabs, formed in the shape of an enormous pollywog, and its prehensile tail reached for stacks, trees, buildings, like an elephant's trunk, lithe and snaky. It got what it went for. The dwellings of A. McKee. John Maughlin, Geo. Gilchrist, Wm. Caldwell, Thomas Waters, Alex. Gibson, J. M. Davidson, and the Puddleford school house were destroyed, and Mary Rathmell, Mrs. Waters and child. Davidson and Laborn Housel were killed, and twenty-five more were seriously hurt. The property loss was seventy-five thousand dollars. Poultry were plucked clean ; wooden debris stuck as splinters and darts in fields for miles : scantling were driven endwise into tree trunks : stoves were carried many rods and set down in pastures, hardly broken, the fuel burning, ready to cook; people and cattle were sucked into the air, and made temporary angels, though without wings ; there were all sorts of modes of transportation ; live stock fell out of the air and broke bones and necks ; the freaks were endless. Love letters, etc., were picked up miles away. What kind of a pickpocket is this electrical prehensile tail, that creates a vacuum as it passes over buildings, sucking out the contents, bursting the walls outward in a spiral whorl, or collapsing them inwards? It impresses one as a devil like Mephisto, a busy- body full of malevolent wit, delighting in mischief and cruelty. The houses of J. P. and N. L. Babcock and many others were twisted, knocked off foun- dations, and more or less damaged.
Nothing is more distressing than people, especially children, getting lost. In the summer of '59 Jackson Patterson's seven-year-old boy was lost, cross- ing the prairie. The next day he reappeared in front of his home, so be- wildered by terror that he did not recognize the place or his parents.
On Sunday, August 25, '72, Wm. Scranton and his little boy were visiting at John G. Stewart's home in Franklin. The boy toddled away unnoticed, and by night one hundred people were searching. On the next Wednesday he was found in wretched plight under the brow of a bank of a slough, hidden
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in tall grass. Mrs. Wm. Clark, an invalid, had seen the baby in a series of dreams the stormy night before his discovery : so vivid was her vision of boy and locality, she urged her husband to ride a horse to the spot. He pooh- poohed it as a case of nerves, but at last he yielded to her passionate en- treaties, and rescued the baby from the habitat she had so accurately pictured. The whole county thrilled to the joyful signals of "Found" that rang from church bells. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, hearing the plaintive cry of the woebegone child,-"I knew you would come, papa."
James Rurch got lost, returning from Washington, and on March 27, '44, his frozen body was found near the head of Goose creek. He lived in Richmond. Nature cares no more for a man than for a worm or weed.
Skunk river at McMartin's mill, later known as McKain's, and at Brighton and Coppock mills, as well as English river at the mills in the northern tier of townships, were veritable dragons, devouring boatmen. bathers, forders. Pearl Hutchinson, Robt. McCaleb, David Sharp and Mr. Nichols were bathing victims. Jones and Hibbs and boy were drowned, crossing the swollen river. When found, Hibbs still had the child in his arms. They were buried by torch-light.
Samuel McKain and Thomas Philips were drowned March 4. 67. and Madison McKain escaped by clinging to a shelf of ice left as a collar round a tree when the water fell, but he was so chilled by long exposure that he died when taken into a warm room.
John Pennington, freighter from Burlington to Brighton, came near perishing in a blizzard Nov. 8, '42. He left his wagon, unhitched the oxen, tied himself by the wrists to an ox's tail, and was dragged to Lewis' store, insensible, badly frost-bitten.
W'm. Hickenbottom, from the Robinson place in Clay, started for Oregon with his father's family, resolved to kill an Indian. He shot a squaw. The Reds demanded his surrender, or they would massacre the party, and they skinned him alive and burned the body before the white train. The shock killed his mother on the trip, but the father married a widow in the party before arriving. Seems to have been a nice family.
John Kyle, a Scot, got so mad at a cow that ate his garden truck at night, that he walked eight miles to the river, went out on a log over- hanging the water, jumped in and drowned. It did not restore the vege- tables, but he did get even with that blamed cow all right. Funny lot, those pioneers.
In the '50s, Smith Thompson was accidentally shot at Hasty's farm by parties shooting at a mark. He was hauling lumber from his mill to Richmond. He died at Hasty's house.
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GRANVILLE G. BENNETT
JUDGE A. R. DEWEY
NEW YORK IC LIBRARY
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Would it be too cruel a joke to classify as accidents the mis-carriages of mining companies organized here, with the net result that the stock holders and victims of assessments were made "men of sorrows and ac- quainted with grief?" On April 15, '76, nine men organized the "Iowa State Mining Co." First and last, they blew more coin into it than out of the mines. Of the dead say nothing but good.
On June 14, '87, there was the "Washington County Prospecting Co .. " to find oil, gas, coal, and any old thing except pearls, rubies, diamonds, etc.
Then on March 21, '99, the "Hawkeye Gold Mining and Milling Co." was organized. None of these declared dividends. I put them in the cate- gory as accidents, because they made "lame ducks."
In the same category let me place, say "The Jackson Pipe Organ Co.," and several other sells like that. I still have a certificate, No. II, of five shares in that delectable thing. It was one of the nuttiest things I ever did fall into, as into an open well in a dark night, and there are others who struggled in that same Black Hole. The various attempts to get factories here have been sad, tearful things. It is jollier to nurse sickly twins and triplets than to raise "infant industries" on bottles of protection. Pause right here, gentle readers, and let the dupes weep into cuspidores.
In July 1854, Brighton had an epidemic of cholera. Nothing is said about it in the prints, yet it is more than a tradition. The old settlers say a little girl member of the Wmn. Trine family traveling through had the disease, and the infection spread. At least twenty-five died ; terror aggra- vated the conditions. The medical profession had more courage than any- one, and helped all they could. Everson was a volunteer nurse. The con- tagion ran its course, the germs got exhausted, lay down, and quit, and did not appear elsewhere. There has never been a county-wide pestilence, not even of la grippe ; "malaria," whatever that may be, spread the broadest mantle. The early population shook their teeth out with ague.
In June, 1902, a fierce tempest raged southward from this city, spending its intensest energy down Eureka way. The artillery limbered up in the early evening in the southwest and northwest, and it looked twisterish, but we got grandeur only, not disaster. Hail went through greenhouses like bullets, rain fell two and eight one-hundredths inches deep ; the top knot on the Presby- terian church was wrenched to the south, and rubber-necked ; two of the "five points of Calvinism" on the First U. P. church were knocked off, and the tall phallic M. E. steeple vibrated itself out of plumb enough to provoke payment of insurance. The storm waxed vimful as it sped south. Nineteen high school graduates, chaperoned by County Supt. Cora Porter and teachers, had picnicked at Coppock, and were gripped and blown and soaked, and sixteen
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of them wounded, on the way back ; one buggy capsized : all ran to a brick school house at Eureka, smashed in the locked door, when away went the roof, down came the walls, a youth's arm broken several times, a collar bone broken, heads so cut and mauled as to cause delirium, faces disfigured, teeth knocked out and skin scraped off. girls huit in the back with missiles, shoulders dislocated, clothes gormed with grime. The McCunes took in the sorry crowd. and one hundred and five dollars and fifty cents was raised to compensate them.
This item should find place in "crime." One night Dr. A. A. Rodman was wakened by a burglar holding a gun near his face, demanding money, and he threatened to return and kill him if he gave an alarm. The sheriff caught the desperado at the station. Court was in session. The next day he was indicted, tried, convicted, sentenced to state prison, and on the way thither. all within twelve hours. Never another case of such rapid transit in our court.
In 1845. Ezra C. Clemons brought into Marion a black boy named Henry Hanna, and C. L. Hendricks got possession of him. People fancied he meant to take the lad to Missouri and sell him for a slave. Remarks about going to Mormon Nauvoo still more excited suspicion. Mr. Yockey and Rev. Mr. Vincent drove to Hendrick's place. As he was not at home, they took the darkey to Houston's, two miles away, and that night Houston's son-in-law Ritchey took the boy to his father's house in Winfield. He was secreted here and there till the next term of court, when liberty was secured to him.
A Municipal Stain .- Like the eloquent snake in Eden, whisky was the trail of the serpent over us all from the first. Licensed persons were allowed to sell it. and the earliest courts were mainly engaged in prosecuting liquor- license jumpers. From the organization in 1839. we had whisky, like the poor, ever with us. But the old settlers did not mind it specially. It was pure and almost as cheap as water. There was no object in adulterating it. It cost so little, merchants kept barrel, faucet and gourd cup on the free list, and customers thought no more of taking a copious nip then in the stores than now of going to the ice-water tank. Washington was full of saloons as late as 1866 when I came, to observe the customs and manners. They seemed to belong to the order of nature, certainly to the order of society. as truly as sun, moon, rain, frost, and banks, shops, etc. There had been little popular education along the line of temperance. The council licensed saloons as a matter of course. There were joints on each side of the square and on vach spur of street from the corners of the square, vile, stinking holes, full of Low Brows carrying round sloppy, tobacco-stained mouths and eyes like boiled gooseberries and the eyes of dead fish. The temperance crusade started in an outraged esthetic sense, and not in morals-in sheer disgust at
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