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 23
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Dusty, parched were the gullets in those days. Too much alum, and it took the boys a long time to get used to the new ways of reform, and not one of them believed that virtue is its own reward.
Altogether, there are some seventy-five societies, orders, clubs and what- not where our people may go for solacement, amusement and edification. And they are outside of church sub-divisions. Churches are wonderfully organ- ized and sub-organized. All have Sunday schools. The Methodists have four foreign and three or four home missionary societies, Epworth League, ladies' aid society to procure funds for wise use. The U. P.'s have the Senior and Junior Endeavors, Ladies' Missionary Society, King's Daughters, a dual affair of Golden Rule and Helping Hand circles, men's league. The Presbyterians have a brotherhood. Senior and Junior Christian Endeavor, Ladies' Aid, Women's Missionary Society, and the Baptists have a missionary society, What I Can, ladies' league, B. Y. P. U., men's league.
Hold on-there is a Junior Cooking Club, formed some ten years ago, by the two Misses Shearer, two Meachams, two Parrishes, Maud Moothart, Louise Wilson, Mrs. Morrison, Mary Massey, Anna Wells Truesdale.
Halls, Etc .- Akin in aim and service to the above seventy-five organiza- tions are the public places where people gathered for all sorts of purposes,- the several court houses, Corette's hall, Everson's hall, Music hall, Smouse's hall, the churches, the first Graham opera house that was burned, and the present structure bearing the same name, etc. In these, or in all but the churches that limited their accommodations to lectures, concerts and festivals of a semi-religious but amusingly hold-up nature, we were treated to magic, phrenology, plays, exhibitions, music, home talent shows. Two five and ten- cent shows opened in 1907-8, and Brinton built an Air-dome late in 1908.
In December. 1883, roller skating became so absorbing a passion that a rink was built, and its roar at night was like the pounding of surf on a lee shore. The fad passed, but now that cement walks are so general, skates have come back, but the streets are the rink. We have had all kinds of locomotor ataxia. In the early '6os, or late '50s, we put away oxen and tried horses. It was about forty years ago that Irving Keck introduced a veloci- pede, not the tall kind, but with the pedals so far in front that the rider looked like a reversed flying shitepoke, and acted like a cantering broncho that had caught his hind feet in the stirrups. Henry Clarke and Irv. bought that absurd thing in cahoots, to get exercise-they got it-plus. About twenty- five years ago Cloyce and Ralph Dougherty brought in two velocipede con- cerns some sixteen hands high ; they had to climb the neck of a giraffe, or its equivalent, to mount one. Ira Sproull and Mort Keeley also indulged. The things cost only one hundred and twenty-five dollars each. The principle of
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the machine was dead wrong : the drive wheel should have been the high one, not a low one. All swift animals are well set up behind to give the big push. The velocipede had a short hind leg. In due time bicycles appeared and were modified until the perfect safety was devised. It took a long time to educate country horses not to shy at them. Rev. Mr. Stryker imported the first one, or at least he was the first "cloth" to ride one for his daily constitutional, and some men in his church chided him-it was "undignified," but now that riding habit is rated as orthodox as for girls and ladies to ride horses astride, as they do.
Over fifty years ago, the venerable Jacob Dodder, father or grandfather to Charley, a very ingenious mechanic and patternmaker, who was always evolv- ing some idea or another, invented an automobile. The motive power was steel springs. His shop was between Cook & Sherman's drug store and the alley. The first trip was disastrous. He started down South Marion avenue lickety-cut, and below the tavern the thing wouldn't gee and mind its rudder, and he and it went into the ditch, and it busted. He was hurt in the mix-up, and that was the last of the auto business here for half a century.
For many years there were no carriages, buggies, phaetons, etc., just lum- ber wagons, not spring wagons, and not even spring seats. J. C. Howe and Dick Houghland were early wagon-makers. Folks would pile straw into a wagon box, and women sat in it, not tailor or Turk fashion, but with feet straight out, and rode along smoothly in sleds or bumpy in wagons. They came to market and church that way, sitting broad-based and secure like statues on firm pedestals. Much later Wm. Ditmar and Bell Brothers, and still later Mr. Sage in the Washington Buggy Co., made fine rigs of various names. You can't keep a young fellow on the farm any more unless he can own and sport a top buggy, rubber tire, and the girls all know when he gets it, and they, one by one, sit closely to him in its proper dedication. And even the hired man stipulates that he is to be furnished a rig once in awhile, if not twice and thrice in a while, to go to town or give his girl an airing. But these rigs got passe. In 1901 Dave Donovan drove in an Olds automobile, the first mobile seen here. It made a sensation. Not long after Dr. M. C. Terry brought one into Brighton, to do his practice in. How the country folk did fear and hate that "Red Devil!" How the old rural nags did dance and snort and run away! Not only were their necks clothed with thunder, but the sound and smell of an auto fired them with unwonted ginger, and they went straight up; they became bipeds, and were on their hind feet most of the time, talking sign language with their fore legs. In 1904-5 there were per- haps twenty-five machines in this city. The yeast got into the farmers, and twenty of them use these machines as runabouts, and Wooley Bros. say eighty
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to ninety more are under conviction, and will buy autos of some make this summer. Last fall there were one hundred and forty-six machines owned in this county, and by this June I there will be one hundred and seventy-five. if not two hundred. The young fellows have discovered that the glamour is all off of buggies so far as the girls are concerned, and that no one can make a capture henceforth unless he drives a chugger and loud smeller.
Have we now reached the limit in locomotion ? Nay, wait for aeroplanes -they're coming, sure. They alone can solve the good roads problem. The only way to escape mud-in some slovenly districts where King drags are not used and the roads are not worked. When we get these winged planes, every fellow will be a "bird." if not an angel.
How antiquated that makes navigation in old settler days! Before rail- roads the rivers were the routes of travel, coming and going. Thousands were employed in boating, even as in Canton, China, and the captain was the great man, if he had oaths enough in him. St. Louis got the trade of the up-country merchants, as she was head-quarters for skins and furs in the still more ancient days. Before 1820 there was not much river traffic above the Des Moines rapids. In 1827 a boat was forty days from New Orleans to Keokuk. The Panama canal may right the big river and restore its prestige, but just now the traffic on the Ohio river from Pittsburg down greatly ex- ceeds that done on the entire Father of Waters below St. Louis. Everybody now works but Father. A report just at hand, as I write this, says the busi- ness on this river from St. Paul to the Missouri river in 1908 exceeded that on the lower stretch. Over two million passengers were carried and over thirty-three million dollars' worth of freight, and yet the traffic fell off far from that of the previous year.
The Washington County Historical Society was organized June 6, 1905. and officered thus: Marsh W. Bailey president, C. H. Keck vice, A. R. Miller secretary. J. A. Young treasurer, C. J. Wilson curator. Directors, H. A. Bur- rell, A. H. Wallace, Frank Stewart, Col. Bell, S. W. Neal, C. H. Wilson. The other members are H. M. Eicher, J. O. Elder, A. Anderson, Dr. Hull, Col. Scofield.
The society has a room in the court house and has gathered some ma- terials,-diaries of pioneers, their letters back east, account books, property lists, old addresses and sermons quite dry by this time, but not incendiary, papers, magazines, photos, pictures, maps, books, pamphlets, MISS., documents, souvenirs, curios, and county histories by Nathan Littler and Irving A. Keck, etc. In the winter of 1908-9 the society authorized the preparation and publi- cation of a History of Washington County, Iowa, in two volumes royal octavo.
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Temperance .- The fight was long and had ups and downs. The first fight- ing force was the Sons of Temperance in 1850, followed in '65 by the Good Templars : in '67 the Blue Ribbon movement. In '77 and '78 beer was voted out, but, like "nature when driven out with a fork comes running back," as the ancient poet said, the tide came back in '79. In '82 the constitutional amendment swept the county, and it has not had a saloon since 1884.
On February 12, '09, Brighton formed a Fellowship Club. Religions serv- ice via sermon, lecture, talk, etc .. Sunday p. m., by home or foreign talent.
There have been many musical associations round the county, resulting in various bands. And park, detective, anti-horse-thief, cemetery and opera house associations, and the Chautauqua formed November 26, '02. Kalona got a Pavilion association in '03. The list of these affairs is well nigh endless. The cemeteries round the county have a mournful interest. Many graveyards were abandoned. Oregon had two cemeteries, one in James Long's corn- field, the other "Old Camp Ground." Cedar had the Patterson, Highland the Davis Creek, Lime Creek one near II. B. Taylor's, Clay the Smith, Riverside formed an association in '82, Brighton in '67, Washington got Elm Grove in '87, and a Revolutionary memorial for Timothy Brown November 23, '03, and a bronze bust of an ideal Revolutionary soldier was set up in the Circle to his memory, the legislature appropriating five hundred dollars for it.
Endowed, as we are, with so many, many clubs, circles, societies, etc., we have had about every thing in the way of culture except mothers' con- gresses, composed, as they usually are, of childless ancient maidens who look all right in the dark. We are a cultivated community. I believe it is that serious Mr. Geo. Ade who rose to remark in one of his slang books, that "home is not a lecture bureau. I don't blame any man for marrying a woman who has got the intellectual bulge on him. In these days of clubs and reading circles, it is a cheap grade of wife who hasn't got the he-end of the outfit beaten to a pulp. Nearly every woman knows more than her husband, but it helps some if he has enough gray matter to enable him to chip in now and then, if only to give her cues. But thirty years should be a long time to sit at one end of the dining room table, feeling about the size of a cockroach."
4
CHAPTER XV.
BANKING, INSURANCE, ETC.
Money makes the mare go. Its effect on oxen is nil. Yet it depends much on the quality of the money if it makes even the mare go. All through our Colonial and Revolutionary periods, and even down to the Bryanese 'gos, the currency pestered us It would not stay put. It wobbled and was erratic. The circulating medium in colonial days was amusingly various. In Virginia tobacco, wheat, peas, Indian corn, barley, oats, silk competed with gold and silver. Massachusetts, mother of brains and culture, used Indian wampum. "Legal tender" was various, and all of it fluctuated. In 1619 the general assembly of Virginia fixed the rate at which tobacco should pass current, but the inconstant stuff had to be doctored by legislation in the years 1633, '42. '55. '66, 1727, '30 and '55. The weed, and the certificates issued in its name, constantly depreciated, and the partial destruction of stocks and the en- forced suspension of planting, were no cures. Conditions were similar in Maryland, in New England and other provinces. Massachusetts issued bills of credit as early as 1690. Rhode Island put out one million two hundred thousand of these bills. Assemblies rivaled each other in debasing the cur- rency, and in every case depreciation and repudiation ensued. The wiser mother country opposed this speculation, and that was actually one of the "grievances" that led up to the Revolution-our eranks could not freely "wild- cat." Not till the middle of the eighteenth century were gold and silver plenti- fu! enough to form a basis of currency. but even then the colonial legislatures strenuously opposed any improvement in its.quality. In 1779 the Continental Congress issued two hundred forty-two million dollars in paper, and in two years it was worthless. The foreign coins were flaunted, and shin-plasters, stump-tail, wild-eat were preferred.
Barter was pretty near as good and handy as such money. An ox was for ages the standard of value in antiquity, when the word "pecunia," meaning Rocks and herds, was coined. But in traveling, it is not exactly convenient to drive an ox along, instead of carrying a purse or check-book, and then it is difficult to make change in calves, yearlings and two year olds, or in goats,
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kids and doves, as in the Mosaic period. But that was what all he great fur companie- did in John Jacob Astor's day, and before and after that- a beaver skin was the unit of value. It did not fluctuate, for the market could not be glutted with skins.
Up to 1850 money was scarce here, and little of it was good enough to make even the mare go, let alone the oxen. Good money was saved to buy land with. Why have banks in an ox age? Barter, on the basis of a standard price for muskrat skins, sufficed when wages were but forty to fifty cents a day ; fifty cents for splitting one hundred rails ; corn, six to ten cents a bushel : wheat. twenty-five to thirty-five cents : cows, ten dollars ; yoke of oxen, forty dollars to sixty dollars : breaking prairie, two dollars per acre, done exclusively by oxen, three to five yoke to a team, swearing thrown in. No driver could lead a consistent Christian life. Engineer Theo. P. Shonts' father, a pioneer, coming west with an ox train, told a clergyman in the party. who had the best ox team, but they were always getting stuck. "Parson, you've just got to learn oxen talk. Dann 'em, sir. Cuss 'em right and left ; it's the only language they understand."
When things began to look up here in '55, with the sure prospect of the railroad coming in in '58. Norman Everson opened an Exchange and Deposit bank. June 1, '55. in the little one-story brick shop on the site of the Temple building. It was jerk-water, but the beginning of banking here, and the end of barter in Washington. Everson would fry eggs-I saw him do it in the spring of 1862-on the top of a small stove in the back room, and take in money and loan it in the front room, and between whiles he would trace Dr. Rousseau's Bertillon finger tip marks in the dust on the shelves, fumbling for Norman's apples. Later. Mayer & Rich ran a clothing store, in both the old and the new building, on the northwest corner. That bank ran till the branch of the State Bank was established.
In March, '57, Shaw, Rigour & Co .. started the Washington Deposit bank, in a small frame on the northeast corner, but they were succeeded in '58 by W. H. Jenkins & Co., who ran till the branch bank came. A. H. Pat- terson and Col. Scofield were the "& Co." On July 29, '58, notice was legally given that books would be opened for subscriptions to stock in a branch of the State Bank of Iowa, at Jenkins' bank August 19, '58. This application failed, but on March 15. '59. fifty thousand dollars were subscribed thus: G. C. Stone and J. A. Greene, two hundred shares each ; Patterson, four ; C. Craven, five ; Jos. Keck, ten : J. W. Quinn, six ; Jas. Dawson, ten ; L. Whitcomb, five ; S. G. Owen. four ; Thos. Walker, five ; Wm. Wilson, Jr., four; G. Brokaw, five : Thos. Wilson, two; Robert Dawson, ten ; Jenkins, thirty. The directors were, Greene, Stone, Holden. Keck, Jas. Dawson. In August, '61, Keck
J. R. Richards
Joseph Keck
J. H. Young
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATION
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
took Greene's place as president, and held it through the bank's existence. In that year also one J. Richardson was assistant cashier, whoever he was. The Branch began business April 19, '59. Howard M. Holden succeeded Stone as cashier till February, '61. W. H. Hubbard took the place a year, giving way to Holden who stayed till '65.
The first monthly statement, May, 59, gives assets as forty-three thousand fifty three dollars and thirty-six cents, and the balancing liabilities embrace such items as capital, twenty-five thousand dollars ; deposits, eight thousand five hundred fifty-seven dollars and thirty-five cents ; surplus, three hundred twenty-five dollars and forty-one cents. Statement May I. '65, assets, three hun- dred eighty-eight thousand eight hundred five dollars and ninety-one cents, holding such items as specie, legal tender and bank notes, one hundred thirty thousand fifty-six dollars and seventy-five cents, notes and bills discounted, one hundred fifty-six thousand three hundred nine dollars and fifty-four cents ; U. S. bonds, thirty-five thousand six hundred dollars; revenue stamps, one thousand five hundred dollars. And the balancing liabilities show capital, fifty thousand dollars ; notes of circulation, fifty-nine thousand eight hundred fifty-six dollars: deposits, two hundred forty-seven thousand forty-two dollars and thirty-eight cents. There were but three other banks in Iowa that did more business than this one. On April 30, '65, it was merged in the First National bank, with these stock-holders : Keck, one hundred and twenty- eight shares ; Holden, one hundred and forty-five; Dr. Chilcote, thirty-three ; his wife, seventeen; Shep. Farnsworth, thirty-four; Owen, forty-five ; Bro- kaw, twenty-eight ; Mrs. E. A. Banta, eight ; C. Craven, eighteen ; J. M. Craven, twelve; Jas. Dawson, three; John Moore, eleven ; Hugh Smith, eleven; J. M. Rose, six; Robert Dawson, one. The First National was organized in April, '64, but did not begin till May 1, '65. J. Keck, president ; Holden, cashier ; directors : Keck, Holden, Owen, Chilcote, Jas. Dawson. The capital stock of fifty thousand dollars was doubled October 22, '70. In '66 Owen was cashier. Farnsworth assistant, but before the year was out, Owen became vice-president, Farnsworth promoted. The next year Everson was elected vice-president ; in '68, Irving Keck was assistant cashier, Farnsworth resigned, and Henry S. Clarke served as cashier five years. Irving resigned in '69. In '71, R. R. Bowland was assistant cashier, and was promoted in '73, and the next year Wayne G. Simmons was his assistant. Bowland resigned in '82, and Simmons served in his stead, and on August 7, Frank Knox was made assistant.
On February 25, '83, the bank burned, with full half of the west side of the square, and the bank took temporary quarters in the Press building. This made Burrell a National Banker-in his mind, but he didn't "bloat," for on
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August 6, the bank moved into its new building. The old vault had proved fire-proof, but for a few days, while it was cooling enough to be opened, there was mich anxiety as to the condition of its contents.
In '84, Simmons resigned, and Chas. H. Keck became assistant cashier, and in '85 S. A. White succeeded to the cashiership and held the post till Jan- uary 10, 1902. Frank Knox had resigned, and in '90 C. H. Keck became vice-president of the First National. This is a list of its presidents : Jos. Keck. Everson, .1. H. Wallace, Win. Blair ; and its vice-presidents were: Calvin Craven, Holden. Owen, Everson, James Dawson, Hugh Smith, Leon Mayer. Wm. Blair, C. H. Keck, Sol. Rich.
At the close of the renewed twenty year charter, in 1903, the bank took the name Citizens National Bank : C. H. Keck, president. Carl M. Keck, vice. Frank R. Sage, cashier.
As the First National was our first considerable bank, our historie bank, it seemed fitting and just to go into quite full detail.
The Citizens Saving> Bank was organized in Washington, May 7, 1892. with twenty-five thousand dollars capital, which was later increased to thirty-five thousand dollars, and in 1902 to fifty-thousand dollars, and in 1908 to one hundred thousand dollars. The Citizens National Bank went into voluntary liquidation June 1, 1908, and the Savings Bank took over its busi- ness. The officers of the Savings were C. H. Keck, president : C. M. Keck, Frank Stewart and Ira Sproull, vice-presidents ; Frank R. Sage, cashier. Its last statement, May 18, 1909, gives loans, eight hundred twenty-three thousand six hundred dollars and ninety cents ; and deposits, eight hundred nineteen thousand nine hundred eighty-five dollars and forty-three cents; total foot- ings, nine hundred twenty-eight thousand nine hundred fifty-five dollars and sixty-nine cents. It should have been stated that the first officers of the Savings Bank were Jos. Keck, president; Frank Stewart, vice, and Chas. H. Keck, cashier.
J. R. and L. C. Richards and A. T. Green opened a private bank in Cor- ette's corner in '65, and ran it two years, but on June 11, '67, a corporation was formed, The Farmers and Merchants Bank, by John A. Henderson, I. N. Laughead, Dr. McClelland, Joe L. Rader, Richard brothers, Dr. Chilcote, Owen. Henderson was president ; Dr. Richards, vice : Owen, cashier. They opened in the Yellow Brick. In July, '70, Dr. Chilcote took Henderson's place. December 26, '70, they decided to merge the bank into the Washington National, with fifty thousand dollars paid up capital. Chilcote served as presi- dent till his death ; Wells became vice-president in January, '79: Dr. Richards was cashier till July 1, '78 when he resigned and John Alex. Young was elected, and still serves with ability and success. In '74 Cass Richards re-
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signed as assistant cashier and Young took his place and had four years' apprenticeship. The bank building was erected in '71. In April, '74, the capital was doubled. W. W. Wells succeeded Chilcote as president and held the place till his death in 1908, when A. H. Wallace was chosen. W. A. Cook is vice-president ; J. A. Young, cashier, and Walter F. Wilson, assistant.
Two balances will show the growth of this bank. On April 28, '71, the deposits were eighty-four thousand two hundred fifty-seven dollars and sixty-six cents ; the loans, one hundred four thousand one hundred thirty-four dollars and ninety cents ; capital, fifty thousand dollars ; total assets and lia- bilities, two hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred three dollars and sixty- eight cents. The last statement, April 28, '09, shows deposits, nine hundred thirty-one thousand three hundred eight dollars and forty-one cents ; loans, seven hundred sixty-five thousand seven hundred twenty-six dollars and seventy-three cents ; capital and surplus, each, one hundred thousand dollars ; total assets and liabilities, one million two hundred fifty-six thousand seven hundred six dollars and fifty-nine cents.
The original stock-holders were : Dr. Chileote, Michael W. Wilson, Wm. Wilson, Jr., W. W. Wells, S. G. Owen, J. A. Henderson, I. N. Laughead, J. R. and L. C. Richards-all dead, and per cents interest them no more.
The growth of all our banks was quite slow till very recent years ; it has heen rapid the last ten years, and very swift the last five. For general business was good, money plenty and of the best, farmers had bumper erops that sold at top prices, and they got out of debt, got rich, and they began slowly fifteen to sixteen years ago, to deposit in bank. Before that, when they sold stock and grain, they tucked a roll of bills in their pockets, paid their bills, and if anything was left, took it home and hid it. Now they slip it into banks, and carry checkbooks like real city business men. In mid-May this bank had eight hundred and sixty-eight check accounts, and about three-fourths of these were farmers. Same ratio in all banks, probably. Folks have never been afraid of our banks ; there was never a bank scandal, or even the suspicion of one, in either city or county. It is a remarkable testimonial to the probity and integrity of our bankers. Their conduet has taught morals as truly as our pulpits.
The rate of interest began to go down years ago. In '74 it was ten to twenty per cent, ten and a third, or thirteen, being the usual. By '80 it was down to eight and ten, and stayed till '92 or '3, dropping to six on large loans. Six per cent was legal on debts where no interest was specified, and twenty per cent was legal in contracts. Our people in late years have been flush with money, as the bank deposits show.
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