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 26
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About the only respect in which our pioneers held it over us was, they were not victimized as we are, were not eaten by swindlers, burglars, tramps, nor bitten by book agents, colporters, college and church beggars, lightning- rod and nursery stock peddlers, and all that pestiferous ilk. They had noth- ing to steal. Blessed be nothing! They had no security debts to pay. No notes were "raised" on them. They were not asked to endorse. Their hind legs were not cut off by human, or inhuman, sharks. But in thirty to forty years, when they were getting pretty well off, Vermont sharpers came here with merino rams and ewes that they sold at fabulous prices-rams with Jericho horns, alleged fifty-pound fleeces, and four million skin wrinkles, critters bound to die of hoof rot and scours. And the slick tree liars "did" them to the queen's taste, and the railroad promoters bled them copiously on subscriptions. All those rams were good for was to fight like a lot of Roose- velts. They'd back off four or five rods, run together, leap into the air. and hit heads with an impact like a railroad engine collision, then back up, licking their chops and snuffing with catarrh, run, strike again and again, till be- reaved of their few feeble wits.
As to early products of our rich soil, an average yield of corn was fifty to seventy-five bushels to the acre, sometimes one hundred ; wheat thirty,
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
thirty-five to fifty bushels ; oats seventy-five : no rye or barley till 1840. To- bacco throve and sugar beets made a good crop.
"If Iowa could only raise fruit and grass," sighed an ancient. Tradition in the Hoskins family in Clay township is, that the Jonathan, best of apples. originated in Iowa, and was named for Jonathan Hoskins, brother of the late Moses H. Hoskins, and grand-unele of the family now in Clay. He located near Salem in Henry county, in 1835, planted a seedling orchard, and one tree bore the luiscious red apple they knew as "the .Uncle Jonathan." It was propagated and grown by the Hoskins folk ever since. Really, that and the parrots are aboutt the only things worth going way back there to see and enjoy. Who cares to see seythies, spinning wheels, looms, grain cradles, clumsy hoes, wooden rakes, "slices," andirons, candle-sticks, warming-pans, and all that antique trumpery, except in a museum? Our labor-savers are infinitely better.
"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle at Cathay."
The next chapter will tell how we have ameliorated.
.
CHAPTER XVII.
"WHERE ARE WE AT?"
Mr. Littler's History of Washington county halted in the early '70s. The last history bears the date 1880. Thirty to forty years are to be accounted for. In that time we have come to ourselves, ceased to be primitive and provincial, have reached full maturity, developed on many lines, secured many of the good things going, become somewhat up to date. Let us strike in anywhere, not exact as to dates of realizing things, unmindful of logical order. and in- voice some of our blessings.
We have a court house and jail that are models, the former fire-proof as to the record vaults, and so ornate that ever since it was built everybody in town has tried to live up to it, and every tax-payer in the county is glad he owns a few bricks in it. That building became the standard of beauty in the county-seat, and has exerted an esthetic influence on every townsman and farmer who has put up a fine house. Since then, no one cared to build an ugly house or keep untidy grounds. The court house set the pace. It is rare that a building has been such a fountain of good taste and inspiration.
The public business transacted in that building and in the city hall is carried on with the nicety of clock-work. Tax levies are made to meet actual needs ; public business is intelligently and honestly conducted : the people fix the taxes, by insisting on having the so-called hest schools, the best bridges, the best roads, and, in the city, the very best public utilities, such as infinite pure water, sewerage, serviceable streets, school buildings, fire departments, etc. The bridges are now of steel, and serve the people well. They were built with such sound judgment, this county has had less loss from high water than any other in this part of the state. The first steel bridge was built at Brighton in 1867.
In the city, we began the twentieth century right. George Carlin, of Oskaloosa, in 1900, laid a few of the first cement walks here. In the spring of 1901, J. J. McKeone extended the work, and later T. Minick & Son, J. C. McCartney, Cass Slocum, Horsey, Robert Gault, Hiram Johnson, Ballou pushed it, so that board walks have largely disappeared, and women can wheel
405
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LHISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
cabs without running into cracks and giving babies jerks endangering their necks. The city is substituting cement street crossings for planks. It was a great day when cunning, canny men hit on God's art of making stone, and they do as good a job as He did, and do it lots quicker. He took eras and eons to precipitate the lime in shells and roll the weight of oceans over the beds, but a half dozen men can mix a square yard of cement in less than half an hour, and the stuff solidifies itself. Many a farmer has cemented his cellars, laid artificial stone walks, and even cemented feed lots. It beats mud all hollow, and saves grain.
And the making of plain and ornamental cement blocks for house founda- tion walls, by McKeone and the Minicks, has become a growing and promis- ing industry.
Akin to laying cement is the laying of tiles under farms. That is prob- ably the greatest hit ever made in agriculture. A farm well tiled has a base- ment story put under it. Say what you may, man's greatest foe is-water. It is likewise his best friend, when he conquers it, takes the noxious germs out of it, runs the cold stuff away from the otherwise drowning roots of his plants, and by the use of tiles makes the escaping water distil the proper amount of moisture to nourish said plant roots and aerate the soil, a function precisely like that performed by earth-worms in borings. Read Darwin's book on said worms. Draining, like frost-heaving of soil, secures a free circulation of air in the ground. The plants get food from the soil, yet they derive it primarily from the air. Carbonic acid, carbonate of ammonia, nitric acid are dissolved out of the air by falling rain, and carried into the soil. Plants get nine parts of their subsistence from the air, one part from the soil. Draining makes soil porous and ten degrees warmer, due to atmospheric circulation in the soil. Grass starts earlier in spring in drained fields ; land can be worked two to three weeks earlier. Drained earth is warmer in cold weather and cooler in very hot weather. There is no sort of doubt about the utility of drainage ; plants in swimming all the while do not thrive any more than boys equally immersed. England has demonstrated the advantage of ditching and tiling, and New England and the middle west also.
The Creator must have liked water or He would not have made so much of it. Three-quarters of the globe are covered with it. The oceans, lakes and rivers are factories where climates are made. Water, both fresh and salt, is good, but we do not wish to drown in it, nor do virtuous plants wish to do that, but as they are anchored, they cannot escape drowning, in a wet season, unless tiles rescue them.
Mountain farmers facetiously say it pays to cultivate a mountain-you have two sides to deal with, double acreage when the land is stacked up on
WASHINGTON CITY PARK, LOOKING SOUTHWEST, 1909
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATION
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IHISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
edge. A tiled farm has two sides, an upper and an under, and the latter is not a cistern. Get rid of excess water, cries the intelligent farmer ; provide constant moisture for plants in a time of drouth : that string of burned clay cylinders in the field performs both functions.
James Eckles was the pioneer tile-burner in this county, beginning in 1877, and he has sold in all seventy-eight thousand dollars' worth. Mr. Swift made them later, and now the Long Bros. are making most excellent tiles by the wholesale. Eckles sold more three-inch size than of others, and threes and fours are the favorite sizes. He got tiles for cellar drains as early as '07. The size of farm tile is dictated by the fall. Tiling is said to add twelve dol- lars to fifteen dollars per acre to the value of a farm, and the increase or excess of the first crop after tiling pays for the laying, and that of the second crop pays for the tile, and that of the third crop and all subsequent crops is clear. Hon. A. Pearson has planted two thousand dollars' worth on his splendid farm in Jackson. John Romine is a great user of tiles, and says they double the value of a farm. A. Huber is also firm in faith and practice, as was the late Jackson Roberts, and many more,
John Shields began shipping in tiles in"84-5, and has handled a thousand cars of it. They have been sold plentifully at all our railway stations, and are made at Wellman, Riverside: Kalona, Crawfordsville, and were made at Brighton. Perhaps one-third of our flat farms have been tiled. It is believed that rolling lands will eventually be tiled also. It is pleasant to think of a time when there will be a two-story Washington county, a subway under the whole of it.
We have adequate steam transportation facilities, lines of road through the north and south parts of the county and the mid-region-the Rock Island, the Burlington, the Milwaukee, Muscatine Western, lowa Central, etc. When trolleys come in the next twenty years, our cup of such blessings will run over. The great markets are annexed now to our shippers. Trolleys or electrics are bound to come. One line is projected, the Iowa City, Kalona and Wash- ington railway. The company incorporated in 1903, surveys were made and estimates of cost given, but it was not financed. The trouble is, lack of dense population ; Iowa has few tolerably large cities. So far, only the Des Moines system has paid well. Two of the officers live here. G. G. Rodman, president and Carl M. Keck treasurer.
Many years ago, the late Wm. A. Stiles proposed to build a horse-car line, running round Robin Hood's barn, to the cemeteries, depots, etc. The proj- ect was still-born. The people in the cemeteries do not travel ; they do not want to go anywhere, but just rest, and they have no nickels to pay fares.
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
The County Farm and Infirmary provide generously for the most unfor -. tunate of our poor and the mildly insane.
Few counties have ampler educational facilities, only some of the rural districts suffer, here and everywhere. There is a steady and progressive decay of country schools, and churches as well. Some districts have a half dozen or less pupils. It does not pay to hold schools in them. Consolidation of schools, on the basis of the township as the unit, is the obvious remedy. There is a tendency to larger farms. The owner of a forty or eighty can't make a living on it-must have more land, to raise stock, but can't buy our high-priced land ; he sells to a richer farmer and moves out of the state. That rich farmer keeps on adding quarter- and eighties till he can give each child of his a farm. This land-hunger has several times become acute, and there have been notable hegiras, to Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, to Canada, to Oklahoma, to Texas. to Colorado, etc. Partly speculative now. but hundreds of farmers have sought cheaper lands in the offings west. south, north. These movements of farmers have been interesting phenomena. People are as fluid as water and air. Illinois farmers in the last fifteen to twenty years sold out at one hundred and twenty-five dollars to one hundred and fifty dollars and even one hundred and seventy-five dollars per acre and came here. bidding up our land, that is as good as theirs, from twenty-five and thirty dollars to fifty dollars for Alex. Loughridge's farm, and to seventy dollars in the case of the late John Smeltzer. That price struck us all dumb. "Land can never go higher than that high water mark." all gasped, but the yeast has sent it to one hundred dollars, to one hundred and twenty-five dollars, to one hundred and fifty dollars, and it will go to three hundred dollars, mark that, and then some, give it time. B. F. Dixon has boosted our farm land, in the sixteen years of his residence here, more than any other man. He has oper- ated most actively in Cedar, Washington, Franklin and Oregon townships. He has sold some farms five and six times, at an advance each time. The first farms that sold at fifty dollars per have gone to one hundred and fifty dollars. Not one buyer failed to do well on the farm picked out for him by Dixon. He has located over seventy families from Illinois, who sold at twenty-five dollars to sixty dollars more per acre than our lands commanded, but of late years there is not that disparity-our lands are as good and valui- able as theirs. Restless, ever on the move, a man gets the wander-lust and cheap-land-hunger, and migrates, selling to a richer and firmer-rooted man ere he fits. It is a sort of hoboism. That movement reduces the number of families. Schools feel the depletion, churches also ; can't hire a teacher, must starve the preacher, so they cut off both, hitch up the fleet team, step into an auto, go to a village or city to church, send the children off to school.
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Many of the out-going farmers sold to foreigners, and there have been migrations into the county as well as out. Those industrious people, the Bohemians, have come in and multiplied so fast, they have changed the political character of townships like Iowa, English River, Highland, and Jackson, and modified the social and religious life of those communities. An- other curious migration, that has helped villages while depleting the country, is the retiring and exodus of farmers to the towns. Old, well-heeled farmers fancy they would like to spend their last days in town. They rent their farms to their boys or others, come in, buy places, keep a team, a cow or two, some chickens, a dog and cat, and in a few years leave rather reluctantly for- heaven. A few years ago there was so large a colony of ex-Jackson people in this city, they formed a club and had grubfests and high jinks. As I recall, there were then sixty to seventy families. Other townships have suffered the same way. For awhile, the exile enjoys the novelty of the town ; he goes to shows like Uncle Tom's Cabin, they are so moral, gardens some, drives out to the farm, but after all, it's like shutting up a bird or animal in a cage. He irks under the limitations. gets lonesome, loses his cud, mopes, gets a grouch, grows morbid, loses appetite, finds he has a slow liver, bad kidneys, develops locomotor ataxia, shuffles off, makes another widow. The women stand the change better than the men, for, as domestic help is scarce, they usually do their own house work, and that keeps them busy and contented. Really, the continuity of their exercise has not been broken, nor their domestic experi- ence short-circuited. So it is far more apt to be a widow than a widower. On the average, they plant an old rich farmer, retired from all work, in about three years. That is, if he is foolish enough to shut off all accustomed work, and "takes life easy," as he says.
Still, there has been in the last year or two but little land money going out of the county, save to the Oklahoma pan-handle and to Missouri. The out- going stream of cash for land is almost dry-has wholly ceased to Canada and Texas.
City Utilities-Water .- The water in our wells became suspect. Many libeled God for sending typhoid fever. He could prove an alibi. Germs in water in wells contaminated with sewage did it. In '89 a few men chipped in and imported a driller to bore a deep well on Smouse's land out east. They got unlimited water, and offered to turn the well over to the city on easy terms, but the offer was declined-too far out, for one reason. In July, 1890. J. P. Miller & Co. were hired to drill the first city artesian well. and began November 5, and stopped March 12, '91, at a depth of one thousand six hun- dred and eleven feet and two inches. For a test it was pumped ten days, at rates from ninety-five to one hundred and twelve gallons per minute, the city
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
requiring but eighty-three and one-third gallons. Ten inch casing was put down two hundred and forty-two feet, six and one-quarter inch to four hun- dred and sixty-one feet, then rock one hundred and two feet, five and one- quarter inch down to eight hundred and eighteen feet, rock five hundred and eighty-two feet, four and one-half casing to one thousand four hundred and sixty-eight feet, rock one hundred and forty-three feet, casing to bottom of well. After a second pumping, water stood forty-four feet one inch from top of casing. Quality of water good, its temperature seventy-four degrees. The cost was four thousand dollars.
Well No. 2 was drilled by O. G. Wilson in the fall of '96, and was one thousand two hundred and seventeen feet deep, with casing one thousand and ninety-four feet. The city bought the casing and paid two dollars a foot for drilling. In 1908 it was deepened to one thousand five hundred and sixty-five feet.
Well No. 3 was drilled, in 1908, by C. P. Brant, to a depth of one thou- sand eight hundred and six feet, costing about nine thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. The original plant, wells, buildings, standpipe, etc., cost thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and forty-two dollars and one cent. Water rents have not yet equalled the operating expenses, cost of extensions of mains, interest on bonds, etc., but who cares? We have plenty of wholesome water for domestic use, fire protection, lawns, etc. We have about eight miles of mains, and are putting in an universal meter system, and receipts will come up. The last of the bonds, five per cent, is due in 1911. Interest on bonds for ten years, operating expenses, fuel, incidentals, street corner drinking and park fountains, watering troughs, bring the total cost of water works, exclu- sive of well No. 3, up to one hundred and five thousand three hundred and thirty-eight dollars and sixty-three cents. With that well added, nine thou- sand seven hundred and fifty dollars, the grand total is one hundred and fifteen thousand and eighty-eight dollars and sixty-three cents.
State chemist's analysis of the water is appended :
Mineral analysis of water shows as follows: Silicic acid (SiO2), .5599 gr. per U. S. gallon. Potassium chloride, .6410 gr. per U. S. gallon. Sodium chloride ( NaCl), 6.2655 gr. per U. S. gallon. Sodium sulphate ( Na2SO), 36.3261 gr. per U. S. gallon. Sodium bisulphate ( NaHSO4), 29.1590 gr. per U. S. gallon. Calcium sulphate (CaSO4), 7.0332 gr. per U. S. gallon. Magnesium sulphate (MgSO4), 12.4800 gr. per U. S. gallon. Sulphuric acid ( H2SO4), 26.2139 gr. per U. S. gallon. Aluminum oxide (Al2O3), .0583 gr. per U. S. gallon.
4
Photo by D.S. Cole
ARTESIAN WELLS WATER WORKS, WASHINGTON
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATION
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Ferric oxide ( Fe203), .2099 gr. per U. S. gallon.
These determinations are as would be computed in the regular manner. The iron and aluminum should be indicated as sulphate probably. The water is acid due to the presence of sulphuric acid, which with the large amount of sulphates present must indicate that the water comes from coal measures. The large amount of sodium and magnesium sulphates, known as glauber and Epsom salts respectively, would of course act as a fine cathartic agent. The presence of the free mineral acid would not be so desirable as a mineral water. This, however, could be neutralized by use of a little alkali which would then make it a very valuable mineral water.
We do not find the presence of any rare mineral in the water as first sus- pected. This water would compare very favorably with many celebrated mineral waters.
What is under us? That all may know what, at least to the depth of one thousand eight hundred and six feet, is below, and learn how Nature built up the globe beneath our feet during, eternities of time, read this log of the driller of well No. 3:
DEPTII
FORMATION
1- 65 65- 70 Quicksand
Subsoil white and blue clay
.
70- 105
Blue clay
Pleistocene.
105- 117
Quicksand
Blue clay
117- 235 235- 242 242- 360
White shale
360- 385
Brown shale
Kinderhook Shale.
385-435 435- 475 475 -- 527
Brown limestone
Gray limestone
Devonian Limestone.
527- 534
Brown limestone
Gray limestone
534- 563 563- 605 605- 620 620- 700
Blue shale
Brown shale
Blue shale
Maquoqeta Shale.
700- 735
Brown shale, sandy
735-763
Blue shale
Quicksand and gravel.
Blue shale
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
703- 790
Brown limestone, shelly
700- 800
Brown limestone, hard.
800 -- 1028 Gray limestone
Galena
1028 -- 1037
Brown limestone, hard.
Trenton.
1037-1050
Brown limestone, hard.
1050-1000
Gray limestone
Blue shale and sandstone. 1 St. Peter
1000-1108 1108-1211
White sandstone
Sandstone.
1211 1215
Blue shale
1215-1230
Red limestone shells, hard
1230-1353
Gray limestone, hard.
1353-1305
White sandstone, soft.
1365-1375
Red limestone
1375-1380
White sandstone, soft.
1380-1400
Gray limestone
Oneata Limestone.
1.400-1480
Gray limestone, soft.
1480-1500
White limestone, hard.
1590-1670
White sandstone, soft.
1670-1700
Gray limestone, hard.
1700-1740
White sandstone, soft.
1740-1803 Gray limestone, hard.
1803-1808 Pink limestone, hard.
PIPE.
14-inch extends from the surface down 256 ieet. IO-inch extends from the surface down Gic feet. 8-inch extends from the surface down 1470 feet.
WATER LEVEL.
At 500 feet, 200 feet from surface. At 563 feet, 120 feet from surface. At 1215 feet, 110 feet from surface. At 1365 feet. 95 feet from surface.
At 1670 feet, 83 feet from surface. At 1808 feet, 80 feet from surface.
After fifty-three hours' pumping test, water level stood seventy feet from surface.
It is enrions-water. The St. Peter porous stone and the Oneata sand- stone, dipping down so deep here, crop out several hundred miles to the north of us. Rain and melting snows up there sink into these inclined planes of rock, and our artesian water was surface water filtering down those rocky
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
sponges. It comes down to us from the surface in long cascades under ground. Our deep-seated rocks came up, like whales to spout and breathe, far to the north, just as the shales that once roofed coal beds liere went into the air by erosion and the coal measures exlialed with them. Go west, said shales deepen and protect the coal deposited in Keokuk, Mahaska, Monroe and other counties.
Why have the ancient springs dried up? They have not dried up, though we mistakenly so stated. They flow merrily and sparkle and sing yet. 'Tis so here, and in Ohio, and in New England. A score of years ago, I visited my ancestral farm home in Sheffield, Berkshire county, Mass., and at the milk house the famous spring that delighted father's eyes when a boy a century and more ago, was boiling and bubbling still, pouring a stream of pure, cold, soft water as thick as one's thigh. What feeds them? Ultimately, it is the sun evaporating water from the oceans and sending the vapor clouds over the continents. For Europe is full of springs, medicinal and other. So long as sun and seas and trade winds do business at the old stands, waters will gush out of the depths of the earth as from the rock that Moses smote. Many states of our Union exploit commercially the alleged healing waters. Our federal geological survey shows that we drink over fifty-five million gallons of bottled waters each year, and fifty-two millions of these come from do- mestic springs. Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Massachusetts, the Vir- ginias and Indiana lead. It is also queer that medicinal springs vary in strength of charge, lose their virtue or suffer a diminution of it. But, praise be, the live springs stay, and gush, bubble, sing, go on forever. "Why have Iowa rivers ceased to be navigable?" The erosion of plowed fields Put Iowa in universal grass, with timber along the streams, as she was clothed in 1830, the creek and river beds will scour ; remove dams, and boating will again be possible, and our opaque flowing waters will be as clear as New England brooks and Colorado crystal streams.
Light .- About 1879, DeGalleford, who had put in a gas plant, and strug- gled with it, borrowing money of Mr. Everson till he had to take the elephant, wandered elsewhere, and Everson sat up nights with the vexatious thing, the unknown business worrying even him. He used to emerge from cellars, reading meters, with a huge hat on, so festooned with cobwebs it looked like a cocoon. Still more embarrassing and distressing was this inherited business to his inexperienced widow, and in sheer desperation she sold the plant to Win. Smouse in 1895, and he organized a stock company, The Washington Illuminating Co. In 1906, they sold the works to The Iowa Gas and Electric Co. (Carson brothers) for thirty-six thousand five hundred dollars. They are this spring replacing mains, rusted by thirty years' service, with larger
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