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 5
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it, and frost compacted it into ice; it became a toboggan by sheer gravity, and started slowly down the grade of the country. That is, it was a glacier, growing ever thicker, and this ice-sheet reached to the latitude of St. Louis before it melted. No vegetation but arctic could live amid its terminal moraines, and arctic plants held on by pure grit-those that were not run over by the planers of ice; and it is the bark, cones and bits of woods from these mangled forests that we bring up in our well-borings. The imagination staggers at thought of computing the millions on millions of cubic miles of rock pomace this gigantic ice sledge brought down from the north to scatter as soil deeply over British America and the northern part of the United States, filling the gorges and valleys with drift.
Professor Samuel Calvin, of the Iowa State University, and state geolo- gist, tells how the soils of Iowa were produced by the action of ice :
"Glaciers and glacial action have contributed in a very large degree to the making of our magnificent state. What Iowa would have been had it never suffered from the effects of the ponderous ice sheets that successively over- flowed its surface, is illustrated, but not perfectly, in the driftless area. Here we have an area that was not invaded by glaciers. Allamakee, parts of Jackson, Dubuque, Clayton, Fayette and Winneshiek counties belong to the driftless area. During the last two decades numerous deep wells have been bored through the loose surface deposit, and down into the underlying rocks. The record of these wells shows that the rock surface is very uneven. Before the glacial drift which now mantles nearly the whole of Iowa was deposited, the surface had been carved into an intricate system of hills and valleys. There were narrow gorges hundreds of feet in depth, and there were rugged, rocky cliffs and isolated buttes corresponding in height with the depth of the valleys.
"To a person passing from the drift-covered to the driftless part of the state, the topography presents a series of surprises. The principal drainage streams flow in valleys that measure from the summits of the divides, six hundred feet or more in depth. The upper Iowa river, in Allamakee county. for example, flows between picturesque cliffs that rise almost vertically from three to four hundred feet, while from the summit of the cliffs the land rises gradually to the crest of the divide, three, four, or five miles back from the stream. Tributary streams cut the lateral slopes and canyon walls at intervals. These again have tributaries of the second order. In such a region a quarter section of level land would be a curiosity. This is a fair sample of what Iowa would have been had it not been planed down by the leveling effects of the glaciers. Soils of uniform excellence would have 5
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been impossible in a non-glacial Iowa. The soils of Iowa have a value equal to all of the silver and gold mines of the world combined.
"And for this rich heritage of soils we are indebted to great rivers of ice that overflowed Iowa from the north and northwest. The glaciers in their long journey ground up the rocks over which they moved and mingled the fresh rock flour from granites of British America and northern Minnesota with pulverized limestones and shales of more southern regions, and used these rich materials in covering up the bald rocks and leveling the surfaces of pre-glacial Iowa. The materials are in places hundreds of feet in depth. They are not oxidized or leached, but retain the carbonates and other soluble constituents that contribute so largely to the growth of plants. The physical condition of the materials is ideal, rendering the soil porous, facilitating the distribution of moisture, and offering unmatched opportunities for the em- ployment of improved machinery in all the processes connected with cultiva- tion. Even the driftless area received great benefit from the action of glaciers, for, although the area was not invaded by ice, it was yet to a large extent covered by a peculiar deposit called loess, which is generally con- nected with one of the later sheets of drift. The loess is a porous clay, rich in carbonate of lime. Throughout the driftless area it has covered up many spots that would otherwise have been bare rocks. It covered the stiff intract- able clays that would otherwise have been the only soils of the region. It in itself constitutes a soil of great fertility. Every part of Iowa is debtor in some way to the great ice sheets of the glacial period.
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"Soils are everywhere the product of rock disintegration, and so the quality of the soils in a given locality must necessarily be determined in large measure by the kind of rock from which they were derived.
"From this point of view, therefore, the history of Iowa's superb soils begins with first steps in rock making. The very oldest rocks of the Mis- sissippi valley have contributed something to making our soils what they are, and every later formation laid down over the surface of Iowa, or regions north of it, has furnished its quota of materials to the same end. The history of Iowa's soils, therefore, embraces the whole sweep of geologic times.
"The chief agents concerned in modifying the surface throughout most of Iowa since the disappearance of the latest glaciers have been organic, al- though the physical and chemical influences of air and water have not been without marked effect. The growth and decay of a long series of generations of plants have contributed certain organic constituents to the soil. Earth worms bring up fine material from considerable depths and place it in posi-
TIMOTHY BROWN MONUMENT IN ELM GROVE CEMETERY A Revolutionary Soldier
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
AFTOR, LENOX 44.DEN FOUNDATION
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tion to be spread out upon the surface. They drag leaves and any manag- able portion of plants into their burrows, and much of the material so taken down into the ground enriches the ground to a depth of several inches. The pocket gopher has done much to furnish a surface layer of loose, mellow, easily cultivated and highly productive soil. Like the earth worm, the gopher for century after century has been bringing up to the surface fine ma- terial, to the amount of several tons annually to the acre, avoiding necessarily the pebbles, cobbles and coarser constituents. The burrows collapse, the undermined bowlers and large fragments sink downwards, rains and winds spread out the gopher hills and worm castings, and the next year, and the next, the process is repeated ; and so it has been for all the years making up the centuries since the close of the glacial epoch. Organic agents in the form of plants and burrowing animals have worked unremittingly through many centuries, and accomplished a work of incalculable value in pulverizing, mellowing and enriching the superficial stratum, and bringing it to the ideal condition in which it was found by the explorers and pioneers from whose advent dates the historical period of our matchless Iowa."
Did Adam Ritchey, Simpson Goble, Billy Moore and the rest stop to think of all this preliminary work of the infinite Providence, to get Wash- ington county ready for them? Probably not. If they had realized that truth, it would either have made them humble and devout, or so stuck up over their implied or assumed personal importance, they would have burst with conceit.
And now, having conquered Washington county from the chaos of "Louisiana," and got rid of the Indians, and paid our respects to the In- dians' predecessors, the Mound Builders, and to the still more ancient, and probably the real, aborigines, the race of the Stone Age, who fashioned all these delightful stone implements and ornaments, and who had the grit to stick out here the glacial period by sharing caves with shaggy bears and saying boldly to them, "Come out of those furs and skins, I want 'em as clothes for myself and my family, and while I'm about it, I'll put your fat carcass in my pantry, where it will come handy in my business ;" and having cast a long backward glance at the process by which nature provided a tempting soil for our waiting settlers, not nomads, for farmers instead of hunters, let us ring up the curtain and show a modern scene.
Exeunt, Reds ; enter, Whites.
CHAPTER V.
INVENTORY OF THE PIONEER PERIOD.
The Indians gone from a part of the county, their lands surveyed and put on the market, white settlers began to come in, in 1835. It will be con- venient to group them by years in the order of their coming.
1835 .- Adam Ritchey and John Black-no more, unless it be Tommy Tucker. They were Pennsylvanians, but had moved to Illinois, to be ready to cross into Canaan when the treaties were ripe. Both returned to Illinois in the fall. The Crooked creek region looked good to them. Before the forties no settlements were risked on the "prairie," which is French for "meadow." All stuck to the brush with the unerring instinct of a squirrel and 'coon for available trees. Fuel, cabin, fence and furniture material and shelter were on the wooded streams.
Ritchey put in the winter bragging about the country, its assets of soil, climate, water courses, timber, grasses, and his hot air inflated his brothers Matthew and Thomas, Mr. Humphrey and a few others.
1836 .- They came with him in February, crossing the Mississippi river on the ice, staked out claims on Crooked creek, but all save Adam went back. Black moved to Henry county. Adam built a cabin near the spot where the road running south from Crawfordsville crosses the creek. He fell sick. Friendly Indians ministered to him several weeks. At last he returned to Illinois, and came back with his boy Matthew, aged fifteen, and his daughter Sarah, thirteen years old. The lad drove the team, the lass kept house, and Adam made fence, and when a bit of corn was planted, he went home to fetch the rest of the family. By October they were. settled. Little Sarah in due time became Mrs. S. McCulley.
Ritchey was our first man. How happy that his name was Adam, for this county was Eden number two. What a pity we have no picture of him. R. T. McCall says he was a quite robust man, thick-set, roundish, plump body, full of energy. But we cannot see him from those few strokes. What the color of his eyes and hair? the timbre of his voice? what his habits and tastes ? We ache to apply a sort of ancestor-worship to this man, and he is so
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vague. Yet hie looms on the imagination as a large, imposing figure, as Abraham in the dim fore-world stands as a massive column. Sentiment re- quires that our forebear, Adam Ritchey, should be a giant.
John Black makes no such appeal, but he shrinks into a Mormon and drifted to Utah. How many wives he amassed history saith not, but really "this is too much," as Artemus Ward murmured when Brigham Young's widows fell on his neck and wept. Adam, too, soon left us, selling his claim to the Matthew Moorehead folk, one of the notably fine families of the olden time, and in all their years shedding sweet influences like the Pleiades. Mr. Moorehead was long a justice of the peace, and kept a sort of sub- tavern. He and Robert Glasgow were elected members of the eighth general assembly.
Ritchey went down the river, built a mill in 1839, and died in 1848. He and his brother were killed, hauling barrels from Brighton. But before he goes, let it be stated that he was the first justice of the peace appointed by the territorial governor, for this county, and in the summer of 1837 he mar- ried John Hulock and Nancy Goble, the first wedding in the county, and he farther distinguished himself by coming up on the blind side of the stork- his daughter Isabelle Ritchey was the first baby born in the county. Glory enough !
Reader, would you not like to know all about that wedding? How John was dressed, perhaps in "conventional black," and Nancy in linsey-woolsey, with prairie flowers in her belt and delicious wild thorn blossoms in her hair. Was there a feast, a dance, a tour, a charivari, a serenade, a reception ? Had Nancy been caught out in many preliminary "showers?" Was there a gold ring on the third finger of her left hand? How did John propose? on his knees, think? Did Nancy say "yes" so softly and still that the recording angel had to say, "Ahem! Louder, please!" How can I be expected to write an authentic history when Clio, Muse of History, denies me all the essen- tial raw material ?
Editor John H. Pearson says the bridal parties were Harrison Goble and Lydia Osborn.
Well, what is history, anyhow? Napoleon said it was a fable that had been agreed upon. Let both records stand. Two couples could have more bliss than one pair. Perhaps Adam married both. If so, I hope he kissed both brides, enjoyed it, and counted it a good day's work.
In the spring, another columnar figure moved across our spaces-Richard Moore, of Indiana. He made a claim in what is Washington township. His sons Amos and Thaddeus, and son-in-law John C. Maulsby took claims also, and all went back in the fall and brought their families-Richard's wife
Pioneer Transportation
Log cabin in which first court was held
Old "Elm" Schoolhouse
Old Bunker Mills Built in 1842; photo taken 1881
PIONEER SCENES AND EVENTS
THE NEW YORK I UBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX LITEN FOUNDATION
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Rebecca and sons Amos, Thaddeus, William, Jesse, Dick, jr., and girls Rebecca and Averila. Mrs. Maulsby came, George Baxter, Wm. Hunter, John Mosteller and wife, though the latter died on the way, in September. A coffin was made of puncheons, split from sections of a log, rudely fitted to- gether, and in that she sleeps till the trump shall sound.
Amos' claim became the James Looney farm, Thaddeus' the John C. Malin place, and Maulsby's the Michael Wilson farm. Mosteller and Wm. Moore settled in Marion.
These folk were well-to-do in the east. and brought household goods, horses, young cattle, sheep, hogs, four yoke of oxen, chickens, apple and garden seeds. They had force enough to build cabins and make prairie hay. Richard's log cabin was double and very swell, floored with puncheons, roofed with clap-boards laid on logs and weighted with poles, and it took the shine off from all the other architecture. It belonged to the order of Renais- sance Americano Romanesque.
At Christmas a blizzard stampeded the cattle, and most of them perished. Indians at the village a mile from this city, in the absence of their chief, and mad because their annuity had not been paid in March, and so dissatisfied with the survey and the treaty boundary line that they tore up the stakes, sent a protesting delegation to Washington, D. C., and, getting no redress, vented their spleen on the Moores and especially on Thomas Baker who had settled near where Washington now stands, and he was persona non grata. The reds conceded that the Moores were well within their legal rights. The village was red-hot. Baker stuck till May 31, in spite of the advice of the whites. The Indians burned him out, and he went to Ritchey's, made a claim and worked it till the second purchase. Later, he was given exemplary dam- ages and full remuneration from the Indians, through the general govern- ment assessing them. Thaddeus and Wm. Moore were warned by the un- reasonable redskins, who went to the boys where they were plowing, and tried to scare the oxen by waving blankets in front of them, and clawing sod back into the furrow. And a temporary upstart chief with a gang armed with war-clubs and new guns threatened with infinite chatter and clamor. Some reds, camped on Crooked creek near Ritchey's, got into a heated confab, struck pugilistic attitudes, when a Ritchey knocked one brave down. That tickled the other Indians, and they guyed the bored warrior and laughed-it was such a good joke. The Moores thought it prudent to go to New London, where they stayed till 1839, and, returning, found cabins, fences, etc., intact, and the Indians gone. Amos and William Moore held their claims longest, and were our oldest settlers at their deaths.
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Another Cleopatra Needle in our landscape was David Goble, in Oregon township, with his sons David, George, Simpson and daughter Nancy, and young Oliver Sweet, who came from Kentucky August I, crossing the river on a flat boat at Flint Hills, now Burlington. They drove forked posts in the ground, put clapboards a-top and hung quilts on sides and rear for tapestries, and lived cosily till after haying when they built a cabin of hewn logs, sixteen by eighteen, and made another so near that a door connected both. It was the first house in that township. David was a Daniel Boone sort of man, hunter, trapper, and lover of solitude and plenty of room. Daniel, when he heard of a man within a hundred miles of him, felt crowded and stifled. Goble's boon companion was Reuben B. Davis, who settled on a creek in Iowa township, that took his name. They made money on furs. Goble was a prominent man in county affairs, but sold out, went to Kansas, and died in 1855.
Milo Holcomb and John B. Bullock, of Illinois, settled at Hoosier Bend, on the site of what was later the Van Doren mill, had a post, and traded with Indians. In 1839. Holcomb married, in Monmouth, Rachel Jackson, sister to the first Mrs. Joseph Keck and Mrs. Martha Jackson Burrell, and he brought her home with the June roses, but the Indians, who gave her an unique reception. were more picturesque in scarlet blankets, red petticoats, feathers, buckskin raiment and other brilliant toggery, than the prairie flow- ers. They turned out en masse, four or five hundred of them, and it was a wonderful scenic festival.
Those white men built a saw mill on Crooked creek, and sawed the first lumber in the county, late in 1836. In 1839, John Jackson, father to Mrs. Holcomb, came to her home and got out lumber for the first two-story house in Washington or the county. That place was a knot of first things. Hol- comb was the first sheriff, he ran the first store, ground the first grist in '39. At the mill was a post-office called "Marcellus." That two-story house stood on the site of the Joseph Keck brick, now a sanitarium. After the Jacksons, Mr. Keck lived in it, and when he built the brick, it was moved to Jefferson street, and still serves, owned and occupied by S. P. Kiefer. John Jackson was one of the earliest surveyors, and was deputy sheriff when his boat went over Skunk river dam and he was drowned, as was also his son John, years later, when he was post-master in Washington.
Godfrey Augustine came to Dutch creek and sort o' settled, though the Indians still owned the land, but they were kind to him. War parties met nearby, once, and had a skirmish, and a bullet made one "good " Indian. Augustine worked two winters in Wisconsin woods, then at packing in Burlington, but when the land was surveyed and title clear under the new
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treaty, he bought two hundred acres at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre.
1837 .-- Few came this year, on account of the grouchy Indians. But Silas Washburn and Morgan Hart reached Brighton. Washburn's claim in- cluded the mill site, and he made a cabin on the national bank lot. They slept in their clothes, on prairie hay, in a shanty, that winter, and did not have carpet, lace curtains, piano, silverware, napkins and finger bowls, but they had health plus. Hart became a prominent man, serving with superb common sense on the board of commissioners.
Josiah Smart kept a trading post on the north side of Crooked creek, and traded with the Indians, and left when they did. For several years a large section of tree bark, bearing Indian picture writing on its inner surface, lay on his store roof, and finally rotted. If only some one of archeological tastes had preserved it, varnished it, given it to the county historical society, it would now be worth its weight in bank notes, if not in gold. It is said that Smart's wife was a full-blooded squaw. She did not organize the first W. C. T. U. in this county, and rarely wore a blue or white ribbon. She advertised in her own proper, or improper, person her husband's goods. The choicest he kept locked in a valise, but she is charged with burglarizing that, and then proceeded to publish the glad tidings of great joy to the bucks and squaws, and they raised more hades than maize. If all is true they say about her, she was the first "horrid example" in our history. When she was jagged with this sort of locomotor ataxia she could walk seven Indian trails at once, whether they ran parallel or at right angles, and give the war-whoop in solo or chorus. I shall always regret that editor Heacock never met this ornament of her, sex.
J. W. Neal came to Crawford township and built a cabin south of the bridge across the branch south of Crawfordsville. There was a block house or fort that he shared the first night, and seven families had gathered there, but six of them moved out. Neal kept guard all night, but the Indians swarming all around made no attack. Other comers were Isaac Pence and family and his son Samuel and family, with the Gobles, and settled in Craw- ford on a claim sold by John Drake for two hundred dollars, improvements thrown in; and Thomas and John Caldwell, Henry Osborne, Wm. Huston, James McElroy, Wm. Wooley, Wm. Kinnear, Wm. Kinsley, David Sykes, Nathan Griffith. Mr. Kinsley started a nursery in '37 or '38, and many an orchard was its offspring.
Wm. L. Harvey located on what was later better known as the Stewart farm on the Brighton road a mile from Washington.
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The scene shifts to English river, where there was more brush. Joseph Edelstein, a Swiss, made a cabin, but it burned before the family came from Ohio, and they holed up in a cave awhile. He was farmer and wagon- maker, and, being a Catholic, he attracted settlers of that faith.
In the fall James, Thomas and Samuel Watters and Joseph, Hiram, Benjamin and Robert Wasson went hunting on English river in Lime creek township, and in camp noted a promising mill site, made a claim and cabin and left Hiram Wasson in it to hold the fort. A few weeks later, N. W. and Daniel McFarland came, staked claims, including the mill site and land to the east, built a cabin and took squatter sovereignty. But the first set of men won out, and built a mill the next year on the north side of the river. It burned in '48, was rebuilt, and used as a saw mill till '56. The present mill was erected in '50, and does a good business.
The records are conflicting as to arrivals in
1838-39 .- The Lime Creek comers were Marcus Hull, Benj. Parker, W. A. Davisson, Josiah Morrow, John Wasson, W. G. Griffith, Wm. Bevans, W. L. Hewett, H. H. Willson, George Pinkerton, John R. King, Merlin Carpenter, Messrs. Perrington, Smith, Gilliam, Roberts and the Rickeys. Wassonville was laid out in 1840.
Wm. Bussey located near Colonel Palmer's farm, and on October 25 Ann was born to him, the first child the stork brought into "Widow" Washington.
Wm. Myers settled on what is now the county farm, and Captain More- land, who had quit steamboating, bought a farm on the Brighton road, four miles from this city, and began to give his neighbors specimens of the raciest, most vivid and picturesque English heard up to date.
The year 1838 is credited with John and James Neal, Daniel Powers, the Crills, Conrad Temple, John Lewis, George Farrier, Robert Risk, Seneca Beach, Francis Thorn, Parks, John Grimsby, Thomas Wilson. Most of this invoice went towards Brighton.
This good bunch came in 1839: Thomas Ritchey, the Gordons, the Longs, John Hobbs, James Dawson, one of the biggest brained men among all the emigrants ; Wm. Ayres, David Bunker, a large personality ; the Moons, Abe Custer, Gideon Bear, the unique ; John ("Paddy") Connelly, the first Irishman in the county ; Jonathan Wilson, T. Neal, Joseph Bealman, Joseph .B. Davis, Nathan Baker, Edward Clemons, and their families, for nearly all the men were married.
John Adams arrived from Ohio in Washington, October 17, '39, bought two lots on the southeast side of the square and built a log cabin fourteen by sixteen, and a smithy sixteen by sixteen, the first "improve- ments" here.
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WILLIAM H. JENKINS
MARGARET REISTER JENKINS PIONEER PRIVATE BANKER AND WIFE
AL
JOSEPH SOMMER
ELIZABETH SOMMER
PIONEERS IN MARION TOWNSHIP
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATION
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
This Adams is sometimes called Joseph, and generally "Quincy" Adams. It seems he came the last week in 1839, with Jesse Ashby and Jonathan and Michael Wilson, yet the last three are credited as October arrivals. Never mind. Adams bought lots 3 and 4, block 22, on the corner of Iowa and Jef- ferson streets. His furniture was scanty, bunks for beds, floors of punch- eons, while most settlers had dirt floors, but Quincy was not stuck up. That winter of '39-40 was very cold ; snow drifted thro' his roof and lay ten inches deep on his bed, equal to arctic down.
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