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 6
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He was proud, however, September 22, 1840, when his Margaret was born, the first birth in this city. She is still living, as Mrs. John Farra. As if this was not glory enough, Quincy wanted the credit of the creation of the first boy in town, and Henry arrived, date not given so far as I can learn-no matter. The jesters called the house "No 7" for some reason I know not what, but "Stork's Nest" would be more appropriate.
John Diehl, a German Lutheran, reached English river, saw Elizabeth Spaner. and his fate was sealed.
Dr. Simeon Teeples and Dr. Stone were the earliest pillists in the county. Teeples went to the territorial legislature, and did not feel dis- graced by it. The first election, held in 1840, took place in this house.
Ab. Owens, A. H. and Charles Haskell also came, and the Haskells built a mill, but the March freshet took it out, and in trying to save the timbers, in a boat, Charles was drowned. Two years later a dog, tugging at a bone buried in the sand, revealed his skeleton. A mill was not built till 1841. It was sold to N. McClure.
Other home builders on that river were Wm. Duvall, C. D. Gillam, Nixon Scott, Ab. Tansey, and Reuben Davis erected the first frame house, sixteen by thirty-six, weather-boarded with shaved clapboards, split puncheon floors, shingled, a stone chimney in the center, and two fireplaces. It was meant for a tavern on the military road.
That "Haskell mill site claim" on the English, was the first transfer of real estate in the county, and the conveyance was acknowledged in December, 1839.
Cyrus Cox came from Michigan, Stephen and Jonathan Bunker and George and John O'Loughlin from Indiana, S. B. Cooper from New York, B. Criswell from Illinois, Wm. Shaw from Ohio, John and Joel Tyler. It is said that two men claimed the whole township, George O'Loughlin all south of the river. Jonathan Bunker all north of it-in vain.
Clay township was lively about this time. Martin Bedwell and John Pennington came from Indiana. C. L. Morgan is of the fifth generation still living on his place.
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Moses Hoskins, Ellis Walton, Richard Disberry, John McClintic, Robert McCarty, and Robert Pringle came. Walton liked not only the country, but Elizabeth J. Edwards, and 'Squire Orson Kinsman married them July I, '40. With great firmness of spirit, they did not wait till the Fourth. The stork brought Disberry a son William, September 25, '40. McClintic is the progenitor of all the Macs in Clay and Brighton. Walton was a mighty hunter and a warm friend of Chief Wapello.
Mr. Roberty, a bee man, dates from this period. All the Pringles in that region sprang from Robert.
It is worth noting that Clay township, that has always been a canny, thrifty New England or Yankee settlement, furnishes the first case of con- sumption cured by deep breathing of pure air. When Julius Wolcott came of age, the doctors gave him the cheerful information that he could not live three years. Julius "guessed" not. Every day he went out doors and inade a business and religion of breathing deeply twenty minutes. In six months his chest had expanded three inches, the lungs were healed, and he lived to be over seventy, and died from other causes. The doctors never forgave him for proving they were bad guessers.
John Brier settled on the Indian burial ground at Sandy Hook, with reds all around, both quick and dead. His father John came also, and loaned Mr. Pickerell money to build the first mill there, but it burned.
The old settlers were always talking, at the celebrations, about the early hard times, the privations, distress, etc., but Dan Cupid jollied them right along. In that year Brighton had its first wedding-Orson Kinsman and Hannah Dinsmore-and Philo Dray was born, and the Fourth of July celebrated, Horace Carley reading the Declaration, and Mr. Calkins orating.
1840 .- English river was re-inforced by John R. Hawthorn, John Hol- land, a Thompsonian doctor, and R. McReynolds, a farmer and preacher, who married the first pair of lovers up that way. Frank Forbes, Elizabeth Holland and H. S. Guy also came.
Toward Richmond, George O'Loughlin and Elvira Smith were the first to wed, and their baby was the first fruits of the stork aforesaid. Its death a year later was the first tragedy.
Other comers were Henry Rogers, Lewis Vanbuskirk, W. S. Britton, Eli and Ephraim Adams, Levi Randall, and Mr. Ramsey who gave his name to the stream he settled on, where he built a small grinding mill, the first in the township.
Jonathan Bunker and Mary Randall were married by 'Squire Gillam in 40, and Mr. Gilchrist and Cynthia Tyler. Cyrus Cox gained a daughter and Daniel Bunker lost one. All these incidents were township "firsts."
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MR. AND MRS. MICHAEL HAYES
MR. AND MRS. ALEXANDER YOUNG
MR. AND MRS. SIMPSON GOBLE
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENCY TILLEN FOUNDATICI
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Mr. Clark was the first settler in Highland. It was slow work there. The next settler was Ahira D. Liming, in '41, and the third was John Forbes in 42.
In the spring, Alexander Young came from Rush county, Indiana, built a hewn log cabin twenty-six by twenty, in Cedar township, which is still standing, and is pictured elsewhere. The Youngs say there was not a house in Washington, and only five houses between Washington and the head of Crooked creek then, but, surely, Mr. Adams' cabin and smith shop in this city were up.
John Ingham, from whom all the Inghams and Hortons in Clay de- scended bought two hundred and forty acres, but he sold out and went to Peoria, but got home-sick, came back, bought one hundred and sixty acres, and died in '60.
Daniel Powers built the second house in Washington in '40, a double log, one and a half story, four rooms, very swell indeed, style of architecture Greco-Romano Renaissance, to be exact. It stood on the Yellow Brick cor- ner, and had an elevator plying between the first and second floors, a rung ladder. Women were rather disinclined to use it when folks were around. The house was the first tavern, Bloomer Thompson succeeding Powers. When General A. C. Dodge and Alfred Rich stumped for congress, they lodged there one night, and for supper had tea and onions. There was noth- ing else in the house, Bloomer being off to mill in Des Moines county, but he got back in the night, and the great men had a good breakfast. If an Indian had run that house, they would have got boiled white dog, sure. They raised white dogs for the table.
The authorities conflict as to the Yellow Brick building. One says Powers built it, another credits it to A. Lee, who came here to build a jail in '41 ; he could find no house for the family, and put up that log house, hauling brick for chimneys and fireplaces from below Crawfordsville, and also made a one-story addition on the west for dining and sitting room. There was lots of custom-men seeking homes and staying the night, and members of the legislature, from south and west, going to and from Iowa city were guests. February and March, '42, were very cold, and the five fireplaces burned thirty cords of wood.
The next comer was John Dougherty, en route to Missouri with merchan- dise ; he was so struck with the place, he rented the lower room in the tavern just below the elevator, and set up groceries and notions, in 1840, but he soon had a rival in Almon Moore from Wapello, who built a one-story frame next door west of tavern, and he so mixed up his family with the stock that
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patrons hardly knew which to take, a wife or a bolt of muslin, a mother or a gingham dress, a kid or a bushel of potatoes.
Then, to remove the reproach of this being a dry town, Amos Embree put up a one and a half story log cabin on the south side, with a shed attached to hold the booze. To deflogisticate the liquor, he hitched the casks and barrels to the water-wagon and enfeebled the stuff with aqua pura to such a degree that it would freeze o' nights. An early morning customer was tickled to see the good Amos kick a long icicle off the spigot. That ice wore high colors, too, like a red-purple over-ripe nose. "Patrons grew censorious because the liquor was so affected by chronic fatigue, he lost his business and went to Richmond. But Amos was a much more honorable retailer than later dealers who used to drain into their casks rain-water from bar- rels at the house corner, and soaks complained of wigglers, the larvae of mosquitoes, that tickled their throats and nested in the holes of their teeth. Besides, these dealers slipped into the barrels of whisky, enfeebled by water, such compensatory condiments as plug tobacco, rusty nails, red and green peppers, pints of red and black ants, etc., to give tang, bite and qui vive to the juice, and by the time a man got four or five fingers of that hot lava in his system he fancied he was a company of Wide Awakes marching gloriously in a torchlight procession. By morning the enthusiast was cured of his delusion, though his head was as big as the dome on a building full of clanging bells. Amos had an honest wife, who made for sale delicious pies, cakes, etc.
1840-41 .- Our first doctor, George H. Stone, came in one of those years, the record being uncertain. His brother Hiram was sheriff.
In '4I a one-story sixteen by thirty-two frame was built by Emily Car- michael, the Malin corner site of the present Columbia pharmacy. An addi- tion to the south took in Dr. M. C. Parker, and Dr. Wm. H. Rousseau above both. For years this was a fine fire-trap and rat and cockroach retreat.
John Cameron had a grocery and whisky joint in the south room of the tavern here, and it was said that his whisky was water-wetter than the load of elm that Dr. Rousseau got from a Sockum Ridge debtor, who had shaken his teeth out in ague fits. Meeting him a few months later, the doctor gravely asked him if he had any more of that same sort of wood and could spare another load. "Yes." "Well, bring it, just one load, for that would put hell out." Folks got down on Cameron, a temperance society was formed, and he moved his joint out.
I have thus traced, as closely as the records bear witness, the families that came to this county from 1835 to 1840 inclusive. In 1840, the population was one thousand five hundred and ninety-four. That is a good many, con-
MARGARET MORRISON YOUNG
2
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MARGARET MUNCE PALMER
SAMUEL ROBERT PALMER
YORK PUBLI UND R
ASTON
TILLEN EL T.
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sidering the problem of transportation. There were no railroads, or canals, or stage coaches. Aside from the rivers, there was "the long blue wagon" hauled by oxen, and many came horseback or afoot. Ten years later we scored four thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven. The Rock Island road came in '58, and in that decade we jumped to fourteen thousand two hun- dred and thirty-six. It is curious about emigration-as a rule, folk go on in the plane they start in, like a bicycle. Most of our immigrants came from our latitude in the east. Northern Europeans strike north of us, while Italians and Spaniards prefer the south, California and Mexico. We got men from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, some from New York, but not many from the extreme north or south. At that time the river could be crossed only at Dubuque, Davenport, Muscatine, Burlington and Keokuk, and land-seekers, once across, usually made a bee-line west from the ferry. When, later, they could cross at New Boston, settlers followed the Iowa river, instead of the Des Moines, as formerly.
I may be wrong, but the real pioneer period runs from '35 to '41. Many important men came soon after, but they were rather settlers than pioneers. Our civic condition was nebulous until the early forties ; there was no politics in the thirties; we did not bother about such things. But in '41 a web of civil, if not of political, relations began to form, as crystals shoot into ice at the right temperature. Iowa was in a formative state from, say, 1841 to 1846 when she was admitted into the union. Constitution had been adopted, counties, townships and school districts established, popular education provided for, churches organized. We could not amount to much until we had numbers. In 1838 we had but two hundred and eighty-three folks, and they were trying to make a live of it. They would not have suc- ceeded, at first, if the Lord had not provided them their meat in due season, secured by their own dogs and guns. If they had been conscientious vege- tarians, they would have starved. And this brings me to the caption of this chapter. What did we have in this county as assets, we pioneers, from 35 to '41 ?
Any approximate inventory of blessings would have included these items : Soil .- Most excellent, unrivalled for depth, richness, fertility, ease of cultivation. Outside the timber belt, no stumps, or roots, or stones disturbed the breaking plow. On the alluvial bottoms the soil was twenty-four to forty- eight inches deep, eighteen to twenty-four on the undulating prairie, and the lime in it makes it stick closer than a brother. The vegetable mould that had accumulated for centuries could not be exhausted in a hundred years by the most reckless farming. The land stands drought well. There is a bed of bluish clay down twenty to thirty feet, that makes a perfect well-pocket. The
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sole criticisin on the soil is, it is so good it defies the making of good roads. We have worked at roads for seventy-five years, and the more the traffic, the worse they got, in wet seasons. It is always a poor country that has ideal roads.
This soil grew any and everything but cotton, bananas and citrus fruits. All the cereals and legumes, vegetables, grasses, trees, fruits of the temperate zone, grew by magic. Wheat easily produced thirty to fifty bushels per acre, oats seventy-five, corn fifty-nine to ninety. Till weevil and chintz bug took the wheat, thirty to forty years after the pioneer period, no one imported flour. Even now, many a farmer raises enough wheat to bread his family, and to spare. But from the first corn was king. It was not aborigine, how- ever, though it is mis-called "Indian." The redskins raised "maize," a thing that nature started as a grass, "zea mays." She changed her mind and pro- moted it from a fodder to a human food. Her second thought was best, as our after-thoughts are apt to be. Indians in North and South America would learn the merit of the sweet cobbed ear as soon as woodpecker and robin caught the excellence of cherries reddening on a tree, or a squirrel the worth of a nut.
The first thing the Pilgrims stumbled on, on Cape Cod, was an Indian cache of corn. They took it, but paid for it. Before Boston "knew beans" it gnawed corn off the cob, and parched the kernels. Parched corn was the Indian ration on the war-path-it was more portable than their birch bark canoes -- far more portable than prisoners that, on a pinch, they ate.
Every September, as the shocks of corn are set up in wigwam form on our boundless Iowa lands, we are reminded, by these pleasing forms, that corn, our staple crop, is an Indian memorial. Few races have been so happy in the relics they have left us, as the Indians. The stone axes, the flint and quartz arrow-heads-what imperishable and beautiful things are these sur- vivals of the American Stone Age! Architecture has no such staying quali- ties. Cities pulverize, cities rise on the debris of former cities, tier on tier of cities ; columns fall and go to wreck and crumble ; pompous tombs disappear ; but our plows keep turning up darts and axes, and they are as sound and clean as they were ten, twenty, or who knows how many thousands of years ago. And this annual that the squaws planted, and tended to the roasting-ear and succotash stage is a still more lasting memorial. The seed keeps it a perennial, as deathless as the Norse tree Ygdrasil, the Ash Tree of Existence.
What a happy-go-lucky thought it was in the white man to shock corn in the shape of a wigwam! It is an annual tribute to the memory of the Indians. There is nothing in our autumnal landscapes more charming than these mimic wickiups, broad-based, tied at the top with a pumpkin vine. As
W. W. KENDALL
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A. H. GUZEMAN
SAMUEL CONNER
1
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you drive by the fields filled with these rude imitation tents, musing sympa- thetically on the vanished red race, glad that this compliment is paid uncon- sciously to it, your fancy sees a subtile smoke rising from the center of the sheaf of tassels, and you are persuaded that if you pawed away the butts, papooses would be seen rolling in the dirt around the fire-pots. The illusion is all the stronger when snow is on the ground. Glance over a whited field- the wigwams suggest an Indian village.
The red men left us no books, no score of music, no sculpture, or paint- ings that were more permanent than picture-writing on skins, bark or rocks ; they left no monuments ; but they did hand down this classic corn. It is tender to frost and heat, but it persists like that transient fugitive breath called language. You cannot kill a wise spoken or written word. "It comes down generation after generation, as if God brought it in his hand."
The institutions, literature, laws, art. that other nations have left, have not a tithe of the commercial value of this Indian legacy. It has sugar, starch, fatty matter, flesh-forming materials that are transmuted into beef, pork and mutton, not to mention whisky.
No other grain, except rice, is eaten by more people than corn. Think of the corn-bread. johnny-cake, hoe-cake, tortilla, mush, puddings, roasting- ears, etc .- infinite in amount.
Corn had many uses, but not as many as the palm, which was said to have three hundred and sixty uses. We use corn for food, fodder, fuel, make from it alcohol, pipes, oil to burn, mattresses, mats, etc., and what fiddles boys make of it!
Don't you like to see a man gnawing corn off a cob? After buttering and salting it, he seizes either end with an energetic hand, and you'd think he is playing a mouth organ.
Even more amusing is the sight of a cow mouthing a big ear. She turns her head from side to side, rolls up her eyes in ecstasy, wraps her rough tongue around the slippery member, and her gums slide over it, and it sounds much like the playing on a corn-stalk-fiddle.
What a fool a hog, a steer is, to gorge itself, day after day, month after month, with corn. to fatten itself-for death.
Bless the Indians for our corn. How could Mrs. Mary Lease advise the Oklahomans to "raise less corn and more hell ?"
Good Drinking Water .- In the early time springs gushed on almost every farm, at the foot of a hill. Most of them have ceased, and it is a pity. A spring bubbling under the roots of a tree, and stealing down a run-way, leaving an intense ribbon of green, was a symbol of life. Wells were made at con- venient depths. The water in creeks and rivers at first was wholesome.
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Streams had not been contaminated with farm drainage, factory refuse and city sewage. It was the age of innocence.
Timber .-- Plenty to furnish raw material for all the log cabins, fences, fire-places, furniture, coffins, etc. There were fourteen to sixteen varieties of oaks, white and black walnut, hickory, sycamore, hard and soft maple, locust. dogwood, mulberry, linn, hackberry, and the like. And the settlers soon found that a dense woodland could be grown anywhere in a few years, and the groves as wind-breaks changed the expression of the entire face of the country, so that the prairie disappeared, and "lone tree" lost its sig- nificance as a land-mark.
Climate .- We have four seasons. The Pacific coast and most of our south have but two seasons : we are twice as rich, and perhaps a country that might boast eight seasons would rank all others. Three of these four seasons are free enough from frost to ripen all the products of the soil. The elevation of the county ranges from six hundred and sixty feet to seven hundred and fifty feet above sea-level. The winters are exhilarating, and never too severe save for invalids ; the cold cuts all the cobwebs of malaria out of the crystal air. People who patronize the air and breathe it properly do not have con- sumption, but cure their lungs, if weak. Winters should have such an edge as to quicken foot-steps. Young people and all under middle age do not mind snow and cold-they sleigh-ride, sitting in straw on the bottom of the box, feet and legs stuck straight out, under quilts, blankets, buffalo robes, and keep warm by those pleasing arm and labial exercises that all remember -yes, you do, I don't care how old, demure and grouchy you may have become. Pshaw! what's cold? A mere meteor that you forget as soon as you step inside. Sleigh rides are a proper meter of winter climate-any- thing that "spoons" can stand, goes.
Winter weather records have been kept by Mr. Wm. A. Cook, government observer, since 1882. The average January temperature since then was from four to twenty above at seven a. m. The first snow never came earlier than October 20, and later than March 31. From December 14 to February 23, the below zero temperature ranged from 8 to 32.
The springs have a touch of languor at first, that some call "fever," but they are delicious. A spring on an Iowa prairie is Paradise. Flowers, birds, bees, odors come in mobs, and fairly riot. Everybody outside asylums writes poetry then-just can't help it.
Summer is rich and decidedly warm, but how else can we grow corn? Mr. Cook's record of highest temperature since 1883 gives two June days of ninety-six and ninety-nine degrees; eighteen July days from eighty-one to one hundred and eight, and eight August days from ninety-two to ninety-
HUGH SMITH
JONATHAN H. WILSON
MICHAEL W. WILSON
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
AFFAR, LENOX BILDEN FOUNDATION
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eight and five-tenths. Usually, the heat is mitigated by an all-day breeze. Perhaps there may be two or three muggy nights when sleep is banished, unless one stalks out into the dim and stilly watches of the night, on the north side of the hydrant, with hose attached, and lets 'er go!
The autumns are delightful ; crops ripen and are safely gathered, and every one can play in the corn field bowling alley, sending pumpkins with a vim at Thanksgiving day. The Indian summers are glorious. They are the very choicest things the red folk left us -- thanks! Since 1886, according to Mr. Cook, frost has pinched not earlier than September I. White frosts through that month and October. The last frosts in Cook's period ranged from April 16 to June 2, though only twice in June.
In the first five years not a single case of consumption originated here, but weak and diseased lungs, imported, were cured in hundreds of cases by folk being in the air and sunlight. Fireplaces ventilated log cabins. No stoves were seen by Mr. McCall in Crawford township before '46, and Job McClelland first sold stoves here, on the north side, in 1848, Mr. Samuel Conner thinks. Later comers brought stoves with them from the east.
Breaking up the sod let loose miasm. and folks shook with chills and fever or bone-break, and many became "bilious," as they called it, and had "yaller janders," in the vernacular of that day. Norman Everson made himself an angel of light as a volunteer nurse when so many were ailing. Dr. Rousseau said he was the best nurse he ever knew. Cabins in the woods got dark, dank and noisome, and dwellers on low lands shook like peat beds, and marshes were sore neighbors. Pioneers should have been healthy, but there was a lot of malarial sickness, and there always is in breaking up the rich virgin soil. After the deadly gases from fermenting vegetation had exhaled, the country was salubrious indeed.
Rainfall .- Since 1876, Mr. Cook makes an average of thirty and two one-hundredths inches. The highest notch was forty-nine and eighty-six one- hundredths in 1902. The greatest single fall was four and ninety-one one- hundredths. Plentiful precipitation may be depended on, and ordinarily rains are well timed.
Lay of the Land .- The county is undulating, and drains well, to the south and south-east. From the north line to the southern, the slope or grade is some ninety feet.
Streams .- The county is well watered. Of rivers, the Iowa, English, Skunk ; creeks, Crooked, Long, Davis, Goose. There was another creek, but it got lost, and should have been advertised for, with suitable reward for return of the same. John B. Newhall, in his "Sketches of Iowa." issued in 1841, has this amusing paragraph : 7
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"Washington is the seat of justice of Washington county. It contains about one hundred inhabitants, is handsomely situated near one of the tribu- taries of Crooked creek, is twenty-nine miles from Iowa city, and promises to become a thriving and important town."
Local geographers like Colonel Charles J. Wilson believes this "tributary" was the run that cuts through Colonel Scofield's grounds and scoots down below Jugenheimer's extinct brewery. Maybe, it dried up when said brewery did.
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