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 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
At the meeting of the board of commissioners January 3, 1844, the county was first sub-divided into these civil townships, that perfected their organiza- tions later, Brighton, township 74, range 8; Cedar, 75, range 8; Clay, 74, range 9 ; Crawford, 74-5. range 6; Dutch Creek, 75, range 9; English River. 77, range 7; Iowa, 76-7, range 6: Lime Creek, 77, range 8-9; township 76, range 8 : Marion, 74, range 7 ; Washington, 75, range 7.
On the first Monday in April, '45, Brighton, Cedar, Dutch Creek, English River. Lime Creek were duly organized by the election of township officers, and in October, '45, the boundaries of Dutch Creek were changed to extend from Skunk river to the center of what is now Seventy-six township.
BRIGHTON.
Brighton was among the first townships to be settled, and at first that settlement bid fair to head the procession in the county, for it had timber, building stone, and water power for mills-great advantages as the pioneers estimated things. If they had had a herald's college, their armorial hearings would have included a tree, a catfish and a bullfrog rampant. From the first, Pickerell's mill was a Mecca to pilgrims from all about, and it attracted settlers and retail trade to the hamlet on the hill. In 1839, John Brier hauled a stock of goods from Burlington to the first store, owned by John Lewis, sixteen by twenty, and Jeff. Gordon had a very wet grocery that the Indians patronized.
131
132
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Up to 1840, there were four settlements in the county, Crawfordsville, Brighton, several claims on English river, and a dozen families in Dutch Creek. In that year, the northern settlement doubled in population, and the county then had one thousand five hundred and seventy-one. By '44, there were three thousand one hundred and twenty, and in '46, three thousand four hun- dred and eighty-three.
Early in the forties came to Brighton, Win. Spencer. J. W. Stone, J. S. Erwin, L. J. Washburn, Ed Deeds, R. C. Risk, S. O. Kirkpatrick, W. D. Hoagland, W. B. Lewis, I. H. Friend, and the following men came stringing along soon after: S. G. Rhodes, R. S. Mills, Jacob Dillon, J. R. Shields, James Frederick, John H. Prizer and Dr. Prizer, Daniel Elliot, J. P. and Alex. Hamilton, David Robertson, Ol. Sweet, Jos. Earl, and T. E. Purring- ton who went insane.
Early Campaigning .- Wm. B. Lewis, father to Sam, Porte and James, rode a horse from Kentucky to Brighton, four hundred and fifty miles, in ten days, in 1840, and he came again, and for good, in '44. In 1860, he was sent to the state senate. On November 25, '78, he and his wife celebrated their golden wedding, with the help of one hundred and fifty guests. He was a very merry, vivacious man, and he enjoyed the campaign he made in '60, calling on Democrats and all, though he was a Whig. He did not expect to get 'em all, nor did he. He and a friend alighted one hot summer day at the house of a noted Democrat, Batterson, and saw the fat man sitting under a tree, fanning and fighting flies. As Mr. Lewis approached, he sang out in his high treble voice, "I'm running for the senate and want your vote" ... "Not by a dam site," came the rebuff, and the visiting statesman laughed and drove on, hunting more promising fields of alfalfa.
It is a puzzle how Captain Moreland, in 1839, settled on the prairie four miles south of Washington. He had sailed the Mississippi river many years, knew General Sam Houston and Colonel David Crockett. The latter was noted for holding a dialogue with a coon up a tree. David had called to Zaccheus, and the coon said, "Don't shoot, Colonel, I'll come right down." The jolly man did not freeze outside the pale of the brush, but kept himself warm, laughing. At that time, and for a year later, there were but twelve families in Washington-Jos. Adams, Henry Mccullough, Dr. G. H. and H. A. Stone, Dan Powers, Bloomer Thompson, John Dougherty, Almon Moore, Amos Embree, J. J. Jackson, John Hendel, Samuel Joy.
John Prizer came to Brighton in '45, took the gold fever in '50, spent two years in California, scraped up quite a bit of gold and returned. In '79 he was sent to the state senate, and was a level-lieaded, merry, wise man, and delightful company.
v.
THE YOUNG CABIN IN CEDAR TOWNSHIP Built about 1841
PIONEER SOD HOUSE
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Arran ! KNOX DATION
135
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Navigation of Skunk .- I. H. Friend was the most original man that ever lived in Brighton. A giant in stature, he was bold in business. He came in '41, to retrieve his fortunes failing in the east, sold goods, packed pork, handled grain. He was in the hog packing business five years, handling five thousand to six thousand head a year, paying one dollar and twenty-five cents to two dollars per hundredweight, net, and in winter he sledded them to Burlington and shipped the cargo to St. Louis and New Orleans. He bought and sold yearly fifteen thousand bushels of grain, grinding some and shipping flour down Skunk river in flatboats, thence to St. Louis. It was risky boating on the Skunk. for there were ugly snags, and seven dams to shoot. In '43, Gilbert Levell's boat had struck the dam at Wilson's mill, and the cargo of beef and pork was a total loss, but the next year Wm. Compton's load of corn and potatoes got through all right, and he made a good spec. In '45 Friend and Heaton loaded two boats with one thousand six hundred bushels of wheat and four hundred and fifty barrels of flour, jumped the seven mill dams and ever so many other damns, and made a profitable three weeks' trip. - In prudence, they tied up at night. The last boating was by George Fisher and G. W. Mccullough, but the boat smashed on Merrimac dam, and two thousand dollars' worth of corn, potatoes, wheat, oats, brooms, etc., went to Davy Jones' locker. -
Mrs. John Brier was weaving cloth in '38, on a rude loom made by hubby with a broad ax.
Seneca Beach, for whom Sen. Dewey was named, was J. P. in '39. His handsome son and his wife re-visited the old haunt in 1908, drawn by the magnet of home sentiment.
Orson Kinsman and Hannah Dinsmore were the first pair to wed ; in '38, Virtne A. Milton was born, and in '40 Thompson Dray's boy came to town, the first fruits of the stork.
David Powers in 1851 unearthed a part of the very earliest settler, in the river bottom where it had mired down ages ago-a portion of the foreleg of a mastodon, three and a half feet long, fourteen inches wide, weight eighty- three pounds. The huge molar teeth of these monsters have been turned up many times. Ancient politics made strange bed-fellows here.
Another old relic: On section 5 a coal bank was operated several years, but the coal was scanty and of very poor quality.
The original town of Brighton was laid out in '40 by Kinsman and Dray, on section 31, township 74, range 8, and additions were made by G. W. Tuel, I. H. Friend, Charles Dunham et al.
The church organizations are classified elsewhere.
136
IHISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Brighton had a scourge of cholera in the fifties. The Elijah Smith family was decimated. Their son, and a man named Smith, and a hired man were freighting from Burlington to Richland, and stopped at a house where the baby of an in-coming family had the disease. Three or four of the exposed parties died. Obedialı Morgan cared for the living and buried the dead in what is now Rubio cemetery. The disease spread. At last, Elijah and wife were so dejected they sold out and started for Oregon, but he died on the way, and his wife and her son and his wife got through, on foot, worn out, their team of an ox and a cow hardly able to pull the wagon with the few contents. Smith had deeded an acre, where his sons were buried, to the trustees of Clay, as a grave-yard.
When Wm. N. Hyde came to Brighton, August 6, 1842, there was only the store of Friend. J. N. Lewis' tavern, Frank Thorn's blacksmith shop and a dozen cabins. An Indian trail, worn a foot deep by their ponies going single file, ran across his father's claim. Hundreds of redskins were prowling around, their kids using bows and arrows. Their burial places were numer- ous-their main industry seemed to have been dying. Here and there were well-kept graves, one being that of an aged squaw who loved the whites and wished to be buried in a coffin as they were. Her wish was gratified, and here's a bunch of pansies to lay upon her green mound. At Hesseltine's hill were the granaries or caches of Indian corn, places where the drainage was good, and they covered the grain to protect it from the weather and mammals. Caches in the woods were covered with fallen trees or brush. Mr. Hyde saw, as late as 1870, flocks of wild turkeys numbering seventy-five to one hundred.
The list of notable, strong and original men in Brighton is no where near complete if 'Squire Anson Moore, Dr. Prizer, L. B. Fleak. the Tracys and Downs are not included.
CEDAR.
Her history is like "the short and simple annals of the poor," because it developed late, as settlers were afraid to go where there was not brush, water and frogs. In 1875, however, it had gained eight hundred and eighty- three population. Calvin Craven was the first man to go in there, in 1839, but he went away, having the timber belt superstition. Returning the next year, Mr. Duke had taken the "sort o' claim" Craven had made, and was cultivating three acres. Mr. Craven bought the claim, one hundred and sixty acres of timber somewhere and "all the prairie he wanted" for four hundred dollars. He says he could have had then all the prairie around Washington for nothing, as timber was scarce. He went farther and bought a timber
-
THE CLAY CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH Organized in 1842
--
-
-
-
THE OLD CLAY SCHOOLHOUSE
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILL EN ELLADATION
139
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
claim for four hundred dollars. The other settlers were Wm. Myers, Wm. Dusenbury, Lenox Dayton, Wm. Hinkston. The latter's child was the first baby born in Cedar, and the first death was that of his wife Elizabeth, buried in the Patterson grave-yard. The first wedding-Newton Smith and Nancy Young.
In '44, Calvin and Wm. Craven, John A. Young, Jas. N. Young, A. Young jointly built a school house on section 28. Schools and churches are classified in another place.
The hamlet of Lexington was laid out by M. D. Story in April, '65, on section 8.
Crooked creek made a bad flight of stairs of the edges of Cedar, Franklin and Washington townships.
Cedar is unique in one respect, having had as members of the legislature four men, Hons. Marshall Goodspeed, B. F. Brown, Sam C. Gardner and B. F. Tipton, and its ex-resident John Alex. Young as state senator for Washington and Henry counties. He also had served as county auditor. Among its other noted men and large land-owners were Adam Wombacher, Jesse Phillips, Enoch .Vinter, the Youngs, John Knupp, the Pattersons et al.
A Stock Deal .- Calvin and James Craven and Nicholas Dayton drove one hundred fat cattle to Chicago via Burlington, consuming nineteen days, butchered them there and sold at two and a half to three and a half cents a pound. The total expense of the round trip was ninety dollars, and they made money on the deal. In that day, stock dealers went round contracting for stock, giving their notes, and settled after marketing hogs and cattle-if they could ; if not then, then when they had cut a juicy melon.
It may be stated in general terms that up to '41, folk did not raise enough products for home consumption, and had to haul in supplies from Burlington with oxen, and spoil a week in the trip. There were few horses in the county. In '40, in English river township there were but two teams of horses, owned by J. R. Hawthorne and Wm. A. Seymour. It took two days to go to Skunk river mill, and water might be too high to grind. Most people used hand mills and even coffee mills to grind corn, and coffee mills and graters for buckwheat. Up to 1846, the trading points for this county were Burlington, Keokuk and Muscatine.
CLAY.
She is the baby township in the county, that is, the smallest, and sweetest. In '75 it numbered six hundred and ninety people. Among the '39-er settlers were Ellis Waters, Moses Hoskins, Sr. and Jr., Richard Disney, Robert McCartey, H. T. Pringle.
140
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Here is where Ralph Dewey came to light, as the first teacher, and he advanced from glory to glory, to clerk of the courts and first mayor of this incorporated town.
Many of these people were New Englanders, and of course Congrega- tionalists. Several very notable families came there, the Meachams, Wol- cotts, Millses, Watermans and Waterhouses, Plumbs, Harts, Bosworths, Woodfords, Pringles, Robinsons, Brintons, Griffiths, Hutchinsons, Stephens, Savages, Townsends, Morgans et al. Indeed, Clay has always passed as "Yankee," for thrift and shrewdness. Her people were frugal. tidy, snug in business, and they were well off, well-heeled, so to speak. They believed in churches and schools, and took a lively interest in politics and were not hunk- ers. They knew their own minds to a man, to a woman, and stood by their convictions political and religious. One could hardly name another commu- nity so full of character and individuality.
As late as '78-9 a lot of Indians camped on Honey creek, and braves in- sulted and scared lone women. Reds came every winter to hunt, fish and beg. Once they brought an old consumptive, and stayed all winter to benefit his health, but as he didn't die fast enough, it is said they helped him to the happy hunting grounds. He wished to be buried among his kin at Sandy Hook. The party charged children at the Farrier school a dime to see a papoose. A half-breed Johnny came every winter, on a fresh honey-moon- having added a fresh bride to his harem, and he was happy.
George Gallup's career had a gait like his name. He had a family, trav- eled much, and it was reported he married a fair Virginian, sold his place in Clay, deserted his family. Years after word came that he was hung in California, and on the gallows said he had buried five thousand dollars at the foot of a red oak tree in the northwest corner of section 16 in Iowa, but, though it was hunted for, the treasure trove was never found. His wife here went to live with a married daughter in Nebraska, whose husband drove both out into a blizzard ; they walked several miles to shelter, and the silent mother died of a broken heart and from exposure. Does the reader taste the bitter dregs in that cup?
On top of Pisgah on Honey creek is an Indian mound, pierced by a big tree, scarred with names cut seventy years ago.
One of the characters was Jacob Dillon who came first in '39 and per- manently in '44. He lived to be eighty-six years old, and every fiber of his mind was racy. He hated bull thistles as the devil hates holy water, and he would walk miles to swipe a Canuck thistle, and he had a fad for ponds and German carp. He was the best company ever, and his daughter, Mrs. J. R. McKain is just like him.
THE CLAY CHEESE FACTORY
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, A.ENOX TILVON ILENDATION
143
.
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
The Griffiths, Robert, Elias and others, had the most striking and amus- ing English vocabulary extant. They were artists in its use. Shrewd busi- ness men, too, and, Midas-like, everything they touched turned to gold, except food, drink, raiment and the like. Though, when Edward Brinton met these Greeks, and used language, then came the tug of war. Some men have a genius for using words that have a sort of ripping sound as they issue, like the violent tearing of muslin. There is a vast deal of theology in some artists' expletives and explosives. The Griffiths were capital neighbors, warm- hearted, kindly, just tip-top citizens, with that comical foible.
Another peculiar man was Henry Morgan, a Quaker. His retort to Henry Clay Dean made him, perhaps, the most famous man in the county, unless it was Captain Sam Russell. Dean was orating on our public square, some years after he was chaplain in the United States senate, and he yelled a challenge to any one to say when the Democratic party had ever squandered money. Little Henry was huddled up in a group in front, and didn't look bigger than a pint of cider half drunk up, and he squeaked out, "I can tell." "Well," gruffly said Dean, "when was it?" . "When they gave you eight dollars a day to pray in the senate," Dean growled out a lot of ineffective abuse ; but that arrow stuck and quivered in his equator while the crowd went into gales of laughter. Many years later, Dean said here that he was never worse gravelled than by that sharp squib of Morgan's. Henry carried mail eleven years from Brighton to Ioka in Keokuk county.
Clay produced ninety-five teachers, nine ministers and nine doctors, but we forgive them for that ; she also sent seventy-five soldiers to the war, and nine never came back.
Clay was red-hot abolition ground, and had a station on the underground railroad, the engineers and conductors being Henry Morgan. Alfred Meach- am and Manning Wells. Many a slave they sent to Washington in care of John L. and Mart C. Kilgore.
Water mills were in the habit of freezing up. R. S. Mills once took a grist to Iowa city, in vain: then back to Wassonville and waited three days to get a bushel of grain ground. McMartin built the first mill in Clay. They used to pound corn, use coffee mills and graters, make hominy, and scrape along. There were no cook stoves. Baby cradles were fashioned out of hollow trees, and the kids never knew the difference. In summer half grown boys darted around in a sole garment of muslin called "factory."
In the winter of '64, R. S. Mills, elected to the legislature, went to Os- kaloosa and, with twenty-one men, hired a four-horse sled and went skipping over fences to Des Moines, the snow was so deep and packed. In bad winters, wild creatures became tame by hunger, and would come near houses and beg
144
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
for food like human tramps, but rarely got a hand-out. Many of the wolves, deer, turkeys perished. Winters have surely changed.
Diocletian Fitch, once a rich Marylander, sympathizing with the Con- federacy, went utterly broke.
CRAWFORD.
Here is where things started in '36. Josiah Smart was the first trader in the county, near this point. Matthew Moorhead kept the first "sort o' tavern," that is, a stopping place for man and beast. It was on the military road, one of the leading territorial roads. The population in '75 was one thousand two hundred and forty-one. Crawfordsville was laid out very early, and it has had more dreams of railways and got fewer of them than any village in the county. Hope deferred many years, made its heart sick. The earliest settlers were Adam Ritchey, Isaac Pence, M. Moorhead, Thomas and John Caldwell, Henry Osburne, John Black, Thos. Baker, J. W., Joseph, Robert and Walker Neal. It was nicknamed "Nealtown," but the place was named for Isaac Crawford, the Neal's brother-in-law, and that bribe fetched him there in '41. Who was David Crawford? It is said that he and his came by boat to Bur- lington, and had so much freight that one box was over-looked and went on to Dubuque, but came back, and he was watching for it. It contained two feather beds, and in them four thousand dollars in cash-that's all.
Dan Ritchey broke the first prairie with oxen on the Moorhead farm ; the first house was the Rankin ; Abe Prather kept the first drug store and post- office, and George Spears set up the first smithy in '43. A lot of folk came early in that southeast region, -- David Sikes, Berry Fancher, John Grimsley, John Stout, Joel Long, Wm. Disney, Jos. Griffith, Timothy Gaskell, James Heath, Elisha Campbell. R. C. Caldwell ; the latter died and was buried in '38 on his claim, the Snider farm, followed that winter by a Mr. Geerheart.
In '49, thirteen men made the six months' trip to California-James Blue, James Boyd, James Crawford, James Spears, Wm. Braden, Wm. Moffit, Wm. B. and W. D. Crawford, Robert Jemison, Peter Mills. Caldwell and Alex. Neal, Charles Barko.
Crawfordsville was a nest of abolitionists, the Rankin house a station on the slave subway ; seven blacks landing there at once were put in the attic, and at night scooted to Columbus city. Slave-holders used to be thick as black- berries on Crooked creek, hunting blackberries, too, and swearing, and punishing the weed and bourbon, and "kunneling" and "judging" everybody, sah, and talking negro patois.
When Kansas was "bleeding" in 1855, a wagon and team were raised by subscription and sent with money for the "cause," by Thompson Crawford,
Benjamin Meacham
Jehiel Meacham
Seymour Meacham
Marcellus Meacham
Alfred Meacham
Allen Meacham
JEHIEL MEACHAM AND HIS FIVE SONS
10
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, ŁENOX TILDEN FOUNDATION
147
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
James Allen, Thomas Smith, Wm. Morrow. The first named was with John Brown, and would have been with him at Harper's Ferry if he had not been down with pneumonia. He enlisted and was in rebel prisons twenty-three months. A lot more went to the war, members of the second, eighth, eleventh, thirteenth and twenty-fifth Iowa infantry, one hundred and sixty-three of them.
The most noted men were, perhaps, Drs. J. B. Miles and H. C. Hull, R. T. McCall, John W. Crawford, Moorhead, Samuel E. Rankin, J. H. Stewart, J. B. Crooks, and, above all, the wit and humorist Captain Sam. A. Russell. Take him all in all, he was probably the most distinctive genius in the county. Folk will not for fifty years yet get done quoting him and telling odd stories of him.
Professional men turned out in this township numbered-doctors thirty- three, preachers twenty-three, druggists sixteen, editors fourteen, lawyers eight, statesmen ten.
DUTCH CREEK.
This township's boundaries were changed 'more than those of any other, at one time including half of Seventy-six, then losing it. In 1875 it had one thousand one hundred and eighty-five population.
In 1836, Michael Augustine and his son Godfrey came among the friendly Indians, but not till 1838 did the former build the first house, as the land still belonged to the redskins. Soon after the Augustines reported, Con- rad Temple, Mr. Junkins, David Sikes came. Mr. Place built the first saw mill and McMartin the first grist mill run by water. Going to mill in those early days was a laborious pilgrimage. David and Al. Augustine and Sikes started with oxen, hauling a wagon of corn and wheat to Fox river in Missouri, but water was too high to grind, and they put for Burlington, and got the grain ground in an ox mill, but they were gone four weeks. They saw a good deal of scenery.
Dutch creek flows through the middle of the township, and there are so many minor creeks and runs that it is a prime live stock country. The Sing- masters got as rich as Jersey cream on that line. But the people, like those of Crawford, prayed many years for railroads, but only the Milwaukee answered, and that, too, not till the twentieth century.
Wm. W. Wells, the richest man in the county, at his death in 1908, lived in this township. He came early with less than ten dollars in his purse, and got his start, feeding and supplying folk passing through to California.
Wm. Said represented Dutch Creek in the legislature, and was the sole statesman it boasted.
148
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
The township raised George L. Reed, a noted teacher, later a racy editor, laying the egg that hatched the Keota Eagle ; and in his son William he gave the Wellman region a still more canny publisher and versatile genius.
John Rheinart, an Alsatian, educated in Paris and serving as soldier in the street barricade fights, ran a saw mill here, later moved to Washington and practiced law, and proved a shrewd financier. Hle set his stakes at fifty thousand dollars, saying he would quit when that notch was cut, and he did. . There was never a better talker in the county. a more genial, wider read, wiser man of the world. He moved to Milwaukee and became the champion whist- player in the country, then to Los Angeles, where this Scribe, but not Pharisee bade him and his wife goodbye in 1892. He died soon after.
Another noted character in Dutch Creek was 'Squire B. Varain, learned. polite, punctilious, a gentleman of the old school, and a continental school at that.
Still another prominent man was George Groendycke, once county treas- urer. He was eccentric, in some ways "impossible," but scholarly and capable, a prime teacher and a justice of the peace as clear as most lawyers. His sudden death was regretted by all. His father, too, was much in folks' mouths many years agone.
A Mr. Shuman was once and for years publisher of the Chicago Journal. Mr. Robert McCaleb was for many years the dictator of the Democratic party there, and influential in the counsels of the party in the county.
I had supposed the hamlet "Paris," was in name a suggestion of Rhein- art's, but Eleazer Kinkade laid it out in '48. Valley is the post-office. At Dublin is another post-office. Grace Hill across the line in Franklin also handed out mail.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.