USA > Iowa > Allamakee County > Past and present of Allamakee county, Iowa. A record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Vol. I > Part 39
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Evidently the big leaguers of to-day would stand no show against such an aggregation of score-makers.
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M. Hancock and family arrived in Waukon April 9. 1856. coming up to Lansing the day before on the War Eagle, from Dunlieth. The following few items from his dairy, though unimportant, are of interest :
Jume 11, 1856, went fishing to Silver creek and caught fifty trout.
( Along here or a little later Frank Hancock and Dudley Adams used to start out on foot in the morning and fish down Patterson creek to the Iowa, returning late at niglit with great strings of trout. As late as 1866 the diary notes Mr. Adams catching 75 on one trip. ) A few years later they had almost entirely disappeared.
July 4, 1856, big celebration, said to be 1500 people present.
August 4. '56, election day for state and county officers. Republican vote (in township) 86; Democrat 39.
October 1, '56, steam mill burned. County Fair, or cattle show, in progress. November 4. '56, presidential election. Township vote, republican 121, demo- cratic 71.
One more item from the diary: Sunday, August 31, 1862, a messenger came from Ossian early this morning and says the Indians have burned Mankato and New Oregon, and are coming this way. Mr. Hatch, Mr. Wilbur, and Mr. Gardner went to Decorah, and Mr. Wilbur returned this evening and said the report was not true. This was the famous "Indian scare."
SOME WAUKON PIONEERS-ONE OF THE MAINE FAMILIES
A genuine Yankee pioneer of Makee township is Noah Hersey Pratt, now in his eightieth year, who enjoys the distinction of being the earliest settler in this community still living here, although his younger brother Emory came but a few weeks later, with the rest of the family. Mr. Pratt recently narrated to the writer his first experiences here, substantially as follows :
Azel Pratt and his brother Lemuel left their homes in Maine, September 20, 1850. for the Great West, a party of fourteen, consisting of the two fathers, three big boys, and nine women and children. From Chicago they went by rail to St. Charles, Illinois, then the terminus of the railroad which was building towards the Mississippi river to Dunlieth. From St. Charles a four-horse stage conveyed the entire party to a place near Belvidere, in Boone county, Illinois, where they visited, and looked over the country for a location, but found no land they liked. It being a wet season, the prairies looked very uninviting ; so Azel Pratt went from here to spy out the land, going to Lansing by boat, and afoot from there out to the ridge where he made choice of a location.
Upon his return to Illinois the party started out with two covered wagons, one drawn by an ox team and the other by horses, traveling by way of Rockford and Freeport, and arrived at Prairie du Chien the very last of November. Here they rented a house for a temporary home for the women and children, while the two men and the three boys, Greenwood, Hersey and Marcellus Pratt, about eighteen, seventeen and fifteen respectively, came on to construct a house for the winter. Though the ground was bare it had been cold enough to form a thin bridge of ice, and on this they crossed the Mississippi, a French guide directing their pathway, and leading one ox at a time. Their route was then by Monona, across the Yellow river at Smithfield, or near Carter Clark's place, up the North
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Fork to Ezra Reid's in Ludlow, thence by Father Shattuck's log cabin on the prairie and two miles north from there onto the ridge where their claim was made, in the southeast part of section 18, reaching the place December 6, 1850.
The first night here they built a brush shanty for shelter, of oak brush to which the dry leaves clung, and made themselves very comfortably at home. The next day they began the erection of a log house, about 16 by 24 feet in size, with two rooms on the ground floor, and all in one room in the loft. Meanwhile they boarded with Darwin and Seth Patterson, who came in the previous spring and had built on their claim at the head of the creek which took their name, about two miles west of the Pratts, taking their noon lunch to their work or cooking one there. In the construction of the house they used windows brought from Prairie du Chien, and drove to the busy little village of Moneek ( which later disappeared entirely), at the head of Yellow river, in Winneshiek county, for basswood boards for flooring and roof. They did not shingle until the following spring.
Having gotten the cabin enclosed the two elder men drove to Prairie du Chien for their families, with whom they returned in January, 1851, and Hersey says that although he had been well and hearty he was never more pleased to see his mother than when she then came "home." At the Prairie they had purchased six barrels of flour and a barrel of pork, of which the men had brought along a portion on their first trip, as well as a small cook stove; so as soon as they had the house enclosed the boys "bached" it till the women came. A stone fire- place had been built, and from the top of the stonework a stick chimney plastered with clay. At first a hollow log was found and set up on the stonework for a chimney, but one night it got afire and they went out and pushed it off away from the house. While the men were after their families the boys put in their time chinking up the cracks between the logs to make the rooms snug for the winter. Bedsteads were made by using the corner of the chamber for the head and one side, setting a post for the fourth corner, with rails to the walls, and stretching bedcords from the rails to pegs inserted in the logs. Their nearest neighbors at first were: James Reid on section 24, and the Pattersons on section 23. Union Prairie ; the Shattucks on section 30; David Whaley, section 20, and James Conway, section 28. Also Prosser and Archa Whaley on sections 32 and 33.
Lemuel Pratt had brought in a small stock of goods which he opened up in this log cabin, to supply the necessities of the few neighbors and the passing travelers. The latter were also accommodated here with meals and lodging. In the following spring he built a house on his claim on the north side of the road, afterwards the McCroden place, where he kept a hotel, this being a main traveled road for the settlers landing at Lansing, who soon began coming thick and fast, bound for the counties further to the west. A little later grain was hauled to the Lansing market from a hundred miles to the west, so that hundreds of teams passed daily, in the marketing season.
In the spring of 1852 the township was organized and given the name of Makee, although the ridge residents being mostly from Maine wanted it called Dover. A postoffice was established that year, at the house of Lemuel Pratt, and he continued as postmaster until he sold out in 1856 and removed to Minne- sota, where he died, at Monticello, in July, 1893. aged seventy-five. Hersey Vol. 1-20
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and his brothers were the mail carriers to and from Lansing, once a week at first.
The Pratts raised sod corn and buckwheat in 1851 ; and Lemuel sowed five or six acres to wheat on a piece of ground broken up by James Reid the previous year on the Richard Charles claim. This was sown on the 6th of March, the soil then being in prime condition, and yielded some 35 to 40 bushels per acre. The first threshing was done in the old-fashioned way with flails; but it was not long until some enterprising individual brought a tread-power threshing machine into the settlement. The carpenters had all they could do in those days. The lumber used in the construction of the frame houses on the ridge was mostly sawed out in the Black river region in Wisconsin, and rafted to Lansing.
Hersey Pratt and three brothers served our country faithfully in the Civil war. Hersey went to Illinois in 1860, and enlisted there in 1862, in Co. I, 95th Volunteer Infantry. In a later year he was commissioned second lieutenant of a company in the 48th Regiment of U. S. colored troops, which position he retained until mustered out at the close of the war. Since that time he has followed the occupation of contractor and builder in Waukon, or in the furniture trade. .
A TYPICAL PIONEER
A pioneer of the pioneers was C. J. F. Newell, who came to the vicinity of Waukon first in 1851. He was born March 3, 1817, in Wayne county, New York, where his father was a pioneer, a hunter and trapper, while clearing up his farm, and who died in 1825. A grandfather was a Colonial captain in the Revolutionary war.
Mr. Newell's early recollections were of pioneer days in York State, which fitted him for similar experiences upon coming to Iowa at the age of thirty- four. To be sure, the big fireplace with its andirons and huge back-log which sometimes lasted a week were not duplicated here, though smaller ones were sometimes built, but are interesting to recall to mind. Potatoes were baked in the ashes, also bread at first. Meat was cooked in kettles hung on an iron crane which could be swung around over the fire, or sometimes it was held over the hot coals on a stick or hung before the fire and broiled to a nicety. Chestnuts were roasted and corn popped in the hot ashes on the hearth. Then succeeded the "Dutch oven," a kettle set among the coals and with a tight cover with a turned up edge on which coals were also placed ; and then the out-of-doors brick oven, and the open tin oven set before the fireplace; and later came that then wonderful invention the stove with the firebox below and the oven above it ; and later the "railroad stove" having a large circular top with several griddle holes in it, and all around on the under side of the rim were cogs in which ran a small cog wheel that when turned by a crank would bring any desired hole im- mediately over the fire. Nor must the method of keeping or starting a fire in those days before matches were used be forgotten. To keep the fire over night or longer coals or a hemlock knot would be buried in the ashes. If the fire went out coals would be brought from a neighbor's if near enough, or a fire would be started by using a flint and steel causing sparks to fall on prepared tinder made from cotton or linen cloth, or on punk obtained from decaying wood. Those were the days too of tallow dip candles, or a saucer of lard with
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a rag fastened around a button and the end sticking up from it for a wick, the days of homespun cloth and homemade clothing.
He remained at home working on the farm in summer and attending the winter schools of those days, supplemented by such study as he could do by firelight at night until about seventeen years of age, when he went to learn the blacksmith's trade, and followed that a large portion of his life.
In 1851 he came to Iowa with the idea of locating at Garden Grove, near the Missouri line, where he had relatives; but upon landing at Sabula he first came north to Dubuque, where parties prevailed upon him to investigate Allamakee county as a healthy section whose streams of sparkling spring waters were filled with trout, and about the last, of July of that year he stepped from a boat at Lansing, then a town of three log cabins, and followed the main traveled road west to John Bush's claim, the southeast quarter of section 22, on Coon creek, in what was afterward Union Prairie township, Bush having located there that spring. There was no Waukon then nor was it dreamed of. He remained in the county about two weeks looking around for land, and finally bought an eighty, a part of the northwest quarter of section 5 (Ludlow township), later owned by Peter Allison, but traded it off for a quarter section three miles east of Waukon, which he afterward sold to Orin Manson, now owned by Fred Hansmeier. He visited Frankville where Frank Teabout offered him ten acres of land if he would build a blacksmith shop.
After a few weeks he started to return east, and in August, while waiting in Lansing for a boat, he helped raise the first three frame buildings erected there, one each for F. D. Cowles, I. B. Place, and one of the Pattersons. The foundation was laid for the hotel afterwards known as the Lansing House, but the frame was not up. Dr. Houghton was running a hotel in a little log house on Front street.
He returned east and remained there till 1853, when he came west with his wife and two children. At a hotel in Dubuque he met Scott Shattuck, who was there buying doors and windows for his house in Waukon, where the county seat had been located that spring, and he prevailed on Mr. Newell to come to the new town, offering him the use of the original G. C. Shattuck log cabin, which stood about thirty or forty rods northeast of the present public school building, where they had cultivated a patch of land for several years. The offer was accepted, they came and occupied the cabin, the first family to settle on the site of what is now the city of Waukon after the first pioneer G. C. Shattuck.
In June 1853. the first District court was held in Waukon, and a small make- shift courthouse was hurriedly constructed of logs for its use. The history of this little hut is told in another chapter, but the first disposition of it after it had served its purpose and a slightly larger one had been erected, was its purchase by Mr. Newell, who that fall moved it to the west side of Spring avenue and set up the pioneer blacksmith shop. In 1854 he sold out to Herbert Bailey. In 1860 Mr. Newell bought of M. G. Belden the location on the southwest corner of Main and West streets, where he continued in the blacksmith business until 1873, when he moved onto a farm in Franklin township, remaining there ten years. In 1883 he bought a farm in the Village Creek valley northeast of town,
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where he lived another ten years, and then sold out and returned to Waukon, making this his home until his death.
Mr. Newell married Miss Mary Boynton, March 7, 1848, in Wayne county, New York. On March 7, 1898, they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in Waukon, at which time a family circle of twenty-five, right royally enjoyed themselves ( their nine children, with the families of those who were married), and a host of old friends were welcomed as guests. Other family reunions, more or less complete, were enjoyed on recurring anniversaries until Mr. Newell peacefully passed away on the 13th day of April, 1909, at the ripe old age of ninety-two years. Mrs. Mary Newell remains among us in good health for one of her age, being permitted to celebrate her eighty-third birthday on the ist day of January last ( 1913). with a family reunion. She has a very clear recollection of those early days, and enjoys talking of them with old friends. Recently asked to relate some of her experiences for this history, she says:
"I arrived in Waukon in the fall of 1853 with my husband and two children. I was obliged to wait in Lansing for two weeks while Mr. Newell was fixing up the only available house in Waukon, a log cabin in the valley just east of where Mr. McDonald now lives, which had just been vacated by the Shattucks. they moving into their partly finished building, now known as the Mauch house, where they kept hotel. At that time there was no finished frame building in town, Mr. Shattuck's family living in the basement of their new house, and on the day we arrived L. T. Woodcock was raising the frame of his two-story store building opposite to it. on the south side of Main street. These two buildings still stand. the Shattuck hotel building now owned by Mrs. Amelia Mauch Boomer, and the Woodcock building by the Misses A'Hearn. Our goods not having arrived we borrowed a straw bed-tick and a quilt from Mrs. Shattuck. also a few dishes and a rocking chair ( we had bought a bedstead and a barrel of pork at Lansing), while Mr. Woodcock let us take a stove and its tinware. At our first meal we had for a table a board laid from the foot of the bed to the ladder that led to the loft, and sat on our trunks. We lived in this way for two weeks, till our goods came. Mr. John A. Townsend, who occupied a house east of town, made us a small pine table, and for a dish cupboard we had a few corner shelves put up on pegs. Mr. and Mrs. Heustis and Mr. and Mrs. Townsend were our first visitors, spending the evening.
"During the first winter we had to go out to Robert Isted's, now the Grimm farm, a mile and a half west, for butter, milk and eggs. Lansing or McGregor, or Monona, were at first the nearest places to get groceries or fresh meat, until Mr. Woodcock finished his store, when he brought on a general stock of goods. Mrs. Woodcock came with him when he returned, and we speedily became friends, both being from the east.
"The town grew rapidly and we boarded a number of the carpenters, includ- ing Azel Pratt, afterwards popularly known as Deacon Pratt, John Pratt, Her- sey Pratt and Alvin Howard, all of them sleeping in the loft of our little cabin. That fall ( 1853) we accommodated eight regular boarders, among them D. W. Adams and L. T. Woodcock. At the time of the District Court all the houses in the vicinity were filled, and one dark and rainy night near midnight a party of new arrivals knocked at our door seeking shelter, and were admitted, none being turned away in those days, no matter how little room was left. Some
1.
PAROCHIAL SCHOOL. WAUKON
A VIEW OF WAUKON IN THE DAYS OF AULD LANG SYNE
The view is from the vicinity of the Court House looking south. To the right is the old Mason Honse. Where the Earle block now stands the Belden blacksmith shop appears.
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one had brought along a bed-tick. and filling it as best they could in the dark and rain at a near-by straw stack laid it upon the floor and as many as could, crowded upon it for repose."
They were attorneys come to attend court, and aside from General Vandever of Dubuque, Mrs. Newell is not quite sure who composed the party, but thinks Reuben Noble and Samuel Murdock, both later district judges, were among them; and Judge Townsend afterwards said he thought Messrs. Burt and Samuels of Dubuque, were also of the party. Mr. Samuels four years later became the democratic nominee for governor of Iowa, and was defeated by Gov. Ralph P. Lowe.
OTHER PIONEERS OF WAUKON AND VICINITY
Mr. John A. Townsend was truly a pioneer, settling on a farm just east of Waukon in 1852, and was a prominent figure in this county for many years. Born in New York, in 1819, he was brought up in Nova Scotia, where he married Miss Ruth Huestis in 1841. After settling at Waukon, he was in 1855 elected sheriff of Allamakee county, and served two terms. He then served one term as county judge, and in 1865 was again elected sheriff and served one term. From 1874 to 1875 he was a member of the Waukon mercantile firm of Hale, Townsend & Jenkins, and then retired from active business but later served the city a while as marshal and street commissioner. Mr. Townsend died March 23, 1890, leaving a numerous family, of whom eight children now survive, and the venerable widow. Mrs. Townsend is a remarkably well-preserved lady for her ninety years, and always of a sociable disposition, now takes pleasure in recurring to the events of the pioneer days.
When they came from Nova Scotia, the family consisted of five children, the eldest eight years and the youngest but two months of age. Their route took them by rail to Rockford, Illinois, thence by stage to Galena, and by boat to Lansing. The river being very low it required three days to reach Lansing, where they arrived October 3, 1852, on a dark and muddy night, and went to the only hotel. The next day they drove out to this vicinity in a buggy, or light wagon, the family of seven and a boy for a driver, over a road recently opened by merely cutting out the trees and brush, the stumps remaining to be dodged the best they could. Mr. Thomas A. Minard, then deputy sheriff, a half-brother of Mr. Townsend, had preceded them to this locality the year before, and they went to his log cabin. This cabin was of fairly good size, with two rooms below, and a loft. It stood on or near the south line of his farm, which soon became the Maxwell farm, adjoining the east line of Waukon, and of late years known as the Pettit farm. It was built near a fine large spring, and a part of this house remained standing until a few years ago, at one time being used as a· slaughter house.
In this little cabin the Minard family of five, the Townsend family of seven, and another family, lived during the following winter ; the Townsends continuing there until the spring of '54. Meanwhile, in the spring of '53 Mrs. Townsend's father, Samuel Huestis and family, came on from Nova Scotia, accompanied by C. W. Jenkins, who with Mr. Townsend built the frame house at the north end of the farm, for James Maxwell, who also came about that time; and they
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and Minard built the substantial old Huestis house opposite, on the north side of the extension of east Main street, or the Columbus Road as it was called, and into which latter house the Townsends removed with father Huestis in April, 1854, until they later had a place of their own on the farm next to the east. Mr. Minard later sold out and went to Kansas, where he became speaker of her first free-state legislature : Mr. Maxwell died in 1870: Mr. Jenkins built many of the buildings in town, including the present courthouse in 1860-61, later engaging in business with Mr. Hale for many years, in which occupation he is kindly remembered by most everybody in this part of the county, living until 19 -; Mr. Huestis built for himself a comfortable mansion on "Harmony Hill" in which the genial old gentleman peaceably passed away in 18 -.
An amusing reminiscence of Mrs. Townsend, which she did not relate for publication, but which she will perhaps not object to, is like this: As is well known, one of her sisters married D. W. Adams, and another J. 1I. Hale, and she says that she and Mr. Townsend were the only democrats in the lot, when in 1865 her husband was candidate for sheriff, and Mr. Adams and Mr. Hale were running for Representative and surveyor respectively, on the opposite ticket, and Father Huestis for justice of the peace. On election day Mother Huestis had asked them all to supper, but Mrs. Townsend (admitting she was quite a partisan), felt that she could not go. But when the returns began to come in showing that Mr. Townsend was the victor she concluded that she could go, and enjoyed the occasion very much indeed. It is human nature now, as then.
Dudley W. Adams was born in Winchendon, Massachusetts, November 30, 1831, and lost his father at the age of four years. In September. 1853, he came to Waukon with L. T. Woodcock, with whom he was associated in the first store building, which they occupied late that fall, and which in later years became the National Hotel, and which is still standing as heretofore noted. The lumber in this building was all oak, and was sawed out by Austin Smith at his mill on Yellow river. Having varied attainments, Mr. Adams proved a valuable acquisi- tion to the community, which grew rapidly from now on. His services as sur- veyor were sought far and wide; for ten years he was assessor, and in 1854 he was elected president of the County Agricultural Society. In 1865 he became a member of the County Board of Supervisors, and later chairman of the board for several years.
In 1856 Mr. Adams entered upon the work of horticulture, in which he always found great pleasure, and in after years the "Iron Clad Nursery" of Waukon became famous for its success where others failed. There were ten or fifteen other nurseries started in Allamakee county at about this time, not one of which proved profitable, and all were abandoned amid the almost universal opin- ion that fruit could not be grown in northern Iowa. During the twenty years he continued in this business, however, Mr. Adams established the fact beyond a doubt that it can be very successful, with judicious selection and proper man- agement, and pointed with just pride to his achievements in this direction under the adverse circumstances of climate and public opinion. For instance, in 1871, at an exhibition of the State Horticultural Society (of which, by the way, he was for five years the secretary), he took the sweepstakes prize, with one hun-
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dred varieties, for the best and largest display of apples. Again, at the State Fair in 1879, he took the sweepstakes with 172 varieties of applies. In 1882 he had forty acres of apple orchard in bearing, and harvested 1,500 bushels, but his interests becoming paramount in Florida he gradually gave up the business here. Thirty years later, in January, 1913, a writer in the Iowa Homestead describes this famous old orchard as it appeared to him at a visit the previous fall, and says:
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