USA > Iowa > O'Brien County > Past and present of O'Brien and Osceola counties, Iowa, Vol. I > Part 15
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 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67
145
O'BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
experiences as examples of what were duplicated over many counties ad- joining.
Frank NN. Derby, county treasurer, at that time lived in the south part of Primghar, and in an effort to get home from his office had an awful experi- ence. He would have failed had it not been for two items. His wife had placed a light in the window. But even this would not have saved him had he not by accident run into the wire fence, which he held fast to and followed the wire, but even then as he entered his house fell exhausted on the floor from his flounderings with the storm.
William H. Bilsland, a homesteader in Carroll township, had a fearful experience and his two sisters, Jennie, aged twenty-five, and Tillie, aged twenty-two, met their sad fate in death. He had made a trip to court at Primghar. The two sisters were at the father's home on the road. They undertook to go home with him in the sleigh. The blizzard struck them with full force, and the horses refused to go, indeed could not in such a gale and blinding storm. The sleigh tongue broke and the horses were detached. An effort was made to ride the horses, but that was unavailing. The sisters became exhausted. They dug as much of a hole in the snow as they could for a possible shelter until morning. Mr. Bilsland wrapped his own fur coat around the two, but, sad to record, it became their blizzard grave and the blinding snow their winding sheet. Mr. Bilsland himself struggled and floundered on, throughout the whole night, lost his direction and finally in the morning found himself miles away from his supposed position. It was a testing time even with a hardy life. None but a strong man, buoyed up by the hope of saving his sisters, could have baffled this battle storm, he to only save, and barely save, his own life.
This sad experience was only paralleled by the pitiful experience in Baker township, just south a few miles, during the same midnight hours. The wife, sister and child of Thomas Kjermoe were in the first instance safe in their own home, but, evidently frightened at the terrible fury of the storm, undertook to get to what seemed a safer place with a neighbor and relative living near. The only record of their awful experience during that terrible night that can ever be told are our conclusions from the grim evidence of death of the three frozen bodies, found two days after, lying cold in death in the snow only forty rods from their own home and place of safety they had so unfortunately left.
In Dale township also, in this same storm, Mrs. Anderson and her very aged mother and son, ten years old, were found in the snow drifts dead.
(10)
146
O BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
They, too, had become frightened and left their home to escape, as they thought, to a neighbor's. The cloak of Mrs. Anderson was found where she had tenderly wrapped it around the mother. .
George C. Godfrey, of Paullina, and his two neighbors, Isaac L. Rerick and L. A. Douglass, were caught in this storm going home from Primghar, and struggled for hours, but luckily followed a fence which led to Mr. God- frey's house and escaped. Sam Norland, living near Paullina, was likewise caught, but very fortunately stumbled on to a straw stack, dug a hole and remained in it unharmed until morning. E. B. Pike, of Sheldon, started with his team for Hull, when the storm struck him. He lost his bearings and wandered over the wild prairies all the night, but just at morning found a hay stack and saved himself, having a narrow escape.
The winters of 1871 and 1872 were each severe, and the early settlers had some bitter experiences, though no lives were lost in the winter of 1871. In the winter of 1872 John Miller was caught in a blizzard near Mill creek. west of Primghar, with a load of flour. To save himself he threw the flour sacks in the road and undertook the race for life on horseback. He was all but exhausted when he arrived home, thankful even to save his life.
In 1872 a young man named Fred Beach, from Iowa City, a friend of Houston Woods and Mrs. Roma W. Woods (one of the advisory board in this history), came to Old O'Brien to visit those old homesteaders, and, with no experience in a new country. undertook to make the trip across the bleak prairie in a blizzard to their home, about seven miles away. To accommodate Mr. Woods and other neighbors, he had also attempted to carry out their mail. He also had with him a pup dog sent from Iowa City to Mr. Woods. He evidently lost his bearings and started up the wrong creek towards, as he supposed. Mr. Woods' homestead, and lost his life in a blizzard snow bank grave.
The winter of 1880 was a memorable one, with immense snow banks. but fortunately the snow was dry and did not reach those death-dealing stages of the other winters. However, it was long spoken of as a blizzard winter from the mere quantity of snow. The Milwaukee railroad had not yet built its snow fences. It was said that the snow shovelers in many places had to throw it up, and then up again, even to fifteen feet high. Much snow blindness resulted with the snow shovelers, it lasting all winter. Indeed that year the writer saw heavy, hard crusted snow banks in Albright's grove ad- joining Primghar as late as June.
It was that year when John H. Gear, governor of Iowa, issued a procla- mation or order to the Milwaukee and other roads to remove the snow from
147
O'BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
their tracks at all hazards and get coal to the needy people. The snow re- mained a depth of solid packed, crusted snow of three and four feet on the level all winter. The farmers in the various parts of the county turned out in large bodies to shovel and cut out the roadways to the towns. In a num- ber of funerals the coffins were skidded by hand to the homes and burials had in the farm yards until spring. During that hard winter the writer. as county auditor, had the winter's coal for the court house hauled all the way from Cherokee, the town of Primghar then having no railroad. In many homes that winter the families had not fully provided themselves with the hay fuel, and the prairie grass was covered with this great bed of snow, coal was practically out of the question and the then small groves were not large enough to make wood. There were no telephones, neighbors were nearly all long distances apart, and even the trip to secure help was often a serious mat- ter. With the now better homes and barns and buildings, with straightened roads, and houses closer together, these experiences could hardly be duplicated at the present time.
PRAIRIE FIRES.
O'Brien county citizens will never again see the grand sight of a genuine prairie fire. It was a condition, like the prairie sod, never to be repeated. It took thousands of years to create that condition. The tall prairie grass in the fall, when deadened by the frosts, burned like tinder. Conceive this grass to be from eight inches to four feet high (old settlers say they have seen it six feet high), and then apply the principle that heat rises and creates its own wind even on a still day; then add to that a high wind: then picture what havoc fire can do; then add the hay stacks, bursting in air, which gave proof through the night that those stacks were still there; then get the con- ception of the fact that many prairies stretched for thirty or more unimpeded miles, and that a high wind would carry this seething, roaring, consuming fire and mass of flames often ten to fifteen feet high, with dense smoke and cinders flying all over and high in the air, all piling flame after flame, and actually going as fast as a horse can run. The writer has thus seen lines of these fires, running zigzag here, and in a straight line there, then a specially tall twenty acres of slough grass burst forth with unusual energy and creat- ing its own wind, for ten miles each way, the crackling of hundreds of tons of this grass, sounding like the rumbling of distant thunder and lighting up the heavens on a dark night like the Aurora Borealis or northern lights. It was indeed grand, but, as can be seen. it was serious, and these fires were a menace to the lone homesteader, then on a treeless prairie, living in a shack
148
O'BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
shanty, with no money, as likewise to the hundreds of haystacks put up for winter use, or put up by these haying companies on a large scale. The home- steader soon learned to put up much more than he needed that he might pro- vide against these fires, and, as there was plenty and labor the only outlay, he could do that easily. These people soon learned by experience to prepare fire breaks, by plowing strips around these stacks and around their homes, ten or more rods apart, and on a still day burn the strip between, but even then the fire would often bound over and beyond and clean out either a home or all the hay. They also soon learned that it was safer to leave fifty or more tons, or twenty stacks, scattered here and there over the prairie, with plowing around each stack, than to stack it all around the home and risk his all in one fire. At times these high winds would carry a bunch of blazing prairie grass high into the air and these precautions prove unavailable. The burning haystacks would only scatter the danger. Single fires have thus been known to burn over a full fourth of the county, and thence on to other counties, all in one fire. The next day this whole prairie would look like one drapery of death in mock funeral destruction, with the black ashes or dust moving in the heavens in streamers of black smoke, and working destruction to more than one home and winter's feed for stock. It was indeed a grand spectacle, now never again to be seen in the county.
TOWNS EVEN IN DANGER.
In those early days, say 1875-1885, the tall prairie grass grew right in the public square of Primghar and in the streets of every town in the county. The writer remembers one little incident during those years, of sitting on the sidewalk of the main street of Sheldon with an old settler, with the prairie grass up to our knees, and of our remarking at the time that the grass was literally growing under our feet. The town was not yet old enough for this grass to have been tramped out. Fairly good sized prairie fires have thus burned within the limits of the towns of the county, on prairie grass. On perhaps half a dozen occasions the writer has seen a sudden scurry, a fire company organized impromptu, each citizen hurrying with a pail of water, a miop, an old gunny sack or a spade to pound out a streak of fire, as one of these long lines of fire would come sweeping towards the town, citizens hurrying to the blacksmith shop to break it open and draft into service the farmer's plows left there to be sharpened, while other citizens were hurrying to the livery to impress the available horses, to plow two strips around the town, and then to back fire the strip between to save the town, meantime the women and
149
O'BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
children using the dampened mops and gunny sacks and spades fighting fire to save the town from burning.
GRASSHOPPERS.
The grasshoppers and the county debt were indeed twin scourges of the early day. The grasshoppers lasted for seven years, or perhaps it should be said from five to seven in the different localities. They were not merely the common, small, tame grasshoppers seen each year along the edges of the pastures. They were known as, and called, the "rocky mountain locust." Their natural home and hatching ground was in the arid, dry sands and soil of the west. They were visitors. In size they were often three inches in length. They did not belong to this region. The scientist has claimed that they never returned, but that each succeeding year, in this damper region that they degenerated in size and strength and finally disappeared. They were prolific, active, saucy and destructive and no remedy for their practical destruction was found. As one wag got it off, "You could catch one grass- hopper and kill him, but you had a job on your hands with the whole bunch." They deposited their eggs in large numbers in the dry, mellow. soft dirt of recent plowing. The sun was the old hen that hatched them out. It may seem like an extravagant, overdone story to state the fact, as the writer him- self did on many occasions, namely, gather up within a few feet a handful of from fifty to a hundred eggs, and hold them in the hands in the sun, and within twenty minutes they would expand and hatch out and jump off the hand, hop, hopper, a full frisky grasshopper, ready to light on the tender wheat or corn blade, in preference to the tougher prairie grass. They had a choice. They had been in the country before, but not in such countless numbers. When they arose in the millions in great clouds, they literally would dim and cloud the sun. When thus in the air they would usually fly with the wind and at a tremendous velocity. The sun shining on their silvery yellow wings, their rapid movements gave them the appearance of shooting stars. Their incisors and well-boring outfit were in proportion, in effect and size, only ten times increased to the blood-boring outfit of a good sized mosquito. These sets of tools could down a large field of wheat or corn in a short time, with many hands doing quick work.
They first came in 1873. In 1877, the year the writer arrived, the people were undergoing the blues of Blue Monday indeed. They were still in con- siderable numbers in 1878 and were practically gone in 1879. The year of 1873 was excessively dry. This resulted in enough ancestral grasshoppers
150
O BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
to keep up the family for the six succeeding years. The strong, hot south- west and westerly winds rousing them up in a myriad cloud, in clash and movement of millions of wings would often sound like the roaring of a storm.
The Sioux City Journal in one issue said. "Farmers should not get dis- couraged." It was hard to tell whether this was intended to be humorous, serious or grim irony or satire. One wag put it: "In the (s) wheat bye and bye." Another wag got it off that "The impudent little cusses would work hard all day, boring wells into his corn stalks. eating, sucking and destroying his corn, and then in the evening would light and line up on his fences and posts and squirt corn juice in his face." All kinds of remedies and suggestions were made and tried out. Some dug a ditch along the field to stop their progress in part. This, however, was doing it just a little. Each remedy fell just a little short. Others tried a long trough filled with kerosene to drag along the fields with a horse, and get them emmeshed with the liquid, but this was only the old woman with her broom sweeping back the waters. The Eastern people and papers said we had all the plagues of Egypt. This did not assist emigration.
The grasshopper was indeed an early settler. He settled on the grain. He was a pioneer. He established his own right by possession. Just imagine. if the reader will, a penniless homesteader, planting corn for a sod crop, and that his first year in the county, as he would laboriously with an ox team turn up five to six inches of solid unsubdued sod of vigorous prairie grass roots in a dry season, and depending on that first crop to winter these oxen or span of horses, a cow or two, a few hogs and also to support himself and family for the winter, with the farm machine man sticking a promissory note at him and threatening to sue him if he did not pay up. This was humorous again. as old Captain Edwards, county auditor, said to the machine note man, "Dod blame it, boys, that's right : sue 'em, put 'em in judgment, I can add 'em up better then."
This fact is probably true, however. with all the damage they did, that now in these later prosperous years of plenty, O'Brien county could feed all those grasshoppers and not miss it. But then they took it all. One man on a whole section of land, with twenty-five acres of first-year sod corn, did not last even a day sometimes.
Like all other new countries, the settler bought too much machinery, and 'during all these seven years and for years afterward these promissory notes became due with interest added. One machine agent came to Cherokee to meet one of these homesteaders, and took a photograph of one of these haytwisters, with his feet and legs wrapped up in gunnysacking in lieu of
151
() BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOW.A.
shoes, with all other clothes to match, and sent it in to the house. Chattel mortgages were given galore, for machine notes, for groceries, for bread. There is one chattel mortgage on the records of O'Brien county actually covering a coffee mill with some other household articles. No wonder they were willing to catch some gophers for the bounty offered and take a county warrant, and even press the matter beyond the limit.
At the September session, 1876, the board of supervisors, on petition of these now distracted homesteaders, by resolution declared all taxes of resi- dents unavailable and cancelled them from the tax lists. This petition and resolution also directed itself to Congress and relief committees for help and relief. Other counties likewise joined who were similarly afflicted. Some citizens, however, held back, fearing that this advertising of those troubles would injure later on in securing settlers.
During the darkest year of 1874, State Senator Samuel H. Fairall, of Iowa City, and our own George D. Perkins, state senator from this district, made a tour of these northwestern counties of Iowa and on the convening of the Legislature in January. 1875, recommended an appropriation of a loan of one hundred and five thousand dollars to these northwest counties, but to be paid back. The Legislature reduced the amount to fifty thousand dol- lars, but made it an out-an-out donation, which was distributed for seed grain to those most needy. This was supplemented also by contributions from relief committees over the country. This making it a donation instead of a loan was the proper thing. as it took many years for those homesteaders of O'Brien and other counties to remedy their conditions.
A committee of the Legislature, composed of Representatives Brown and Tasker, came to Sheldon in March, following and made the distribution, but, as can be seen, even this large sum permitted but a small amount to each homesteader, just sufficient to get seed in the spring, the orders being "to exercise the utmost caution and to supply only the most needy, as it was an emergency measure." Gen. N. B. Baker, of the governor's staff, was the general manager for the distribution of this relief. The people were very grateful, however, as the item of seed grain actually determined the question in many cases whether the homesteader either would or could stick for an- other year, or dig out, as the expression went. Probably, however, like the prairie sod, like the homesteader, like the Indian, like the pioneer, like the then grasshopper in the millions, these conditions only happen or occur but once. When done and gone they were gone forever. Therefore they were historic.
In these later years of prosperity and plenty, in this year 1914, it would
152
O'BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
seem absurd to think that the resolution following could ever have been seri- ously adopted in O'Brien county. Those who have never experienced the ravages for seven years of millions and clouds of grasshoppers would hardly believe it. But in 1873 it was serious. It may be curiously observed that the word grasshoppers was not used. Like the silent lips of death, it was not necessary. The names therein given, however, were among Sheldon's most reliable citizens. In this history we have refrained from inserting long petitions on various subjects, but we cannot abbreviate it in this case and express the due distress of the people during those years and at same time give the proceedings and names of those responsible people taking part. The following was the report of the meeting and resolution :
From the Siour City Journal of December 6, 1873-"Sheldon, Iowa, December 1. 1873 .- Pursuant to a call of the citizens of Sheldon, a meeting was held at Sheldon, November 29, 1873, to take steps for relief to the needy homesteaders of O'Brien county. Meeting was called to order by J. A. Brown, H. D. Wiard was chosen chairman, and E. F. Parkhurst, secre- tary. The following resolutions were presented and adopted :
"'Whereas, many of the people of O'Brien county, through the unfor- tunate failure of crops last season, are needing such aid and assistance from others as is necessary to carry their families through the winter, and procure seed for their land in the spring ; therefore, be it
" 'Resolved, that we appoint a committee of eight to apply to such other parts of the state for what is needed, and to distribute the same when re- ceived, among such families as require it.
" 'Resolved. that the committee report from time to time a list of such goods as are received and that names of the families to whom they are dis- tributed and what each one received.'
"The following persons were elected as that committee: J. A. Brown, H. C. Lane, Ben. Jones, Eli Biarsh, Eli F. Woods, M. G. McClellan, E. F. Parkhurst and E. W. Evans.
"It was voted that a copy of the minutes of this meeting be sent to the Sheldon Mail, Sioux City Journal and State Journal, with a request for publication.
"H. D. WIARD, Chairman.
"E. F. PARKHURST, Secretary."
CHAPTER IX.
COUNTY SEAT CONTESTS.
O'Brien county has had four county seat contests : The contest be- tween Old O'Brien and Primghar in 1872, the contest of 1879 between Prim- ghar and Sheldon, the Sanborn raid or contest in 1882 and the contest of IQII between Primghar and Sheldon.
There are few public agitations that will equal in strenuousness and earnest excitement a county seat contest. It is human nature that the citizens of the contesting towns will be loyal to their home towns. That quality is right and commendable as between the individual and his town, but it forms 110 reason of itself why a county seat should or should not be relocated. The immediate excitement and the otherwise contentions of individuals and towns are often the real subjects discussed in these contests. There are, however, groundwork causes and reasons, above and beyond all this, to which as historic matter we must look and for which we must search in these contests. The contests hover over the shoulders of the towns involved, but the causes solving them out are county wide. We must, therefore, set aside the indi- vidual and tense feelings always playing a part in such contests and look beyond.
The law of the state as to filing petitions and remonstrances was not quite the same in the first two contests of 1872 and 1879 as it was in the last contest of 1911. At the periods of the first two contests the law permitted both sides to procure signatures to both petitions and remonstrances, clear up to the date of the hearing by the board of supervisors. In fact, in the contest of 1879 the board actually permitted signatures to petitions on both sides that were being procured as the board proceeded with the hearing.
At the time of the 191 I contest the law required the petitioner asking for relocation of the county seat, or remonstrating thereto, to affix his signature, to add thereto the date when he signed same, to give the number of the sec- tion, township and range of the land, or the number of the ward if in a city of his residence, and also required that the completed petition be filed sixty days prior to the hearing by the board. The remonstrators could sign up
I54
O BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
names during the canvass of the county by the petitioners and during this sixty days and up to within ten days of the hearing. During each of the con- tests the law required publications to be made of the coming filing of a petition in a newspaper. All the time it has provided that names found on both petition and remonstrance should only be counted on the remonstrance. As can be seen, in all county seat contests this invites a tense struggle in the procurement of signatures.
THE CONTEST BETWEEN O BRIEN AND PRIMGHAR IN 1872.
The establishment of the county seat at Old O'Brien had had an ignoble cause, as we have detailed under other heads. This first contest was not strictly between Old O'Brien and Primghar. but between Old O'Brien and the then prairie grass plat of forty acres, the southeast quarter of the south- east quarter of section 36, township 96, range 41. It is probably the only instance in the history of the state where a spot of forty acres of raw bare prairie, with no inhabitants and not even a name ( the name Primghar not yet having been given to it), ever contested with a prior county seat and actually won out. The board ordered the vote at its June session, 1872, and the elec- tion occurred November 11, 1972. The vote of the people stood three hun- .
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.