USA > Iowa > O'Brien County > Past and present of O'Brien and Osceola counties, Iowa, Vol. I > Part 21
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O BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
which they had so laboriously corralled and expected to kill for their winter's supply. and then when this was done, and the Smithland people became frightened and took away their guns, the Indians passed through that terri- ble winter of 1856, with their savage idea of holding all white people indi- vidually responsible, it is scarce to be wondered at that the innocent victims at Spirit Lake suffered.
One incident occurred in Peterson which perhaps contributed, though probably no one was to blame. It seems that on the road down from Minne- sota, one of the squaws got very sick at Peterson. Her company left her at the home of old Father Bicknell. She was there a month and got well. The winter was dreadfully severe. Food supplies had to be hauled from Fort Dodge or Sac City. The question was serious. Even an addition of one person in a family was serious. This squaw was told she must move on and join her people. She started to do so across the country. This, how- ever, was no more than was often done by the Indian women. The snow that winter was unusually deep. Her bones or remains were found by the Indians in the spring on their road back to Minnesota. This enraged them. One Indian was killed in Clay county. This did not tend to preserve their peace. Other items happened, as Mr. Waterman states in his narrative. The Indians were not wholly in the wrong. Luckily for the peace of O'Brien county. Mr. Waterman was the only citizen and, though roughly used by them, escaped, lucky even that he could "buy his own gun back." Thus it is that the specific Indian incidents directly relating to this county are meager, from the one fact that there was but one citizen here. (See also the narra- tive of Mr. Waterman, and also the article on Prehistoric Fortifications and Indian Burial Mounds in the county.) The Spirit Lake massacre excited the people to that extent that Mr. Waterman was urged to move his family to Peterson as a better protection not only to his family, but also as an aid to the Peterson people.
FIRST O'BRIEN COUNTY HOME OF MR. AND MRS. W. IL. WOODS, BUILT IN 1870. PICTURE MADE ON OCCASION OF PIONEER REUNION, 1903.
CHAPTER XIV.
REMINISCENCES OF EARLY PIONEER DAYS IN O'BRIEN COUNTY.
By Mrs. Roma Wheeler Woods.
Having been requested to write a few pages of reminiscences of early days in O'Brien county, I consented to make the effort. Authorities define the word reminiscence: "The recalling to mind of ideas or impressions for- merly received or forgotten; a statement of what one recollects or remem- bers." Another, "A narrative of past incidents, events and characteristics within one's personal knowledge."
In the settlement of a new country, as in everything else, there is the "beginning of things." It is of these I am to write, running over the years from 1869 to 1881, inclusive. It will be simply a skimming over the years, stopping only to record the events that had a share in shaping the life of the people who had come here to make their homes, with an occasional incident in passing. 1 regret that in this story so much of the personal element must enter in, and regret also that I cannot give glimpses at least of the self sac- rificing, hospitable and noble-hearted people, women and men, who laid the foundations of our beloved county, under some such unfortunate conditions.
In April. 1869, a party of four men, with a camping outfit, left Daven- port for northwestern lowa, to look up lands owned by parties in Daven- port and Rock Island, Illinois, and also to select land for future purchase. The man in charge had been in the real estate business for years, had traveled over much of the state, but never, he thought, had seen anything so fine as O'Brien county, and soon decided to secure a claim for himself. The other three decided to do the same thing. Section 8, township 94, range 39, Waterman. was selected, each man taking a quarter section. They at once built a "sod shanty," in the center of the section, and broke up a few acres on each quarter section. As one of the parties was prominently identified with the happenings I have to relate I have been thus explicit. The men were W. Huston Woods, real estate agent and surveyor; L. A. Worth, a cousin, who came for a hunt and became a citizen; Ed. A. Nissen, who was the excellent cook of the outfit, and who later was sheriff of the county, and George Bell, teamster.
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When these men decided to take claims they went to the village of O'Brien, the county seat. They were very curtly told that "there was not a foot of vacant land in the county," and this in face of the fact that there was not a human being in the county, outside of the little town. However, the plats of the county, just secured from the land office in Sioux City, told a somewhat different story, but upon close examination they were surprised to find that nearly three-fourths of the county had been disposed of in rail- road land grants and to colleges, etc., while five townships had been entered solidly in the sixties. It was found that in Waterman township, in which the little town was located, there remained, all told. only about five sections, out of thirty-six, open to settlement. All efforts to see the county books were fruitless and it was several months before they came to view. These men were considered and treated as intruders. The persistent demands for the county books, which Mr. Woods wished to see in the interests of the men who sent him here, made an enemy of the clerk who was placed in the office to do the work. R. B. Crego was the treasurer, but he was not the man behind this clerk and who perhaps compelled him to do as he did. The surveyor had no time to improve his claim. In the latter part of July, in response to letters, the writer had packed a box of things needed, among them a grindstone. I filled up the box with a few things which would "come handy," and also packed in a trunk, a catalog, a guitar and pillow, and some necessities. On a certain day we met Mr. Woods at a station on the Rock Island Railroad due south from O'Brien county. "We are on the way to our new home." "Impossible," was the reply, "there is nothing for you there ; wait until next spring." When, a few days later, the spring wagon, with "Bell" and "Ed" to draw it, started north, there was a large box, and trunk, and a woman and boy beside the driver. Sleeping on the ground at night, with game cooked on sticks by the fire, we had a glorious trip. In the absence of Mr. Woods, the boys had put up a shed long enough to ac- commodate twenty-five horses. They had cut down on a side hill on the west, and it was open to the east and also on the south and north, and closed by a long haystack. The uprights were cut from the timber on the Little Sioux river. The north end was cut off from the main part by rubber blankets, sacks of grain. and boxes were the seats. The east side of this annex being open, a small cook stove stood at the very edge, with one joint of pipe and an elbow which was turned as needed to keep the smoke out. In this primitive shelter, probably hundreds of men, women and children slept during the first few years of settlement and numberless horses were sheltered in a like manner.
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The first day the writer spent on this claim on section 8 (adjoining the present Sutherland), was the day of the total eclipse of the sun, August 7, 1869, and nowhere was it more perfect than here. My husband and I were alone on that vast prairie, and we watched the magnificent pageant with awe and reverence. As the darkness closed about us and the air grew chill, there came a feeling of dependence upon the Creator never felt before, and as the blessed sunlight returned our hearts were filled with joy and thanks- giving. This was my baptism into a new life in more senses than one.
As the darkness passed we were touched on the shoulder and, turning. found our horses had come from across the creek, and so quietly we had not heard them. They were looking to us for protection, as we had looked to a higher power.
This month of August was most remarkable in the astronomical world. We sat in the evenings, in the little annex. in the dark, and watched the planet Jupiter sweep up from behind the hills unto the heavens, magnificent beyond words, singing and talking meanwhile; then going up the hill to our sleeping apartment (a covered wagon bed set up from the ground), we would stand awhile looking up to the starlit sky so beautiful. We could then understand how those old Aryans in the Indus mountains worshipped the over-arching sky which shut them in each night. It was in this way we entered the simple life of the pioneer.
A few settlers had come in the spring of that year. On the first Sunday after our arrival the first informal reception was held, probably the first in the county. The "boys" by this time had met all the neighbors, and some- how it had got noised about that a new woman had arrived. They began coming in the morning, and it was late in the afternoon when the last of them drove up, the Dan Inman family. They came on horseback, and with these, teams and ox teams. Among these last were Mr. and Mrs. Sam Jor- dan, whose journey to this county behind those oxen was their bridal trip. I was greatly interested in them all: they were to be our neighbors and, we hoped, our friends. "Dutch Fred," or Fred Feldman, the one man who had no office, being, as he said, "De beeples," came with his faithful dog "Bony-Parte." In the intonation of his voice and expression of his face one could feel the scorn which this German exile felt for Napoleon Bona- parte Just how Mr. Nissen managed to secure refreshments for all those people has always been a mystery, with the nearest store seventy-five miles away ; but he did it and all was merry and gay. He served the coffee in tin cups, without cream, and probably short cakes on tin plates, but with the same cautious manner as at home serving a large company from a full larder.
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This little village of O'Brien, the county seat, I can see yet, as I first saw it. There was a "square," around which on each side was a road or street ; across each street there were one or two houses, built of cottonwood logs. A new house built for Major Inman by Mr. Husted was the most pretentious. This was used as a hotel, the Major, with his young wife, living there also. On this same side was the "log court house." On the other side was the home of R. B. Crego, and on another that of Archibald Murray. Not far away was the house of Mr. Parsons. And there was a small blacksmith shop, as I recall, and this was the town. Just at the edge of the county line toward Peterson lived Mr. Parish. The memory of this family is one of the sweetest of that time. It was a log cabin, but spotlessly clean. Mrs. Parish, a beautiful, refined lady, was fading away with con- sumption. The sons and daughters were interesting: one of them later was Mrs. H. F Smith, late of Primghar. H. F. Smith. Ed Parker, George Hil- len, Jolin Pumphrey. Mike O'Neal and John Patchin were the young men who made their homes with Crego's, Archibald Murray's and at the hotel kept by Hoel Gibbs. During the summer the Clark Green family and their relatives, Mr. Wears and Len Dick and Cal and Jacob Wagoner. came. Clark Green opened a store in one end of Archibald Murray's house. W. H. Baker lived not far away. This same fall came also William S. Fuller, Archibald McDonald, and Jim Wilson lived in a shanty in the timber. "Grandpap" Wears, Len Dick and Ben Epperson in another and Cal and Jake Wagoner. John Patchin and Mike O'Neal in another. This combina- tion of "holes in the bank" was called Larrapyville by Peter McCrea. They cut logs and hauled to the Peterson saw mill and sold to Crego and others.
September of this year was rainy, and winter set in early. On the 6th day of October the ground was frozen hard and remained so until spring. Returning to Davenport in late September, we felt when we reached the old home surroundings we could never leave them again. But in a few weeks the lure of the prairie was so strong that, in spite of all protests, I returned with my husband in December. The railroad was then within six miles of Cherokee. After supper we started for home. Soon the low-lying clouds in the north grew gray and the snow began to fall so thickly as to cover the track made in a moment. The horses were given the rein to select the road, but they could not face the storm. Turning about, they trotted along and suddenly stopped. We called out and a woman opened the door and said "come right in." This was the only place between Cherokee and O'Brien and we must have perished but for them. It was the home of Mr. Steinhoff, seventy-five years old, who with his son and daughter and mother,
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ninety-five years old, made up the family. Their home was just prairie hay, fixed up with sticks in some way, and they must have perished that long winter had it not been for George Benson, who took them over to his cabin across the way. Mr. Benson now lives in Sutherland.
The "boys" had put up a small cabin on the hillside, not quite ten feet square and near the shed. It was dug into the side hill on the west and north, and had one window on the east and a door in the south. There were two sleeping bunks on the side wall, a small table, box seats, a little coal stove and a chest between the bunks and the stove, which made a seat for two. During that winter letters were written to the Davenport Gazette, telling of the new northwest country. Soon letters began to pour in from Durant, Wilton Junction, West Liberty and many other places. In the Des Moines Register one day there was a notice that a bill had been presented to the Legislature to bond the indebtedness of the counties in northwest Iowa. Very soon Mr. Woods received instructions to have a reputable attorney go to O'Brien from some place and go through the county books. Of course it was not known that he had any connection with that meddler and rascal Woods? The record of that work was copied in that little cabin and the record itself sent to the parties who ordered it and paid for it.
In early March. 1870, a young man in Sioux City named Fred Beach, coming out to take a claim, left O'Brien in the morning to walk out to our place, seven miles. The ground was covered with snow. Knowing nothing of the country, he did not understand directions, and went up to Dan In- man's, who was then living on his claim up on Waterman creek. Again he failed to understand instructions and took the south creek instead, which would have brought him to us. The snow fell so thick and fast in the after- noon, with no roads, the poor boy, unused to all the hardship, tramped all day. had passed within half a mile of us and on to perhaps seven miles away, when strength gave out and he fell upon his face and so died. A little dog some friend had sent to Mr. Woods, he carried inside his overcoat, and where it died later, as his tracks were all around poor Fred in every direc- tion. The next morning it was eighteen degrees below zero. The next day William E. Baldwin, of Sioux City, came out to go over his claim and asked about Fred. They at once began a search for him. The next morning nearly all the men in O'Brien came out and joined in the search. The air was full of snow and it was so hazy that men looked like posts. The storm increased so rapidly that they gathered into that little cabin. We had some bacon and coffee and I had baked up the last of the flour that morning. But
(14)
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I did not dare to let them go out without their dinner. Mr. Woods was the last to come and he was all but exhausted. I would not hear to their going until Mr. Woods came in, but as soon as he came they prepared to go, al- though we tried to have them stay. They all started to the sleighs, but two of them failed to reach them and came back and had to remain three days until the storm abated. The supplies sent for had been forgotten and had been left in O'Brien, but we had some wheat for the spring planting and we cooked that. The thought of Fred was uppermost in mind, and for a month Mr. Woods kept up the search, going each day in the direction we heard the wolves the night before. It was a month before he was found, and then the snow had melted so that our neighbors, a mile away across the creek, had to go three or four miles to get over the stream. Nearly everybody in the country were at the funeral. The people who went to O'Brien in that storm would have perished had it not been for Sylvester Parish, a man with such a keen observation and a long experience on the prairie that in that traveler's waste of snow he kept the proper bearings and, with Mr. Waterman to drive the team, they reached their homes in safety. The men who came out to us at that perilous time were, as I remember, Hoel Gibbs, Russell G. Allen, George Parker, Lionel Worth, John Patchin, Henry ( Hank) Smith, Horace Gilbert. George Younde, George Hillen (the two who remained), Uncle George Johnson, who had just come to the country, and the names of others I cannot recall. I think there were several more. An inquest was held in Liberty township, where Fred was found. A bill of expenses gives the names of the jurors as T. J. Field, Aaron Brown and A. Caldwell, witnesses, John Richardson, Sidney Viers and C. Fields, and the name of the coroner not given, date April 9. 1870. For years the lights were set in the windows on dark nights.
Letters were coming in rapidly relating to lands. The lands in the county were not in the market for pre-emption, homesteads or purchase until the 6th day of July, 1870. Again and again Mr. Woods told the settler that it was of no use to go until that day to Sioux City to secure the claims upon which they had filed. They went on and secured their papers, and the in- dignation of some of them was so great against him (of course he wanted all that land himself) that they organized to do him bodily harm. Mr. Woods, who took ont papers for several parties, spoke often of what a calamity would soon come upon the county for fifty or sixty homesteaders to lose their claims or be compelled to buy off those who on the morning of the 6th of July laid money against them. In September or October of 1871 Mr. Woods learned, while he was filing papers in Sioux City, that patents
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O'BRIEN AND OSCEOLA COUNTIES, IOWA.
were about to be issued for lands near us. Asking for a list of the lands, he received it, and while making a copy of same heard suggestions made that reacted seriously upon the one who made them. Without waiting to conclude his own business, Mr. Woods returned to the county, went to the home of J. C. Doling, who came home with Mr. Woods and spent the night with us at our home. In the early morning they left for Sioux City and went at once to Joy & Wright, attorneys, who told them to organize and make the fight together, that it would take an act of Congress and a thousand dollars. Mr. Doling at once returned home and sent word to all those who were in the list Mr. Woods had given him to meet at Payne's store and they organized the "O'Brien County Land League," with J. C. Doling, president, and Ed. C. Brown, secretary. There were sixty-one homesteads involved, and all joined but one, and he was the only one to lose his homestead.
But to go back to 1870. A man appeared one day with a shovel, with a tin pail hung on it, over his shoulder. He wished to locate a claim in Baker township. Mr. Woods had other parties to locate first, so he would have to remain a few days. He wanted to do some work to help pay for the surveying. My father suggested next morning that he might fix some horse troughs. He said that "it was his Sunday" and he should not work. The next morning he was ready to work, when my father told him it "was his Sunday," so between them the work was never done. It left an item to laugh over.
In the early fall I returned to Davenport. Mr. Woods had paid Mr. Crego for brick to build a house and they were hauled up to the place, but were found to be worthless. So another log cabin was built, this time on the homestead. While in Davenport I had disposed of everything that I thought we could do without and shipped the rest to O'Brien county, including the piano and library, each of which I believe were the first to reach the county. When I reached here later the goods were in the cabin, but there was hardly room to sit down, so some of the things helped to furnish other cabins.
In the fall of this year 1870 my father, Daniel H. Wheeler, and I came down from William E. Baldwin's, three miles away in Highland township (they built the first cabin in that township). My father wore, as he had always done, a "stove pipe hat." We noticed as we neared the cabin that a new camping outfit was nearby. It seems they had arranged for Mr. Woods to go with them to survey out a claim the next day. L. B. Healy came from Cherokee ; they had on white shirts and their best clothes. Just before dark a top buggy came from Cherokee way with two well-dressed gentlemen. Our son, H. C. Woods, long known among the early settlers as "Bub" Woods,
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came in from the O'Brien way. It was a beautiful, clear, moonlight night, and about nine o'clock. R. B. Crego came up with a gay team with white fly covers. He had with him a man who came at once into the house, and H. C. went out, and he and Mr. Crego put the horses away. The curtains were all put down. That night affidavits were made by at least two men who knew all about how the county debt had been created, because they were part of those in the work. They would only come under the strictest secrecy, and were brought by R. B. Crego.
The next morning there was no sign of the campers we had seen. A few days later we heard of them as being at Ben Hutchinson's store in Car- roll township. They were greatly excited and felt that they had made a narrow escape from some great peril. They declared that there was a nest of robbers or counterfeiters down at that place where they stopped. When Mr. Hutchinson heard where it was, he said, "Oh, those were homesteaders gathering in at night." "Homesteaders, h --- , homesteaders don't wear stove pipe hats, and white shirts and ride in top buggies; why teams were driving in from every way and late at night, too." "We bein' warned against that Woods in O'Brien and we lit out of there."
. The constant complaints from new settlers and from those who had invested money here and many cases where the deeds for the land which they had did not describe land in O'Brien county or any where else, and so many homesteaders who had to pay eighty to one hundred dollars to parties who had "laid money against the land," made some organization among the new settlers necessary. The first of these was the "Board of Emigration." of which the faithful Stephen Harris was secretary .. After the affidavits were secured, which were seen only by a few, the conditions were laid before the attorney-general of the state; indeed he had been consulted previously. He said the remedy was simple and plain, and under his direction a petition was prepared which every voter in the county, except the officers and the ex-officers, signed, and it was sent to the attorney-general by private hand. Immediate action was promised. The people waited in almost breathless suspense. Two weeks later a county official told one of the petitioners "that the petition would never be heard of again, somebody had fixed him with three hundred and twenty acres of land." It seemed incredible, but that was all that was ever heard of it. Two years later a board of supervisors was elected, called the reform board. Here was another opportunity for the people. A resident taxpayer wrote to the lowa Railroad Land Company that the people were determined to make another effort to wipe out the illegal debt. They replied that if the board of supervisors would stand by them
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they would pay all costs of litigation. Co-operation was promised by the committee on defense. The attorney for the Iowa Railroad Land Company had been here some time at work when a stub book of the county which he was examining and all of the papers were stolen, and he left in disgust and no efforts were made for their recovery by the supervisors.
In the postoffice in O'Brien in the early part of December, 1871, Mr. Woods opened a marked copy of a paper published in Denison, Iowa, and was surprised into exclamations and protestations, as he read that the school sections of O'Brien county would be put up for public sale on a certain day very near at hand. Why was this sold in the dead of winter? And "why. if for sale, were these lands not advertised in the Sioux City papers, where the land office was, and where people looked for such things?" There were a few moments of vehement talk pro and con, but no time was to be lost. A fleet team carried him to Cherokee to catch the afternoon train to Sioux City. The next morning he took breakfast with his old friend, Gen. N. B. Baker. in Des Moines, who then went with him to the home of Governor Merrill, who was just going to his breakfast as they arrived, but stopped to greet General Baker, who introduced Mr. Woods and stated the object of his coming. Mr. Woods handed him the Denison paper marked. He read it, asked a few questions, then dictated a telegram to the attorney-general to proceed at once and stop that sale of lands. Not many years ago I saw an article in a magazine written by Governor Merrill relating to this incident. There was another phase of pioneer life. Indeed that life was full of many satisfactions.
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