USA > Iowa > O'Brien County > Past and present of O'Brien and Osceola counties, Iowa, Vol. I > Part 66
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Andrew Verhage, one of the men in the crew, was hit and hurt so severely that he was laid up three weeks. Mr. Verhage is still working for the railroad company and is now section boss of this same section. Thomas Larrahty lives in Nebraska, having worked for the railroad company so long he is now retired on a pension. William Larrahty lives in Colorado.
CHAPTER IX.
MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS OF INTEREST.
EDUCATIONAL HISTORY.
The first schools of the county were small and not taught regularly as required by law. They were held in poor buildings wherever the requisite number of children of school age happened to be found. Many of the first teachers made no pretensions to be qualified for their work. The pupils were young, the wages low and frequently the only way to have any school was to give a homesteader's wife a permit to teach some particular school. Often that school was held in the teacher's kitchen.
The first school in Fairview township was held in the homestead shack of S. A. Dove and Mrs. Dove was the teacher. Fairview now has four rural schools and the graded school of Harris, employing in all seven teachers. Gladys Foote is ( 1913) the principal of the Harris school. The value of the school property of this township is eight thousand dollars. It has two hundred and forty children of school age.
Horton township has five public schools and one hundred and ninety- eight children of school age. It has school property valued at twenty thou- sand dollars. There is also, in connection with the Lutheran church, a de- nominational school with an enrollment of thirty-one. The first school in this township was the Clemens school.
Wilson township supports six schools for ninety-nine children of school age, and has school property valued at four thousand dollars. The first school here was on section 27. It was eventually moved to what was later called the Cloud district.
Viola township supports six schools and the school property is valued at six thousand dollars with one hundred and sixty-six children of school age. The first school was held on section 14 and was later called the Shaw district.
Allison township has nine schools and the children of school age number two hundred and fifteen, with school property valued at five thousand dol- lars. The first school is hard to locate at this late day but it was probably in the northwestern part in the neighborhood of the New England settlement.
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Ocheyedan township supports eight schools, outside of the "independent district" of Ocheyedan, with school property valued at four thousand dollars, and children of school age to the number of two hundred and thirteen. The first school house was built by the "boodlers" in the same season that they erected two or three others in the county. They were all larger than was necessary and built at an enormous expense. S. S. Parker later bought this house, moved it onto his claim for a residence and a more suitable school house was provided.
Holman township supports sixteen rural schools, outside of Sibley, with property valued at sixteen thousand dollars. The children of school age number four hundred and forty. The first school was at Sibley in one of the "boodler" school houses. Another of those expensive houses was located on the southeast orner of section 15, township 99, range 41. It was eventually sold and a proper kind of a school house located in the proper place.
Gilman township supports eight schools outside of the independent dis- trict of Ashton, with one hundred and eighty-seven children of school age. and school property valued at five thousand dollars. The first school, as near as can be made out now, was one near the first location of the Ashton church: another was in the western part of the township in the Quaker settlement.
Goewey township supports nine schools for two hundred and twenty- eight children of school age and has property valued at about eight thousand dollars. The first school was on section 10, later moved to the regular school site.
Baker township has nine schools and property valued at four thousand dollars, outside of the Melvin schools, with two hundred and twenty-two chil- dren of school age. The first school was held on section 8 and was taught by Mrs. Orvis Foster, mention of whom is made in the Baker township notes.
Harrison township came in later and had its first school at May City postoffice. This township now supports nine public schools, for children of school age, numbering two hundred and two, and school property valued at six thousand dollars.
Besides the foregoing country schools, there are in the county four inde- pendent districts as follows: Ocheyedan graded school, employing five teachers, and having two hundred and twenty-nine children of school age. and school property valued at twenty thousand dollars. The present princi- pal of this school is J. P. Johnson. The Ashton school employs four teach- ers, and has two hundred and thirty-four children of school age. The school property is valued at three thousand five hundred dollars. Lawrence Newby
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is the principal. The Melvin school employs two teachers with Alice Bahan as principal. It has eighty children of school age and property worth about one thousand five hundred dolars. Sibley has a school building of fifteen rooms, with seventeen teachers. This school has a normal department and a music teacher. The Sibley school property is valued at forty thousand dollars. The children of school age number three hundred and eighty-three. The non-resident pupils, paying tuition, number twenty-nine. The super- intendent is J. R. McAnelly.
The value of the public school property in the county amounts to the respectable sum of one hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars. This will not correspond exactly with the public records since there are instances wherein the records do not enumerate correctly. The total number of children of school age in the county according to the 1913 returns is three thousand three hundred and thirty-six.
FIRST THINGS OF OSCEOLA COUNTY.
The first settler was Captain Eldred, of Gilman township, who was later county recorder several terms.
The first town in the county was Sibley.
Sibley was first called Cleghorn.
The first store in the county was conducted by Thomas Shaw, on the bank of Otter creek, a few miles south of Ashton, to which place he later moved it.
The first store in Sibley was operated by H. K. Rogers.
The first railroad train came into the county in the spring of 1872.
The first death in the county was that of Wells, who died of heart fail- ure and was found dead in his homestead shanty on section 8, Ocheyedan township, in the spring of 1872. He was buried on his claim and later his remains were moved to the Sibley cemetery by the old soldiers of the Ireland Post.
The first white child born in the county was a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Nimms, of Viola township. She was born in June, 1871, and lived only eighteen months.
Levi Shell opened the first lumber yard in the county at Sibley.
D. L. Riley was the first mayor of Sibley.
The first mail coming into the county was distributed at Tom Shaw's first store.
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The first meeting of the board of supervisors was held in a small shack that is still making a doubtful stand on Ninth street in Sibley.
The first session of the grand jury was held in the fall of 1872 in the old frame court house, which had just been completed.
Maud Barclay, born December 17, 1872, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Barclay, was the first child born in Sibley. She grew to womanhood, was educated in the public schools of Sibley and married Alfred Morton. She died at Ocheyedan, January 1I, 1902, where Mr. Morton was engaged in the banking business. She left one daughter who now resides in Sibley.
The first threshing machine outfit was run by John A. Haas, a home- steader on section 34, in Goewey township, in 1872, with Abe Shapley, of Viola, a close second. Both were horse power machines. Mr. Shapley was the first to own a steam power outfit.
The first bank was opened by H. L. Emmert at Sibley.
The first church was the Methodist church at Sibley.
Otto Turk had the first automobile, a steam machine.
George Carew had the first gasoline automobile.
The first term of court convened July 16, 1872, with Henry Ford, judge; C. H. Lewis, district attorney ; Frank Stiles, sheriff, and Cyrus M. Brooks, clerk. The first case on the docket is entitled, "L. F. Diefendorf versus J. H. Winspear & Company."
The first residence in Sibley was built by John L. Robinson, who was father of Frank M. Robinson, the first county auditor.
John L. Robinson died in Sibley at the advanced age of ninety-eight years.
THE IOWA LAND COMPANY, LIMITED, OF LONDON, ENGLAND.
This company operated in this territory many years and at one time it was said to be the richest company doing business in Iowa. Its plan was to buy the cheap prairie land in large quantities, partially improve it, put a cheap set of buildings on the various farms, and run them as tenant farms a number of years. Eventually the company sold out and thus gained the advance in price. The purchase of these lands was made in 1881 under the management of Close Brothers & Company. The stockholders were all Eng- lish and Scotch.
In 1883 the firm of Close Brothers & Company dissolved, and C. W. Benson, one of the partners in the old firm of Close Brothers & Company,
(43)
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took over the management of the Iowa Land Company, in which Ker D. Dun- lop and C. F. Benson were active partners.
A new firm of Close Brothers & Company was formed and operated in Pipestone, Minnesota. The Iowa Land Company operated principally in Osceola county, with headquarters in Sibley. However, it brought some land in surrounding counties. Their entire purchase amounted to something like one hundred and fifty thousand acres, of which it broke in the neighbor- hood of eighty thousand acres, and built about two hundred set of buildings. While the Iowa Land Company operated here it was quite a rendezvous for young Englishmen who had nothing to do but spend an allowance. They gave Sibley the appearance of being a lively town. Horse racing, polo play- ing, fox hunting and toboggan sliding were the usual sports for pastime. The company sent agents east to look up tenants and a vast number, good. bad and indifferent, were brought in by their enterprising agents. During those years, Sibley seemed to have a boom, but as a lot of the floating class of tenants moved on, the merchants found that they were losing more from poor accounts than they had ever lost before. It was probably the hardest time the Sibley merchants ever experienced. The managers of this com- pany were fine gentlemen and free buyers, as well as prompt paymasters, but many of their tenants were a damage to the town. Finally the Iowa Land Company closed out its interests here and moved to St. Paul, Minne- sota, where it is still doing business. Not one of the Englishmen are left in this vicinity.
THE FUEL QUESTION.
No problem of the first settlers was of more importance than the matter of fuel. Nearly all fixed their houses in some way to withstand the on- slaughts of wind and weather. But there was a total lack of any kind of fuel sufficient to supply the necessary demand.
The first fuel was obtained from a little willow brush that was found along the Ocheyedan and Little Rock rivers, but that was insufficient in quan- tity and besides was very poor in quality. The only other visible supply was the timber growing along Big Rock river in Lyon county on the west and on the shore of West Okoboji lake on the east. It was a drive of from twenty-five to thirty miles over poor roads and through soft sloughs to either place. With the poor and ill-fed teams of that day it took two days of hard work for man and team to get a load of green and unsatisfactory wood. When the railroad was built into Sibley soft coal was shipped in, but it was high in price and poor in quality, and money was even scarcer than coal.
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When a car load arrived there was more effort to get to it first to earn one dollar and fifty cents for scooping it off, than there was to buy a load of it.
Finally some good samaritan suggested the use of hay for fuel. At first it was considered a joke. However, people were in such desperate straits for fuel that it was given a trial. After a good deal of experiment- ing the best kind of hay for fuel was discovered and the best way of prepar- ing it for the stove devised. The long, coarse slough hay that grew abun- dantly in all the sloughs, cut before it was badly frozen. proved to be the best. When cut in the proper season and well prepared for the stove it made good fuel either for cooking or heating purposes. It was prepared by twisting a long handful tightly and doubling it into the appearance of a skein of yarn. When twisted tightly, with the ends securely tucked in, it made neat, tidy and useful fuel. . The tighter it was twisted the longer it lasted. A bran sack filled with this knotted hay would do a big baking or last through a long, cold evening.
And thus the fuel problem was solved. The early settlers became so attached to hay fuel that its use was continued as a matter of preference several years after the grasshopper scourge was past. They considered the burning of hay as a blessing instead of a hardship. Some good housewives at this late day express the wish, when wanting a quick hot fire, that they had a sack full of good hay to do their baking. Now when many of these old settlers are still here and sitting round their big hard-coal heaters or over furnaces they never enumerate the burning of hay as one of the hardships of early times. The use of corn for fuel was not practiced in this county to any great extent. The intensive schooling the first settlers received during the grasshopper scourge caused them to look upon the use of corn for fuel as nearly a crime.
In this good and abundant year of 1913 the groves of forest trees planted by the early settlers as well as by those coming later furnished such an abundance of fuel that there is not only "wood to burn," but much going to waste. Many large trees are being cut each year both for lumber and fuel and the smaller trees are growing faster than the big ones are being used. One cottonwood tree in Sibley cut for fuel in 1910 made four cords of four- foot wood, thus showing how rapidly the timber grows in this country. This tree was planted in 1873. In order to illustrate by an actual example the statement heretofore made that the timber planted in this county is now fur- nishing an abundance of fuel, Mr. O. B. Harding, one of the early settlers in Goewey township, and many years a prominent farmer but now retired, was interviewed and made the following statement: "I commenced preparing
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the ground for trees in the spring of 1874. The following year I began planting cottonwood and willow cuttings. During the summer of 1875 I planted some seed of the soft maple. A year or two later I began planting white ash and box elder seedlings. In ten years' time after planting I had nearly all the fuel we needed from the thinning and trimming of the timber. I then began using willows for posts and have had an abundance from that time to the present. In the year 1910, after using a large amount of timber for fuel, posts, cattle sheds, etc., I concluded to saw most of the cottonwood timber into lumber. I sawed twenty-five thousand feet of good lumber and the same year cut about seventy-five cords of wood from the slabs and trim- mings. I also cut about two thousand willow posts from a small piece of ground the same year. After all the cutting that has been done the timber has more than held its own, and bids fair to furnish timber and fuel for the farm for many years to come. I also sawed some ash timber into lumber suitable for sled and wagon tongues, eveners and various other purposes for use on the farm. I have used part of the cottonwood lumber in building a large corn house, wood and tool house, chicken house and other outbuild- ings. Had all the cottonwood timber used for other purposes during all these years been left standing I could easily have sawed fifty thousand feet of lumber. This timber occupied little ground. being along the road side, around buildings and on the outskirts of other timber."
The experience of Mr. Harding has been duplicated by others. For in- stance, L. G. Van Eaton, also an early settler in Goewey township, now re- ured and living in Little Rock, made extensive sawings from the timber growing on his farm in Viola township. Soren Anderson in Goewey did the same thing on his farm, which was the homestead of A. Romey, now a mer- chant in Sibley. Among others who made extensive cutting of lumber from their own groves is J. T. Greenfield, of East Holman, who sawed sixteen thousand feet of lumber as well as many posts and large quantities of wood. R. S. Eakin, of Wilson, has cut considerable lumber, posts and wood. Henry Dagle and William Dagle, of Goewey, both living on their original home- steads and now wealthy farmers, have sawed a large amount of lumber. There are many others, but space does not permit mention of any more. If this county were entirely cut off from outside sources her fuel supply would be sufficient without any great hardship except that a few who never swung it before would have to swing an ax.
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TRANSPORTATION.
The first settlers of this county came here by way of the prairie schooner route. A few who possessed the means shipped their goods on the Illinois Cen- tral to Cherokee or Le Mars and then moved them by wagon the rest of the way. In the early seventies all roads led to northwestern Iowa, where roads ended and a few trails took their place. There was no track to guide the claim seeker when he left the trail and he had to trust the heavens or his com- pass to reach any desired place. People usually came in family groups and helped one another through the soft sloughs. When a slough was reached some one of the party would examine the ground and if found soft, all would stop and double up their teams and help one another across. All carried a few simple cooking utensils and at night camped, prepared the meal and fixed up for a night's rest-some sleeping in the wagon and others under it. When the weather was good they had a very good time, but when the weather was bad they suffered many hardships. Old settlers say now that the least said about it the better. Each morning they moved on. House cleaning had no terrors for them. Three meals and fifteen to twenty-five miles per day was the usual day's work. They forgot there was any Sunday. Singing songs, telling stories and the shooting of prairie chickens were the common pastimes. They came from southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois and eastern Iowa, a hardy, happy, jolly lot, full of hope and courage and ready to subdue a wilderness. How well they succeeded the following pages will disclose.
The first settlers came in 1870, more followed in 1871 and the number increased in 1872 and 1873. During the summer and autumn of 1871 the St. Paul & Sioux City Railroad was graded through the county and in June, 1872, the ties and rails were laid and the first engine came into Sibley from the north. The road had been completed to Worthington, Minnesota, in the late fall of 1871. The winter following was so severe and so much snow came, followed by extreme cold weather, that railroad building was impossible until well along in the spring of 1872. Along about that time some stage lines were established to carry mail and passengers from Spencer to Sibley, and from Spirit Lake to Sioux Falls by way of Sibley. About that time mnich freight was hauled by teams overland from Sibley to Sioux Falls by way of Rock Rapids. Large quantities of wheat were hauled from Sioux Falls and vicinity to the Sibley elevator, considerable of that work being done by Indians with ox teams. So much wheat came to the Sibley market that
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as many as fifty wagon loads were lined up to be unloaded in the morning after the elevator men worked as long as they could in the evening-unload- ing at what was then the railroad elevator. All this occurred before the grass- hopper scourge.
The first railroad was the St. Paul & Sioux City line and to that com- pany fell every odd numbered section of land given as a bonus by the United States government for building the road. The above named road kept and sold all the railroad land, but the road itself changed hands and is now called the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railroad. The road is known locally as the Omaha, and is used as a part of the Northwestern system. This railroad continued to be the only one until the year 1884, when another line, the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern, crossed the county from east to west. At that time the towns of Harris, Ocheyedan and Allendorf were es- tablished, of which more will be written in other chapters. This line was later sold and is now a part of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Rail- road. In the year 1900 the Gowrie branch of the Rock Island was built from Gowrie to Sibley, giving Osceola county a direct line to Des Moines and the coal fields of southeastern Iowa. On this line were established the towns of Melvin and Cloverdale, thus giving the county seven railroad towns for market and trading purposes; also giving all towns several daily mails. Sib- ley is now accommodated with fourteen daily mails. These various lines of railroad add materially to the assessors' valuation for taxation purposes.
THE GRASSHOPPER SCOURGE.
All history occurs in stages or periods. Thus there was a period of settlement, a period of improvement, and then a period of grasshoppers ac- companied by privation, stagnation and hard times. We thought we had ex- perienced many privations and hardships during the first years, but we were young and nervy and expected it, and in our minds were prepared for it and went through it with hope and song.
In 1872 a few acres of crops were sown and planted on land broken the year before, and produced fairly well, considering the wild and raw nature of land and the lack of proper tools to work the soil properly. More breaking was done, and a considerably increased acreage planted in 1873, in land bet- ter prepared for the seed. Everything came on prosperously and our people began to see their visions more clearly and to believe they were rapidly near- ing realization. When lo! one fine day early in June a great cloud appeared in the distance with a slight roaring sound of millions of wings. First came
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a few of the swifter hoppers, dropping, dropping, dropping here, there and everywhere-then more rapidly, oftener and thicker, more and more and more until all the ground was covered. the buildings and the little trees we had planted were borne to the earth by the heft of the hoppers that had clus- tered on them like swarms of bees. Immediately upon lighting, they began to eat every green thing in their way. As the grain. was more tender then prairie grass, they gathered into the grain, and ate all day and during the night. A person could go out over the grain and corn fields in the stillness of the night and hear the stripping and chewing like the subdued noise of a drove of cattle. In the morning the crops were all destroyed. Corn, grain. potatoes and garden stuff all gone. The young trees were stripped of leaves and some of them of bark. This was the prospect of profit and living for two years gone, and gone in less than twenty-four hours. After the crops were all gone the hoppers scattered out over the prairie and lived on grass a few days, but they could make very little impression upon that. In a few days they left as they came, in a great swarm, making it look like an eclipse of the sun. They went to clean up some other county. But before going they deposited millions of eggs in the hard prairie soil and in the new break- ing so there should be something left to remember them by. After the hop- pers had gone, the settlers had little time to recover from the shock and dis- appointment of their loss. Remember, dear reader, that everything was staked on that crop. Here the true spirit of these sturdy pioneers asserted itself. Most of them, with true Yankee grit and American enterprise, com- menced to summer-fallow the devastated fields, preparing for another cam- paign. They said that to plow early meant a heavy crop for 1874. So hope re-entered the stricken land and work went cheerily on, and, although the set- tlers had lost the first round with the hoppers, they refused to throw up the sponge, but came up smiling prepared for another bout. The hoppers, too, returned to the conflict but in a different way. In due season of time the same sun that warmed mother earth, and the same balmy breezes of spring that fanned and brought to life the grass and flowers of the prairie, and the same rains that caused the farmer's seed grain to germinate and grow, also warmed into life the millions upon millions of clusters of grasshoppers' eggs laid the year before. Suddenly it was discovered that the country was literally alive with minute young hoppers and that the hoppers must eat to grow, and did eat with a marvelous appetite. Being chips of the same, they immediately manifested their preference for the tender growing shoots of the cultivated crops instead of tougher prairie grass. Thus was witnessed day after day the race between the growing grain and the devouring pest. The
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