USA > Iowa > Woodbury County > Sioux City > Past and present of Sioux City and Woodbury County, Iowa > Part 60
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The home of Mr. and Mrs. Robinson has been blessed with six children, Ina, Chloe, Howard, Vernie, Clarence and Rexcy. The parents are members of the Rock Center Chris- tian church and Mr. Robinson has served for several years as Sunday-school superintendent, while in the various church activities he takes a deep and helpful interest. He is a Master Mason, belonging to the lodge at Correction- ville, and in politics he is independent, voting for the candidates whom he thinks best quali- fied for office, regardless of party affiliations. There have been no exciting chapters in his life history and yet it is the record of one who has been found faithful to the duties of citizen- ship and to the ties of family and friendship. Such a man deserves and receives the respect and confidence of his fellow men and Mr. Rob- inson is held in high regard by all with whom he has been associated.
JAMES LEE.
James Lee is a successful farmer and stock- raiser of Liston township, owning and oper- ating a nice farm of one hundred and sixty acres. He was born in London, England, on the 18th of October, 1840, a son of William and Mary Lee. He began his education in his native land and after coming to America at- tended school both in Chicago and Wisconsin, pursuing a high school course. He was the eldest son in a family of seven children, the others being Joseph, Charles, William, Kate, Mary and Ann.
At the age of fourteen years Mr. Lee came to the new world with his father, the mother and other children remaining in England. Their destination was Marquette county, Wis- consin, and they passed through Chieago when there was no bridge across the river where the McCormick Harvester Works are now located and no houses from there to the lake shore on either side of the river. At night, when seven miles out of Chicago on the Michigan Central Railroad, the train on which they were pas- sengers collided with another and thirty-five persons were killed and many wounded. The engine of the other train struck the car in which were Mr. Lee and his father at a crossing and the former had his hand caught in the broken timbers. He managed to pull himself loose, but the hand was severely injured. He then got his father from the wreck, but the father had one arm, a leg and several ribs broken and had to be taken to a hospital in Chicago, where he was all summer getting well. During that time our subject attended the city schools. When his father had sufficiently re- covered to proceed on his journey they took a boat for Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and then on foot traveled through various towns-Fond du Lac, Neenah and Menasha-and on to Lake Winnebago in search of a farm. They once stopped over night at a place in the woods many miles from any habitation, their host be- ing a Mr. White, and the room to which they
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were assigned for the night was a regular arsenal, the walls being covered with guns, knives, etc. The father had considerable money in a belt around his body and fearing that he had been led into a trap for the purpose of robbery watched all night long, but fortunately nothing happened. He finally purchased a farm of eighty acres in Marquette county of a Mr. Moss for three hundred and fifty dollars, but was unused to western ways and soon found that the farm was mortgaged as well as the team and horses, for which he had paid seventy- five dollars. The farm was located about fifty miles north of Madison and in that city he spent the following summer, working at the mason's trade, our subject being with him. In the fall he went to Illinois, where he was taken ill, and from Chicago he again returned to his Wisconsin home, where he was joined by his wife and the other children in the next fall. They came to this country in the spring, but on reaching Manitowoc, Wisconsin, no one could tell them where our subject and his father were living, their postoffice being at an nn- known place called MeIntyre. The mother and children were ill with fever and agne at Mani- towoc for two months. During that fall the father contracted a severe cold while digging a well through thirty feet of solid sandstone with chisel and hammer and died on his farm in the winter of 1856.
After his death James Lee left home and went to Columbia county, Wisconsin. He spent the first night in a German hotel and, as his possessions consisted of only a jaek-knife and fifty cents, he told his first fib-telling the landlord that he had no money. The knife was therefore accepted as pay. Ile continued his search for work and while stopping at the Blue Tavern he worked for the proprietor, Mr. Gage, for his board. However, he soon found employment on the farm of Mr. Tripp at thir- teen dollars per month, and his employer's wife was very kind to him.
While there Mr. Lee met Miss Edna Smith,
a daughter of William Smith, who was also a native of England and a potter by trade, having come to this country with a colony of potters. He died, however, in March, 1851, soon after locating in Wisconsin, when his daughter was only seven years old. She was born May 9, 1844, in Staffordshire, England, and was four years of age when the family settled in Wis- consin. On the 10th of October, 1863, she gave her hand in marriage to Mr. Lee. Unto them have been born seven children, four sous and three daughters, namely: W. J., S. B., C. H. and G. A. Lee, Mrs. Mary L. Sehrunk, Mrs. Lillie R. Williams and Mrs. Ethel P. Upham. All are married and all live in Iowa with the exception of Mrs. Williams, who on the 16th of March, 1903, removed with her husband to Alberta, Canada. Mr. and Mrs. Lee also have seventeen grandchildren and, sur- rounded by relatives and many friends, they are a happy and contented couple. Mrs. Lee has two brothers and two sisters, namely: Wil- liam, Samuel, Rachel and Hannah.
During the Civil war Mr. Lee manifested his loyalty to his adopted country by enlisting September 16, 1861, in the Eleventh Wiscon- sin Volunteer Infantry, with which he served for three years. IIe continued to make his home in Wisconsin until the 14th of June, 1870, when he came to Woodbury county, Iowa, the journey being made by team and consuming three weeks. His first crop here was destroyed by hail and the second by the grasshoppers but he did not allow himself to become discouraged and making the most of every advantage he soon met with success. In those early days the prairie fires often swept from Sioux City to Dennison and back again, a distance of eighty-five miles. There were no churches nearer than twelve miles from his home and the first schoolhouse in the locality was built by himself and neighbors, the school- board furnishing the material and the men doing the work for nothing that their children might be educated. The little temple of learn-
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ing was only twelve by sixteen feet in dimen- sions, but here many a child gained his first knowledge of the common school branches.
THOMAS H. RALSTON.
Thomas H. Ralston is one of the extensive landowners of Woodbury county, his realty holdings comprising eight hundred acres of rieh and arable land. His home is in Kedron town- ship and he is numbered among the early set- tlers of the state, having been a resident of Iowa since 1855. He has lived in Woodbury county since 1889 and throughout this portion of the state he is held in high regard, because of his business ability, his devotion to the gen- eral good and his fidelity to all the duties and obligations of private life.
Mr. Ralston was born in Ohio, a native of Wellsville, Columbiana county, his natal day being January 5, 1840. His father, Robert Ralston, was born in Pennsylvania and was a son of Robert Ralston Sr., who removed to Ohio about 1815 during the second decade after the admission of that state into the Union. He settled in Richland county and upon the old homestead there Robert Ralston Jr. was reared to manhood amid the wild seenes of frontier life, assisting largely in the development of the home farm. He was married in that local- ity to Miss Harriet Hurford, a native of Ohio, and after remaining in the Buckeye state for a number of years Robert Ralston Jr. removed with his family to Iowa in 1855, settling in Clinton county, where he opened up a farm and reared his family. He spent his remain- ing days there and was actively identified with the substantial upbuilding and improvement of that part of the state. During the terrible tor- nado, June 3, 1860, his family escaped unin- jured, although several hundred in that local- ity were killed and many injured.
Thomas H. Ralston was reared in Clinton county, Iowa, upon the old home farm. He attended the common schools and also the high
schools of that loeality and subsequently he went to Chicago, where he was engaged in busi- ness, being in that city at the time of the great Chicago fire, one of the most disastrous that has ever oeeurred in the history of America. In 1872 he went to California and was engaged in mining at Virginia City for about ten years. His experience there was such as usually fell to the lot of the miner, who is sometimes suc- cessful and again meets with reverses. Mr. Ralston returned to Iowa in 1889, locating in Sioux City, where he was employed in the in- surance business for a number of years. In 1882 he purchased land in Kedron township and hired men to break and fence this. He also has two sets of buildings erected on the farm and he now has over three hundred aeres in blue grass pasture. He rents this land and gives his attention to its supervision. Every- thing about his place is kept in excellent condi- tion in keeping with modern progressive ideas of farming and his property is the visible evi- dence of his life of thrift, industry, economy and capable management.
Mr. Ralston was united in marriage in Cali- fornia in 1874 to Miss Georgia A. Congdon, a native of Iowa, and a daughter of George Congdon, who went to California in 1849. Subsequently he removed his family there and Mrs. Ralston was there reared and educated. There is only one daughter by this union, Stella, the wife of Perry S. Tracy, of Cali- fornia.
Politically Mr. Ralston is a lifelong Repub- lican, but has never sought or desired office, preferring to give his time and attention to his business affairs, in which he has met with ex- cellent success. He spends much of his time in Iowa, looking after his interests here and his family remain in California. He is a man of good business ability and unquestioned in- tegrity in matters of trade and these sterling qualities have gained for him the goodwill and confidence of all with whom he has been asso- ciated.
THOMAS H. RALSTON.
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JOIN F. BROOKS.
John F. Brooks, who is winning success as a lumber and coal merchant at Pierson, was born in Fayette county, Pennsylvania, on the 1st of September, 1859. His father was Joseph R. Brooks, who was born in Fayette county in 1837, and was there reared to manhood. He married Eliza M. Fuller, whose birth occurred in Fayette county, January 20, 1839. Her par- ents were both born near Johnstown, Pennsyl- vania, where they were married and then re- moved to Fayette county, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Brooks was the only child of that union. Mrs. Fuller came to Harrison county, Iowa, and took up her home with her daughter, Mrs. J. R. Brooks, after the death of an unele, J. M. Mur- ray, with whom she had been living after her husband's death. Joseph R. Brooks was a soldier of the war of the rebellion, serving with a Pennsylvania regiment. He had followed farming in Fayette county and subsequently he removed to Carroll county, Illinois, but was only permitted to enjoy his new home for a year, his death occurring in 1871. His wife survives him and resides with a son in Wood- bury county. In 1882 the family came to Iowa, loeating in Harrison county, and John F. Brooks has since been a resident of this state.
In Carroll county, Illinois, Mr. Brooks largely spent the days of his boyhood and youth and his early educational privileges afforded by the common schools were supplemented by more advanced learning acquired in colleges. In early manhood he chose a companion and helpmate for life's journey, being married in Carroll county on the 2d of January, 1881, to Miss Ella Turnbaugh, a native of Pennsylvania, in which state her father, Joseph Turubangh, was also born, reared and married. Removing west- ward, he located in Lee county, Illinois, and subsequently took up his abode in Carroll coun- ty, that state. Mrs. Brooks is a lady of superior education and refinement and is a graduate of Cornell College of Iowa.
After his marriage Mr. Brooks engaged in farming in Harrison county and later in Wood-
bury county, but in 1892 retired from agricul- tural life and established a hardware store in Pierson. He conducted it for several years and then sold out and took charge of a busi- ness enterprise for other parties. In 1902 he took charge of the lumber and coal business which he has now successfully carried on for two years. Ile is a progressive man, conducting his interests along modern business lines and finding as he takes each forward step opportu- nity for still greater advancement and progress. Hle has erceted a business house and a resi- dence here in Pierson and is now the owner of a valuable farm near the town and has a half interest with his brother in another farm. He is especially active in anything calculated to advance the business prosperity and activity of Pierson and is a representative of that class of citizens who streiously uphold the political and moral status of a community and support all movements that tend to prove of direet and permanent benefit to their fellow men.
Unto Mr. and Mrs. Brooks have been born four children : Cleveland F., Alice, Vera and Wayne. The family have a pleasant home in Pierson and the circle of their friends is al- most co-extensive with the circle of their ac- quaintanees. Mr. Brooks is a Democrat in his political views and was elected and served for two years as mayor of Pierson. He has also been assessor of the town for twelve years and has been a member of the school board for twelve years. The eanse of education finds in him a warm and helpful friend and he does everything in his power to promote the inter- ests of the schools and render them efficient by the employment of good teachers. He was large- ly instrumental in securing the building of the Pierson schoolhouse, although he met with much opposition in this movement at first. He has served as a delegate to numerous county and state conventions of his party and his opin- ions carry weight in its local councils. Fra- ternally he is connected with the Odd Fellows lodge at Pierson, in which he has filled all of the chairs.
HISTORICAL
BY HON. C. R. MARKS
The History of Woodbury county properly begins with its political organization as such, and its settlement ; but the territory embraced within its limits had a history long before that, and it will not be considered out of place to recall the various governmental and political sovereignties of which it has formed a part.
There is but little data from which we can tell of its occupation by the aborigines prior to the discovery of America by the Spaniards. There are no great evidences of a settled pop- ulation at that time, such as mounds and rem- nants of domestic implements, though in places near our borders are signs in the way of kitchen mounds with their broken pottery and burial places, showing there had been settlements in this region for a considerable period before the last century of a people more domestic than the roving Sionx Indians who were the last occupiers. But this Indian population must have been small ; Baneroft estimates there were never more than twenty-five thousand Indians in the regions from Ohio to Iowa.
This region was not visited by whites until a long time after Columbus discovered the Western Hemisphere, and it was many years before explorers paid much attention to the interior part of the continent, so far distant was the Iowa country from its ocean borders.
Sailing vessels, being the only means of navi- gating large waters, were almost useless for ascending swift rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri, and there was enough to ocenpy the energies of navigators along the sea coast.
Ferdinand De Soto discovered the Missis- sippi river early in the spring of 1542 when on his expedition overland from Florida. Aft- er De Soto's death his followers built a small boat and in July, 1543, descended the lower part of the river to its mouth, and Spain, having discovered all the coast along the Gulf of Mex- ico, claimed it all, including the territory from the gulf to the source of the rivers that flowed into it.
Balboa discovered the Pacific ocean in 1513 and, not knowing its extent, claimed it as a private sea in behalf of the Spanish crown, and under discoveries later by Spanish navi- gators along the Pacific coast, Spain claimed the whole southern and western part of North America, though its navigators and explorers had but a dim idea of what was in the interior.
Undoubtedly this country along the Missouri was within the limits of their claim. This claiming by right of discovery all the territory tributary to the coast or to its source from the month of a river discovered, was in the early years of American conquest a favorite subject of international dispute, which was generally settled by the strong arm that was able to oe- eupy and hold the territory itself.
Spain does not appear to have made any settlements in, or permanently occupied the great Mississippi valley. The French made early settlement in the portion of Canada acces- sible by the St. Lawrence river and the Great Lakes, and from their national habits and char- aeteristics made friends with the Indians ; and
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their missionaries were more courageous, and dian guides and June 10th started for the self-denying in their religious zeal for the con- version of the savages than others, and were the most industrious explorers, and were not so infatuated with the mania for finding gold as were the Spanish farther south.
The chain of the Great Lakes penetrated to the interior and the French soon heard from the Indians of the great river in the west, and the further west along the lakes they went the more they heard. Lake Michigan had been dis- covered by the French, and missionaries met the Indians in council at places on both sides of this lake early in the seventeenth century.
Pierre Claude Allouez had navigated Lake Superior in September, 1665, and heard from the Indians of the great river farther south.
About 1668 and 1669 Father Jacques Mar- quette had conceived the idea of exploring this great river and spent some time studying the languages of the Illinois Indians.
The French government had also conceived the idea of taking possession of the western part of Canada, and sent Nicholas Perrot to hold a council with the western Indians. He assembled them from all directions at a great council at the falls of St. Mary, the outlet of Lake Superior, which was held in May, 1671, and Perrot made a treaty with them, and took them all under the protection of France, thus leaving the Indians far and near in a friendly frame of mind. Marquette was making his preparations at Point St. Ignace on the north side of the Straits of Mackinac be- tween Lakes Huron and Michigan, which was then considered the key to the frontier posts.
In May, 1673, Marquette, as a representative of the church, with Louis Joliet, as a repre- sentative of the French government, with five French boatmen, left Point St. Ignace on his journey to find the Great River.
They went to Green Bay, Wisconsin, up the Fox river to a Miami and Kickapoo village, the extreme limit to which any white man had theretofore penetrated. There he got two In-
Wisconsin river, and reaching it, floated down the river into the so long anxiously looked for Mississippi river, and down it, apparently not stopping in Iowa till near the mouth of the Des Moines river, where, June 25th, they land- ed and went inland to this river, holding con- ferences with the Illinois Indians there, and taking possession of the country in the name of France.
They continued on down the Mississippi past the mouth of the Missouri, which the In- dians called Pe-ki-ta-no-ni, going as far south as the mouth of the Arkansas river. They re- turned from there to Canada ; Joliet made maps of the journey and the country, but these maps were lost on their return journey.
Father Marquette made a map of the region through which he journeyed and marked the rivers and the location of the Indian tribes, and appears to have learned little of the great length of this Pekitanoni (Missouri river), as he only marks it as of short length, but marks the location of numerous Indian tribes to the northwest relatively correct.
Among these tribes are the Oumessourit and Maha.
In 1678 Cavelier de La Salle started from Canada and the Great Lakes, and in 1680 sent Father Louis Hennepin down the Illinois river and up the Mississippi past Iowa, and in 1682 La Salle himself came down the Mississippi and speaks of a tribe of Indians called Aiou- nonia (Toway) and descended the Mississippi to its mouth, and claimed all the valley of this river and its tributaries as belonging to France by right of discovery and occupation and named it Louisiana, in honor of his sovereign, Louis XIV.
So we might assert that our state at this time passed from the sovereignty claimed by Spain to that of France. In 1684 Louis Fran- quelin published a map of Louisiana showing this country up to the Great Lakes, giving
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for the first time the present names to the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
Settlements were made in this territory on the gulf coast commeneing with D'Iberville in 1699 and about 1717 France granted the trade of the Mississippi valley to the Western Com- pany for twenty-five years, and Bienvilles, a younger brother of D'Iberville, founded New Orleans. This company was the occasion of the famous "Mississippi Bubble" which John Law, the Englishman turned French financier, inflated for the supposed enrichment of the kingdom. So at that early day the great west was the occasion of a greater financial boom than has ever been in these late years of its numerous, inflated and rapidly developed towns.
As early as 1705 the French had explored the Missouri as far as the Kansas river, and built a fort at the mouth of the Osage.
After the war between France and England in which the English captured Canada and under the treaty between France and England in 1763, all the country east of the Mississippi theretofore owned by France, except the part east of Louisiana east of the river on the gulf coast, became the property of England, and at the same date, France, fearing it would lose the rest of its American territory, by secret treaty ceded to Spain all the rest of its terri- tory of Louisiana, including what is now Iowa.
So we again became subject to the sover- eignty of Spain. This treaty being secret did not become known publicly for a long time, and after England in 1763 secured all east of the Mississippi, many French, estimated at the number of five thousand, refused to become English subjects, and crossed west of the Mis- sissippi.
And in 1764 Pierre Laclede, one of these Frenchmen, laid ont the eity of St. Louis, not knowing that the country west of the river had passed to Spain.
At the close of the Revolution the United States succeeded to the former territory of Great Britain, and England ceded to the Unit- ed States all its territory east of the Missis-
sippi, with all its right of navigation of that river to its mouth, derived by treaties with France and Spain, but the latter refused to recognize this right of free navigation. Al- though Spain had acquired sovereignty of the country, the French, constituting the chief part of the population, were almost in rebellion, but were finally subdued.
The American settlements east of the Mis- sissippi were increasing faster than the French and Spanish ones west of it, and the authorities at New Orleans were fearful that these settlers would resort to force to compel free navigation, and offered special privileges to a few influen- tial American traders and public men, and tried to induce them to secede from the distant Atlantic colonies and make part of a new em- pire in the Mississippi valley, known as the Aaron Burr and Gen. Wilkinson conspiracy.
It is claimed that by treaty of October 20, 1795, Spain granted to the United States free navigation to the month of the Great River, but October 1, 1801, by treaty between France and Spain, this same Louisiana country passed again to the sovereignty of France and our country here came again under the jurisdiction of France, making twice each our soil has been subject to Spanish and French rule. But the right of American citizens to freely navigate to the mouth of the river was not conceded in practice by France and was a source of great irritation in the west, and President Jefferson thought it a good time to negotiate for this right, and for a site for an American city at the mouth of the great river, and sent commis- sioners to France to negotiate the purchase of this right.
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