USA > Iowa > Polk County > Pioneers of Polk County, Iowa, and reminiscences of early days, Vol. II > Part 18
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Hobaugh at once became active in civic affairs, and to boost things. In January, 1854, he went to Keokuk with three teams, and came back with them loaded with dry goods and groceries, which were readily disposed of among the settlers, and was the first attempt at merchandising in the township.
In June, 1856, he laid out and organized, on his own land, the town of Peoria City. He opened a general merchandise store,
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founded schools and churches, a postoffice was established, mechan- ies opened shops, and two years after it was laid out, had a popula- tion of over two hundred. It was in a prosperous, flourishing con- dition, and the trade center of a large area, when, in 1864, the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad started in its wild rush from Marshalltown to win the big bonus offered in gold by the Union Pacific to the first road across the State of Iowa that would make connection with it at the Missouri River. Towns were deemed of little importance. Even Des Moines, the Capital of the state, was ignored. Its line was run about a mile north of Peoria City, and a station named Maxwell established. That fixed the doom of the ambitions young Peoria City. It dwindled away, lost its postoffice, and finally its place on the map, which was only one of several similar instances.
Early in 1856, the settlement had so increased that Hobaugh wanted to centralize and individualize its government. He, there- fore, applied to Judge Napier, the County Judge, for a township organization. The Judge thereupon ordered that Congressional Township Eighty-one, Range Twenty-two, be organized into a civil township, and an election held March Third, to elect the proper township officers. He appointed Hobangh a Constable to give the notice of election, and make the necessary preparation. He also gave the selection of a name to him, and he chose "Washington," the name of his old home town in Ohio.
The election was held at Peoria City, and Hobaugh was elected Justice of the Peace, and held the office for five years, when he resigned, because the duties of the office conflicted with his more important business affairs.
In 1860, the Legislature, to get the county government nearer the people, transferred the control of public affairs from the County Judge to a Board of Supervisors, consisting of a repre- sentative from each civil township in the county, and in 1862, Hobaugh was elected from Washington Township, and served two years.
In 1863, he was elected Road Supervisor of the township, his duties being to keep the roads,* * * in as good condition as the funds at his disposal would permit, and to place guide- boards at crossroads, and the forks of the roads, * * * a
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requirement more honored in the breach than the observance in those days, as the funds invariably failed to materialize.
In 1863, the first fine schoolhouse was erected. He was elected Township Treasurer, and had charge of the school fund. He held the office six years.
Politically, he is a Republican, but not a politician. Though he has held many public offices, it was in response to the will of the community where he lived, regardless of politics.
Socially, he is the friend of everybody, and held in high esteem throughout the county. He is public-spirited, schools and churches being special objects of his activities, financial and otherwise. Whatever promotes the betterment of the social life of those around him receives his hearty support.
Religiously, he is an active, exemplary Christian, and member of the United Brethren Church. There being no church of that denomination near him, he has given aid and support to all others.
Now, at the age of eighty-six, he has accumulated sufficient to enable him to have a surcease of watching the rise and fall at the stockyards, the puts and calls of the grain speculators in Chicago, spends his Winters at ease in California, without a thought or care for the shoes and soles of his old friends and neighbors, which so tormented his adolescent years.
JUDGE T. T. MORRIS
JUDGE THOMAS T. MORRIS
A PIONEER of Iowa, and a well-known old settler of Polk County is Judge Thomas T. Morris. Though a resident of Des Moines nearly forty-three years, very few people know that he had a judicial title. I did not ,and I have known him well ever since he came to town, but so say the records.
Born in Cumberland County, New Jersey, October Twenty- ninth, 1822, his ancestry dating back to John Morris, an English- man, who, in 1635, emigrated to America and settled on Manhat- tan Island, at Morris' Woods, now Central Park, in New York City.
In 1837, when Thomas was about fifteen years old, his parents moved to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he worked with his father, who was a brickmaker. At times, when brickmaking was dull, and the water high, he became a pilot on coal barges down the Ohio River. In 1840, the brickmaking business went out, and he went to an iron foundry to learn the trade, but soon afterward the foundry collapsed, and he started to learn the manufacture of cutlery. He was making good progress when the works became bankrupt. He then took to the water, as second engineer on a river boat, until 1844, when he learned the trade of mason, plastering and stucco work in Pittsburg, where he worked as a journeyman until 1848, when he went into business for himself as a contractor. During the following five years, he built four Catholic churches, and did the stucco work in seven of the largest and finest churches in the city. He also built a large number of costly private homes.
Early in 1855, he concluded he could do much better in the West, and June Sixth, he and his father loaded their families, household goods, horses and wagons on a boat, went down the river to Saint Louis, thence up the Mississippi to Keokuk, where, with their teams, they started northward, camping at noon to get food for themselves and their horses, and at night stopping with some
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hospitable settler. They passed through Des Moines, fording the river, got dinner at the Avenue House, which stood on a high Indian mound on the northeast corner of Fourth and Court Avenue, and kept by John Hays, a pioneer of the county. A carriage was hired of Frank Laird to carry the women and children to Panora, ford- ing 'Coon River at Adel. Thence a bee line was taken for Coplin's Grove, in Newton Township, which then embraced the south half of Carroll County, arriving July Third, where they had located a tract of Government land.
The first move was to get a house to live in. Their land lay along 'Coon River, on which was a broad timber belt. Morris cut down trees, scored and hewed on both sides logs for a cabin 18x24, split lumber for clapboarding, roofing and lathing. To get lumber for flooring, door and window casings, he had to go to Dunham's Grove, in Crawford County, forty miles away.
To get plaster, for he proposed having a first-class cabin, he hauled timber out on the prairie, piled it up, gathered a lot of lime rock, scattered over the prairie, placed it on the timber, covered the whole with earth and sod, set fire to the timber and burned the rock to lime, with which, and sand from the river, he plastered the ceiling of the cabin. The windows were brought with them, but they were not of extravagant dimensions.
In eight days, the cabin was ready for occupancy. In the mean- time, the wagons were used for lodging and the meals prepared on a cooking-stove, brought with them.
The cabin occupied, the next move was breaking up the prairie, and securing the first crop of sod corn. If the flour bin got low, it was a journey of fifty miles to a mill near Redfield, through sloughs, across bridgeless streams, with wide detours to avoid the impassable places; not so bad in Summer, but in Winter there were trials and hardships severe. In Winter, it was usual for three or four settlers to go to mill together, for mutual aid and protection, for a blizzard on the open, trackless prairie was something to be greatly feared; once the trail was lost, in the swirling, blinding snow, it became at once a fight for life, usually ending fatally. On one occasion, when Morris, with three other settlers, went to mill for flour, a severe storm of snow and wind set in and lasted two
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days and nights. The morning of the third day, they started for home, going due north, but were able to get only two miles. Then they called out the Road Supervisor, who, with sixteen men and six of the Morris party, only succeeded in getting through four miles of the deep snow that day. On other ocasions, when delayed by deep snow and storms, and night came on, far from a habitation, a cane-break, on which the snow had been piled high, on the border of some slough, would be sought, a cave dug out in the cane and snow, into which men and horses would take shelter for the night.
There was no want of meat. Elk, deer, prairie chickens, quail, rabbits, and squirrels were abundant on the prairie, while one side of the farm abutted on a lake known as "Morris Lake," which, in the Spring and Fall, was alive with wild duck and geese, and at all seasons a good fishing place. On the spot where the Court House now stands in Carroll County, Morris says he has hunted elk.
To keep his family larder supplied required some engineering, for the cabin of a pioneer was always open, with room inside for "one more." Land-hunters were roaming over the country, with nowhere to stay, and at one time Morris counted thirty of them for lodgment and grub in his little cabin and one like it in which his father lived. There was no limit to the hospitality of the pio- neer. If there were not beds enough for the strangers, a "shake- down" on the floor or on the grass, with the blue sky for a cover, was provided. They were welcome guests, for through them intel- ligence was received of the outside world, as there were no post- offices, and at times for four months they were without mail of any kind.
In April, 1857, Morris was elected Justice of the Peace, and served nineteen months, when he resigned.
Early in 1857, he was directed by Governor Grimes, on the advice of the Judge of the District Court, to organize the county and make the necessary preliminary arrangements for an election to elect county officers, the county then being attached to Guthrie County for judicial purposes, and to Pottawattamie County for election purposes.
At the election in October, he was elected County Judge. To make return of the election, he, with the representatives of sixteen
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other counties just organized, had to take the trails over the prai- ries, one hundred and fifty miles, to Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), that being the County Seat for that purpose.
His first business was to get records and stationery for his office. He came to Des Moines, bought them of Mills & Company, pay- ment for which he drew a county warrant sealed with an impres- sion of the eagle side of a silver half-dollar, coined by Uncle Sam.
W. H. Leas and a man named Harsh donated a tract of land for the County Seat, which was accepted. They named it Carrollton, and that was the first County Seat of Carroll County.
While Morris held the office of Judge, he was directed to levy a tax to meet the expenses of his office. He also employed surveyors to lay out the swamp lands belonging to the county.
After serving nineteen months as Judge and boss of county affairs, he concluded there was too much glory, too little pay, and he doffed the judicial robes.
Always interested in schools, he was elected School Director, and served several years. He was also elected Road Supervisor, and served two years, during which period he boosted good roads, and did that other statutory stunt so generally neglected, by placing guide-boards at every crossroads and forks of roads across the county from the Greene County line to that of Crawford County.
In the Spring of 1864, he came to Des Moines, and went to work at his trade. It was during war times, business was dull, money was scaree, so were laborers, and wages high. The com- munity was considerably agitated by rumors current that a mili- tary draft was to be made in the county, which incited a large num- ber of able-bodied men to seek a more congenial climate for their health, in the Far West, notwithstanding Governor Stone's procla- mation forbidding "* * * citizens of Iowa removing beyond the limits of the state before the Tenth day of March next. * * "
As business increased after the war elosed, he became a con- traetor. His first job was the Lincoln School building, the second public school building in the eity. He also built the Lueas and Curtis school buildings on the East Side, the original MeQuaid store building at Seventh and Locust, one of the buildings now a part of the Foster Opera House block, the Windsor building on
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Walnut between Third and Fourth, the gas works, the Reinking Block at Eighth and Walnut, which had the first pressed brick front in the city, and the Fifth Street side of the Marquardt build- ing. For the brick used on the Marquardt building, he paid fifty dollars per thousand, delivered on cars at Philadelphia. He had at that time five hundred men in his employ.
He did the plastering and stucco work in B. F. Allen's costly residence at Terrace Hill. Allen had the stucco work done in Chi- cago, from special designs. It was brought from Nevada, railroads not having reached the city, by wagons, over rough roads, and when it arrived, was broken into fragments. Morris, being a trained stucco worker, went on and completed the work with acknowledged greater artistic skill than was shown in the Chicago designs.
He also built hundreds of residences, one of which was that of U. B. White, the well-known bridge builder in early days, at Sev- enth and Center streets. It was the first house in Des Moines in which pine lath was used. He paid ten dollars per thousand for the lath, eight cents for laying it, and eleven dollars per hundred pounds for the nails.
In 1876, he was elected a member of the City Council from the Third Ward, and assigned by Mayor Giles H. Turner to the Com- mittee on Gas and Water. He secured a liberal extension of the service in both those departments, but he had to fight for it. Old- timers who visited that bear-garden in those days have a vivid remembrance of "Mike" Drady, "Mike" McTighe, "Mike" King, "Mike" Kavanagh, and George Sneer, who were always ready for a scrap. There were no paved streets, the city was in the mud the year round, and when the skies had a weeping-spell, Levi J. Wells could be seen riding in a skiff drawn by two horses up and down Walnut Street, as a gentle reminder that Des Moines sadly needed a boosting committee. Morris suggested paving the streets, and, to help out, offered to pave the intersection of the streets at Fourth and Court Avenue with Mulberry wood blocks, which would never wear out, as a sample of good paving, but the other fellows couldn't see it that way, and he was beaten ont.
He was the first inspector of brick in the city. It was on North Street, now University Avenue. While he was doing it, an omniv- erous municipal functionary came around to inspect his inspection,
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spiced with derogatory remarks, which was endured for several days, when Morris politely told him to keep away; that if he came there again he would -. The warning was sufficient, and he probably has not forgotten it yet.
In all business transactions, Morris was noted for his integrity and honesty. His word was as good as his bond.
Politically, he was originally a Democrat, but when the Repub- lican party was organized, he united with it. He also took a little part in the Know-Nothing craze, which swept over the country in 1853-1854.
Socially, he is of genial temperament, and popular with those who know him. Always interested in schools, realizing fully the necessities of childhood and youth which deprived him of seeing the inside of a public schoolhouse until after he was twenty-one years old. ›
Formerly, he was a member of the Order of Odd Fellows, but withdrew for religious reasons.
Religiously, he is a devout Methodist, and a zealous worker in that faith. On the second Sabbath after his arrival in Carroll County, he gathered together his nearest settlers, organized a Sun- day School, and erected an altar for the worship of God, which remains to this day.
He retired from active business several years ago, but bears well the burden of his eighty-four years, has good health, and passes time as Bailiff in Judge MeVey's court, satisfied and content, for, said he, a few days ago: "I know that I am living on borrowed time, but these days are the best of my life, with the blessed assur- ance of a home not far hence, in the mansions above."
December Thirtieth, 1906.
DAVID NORRIS
DAVID NORRIS
O NE of the most unique, well-known and popular pioneers of Polk County was David Norris, or "Uncle Davy," as every- body called him.
He was born in Frederick County, Maryland, August Third, 1801, of Scottish descent.
He once said : "I have been told that I weighed three and three- quarters pounds at birth. I don't know much about that, but I was there."
His youth was passed with his mother, for, when he was five years old, his father, who was a miller, was killed by an accident in a mill, and David had to hustle for himself, with very limited advantages for educational acquirements.
In 1814, when thirteen years old, he went to driving team. In July of that year, he went, with Frederick K. Biser and two teams loaded with flour, which was sold for thirteen dollars a barrel. After the flour was sold, and while he, Biser and the teams were taking their noonday meal, a United States officer came and noti- fied them that he would have to take the teams for Government service. Biser objected vigorously, but he took the teams, saying they would be appraised and paid for. Biser and David then decided that they might as well go with the teams and they enlisted in the Government service, David easily passing muster, as he was of large proportions, weighed one hundred and sixty pounds, yet was simply an overgrown boy. The War of 1812 had not then closed.
Their teams were loaded with ammunition and sent to Fort McHenry, thence to Baltimore loaded again, and sent to Wash- ington, without being allowed to stop for rest or meals, as the Brit- ish were making an effort to capture and burn the city. Arriving at Capitol Hill they met President Madison fleeing the city, which was then burning. His carriage was loaded with office records,
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and he was riding one of the horses. Going up a hill, his horses got stalled, and David was ordered to hitch his team on and help, which he did. They were quickly joined by about three hundred boys, who were pressed into service, and made an escort to Mont- gomery Court House. The President said his wife was across the river, hidden in a cornfield.
The teams were left with guards and the posse ordered to help. A bucket line was formed to the river, and water carried to an old- fashioned hand-brake fire engine, and the fire was finally extin- guished. David remained there five days. Meanwhile, soldiers were sent to find Mrs. Madison, and escort her to the President. He was then ordered to go to Baltimore, get ammunition, and take it to Fort McHenry.
The British left Washington, sailed down Chesapeake Bay, threatened Baltimore several days, but finally went to Haberty Grass Landing, five miles above Baltimore, near Fort McHenry.
As they were crossing the Susquehanna River, September Thir- teenth, Lords Cockerham and Ross were a sort distance in advance, and two boys who had climbed into a tree shot them both. Cocker- ham's body was put into a cask of whiskey and sent to England. A monument now stands where that tree stood.
David was in Government service twenty-nine days, and dis- charged, one day short of time necessary to entitle him to a pen- sion. He always said he didn't think Uncle Sam gave him a square deal, but he was a little prond of the part he took in the scrimmage.
When General LaFayette was in this country, David saw him at Fredericksburg. There was an immense public reception given him. Carpets were laid in the streets for him to ride over, but he would not do so.
In 1820, David's mother removed to Dayton, Ohio, where he engaged in farming. He remained there until 1839, when he moved to Johnson County, Indiana, where he resided until 1845, when he came to Fort Des Moines, which contained only soldiers and officers of the garrison, while outside and not far away were the Indian villages of Keokuk and his various bands of Sauk and Foxes.
Norris at once procured a permit from Captain Allen to make a claim for some land. The land had not been surveyed, possession
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was in the Government, and could not be purchased. There were three or four squatters widely scattered over the county, on claims granted by Captain Allen, on agreements to raise grain, forage and other supplies for the garrison. Norris went up north about five miles and selected one hundred and sixty acres, which is now a part of the County Poor Farm. John B. Saylor, who came here just before Norris, had staked out the claim, and Norris traded him a yoke of oxen for the claim. The sale conveyed no title to the land, as the entire county was in possession of the Government, and held as a part of the reservation of the Sank and Fox Indians, who had the exclusive right to occupy it, Captain Allen and his soldiers being stationed here to protect them against squatters and their predatory enemy, the Sioux, until October Eleventh, 1845, when the Indian title ceased. But there was a tacit agreement among squatters and claim-holders that their claims should be rig- idly observed. Early in 1846, a Claim Club was organized, rules and regulations prepared by "Old Bill" McHenry, adopted, and the squatters and claim-holders became a law unto themselves.
In 1847, the Government survey of the land was made, and the lines run for townships and sections. It was found that in many cases the lines staked by squatters did not correspond with the Gov- ernment lines. All such cases were submitted to the Claim Club, an amicable adjustment made to conform to the survey, and the land speculator or "claim-jumper" who attempted to interfere was made to understand that his immediate safety was outside the county lines. October Thirtieth, 1848, Norris entered his claim at the United States Land Office, at Iowa City, and got his title. He at once, on buying his claim in 1845, began to cultivate and improve the land. His nearest squatter neighbor was "Uncle Tommy" Mitchell, whom Captain Allen had permitted, on agree- ing to raise corn for the garrison, to stake a claim on Camp Creek, in what is now Beaver Township. The Indians were his frequent visitors, and he became very chummy with Chemeuse, or "Johnny Green," as he was known to the pioneers, a Pottawattamie chief, who, with several hundred of his tribe, roamed over the county, hunting and fishing. The location of his claim was a beautiful one, bordering on the timber, and from which is a fine view of the
VOL. II-(16).
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Capitol and prominent buildings of the city. It is also a healthful location, respecting which, said "Uncle Davy," several years after he had left it: "Yes, people live up there, and animals, too. One of my neighbors there, in 1847, during the Summer, went back to Indiana to visit their old home and be absent about four weeks. They stored the carriage and some other articles in the garret. When ready to start, the family dog was missing-couldn't be found. On their return, during the first night, there was a big rumpus upstairs. On making an investigation, they were greeted most vociferously by the missing dog. He had eaten up the leather top of the carriage, was lank and lean, but he lived."
During the Summer of 1847, Norris opened a butcher shop in a part of B. F. Allen's warehouse, at Second and Vine streets, and in the Fall of 1848, built a shop at the corner of Second and Vine streets. The shop was open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. One "beef critter" was sufficient for a whole week, and families had to go to the shop to get their supplies.
In the Fall of 1848, the supply of flour in the town became exhausted, and "Uncle Davy" went with an ox team to Bonaparte, in Van Buren County, and got a full load. On his return, he found that not only was everybody out of flour, but out of money. He loaned out the entire load, the Hoxie House taking a large por- tion of it. Of the remainder, very little was ever paid for.
In 1855, he sold his farm and moved into Des Moines, and built a double brick, two-story house at the corner of East Eighth and Keokuk streets, now East Grand Avenue.
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