USA > Iowa > Marshall County > The History of Marshall County, Iowa, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, &c., a biographical directory of citizens, war record of its volunteers in the late rebellion, general and local statistics, portraits of early settlers and prominent men etc > Part 35
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Prof. Gunning says : "The area of Greenland is nearly eight hundred thousand square miles ; and all this, save the narrow strip which faces an ice- choked sea, on the west, is a lifeless solitude of snow and ice. The snow over- tops the hills and levels up all the valleys, so that, as far as the eye can reach, there is nothing but one vast, dreary, level expanse of white. Over all broods the silence of death. Life, there is none. Motion, there seems to be none- none save of the wind, which sweeps now and then, in the wrath of a polar storm, from the sea over the "ice-sea," and rolls its cap of snow into great bil-
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lows, and dashes it up into clouds of spray. But motion there is; activities we shall see there are, on a scale of grandeur commensurate with the vast desola- tion itself."
Let the mind go back, in the history of our earth, one hundred thousand years, when Prof. Croll, from mathematical deductions, inferred the existence of a snow-cap, covering the whole of North America and Europe, from the thirty-eighth parallel to the north pole; then, in imagination, see the larger portion of North America, as you see Greenland now, covered with an "ice- mantle " 3,000 to 6,000 feet thick.
Le Conte says : "This ice sheet moved, with slow, glacier motion, south- eastward, southward and southwestward, over New England, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, etc., regardless of smaller valleys, glaciating the whole surface, and gouging out lakes in its course. Northward, the ice-sheet probably ex- tended to the pole ; it was an extension of the polar ice-cap."
The dynamic power of such a continental mass of ice is inconceivable. It is fit to be called one of the giant mills of the gods, which are represented " to grind slow, but exceeding fine." It was a monstrous ice-plain, shaving off the rugged crags of mountains, leveling up valleys and filling up ancient river beds. Its under surface was thickly set with rock-bowlders, which, with its ponderous weight, ground the underlying rocks to powder. This pulverized rock was washed from beneath the glacier by the outflowing waters which con- stantly gushed forth, and settled on far-off plains as alluvial sand and clay. The motion of the glacier was slow, perhaps six inches in twenty-four hours. This was the giant mill that ground out the blue clay-the glacier clay-that overlies the native formations of the entire country. It doubtless owes its dark blue color to the Laurentian and trap rocks of Canada. Well-diggers are familiar with it, and it is nearly always the same in color and composition. Geologists are now unanimous in the opinion that during the glacial epoch the whole northern portion of the continent was elevated one thousand to two thousand feet above the present level. Le Conte says: "The polar ice-cap had advanced southward to 40° latitude, with still farther southward projections, favored by local conditions, and an Arctic rigor of climate prevailed over the United States, even to the shores of the Gulf. At the end of this epoch an op- posite or downward movement of land surface over the same region commenced and continued until a depression of five hundred or one thousand feet below the present level was attained."
It is not within the province of this sketch to go into details and give the problematic causes of this glacier period. The causes were mainly astronomical. Mr. Croll has calculated the form of the earth's orbit a million years back and a million years forward. The probable time of the last glacial period was 100,000 years back ; then the eccentricity of the earth's orbit was very great, and the earth in aphelion (or when most distant from the sun, being about thir- teen millions of miles further than in summer) in midwinter ; then the Winters were about thirty days longer than now. In Summer, the earth would be cor- respondingly nearer the sun, and would receive an excess of heat, thus giving the earth in the northern hemisphere short, hot Summers, and long, cold Winters.
The subsidence referred to above forms the beginning of
THE CHAMPLAIN EPOCH.
Now let us see how the drift was deposited on the bowlder clay. When the con- tinental depression took place, a large portion of the Mississippi Valley was submerged. Le Conte says : "It was a time of inland seas. * * *
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Another result, or at least a concomitant, was a moderation of the climate, a melting of the glaciers, and a retreat of the margin of the ice-cap northward. It was, therefore, a time of flooded lakes and rivers. Lastly, over these inland seas and great lakes, loosened masses of ice floated in the form of icebergs. It was. therefore, a time of iceberg action."
The opinion prevails among geologists that the glacier motion was from the east of north, but that the Champlain flow was from the northwest. Corrobo- rating this hypothesis, is the marked difference in color of the bowlder clay and the Upper Drift deposit. If the glacier motion was from the north, or east of north, it did not produce the beds of our present rivers. Glaciation only wore . off and smoothed down the surface of the country, leaving it a vast, undulating plain of dark blue mud, a heterogencous mass of clay, sand, gravel and bowlders. The old river courses and valleys were completely obliterated. That the great beds of alluvium which cover up the blue clay were deposited in water, is clearly proven by its stratification, which can be observed in almost any excavation where a hill or bluff has been cut through in constructing railroads or mills, or where brick clay has been procured.
But let us see how the Champlain period was produced.
A continental subsidence came on, and large inland lakes were formed. The climate became modified ; the glaciers melted more rapidly ; vast icebergs broke loose from the mountain-like glaciers, and floated over the land, carrying rocks and clay and debris with them, and as they melted strewed them over the sur- face ; sometimes grounding and excavating basins for future lakes and ponds. Thus year after year and age after age did the muddy waters and freighted ice- bergs flow over the country, the former depositing our present alluvial drift, the latter dropping here and there the bowlders and debris that we now find scat- tered over the country. No erosion, save from a stranded iceberg, occurred at that time, but it was a period of filling in, a period of distribution over the sub- merged land, of powdered rocks, sand and clay, and an occasional bowlder. But when the continent emerged from the abyss, and the waters flowed off, and the higher undulations of the land appeared, then the erosive action of winds and waves and storms and currents took place. The waters, as they flowed toward the sea and Gulf, produced their inevitable channels. There was much of the drift carried into the streams and borne away in the floods to the sea. Then was the stranded bowlder, by wind and wave stripped of its soft alluvial bed, left high and dry on the surface of the hereafter prairie. Then were the gravelly knolls that are found in some parts of the State robbed of every fine sediment, and the gravel and stones left to tell the story of the floods. Then were the great valleys washed out ; then did the annual wash-outs all along the water courses-rapidly at first, but more slowly in after ages-eat away the drift accumulations and form the hills. The hilly districts generally lie contiguous to the streams. Back from these water courses, the land is usually undulating prairie, showing but little erosion.
The country contiguous to the Towa River and its tributaries, bears in many localities unmistakable evidences of the action of the retiring waters of the Champlain period. As geology has written its history in the rocks, so the latest action of the waters has left its legible records in the drifts-it made tracks, and by its tracks we can see where it was and what it did.
When two currents of water flow together, charged with sediment, where the currents meet there will occur an eddy, the eddy-water will throw down its load of floating mud and build up a bar. In the valley of the Iowa River may be found many of those silted-up banks and promontories, the deposits of the
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waters during the latter Champlain period. A good example of it may be seen in the long promontory that extends from near Albion and terminates near where the valley of Asher Creek and the river valley intersect. During the Champlain period, when Iowa River Valley and Asher Creek Valley were filled with water from bluff to bluff, then the eddy produced from the meeting of the two great streams silted up those extensive sand and clay hills. That it occurred when the valleys were filled from bluff to bluff is proven by the fact that the silted-up district is as elevated as the bluffs. The farms of Messrs. Chapin. Hamble and Oaks, situated at the north end of the levee, were like- wise produced by the down-throw when the comparatively still waters of the river and Asher Creek mingled. Another very striking example of this formation is Mormon Ridge, a remarkably long, elevated, but narrow spit of land projecting far into the river valley, thrown up during the ancient high floods, where the waters of the Iowa River and the Minerva met. Another handsome formation of this kind is near the mouth of Timber Creek, although quite a portion of it has been eroded away by the creek in recent times. These are some of the old tracks made by the Iowa River and its tributaries in their youthful and gushing days.
The site of Marshalltown is a plateau thrown up from the raging waters of the river and Linn Creek, deeply eroded in places by the retiring water; silted up on the north and east, almost entirely of sand. The Westlake farm and the Utz place were deposited more recently from the eddy-waters of the river and Linn Creek. Mr. Westlake, near his residence, excavated a well forty-four feet deep, through sandy clay. and found abundance of water in the old river bed gravel. In the gravel, he found a huge granite bowlder, which was elevated with great difficulty, as it was estimated to weigh five or six hundred pounds.
The recent excavations for the engine building of the Water Works exposed the subcarboniferous formation of shale, upon which the building stands. Over- laving the shale, is the blue glacial clay ; over this, the ancient river bed, con- sisting of water-worn pebbles about four feet thick ; and above this, the shore de- posit of sand and alluvium, thrown out over the beach by the returning waters. What used to be known as the " Big Slough," northeast of Baptist Hill, is a relic of the Champlain period-a ravine washed out from the overflow of the river during some of its floods. Another one is between the steam mill and First Ward School House; and the remains of still another one may be seen north of Dr. Harris' residence, in the cemetery grounds. These and others that may be seen around the city were measurably filled up and effaced by silt- ing up from the retiring waters.
BOWLDERS
are frequently found scattered over the surface of the country, and very com- monly in ravines or sloughs, because, when denudation was taking place by the agency of the subsiding waters, they invariably moved down hill when the earth was washed from under them. This readily accounts for their being usually found in ravines.
A very large granite bowlder is found three or four miles north of Marshall- town, on the Brown farm. It is eighteen or twenty feet in diameter either way, and if three-fourths of it is under ground it is twelve or fourteen feet thick. It is presumable that the usual calculation in reference to a one-fourth exposure is correct. According to a rough estimate, this stone would weigh over one hundred tons-a mere feather-weight for a large iceberg to carry ! Other parts of the State have very many more bowlders than Marshalltown has,
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
from which we would infer that fewer icebergs drifted over this county, or that they came from glaciers that did not find ready facilities for loading with bowlders.
INDIAN MOUNDS
have nowhere been found within the county. Why they are not here, when so nu- merous in other parts of the State, is a question to be discussed by archaeologists.
THE CHARACTER OF THE SURFACE SOIL
of Marshall County is, in every essential, chemically suited to the growth of crops for a long period of time. It is "rich" and "deep," and is all that practical farmers can desire.
THE ADVENT OF WHITE MEN.
The accident of circumstance determines the nature of history. To the Christian and Atheist alike the truthfulness of this statement appears in full force. Causes may be susceptible of discussion. and difference of opinion may be entertained as to the ordering of events ; but when occurrence reaches the realm of fact, speculation ceases and reality alone exists.
That which one terms the "accident " of life, oftentimes forms a curious and highly interesting topic for study. Had it not been for some exceedingly trivial event, which, from its insignificance was unheeded or unknown at the moment of its occurrence, the thread of history would frequently be changed. and the fabric of man's or nations' life be marred or beautified according as the germ there sown was evil or good.
In the grand economy of the Omnipotent there is no such element as aeci- dent. The creative intelligence comprehends the be-all and the end-all of the universe ; but finite mind fails in its grasp of knowledge and sees only those events which transpire within the radius of its limited vision. The inevitable sequence of natural causes, when those causes are obscured by time or distance, become accidents in man's conception of eventuality.
The historian who uncovers the pages of the past discerns the workings of extraneous influences upon the records of Marshall County. The original entry of white men within the limits of the territory now embraced in this prosper- ous region, so far excels the ordinary methods of settlement as to form a highly dramatic chapter with which to preface this work.
A deluded people, fleeing from the wrath of man, halted for a brief period beneath the shelter of the groves, but found nature no more merciful or tender in its dealings with them than were their fellow-creatures. They escaped the sword to encounter death in a more horrid form. Starvation, gaunt and inex- orable, stalked after them through the primeval solitudes, and laid its specter hand upon them as they shivered before the icy blasts of Winter.
THE MORMONS.
It is necessary, in order to preserve a full record of the brief sojourn of the first white settlement in the county. to digress from the actual history of Mar- shall for a time, and relate the story of the inception of Mormonism, its rise to power in the East, its overthrow in Illinois, and the causes which led to the exodus of the believers in the faith from that State to the far-off unexplored region of Salt Lake.
In the narrative here given will be found the origin of the "accident " which united indissolubly the name but not the principle of Mormonism with
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the early history of Marshall County. Let us first consider who the Mormons were and what were the causes which necessitated the relinquishment of wealth and political power by them, and the seeking of a home far beyond the reach of the strong arm of the law.
The peculiar tenets of a sect like the Mormons are not the product of sudden inspiration, but are developed by degrees from some centralizing thought, and in their growth often so change in character the whole structure as to leave it at the last with really as little likeness to the original as the butterfly bears to the grub. For example, Mormonism's most distinctive feature to-day, polyg- amy. is something that was not only denied by its first followers, but was bitterly denounced by them in their Book of Mormon as sinful. In many ways. as first originated, the Mormon system was crude and indefinite, its founders even seeming to have little idea how vast was the field they had entered upon for selfish ambitions. It was one of those projects whose success, in the eyes of the ignorant and credulous, seems to justify its claimed origin.
In briefly reviewing the history of this peculiar people, we have taken such facts as are necessary from Appleton's Cyclopedia and various other sources. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and its chief prophet, sprang from an obscure family in Sharon, Windsor County, Vt., and was born Dec. 23, 1805. When he was 10 years old, the family moved to Palmyra, N. Y., where they bore the reputation of being a visionary set, even intemperate and immoral, Joseph being the black sheep of the flock. He manifested the traits which afterward distinguished him very early in life, for at 15 years of age he began to see visions, and claimed to have been informed from supernatural sources that he was destined to perform a great work. He was shiftless and worthless in all practical matters, and gave up his time to digging in the earth for hidden treasures, and like occupations, and to playing the part of seer. In that way his education was wholly neglected. His deficiencies in this respect his disciples freely admit; and later in his career, when it became necessary for him as a leader to make speeches and deliver proclamations, he was obliged to depend upon others for their preparation.
In 1823, when he was 18 years old, he announced that an angel had appeared to him three times in the night, who revealed to him that there were buried in a certain hill in Ontario County, N. Y., some marvelous gold plates upon which was written, in a language no longer understood upon earth, a his- tory of the first inhabitants of America, and of how God dealt with them. Furthermore, it was revealed to him that with these hieroglyphic plates, set in bows like spectacles, were two transparent stones, through which only could these records be read. He secured the plates and the stones, and then, lest profane eyes should see the sacred revelations, he hung a curtain across the corner of his room, and with the magic lenses to his eyes read the " Book of Mormon," or the " Golden Bible," as he called it, his friend Oliver Cowdery transcribing as he read. This book was printed in 1830. Three men. Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris, called by the Mormons, "the three witnesses." appended to it this statement : "We declare, with the words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and brought and laid before our eyes that we beheld and saw the plates and the engravings thereon." However, years afterward, when the "three witnesses " had quarreled with Smith, and had withdrawn from allegiance to his faith, they con- fessed that this was perjured testimony. To sustain this confession there are others who declare that at this time Smith himself admitted that it was all a hoax, but that he intended to carry out the fun.
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
The Golden Bible is made up of sixteen different books, which are assumed to be written at various times by various prophets. It is a medley of the his- torieal and legendary, written in antique style, and interpersed with frequent passages from the common English translation of the Bible. This latter ad- mixture being by far the best part of the work, is the most frequently quoted by belie vers in defense of their faith.
To offset the assumption of the mysterious production of the Mormon Bible, there are facts which fully establish its real author to be Solomon Spalding, a somewhat eccentric man, and a graduate of Dartmouth College. He was very poor, and had a strong predilection for literary pursuits ; but his productions were so worthless that he could never find a publisher, and his only public was the few friends who were forced to listen to his reading of his own works.
Spalding was born in Connecticut, but during the years 1810, '11 and '12, he lived in Conneaut, Ohio, where, true to his instinct for composition, he wrote a romance, to prove that the American Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. To this romance he gave the name of " Manuscript Found." and his intention was to make it appear that it had been discovered in a cave in Ohio. He put it into the hands of a printer in Pittsburgh, with whom Sidney Rigdon. later a prominent disciple, was associated. It seems, however, that the work was not issued, for some reason unknown, but the manuscript was returned to Mr. Spalding, who died shortly afterward.
When Smith published the "Book of Mormon," as a translation from the golden plates, Mrs. Spalding at once recognized it as her husband's work. She could only understand its being in Rigdon's possession on the sup- position that he had purloined it from the Pittsburgh office. She protested against its being put to such sacrilegious uses, and said : "The air of antiquity thrown about the composition doubtless suggested the idea of converting it to purposes of delusion. Thus, a historical romance. with a few pious expressions and extracts from the sacred Scriptures, has been construed into a new Bible, and palmed off upon a company of poor, deluded fanatics as divine."
When Rigdon secured this manuscript, it was evidently with a view to mak- ing capital out of it, for he shortly afterward started out as a preacher. He advocated some peculiar doctrines, some of which afterward became a part of the Mormon religion.
He became associated with Smith in 1829, and it is supposed that it was through his agency, and to carry out Smith's assertion of the plates of gold, that he placed the manuscript in Smith's hands. At all events, there is abun- dant testimony to prove that Spalding's romance and the Book of Mormon are identical in the main.
At the outset, neither Smith nor Rigdon had any very definite ideas of their own doctrines ; but subsequent opportunities developed form and purpose ont of the chaos.
There was a strong leaning in both to Millenarianism-a subject much under discussion at that period-and they preached that America was to be the final home of the saints at the closely approaching millennium, and that some- where in the interior of the continent was to be the New Jerusalem.
They drow about them a small following, and a church was first regularly organized at Manchester, N. Y .. April 6, 1830. This consisted chiefly of Smith's family and associates, and some who had previously followed Rigdon's preaching. This they called the Church of the Latter-Day Saints.
A year later, Smith, who seems to have been of a restless, aggressive nature, guided, as he professed, by celestial visions, led his band of believers to Kirt-
.
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
land, Ohio, which was to be the new Zion. Here converts were drawn to them in such numbers that it was not long before they felt the need of greater scope. and it was decided again to change their locality.
Smith and Rigdon were sent out to reconnoiter for a suitable place, and they finally fixed upon Independence, Jackson County, Mo., where, after choos- ing and dedicating a site for a temple to be erected in the future by the saints, they returned to Kirtland. They had yet far too little money with which to carry out their plans, and they proposed to spend five years in making it, before launching out in their project. They, therefore, established a mill. a store and a bank, which was without a charter, and of which Smith was Presi- dent and Rigdon, Cashier. It was not long before the country was flooded with notes of a doubtful character, and that, with some other business transac- tions of a dubious nature, so incensed the people that on the night of March 22, 1832, the two prophets were dragged unceremoniously from their beds and tarred and feathered.
However, this stigma upon their fame was easily removed, as Smith had another vision, in which the angels declared their sins, as well as the transgres- sions of another prominent leader, Frederick G. Williams, forgiven ; and these latter two were anointed as equals to Smith, and the three were jointly made Presidents over the Church. This was styled the First Presidency.
It was at this period of the history of the Saints that Brigham Young became connected with them; and, almost from the first, his shrewdness of character and his leading business qualities made him a man of rule. He was soon ordained an Elder, and at the end of three years, when the quorum of the Twelve Apostles was instituted, he was made one of them, and was sent out with the rest to preach. He was, at this time, 34 years old, and proved very successful in drawing converts into the fold.
Meantime, a large and costly temple had been in the process of construction at Kirtland, which was dedicated in 1836, and, a year later, Orson Hyde and Heber C. Kimball, who had been a Mormon member for five years, were sent out to England as missionaries.
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