USA > Iowa > Cedar County > The history of Cedar County, Iowa : containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, &c. : a biographical directory of its citizens, war record of its volunteers in the late rebellion, general and local statistics, portraits of early settlers and prominent men > Part 36
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named datc, and the streams were swollen to impassable torrents, their banks were overflowed, and the lands adjoining became quagmires. Provisions became exhausted, sickness came upon many families, and the general condition of affairs was deplorable to contemplate. Stock died from sheer starvation, and the people themselves began to think that they would be forced to share the same fatc.
Before the Spring suns began to melt away the snowy barrier, some of the more intrepid and self-sacrificing pioneers made journeys through two feet of crusted snow to Mouth of Pine, and Rockingham, a distance of thirty to forty miles, for provisions. These journeys were oftencr undertaken on foot than with teams. They were attended with exposure, danger and peril that but few people would be willing to encounter now. On the prairies, in many places, the snow was piled up in great billowy drifts of five to seven feet in depth. To pass them with ox teams was out of the question. Provisions must be had. The only way to obtain them was for the pioneers to go on foot to the nearest trading place and carry them home on their backs. Who of the people of Cedar County, in 1878, would think of going on foot, cven in the Spring, Sum- mer or Fall season, over good roads, a distance of thirty, aye, cven ten miles for a supply of family necessaries ? The stoutest hearts will almost quail at the thought.
In making one of these trips of love and necessity, Andrew Crawford almost lost his life. He started from Rockingham to wade home, thirty miles, through the snow, with a back load of provisions, for which he knew his family were hungering, if not suffering. When he had made about half the distance, a blinding snow storm set in, and every hour the snow drifted higher and higher. He lost his way, or, rather, the points of the compass, and guided his course by the wind. Late in the evening, he arrived at the banks of Sugar Creek, about two miles above his residence, but was so bewildered or blinded that he could not distinguish his whereabouts. Despairing to find his way home in the dark and snow drifts, he determined to walk on the icc until morning, and, although well nigh overcome with fatigue and cold, he did not dare to cease walking his lonely, snowy, icy "beat; " to do so was only to invite certain death. After a night of terrible suffering, the morning revealed to him his situation, and he started for home, but soon became almost hopeless of ever again seeing his wife and children, or of delivering to them that succor for which he knew they were almost famishing. At last, just as he had determined to lie down in despair and submit to the fate that stared him so boldly in the facc, he caught sight of a disturbance in the snow, and, making a last, desperate effort, he reached a pathway that James Burnsides had shoveled out to allow his cattle to get to the crcek for water. That path was the means of saving his life. Dragging him- self to Burnside's door, he fell there, more dead than alive. He was taken into the friendly and hospitable cabin and kindly cared for, but, while his life was saved, he was rendered a cripple for the remainder of his days. The flesh pecled from his face, his hands were badly frozen, and the ends of his feet fell off, leaving only the stumps or upper part the ankle joint. He suffered the inost excruciating agony for a number of weeks, but finally so far recovered as to be able to go around with the aid of wooden helps. He was given the office of Constable of Cedar County, a position he held for a number of years previ- ous to his death, which occurred in 1856.
Hector Sterrett had a similar trial, although it did not result so scriously. He had gone to one of the trading posts, and was returning with a load of provi- sions. In attempting to cross Sugar Creek on the ice, his team and wagon broke
DAYTON TOWNSHIP
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HISTORY OF CEDAR COUNTY.
through where the water was about six feet in depth. Taking in the situation at a glance, he unloaded his meal on the ice on either side of the wagon, and then sprang into the water to rescue liis struggling oxen. After being in the water about an hour, with the thermometer below zero, he succeeded in unyok- ing his cattle, but they were unable to ascend the steep bank. Mr. Sterrett was obliged to go to Mr. Bratts, a quarter of a mile distant, for help. A team of oxen was yoked, and Messrs. Sterrett and Bratts returned to the relief of the almost stiffened oxen. All this consumed time, and when they reached the place of the mishap, Sterrett's oxen were standing on their hind feet against the bank. There was no remedy but to hitch a chain around the necks of each of the four suffering brutes and drag them up the bank. The most remarkable circumstance connected with the adventure, was that, as he afterward affirmed, Mr. Sterrett experienced no unpleasant consequences, neither at the time nor subsequently from the exposure incident to the occasion. He attributed this fact to his continued exertion and excitement, which kept his blood in active circula- tion, and also to the further fact, that upon leaving the water his clothes instantly froze stiff upon his person, thus preventing the wind from coming in contact withı his body.
While many of the pioneers were often reduced to scant rations, and often suffered hunger in consequence, the family of Mr. John Finch were perhaps the greatest sufferers. Mr. Finch had but limited means when he came to the coun- try, and he was unable to lay in a stock of provisions sufficiently large to last his family during the Winter. The family fell sick ; the roads were blockaded with snow, his larder was soon exhausted, with the exception of a small quan- tity of frozen potatoes, upon which the family subsisted six weeks, without even salt to season them.
Many of the pioneer families lived for weeks at a time on corn bread and coffee ; some other families were known to have been six weeks without the sign of bread in their houses. When they were unable to procure corn meal, which was not unfrequently the case, and could get corn or wheat, they would boil and eat it like beans. A number of families lived in cabins that were neither " chinked " nor " daubed." The whistling winds and drifting snow were kept out by quilts and blankets suspended from the joists or upper floor, if there were upper floors, which was but seldem the case. In one or two cases the settlers used hollow trees for chimneys set on end over the fire-place. Such chimneys needed constant watching to keep them from taking fire. Other settlers, instead of building cabins, made temporary dwellings by digging out a place sufficiently large to temporarily accommodate the family in the side of a hill. Here the cooking, etc., was done, while the unfinished cabins a short distance away were used as sleeping rooms. " R. L. R.," in a series of articles entitled " Outlines of the History of Cedar County," published in the Cedar Post in 1872, says : " One old settler informed me how he slept in a cabin over which there was only half a roof. Hle could reach out from his bed and put his hand in a snow drift two feet deep, and that he used to get up and run bare footed to his "side hill " shanty (dug out, more strictly speaking), some fifteen or twenty rods distant to make a fire, and that he ' didn't think nothin' of it.'"
Those who had their hay burned, and had the means, bought corn meal at Rockingham upon which to winter their cattle. Corn meal was worthi two dol- lars per bushel, and the readers of these annals will readily see that it was costly feed. Those who did not have the means to buy corn meal, and who had lost their hay by fire, lost nearly all their stock by starvation. Those were hard times-times of trial and tribulation.
B
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HISTORY OF CEDAR COUNTY.
THE SPRING FRESHET OF 1837.
The deep snow of the Winter of 1836-7, with the Spring rains, caused a freshet the like of which has seldom, if ever, been equaled in the country. The banks of all the streams were overflowed, and the prairies were flooded. When occasion required the settlers to go from one cabin to another, thicy were obliged to cross the streams that happened to run between. If the occasion of the visit was not too pressing, it was deferred until the waters subsided. If of a pressing nature, they must either swim across or head the source of the stream by going around. The last alternative involved a jaunt of many miles. At one time, in the Spring of 1837, Washington A. Rigby and Chesman, son of James M. Oaks, with whom Rigby boarded, were engaged in cutting house logs on the opposite side of Rock Creek from the Oaks cabin. When they crossed the creek in the morning, going to work, the water was at an ordinary stage, and they had no apprehensions of a rise. Their work was some distance away from the creek, entirely out of sight of it, and they worked away until about 5 in the evening, never dreaming that Rock Creek was rapidly becoming a sea, over- spreading its banks, and completely flooding the low lands on either side. When the shades of evening began to fall, they started for home and were sur- priscd to find themselves entirely cut off from the foot log on which they crossed to their work in the morning. The creek was a roaring, maddened tor- rent. There was but one alternative presented, and that was to head the stream, or at least follow it up until they could find a place sufficiently shallow to allow them to wade it. This, however, proved a long and a weary undertak- ing. On and on they went, in the midst of darkness and water. Rigby cut a small staff with which to feel the depth of the water as they plodded along. The night was cold, and the water began to chill and cover with mush ice. The boy became chill and numb, and it was with the utmost difficulty that Mr. Rigby could keep him moving. Artifice, persuasion and threats were used in turn. Tired, hungry, cold, discouraged, despondent, the boy dragged himself until at last they found a place where the water was so shallow they could wade across, when they turned their course and headed toward home, and reached the Oaks' cabin a little after midnight, having traveled about twenty-five miles, the most of the distance through water knee deep. Mr. Oaks was absent from home at the time, and Rigby and his boy companion appeared to Mrs. Oaks, who had not gone to bed, more like persons risen from the dead than living beings, as she had confidently believed they had been drowned. When she noticed the creek beginning to rise in the morning, she went to the bank and tried to alarm Rigby and her son, but her voice failed to reach them. The creek rose rapidly, her fears increased with the rise of the flood, and when darkness set in she gave up all hope of ever seeing them again, at least until their bodies should be found after the flood had gone down. Neither Rigby nor the boy experienced any serious consequences from their watery tramp, but. it was an occasion that has never been forgotten.
The opening of the Spring of 1837 was the temporal salvation of the settlers of the year previous. To no people, in any part of the country, was the melt- ing away of the ice and snows of Winter, the subsidence of floods, the return of birds, the blooming of flowers, and the genial smile of the sun, ever more wel- come or received with greater joy than was that Spring to the pioneers who commenced the settlement of that part of Iowa whose history we are writing. When the frosted king retreated north, hope revived, and the languishing spirits of the people were reanimated. With the rigid experience of the
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"reign of terror " fresh in memory, they set about preparing for the coming Winter with a zeal that plainly evinced their determination to never again be subjected to similar trials and exposures.
With the coming of the Spring and Summer months of 1837 there came a general rush of immigrants, and ere the first snows of the Winter fell the whole of the timbered sections of the county were interspersed with cabins and set- tlers. A large part of the lands bearing timber, and the smaller groves, were claimed, if not occupied, while the prairie, for the most part, was left untouched and unsought. The prairie land was regarded as worthless for purposes of agri- culture, and considered as a useless waste. There were hundreds of men who honestly believed it would never be occupied. If any of the settlers of 1836 and 1837 had located a claim out on the prairie, he would have been regarded as extremely visionary, if not absolutely crazy. As a rule, the prairies were left undisturbed until about 1850, when they began to be occupied, and at the close of 1854 not a single acre was left as belonging to the Government. "But," says R. L. R., in the Cedar Post, April, 1872, " the peopling of the county cannot be said to have been completed until quite recently ; and it may be safely stated that Cedar County was thirty years in settling.'
BOGUS CLAIMANTS-CLAIM RINGS-PIONEER ICONOCLASTS.
"As the country began to develop and the demand for cabins began to be active, land sharks of various descriptions began to harass the people with their schemes of exhorbitant rapacity and extortionate speculations. Early in the county's history, a ring of mercenary characters, anticipating immigration, claimed all the untaken groves and wooded tracts in the county, and when an actual settler-one who wanted land for a home and immediate occupancy and settled on a portion of the land rings' domain, he was immediately set upon by the bloodhounds, and it was demanded of him that he either abandon the claim or pay them for what they maintained was their right. If the settler expressed doubts of their having previously claimed their site, the 'ring ' always had one or more witnesses at hand to testify to the validity of the interest they asserted. The result was nearly always the same. The settlers, more to avoid difficulty than from any other reason, would purchase their pretended right for forty, fifty . or one hundred dollars, more or less, according to value, after which the ring was ready for operation in some other locality.
" When one of the number had collected fees for original possession over a considerable area, and come to be known and suspected, he would change fields of operation with a confederate at some distance, and thus guard against arous- ing public indignation and resentment. These outrageous impositions upon the settlers who came to find homes at last became unbearable, and the pioneers resolved they would tolerate them no longer, and mutual protection leagues were formed which effectually resisted the plans and practices of these sharks and bogus land claimants. They were enemies to the settlers and to public economy and hindered and crippled the growth and development of the country."
Greedy, conscienceless, unscrupulous speculators and capitalists formed another combination that was only one degree removed from the bogus claim thieves and claim jumpers, that plundered and terrorized over the honest, indus- trious settlers. Only that they possessed money and more the garb of respect- ability were they different from the other class. In fact, they were the worst and most to be feared and dreaded, just as the modern savings bank manager, who, under cover of respectability and the authority and protection of law,
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robs and plunders men, women and children-helpless widows and orphans- without remorse or compunctions of conscience is more to be feared, dreaded and despised than the highwayman, who, without any claims to respectability and outside of all law commands one to " stand and deliver."
At the general land sales at Dubuque, in the Spring of 1840, speculators; although present in force, were awed into silence, subjection and non-interfer- ence by the presence, in large numbers of pioneer citizens, with their rifles and revolvers, and had any of the speculators presumed to bid against an actual claim occupant he would have paid the penalty with his life. The men who pioneered the way to the timbered sections and prairie slopes of Cedar County possessed courage and resolution, and, coming here to secure and found homes, they were ready to defend them at the peril of their lives. In defending their homes and driving from their midst the ring of claim thieves and defeating the purposes of the ring of capitalists who attended the Dubuque land sales, the pioneers proved themselves iconoclasts with whom it were madness to trifle. They broke the "rings," sccured their homes and their industry has made the forest and prairie wilderness blossom with the rose.
GOVERNMENT SURVEY-CENTERVILLE-FIRST STORE, ETC.
In the Spring of 1837, township lines were established by the Government surveyors. Soon thercafter John C. Higginson and John Sheller built a cabin on the southeast corner of the farm now belonging to the heirs of Gibson Agnew, in Sugar Creck Township, opened a store and named the place Centerville.
This was the first store opened in the county and the first opportunity offered the settlers for obtaining family supplies nearer than the trading places on the Mississippi River at Rockingham or Mouth of Pine. This firm supplied the community with the ordinary necessaries of life until other trading places were commenced in more favored localities, and then Centerville's glory departed.
The old store building is owned by Mrs. Rice, and is occupied by her as a residence.
AN INDIAN RELIC.
A short distance south of Centreville, and not far from where the Bethel M. E. Church now stands, the first settlers found a cedar pole about twenty-five feet in length, which it is said the Indians planted there to mark the spot where a party of their warriors had raised the white flag and surrendered to the Long Knives (by which name they called the U. S. Cavalry) in the Black Hawk war of 1832. The pioneers utilized that Indian relic by cutting it down and making it into pitchfork handles.
SOCIETY, CHURCHES, SCHOOLS, ETC.
Rough and rude though their surroundings may have been, the pioneers were none the less honest, sincere, hospitable and kind in their social rela- tions. It is true, as a rule, that there is a greater degree of real humanity among pioneers of any country than there is when the country becomes older and richer. If there is an absence of refinement, that absence is more than compensated for in the presence of generous hearts and truthful lives. They are bold, courageous, industrious, enterprising and energetic. Generally speaking, they are earnest thinkers and possessed of a diversified fund of useful, practical information. They are void of hypocrisy themselves and despise it in others. They hate cowardice and shams of every kind, and above all things,
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falsehood and deception, and maintain and cultivate a sterling integrity and fixed- ness of purpose that seldom permits them to prostitute themselves to any nar- row policy of imposture or artifice.
Such were the characteristics of the men and women who pioneered the way to the country of the Cedar. Those who visited them in their cabins, in a social capacity, or settled among them as real occupants of the soil, were always welcome as long as they proved themselves true men or women. The stranger who came among them and claimed shelter, food and a place to sleep, was made as welcome as one of the household. To tender them pay in return for their hospitality, was only to insult the better feelings of their nature. If a neighbor fell sick and needed care and attention, the whole neighborhood was interested. If a cabin was to be raised, every man " turned out," and oftentimes the women, too, and while the men piled up the logs that fashioned the primitive dwelling place, the women prepared the dinner. Sometimes it was cooked by camp fires at the site where the cabin was building. In other cases, the meal was prepared at a cabin near by, and at the proper hour was carried to where the men were at work. If one neighbor killed a beef, a pig, or a deer, every other family in the neighborhood was sure to receive a piece of it, and a welcome remembrance it often proved. One of the few remaining pioneer settlers of 1836-7 remarked: "'In those days we were neighborly in a true sense. We were all on an equality. Aristocratic feelings were unknown and would not have been tolerated. What one had, we all had, and that was the happiest period of my life. But to-day, if you lean against a neighbor's shade tree, he will charge you for it. If you are poor and happen to fall sick, you may lie and suffer almost unattended or go to the poor house, and just as like as not the man who would report you to the authorities as a subject of county care, would charge the county for making the report." This declaration was made, not because the facts exist as he put them, but to show the contrast between the feeling and practices of the pioneers of forty years ago, and the people of the present.
A PREACHER IN THE WILDERNESS.
You raised these hallowed walls; the desert smiled, And paradise was opened in these wilds .- Pope.
In the latter part of June, 1837, Rev. Daniel Cartwright, a nephew of the late well-known and highly esteemed Peter Cartwright, preached the first Meth- odist sermon delivered in the county. The cabin of Col. Henry Hardman, on the same spot where the Colonel now lives, in Rochester Township, was impro- vised as a meeting house. There were not more than twenty persons present, and they were there without regard to fashion or display. The preacher occu- pied a place behind a common candle stand, in one corner of the room. There was neither organ nor organized choir to add vocal melody to the occasion. The preacher gave out the hymn, two lines at a time, something after the following manner :
Before Jehovah's awful throne, Ye nations bow with sacred joy ; -
then, raising his voice, the preacher led in singing. When these two lines were rendered, he lined the next two :
Know that the Lord is God alone, He can create, and He destroy ; -
and resuming the last measure of the tune, completed the stanza, and so on, to the end of the hymn.
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At this meeting, the seeds of Methodism were planted in Cedar County ; the planting, carefully and industriously cultivated, ripened into the fulness of a plentiful harvest.
A month later, a elass was formed at the eabin of Col. Henry Hardman, under the direction of Rev. Chauncey Hobart, who; after Cartright's first ser- mon, was sent by the Roek River (Illinois) M. E. Conference to preach regu- larly in the neighborhood.
The following named persons made up the first Methodist class as organized at Col. Hardman's : . Henry Hardman and wife, Mary, and Cynthia, their daughter ; Daniel Hare and wife, and their daughter, Phœbe, and H. D. Brown -seven persons in all. Washington A. Rigby, - Forte and William Wilkin- son united with the elass soon after its organization, inereasing the number to ten persons. H. D. Brown was the first elass leader. This elass was the organ- ized beginning of Methodism in Cedar County, the influence of which grew and spread with the growth of the settlements.
The first Quarterly Meeting was held at Col. Hardman's residenee, about the 1st of September, 1837-Elder Henry Summers, of Knoxville, Knox Co., Ill., officiating.
The Methodists of the county now maintain eight regular Pastors, and prob- ably number as many thousands as they did individuals when the first elass was organized, in 1837.
Of the pioneer representatives of Methodism named above, Rev. Chauncey Hobart subsequently removed to Minnesota, where he was still living at the last authentie report. Mary Hardman died September 15, 1852, universally lamented by all who enjoyed her acquaintance. Cyntha Hardman died April 12, 1867. Daniel Hare died in 1852; his wife, Sarah, died a few years later ; their daughter, Phoebe, still survives, and remains a resident of the vicinity. H. D. Brown resides in Tipton. Washington A. Rigby resides at Stanwood. Forte and William Wilkinsou are both dead.
Six of that little elass of ten members, organized at the cabin of Col. Hard- inan, in the Summer of 1837, have gone
Where the saints of all ages in harmony meet Their Savior and brethren transported to greet; While the anthems of rapture unceasingly roll, And the smile of the Lord is the life of the soul.
The remaining members of that first class-Col. Henry Hardman, H. D. Brown, Washington A. Rigby and Phoebe Hare Edwards-have all passed the meridian of life, and, in the very nature of things, are nearing that bourne from which there is no turning back. But their lives have been full of usefulness, and " their works will live after them."
"TEACHING THE YOUNG IDEA HOW TO SHOOT."
When the settlers came to the wilds of the "Forty Mile Strip," they brought with them that love of education which seems to be a part of every true Amer- ican ; and as early as the Fall of 1837, they made arrangements for a school for the Winter of that year. There was no school house, as a matter of course, nor school districts, nor school money. Educational affairs were in chaos-with- out form or organization-and the pioneer fathers were left to their own resources and management. Col. Hardman, with that liberality that has always made him conspicuous in public affairs, tendered the use of a part of his house for a school house, as he had previously given it for the use of religious meetings,
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