The history of Dubuque County, Iowa : containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, etc., Part 63

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical
Number of Pages: 964

USA > Iowa > Dubuque County > The history of Dubuque County, Iowa : containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, etc. > Part 63

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The eminences which overlook Dubuque commenced to attract notice, as desirable points for residences, and were held at fancy prices as compared with the havens of household comfort under the hill. Among the first to avail him- self of an eligible site on the hill for building a home, was Gen. G. W. Jones, then a prominent counselor in national, State, county and city affairs. In the spring of 1847, he commenced the erection of a princely residence on what is now known as Julien avenue, almost at the summit of the hill. The house was completed during the year, and remained for a long period the mark and model of its time, and has been the scene of many delightful gatherings. In 1875, it was purchased of H. T. McNulty, by Bishop Hennessey, for $10,000, that gentleman having previously become vested with the title for a consideration much larger, and is now utilized to purposes of education, being known as the Academy of the Visitation. The Langworthy brothers built homesteads on the hill at the terminus of the highway, to-day certified on the city map as the Third street extension; and from these beginnings the multitude of private houses which crown the summits of the hills have since been gradually added. In other directions, also, were rapid strides made in this particular connection. John Blake beautified Mineral street, then called Blake's hollow, with a handsome structure; John Wild increased the attractions of South Dodge street in a similar manner, while Timothy Davis and James M. Marsh aided in building up Couler avenue in the direction of Eagle Point.

Eagle Point obtained its name, it is said, from an Indian killing a bald eagle thereon, on the 11th day of July, 1831. It is, or was at that time, about three miles from the city limits, and known to settlers, keel-boat men, pilots and the public generally, as one of the loftiest points on the west side of the Mis- sissippi, between St. Louis and St. Paul. According to a statement made by G. R. West, an old resident of Dubuque, a grand celebration of the Fourth of July, 1831, was held at Cortlandville, N. Y., in which Mr. West partici- pated. An eagle had been trapped a short time previous and was included on the programme as one of the most effective celebrants provided. During the

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day the bird was capsized by the strategy, skill and brawn of one of the committee of arrangements, insists Mr. West, and while thus helpless, that gentleman aggravated the temporary paralysis of this emblem of liberty, equality and fraternity, by securing one of his legs, while William Bassett, an enthusiastic Whig, also a silversmith, riveted a silver shield about the member, bearing the following inscription : "To Henry Clay, of Louisville, Ky., from William Bassett, of Cortlandville, Cortland County, N. Y."

When this was accomplished, the proud bird, who soars aloft to bathe his plumage in the thunder's home, was elevated to the cupola of the Eagle Tavern, his beak pointed in a southwesterly direction, toward Louisville, and " shooed " off. He made threc attempts, narrates the witness of the circumstance, before leaving the " cupola," but finally poised himself in the air, and, spreading his wings o'er the scene, pointed for Kentucky, followed by the shouts of the multitude, the notes of the ear-piercing fife and the clangor of cymbals. In after years. when Mr. West settled in Dubuque, he remembers being told of the death of the Cortlandville messenger, the finding of the silver plate, and the naming of the Point from those circumstances.

Some improvements were begun and carried forward to completion in the year 1848. The Globe building, on Main street, next to the corner of Fifth street, was erected by Platt Smith and T. S. Wilson. David Jones superin- tended the work, but did not turn the building over to its owners as finished until a year or more later. The ground floor was used for stores; the second story for law offices, and the third story, as the Herald office, an assembly- room, under the title of Globe Hall.

During this year, Emerson & Shields built the City Hotel, on the present site of the opera house, previously thereto known as the Athenæum. A yea after the City Hotel was completed, its social hall, or rotunda, as now desig- nated, was made the scene of a cowhiding, wherein a young man about town named F. K. O'Farrall, Jr., was severely punished by a young woman named Smith, against whose character the victim had directed some uncomplimentary allusions. He left for Cincinnati, and subsequently married a lady residing in Kentucky, but never returned to Dubuque.

The residence portion of the city was limited to Thirteenth street, in a northerly direction, at which corner, Hon. J. J. Dyer erected a magnificent residence, the finest at the time in the State of Iowa. It is now occupied by St. Joseph's Academy. The corner of Fourteenth and Main streets, whereon the Episcopal church has lately been erected, was the locality of Norton's Row, a frame rookery owned by Pat Norton, an industrious and enterprising jarvey, who laid up treasures on earth, and invested in the framne buildings, which he yearly increased by additions, known under the above designation. They were the resorts of citizens equally unfortunate as regards resources and habits, and are represented as having been not unfrequently engaged in disturbances, which, on one occasion, ended in murder. The premises eventually came into the hands of Gen. Hodgson and the Episcopal society.

On Locust street, tenements were the rule; the houses of Samuel L. Clifton, a butcher-who, by the way, butchered and packed the first drove ofswine ever pickled in Iowa-and William I. Madden, being the exceptions. Toward the close of 1848, times began to look up, business to improve and the future to be more promising. Late in the summer, Richard Cox built a three-story brick store on the southwest corner of Fifth and Main Streets. Anthony Gehrig laid the foundation for what has since grown into Heeb's Brewery, near the

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HISTORY OF DUBUQUE COUNTY.

corner of Couler and Eagle Point avenues. In this vicinity, too, was located the One-Mile House, a frame tavern and road-house, frequented by farmers and pleasure seekers, and kept by Charles Rose.

The most important event of the year, however, was the introduction of the telegraph as a medium of communication with Galena and other distant points. The wires were laid either from the bluffs above Dunleitb, or the roof of an elevator hard by, and entered Dubuque via Seventh street, thence to Main, to the office on that thoroughfare, in the building where Mason's hard- ware store is to-day. The "phenomena " was regarded by very many with the doubt that of late years has greeted Spiritualistic manifestations. Others reasoned from the causes, and were prepared for results which science and research have developed.

The campaign this year was one of the most exciting known to the political history of the city. Taylor was the Whig candidate and Cass the candidate of the Locofocos, and both parties not only exhausted the resources of argu- ment, rhetoric and oratory, but those of persuasion and personal solicitation.

Among the Whig orators who prophesied the triumph of Taylor, was the Hon. E. D. Baker, then a member of the National House of Representatives from the Galena District, and subsequently a Senator in Congress from Oregon, finally killed at the battle of Ball's Bluff, Va., while leading the charge of a brigade.

During this year, preparations were made for the building of a Catholic cathedral, on the square located on the west side of Main, between Seventh and Eighth streets, under the auspices of Bishop Loras. The foundations were placed and corner-stone laid on the southeast corner thereof, but beyond this nothing further was done, the enterprise being abandoned.

In 1849, the population of the city had increased to nearly three thousand inhabitants ; the city itself had grown but very slowly, as every one who had watched the progress of events was compelled to admit. The business portion extended scatteringly along Main street to Seventh. The levee contained a limited number of impromptu offices for the transaction of affairs relating to transportation and travel by river. The same can be stated in regard to other avenues of trade that are to-day crowded. Booth's Mills had become fixtures, and furnished the market with lumber, flour and meal. The farmers disposed of crops and other products, including swine and cattle, without trouble. Mon- eyed men, with speculation in their several eyes, made investments where neither the rust of age nor moth of shrinkage would corrupt, and waited for the " boom " in real estate, which came after seven years.

Additions and plats were laid off as residence property by James L. and Lucius H. Langworthy, and others, and, these things being accomplished, a gen- eral rest was taken.

The discovery of gold in California, occurring this year, created intense excitement throughout the country. This excitement extended to Dubuque, and enlisted a large number of the inhabitants, who determined to go thither to acquire wealth more rapidly than could be done at home. The list who vent- ured into that comparatively undiscovered land, numbered fully five hundred, including many of the young men, among whom were farmers, miners, clerks, merchants and some capitalists. The parties were made up here but rendez- voused at Council Bluffs, where arrangements were concluded, and the long, weary trip to this promising El Dorado entered upon. For the ten years next succeeding, a number of the adventurers returned, but, after tarrying a short

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time, again sought the gold fields, said to flourish near the blue waves of that tide which rolls onward through the golden gate to the Pacific.

The effect of this emigration from Dubuque was not such as was calculated to encourage those who remained behind. After the departure of those who went West, business became flat, stale and unprofitable. No inconsiderable sums were expended by the adventurers in the purchase of outfits, tools, horses, etc., but with them once more departed the prosperity which had for several years previous coquetted with Dubuque. Mining, while not entirely abandoned, was engaged in at intervals and but carelessly prosecuted, and this interest did not revive to any appreciable extent until 1855. Emigration almost entirely ceased. The area of cultivation was measurably reduced, some of the farmers abandoning their fields, already put in crops, for the uncertain prospects held out in the gold diggings. Property in the city became unsalable, and residents wore an aspect of gloom and disappointment, for the times were hard and money scarce, and little remained to encourage the hope which had there- tofore been indulged, that the probationary period of the city's existence had passed. The winter of 1849-50 was replete with hardships, to which even those who had been hardened by inhospitable circumstances in days gone, were never before subjected. No cases of actual suffering were reported, as far as can be ascertaincd, yet that such existed no one can doubt, and the winter is to-day recurred to by the residents of the city then, as one whose experience is to be avoided.

The spring of 1850 witnessed no material change for the better. In truth, the embarrassments and difficulties encountered during the winter were aug- mented rather than diminished. In March, a tragedy occurred tending to dissolve the rose-colored prospects hoped for, if any prospects of that character were contemplated, by the immediate friends of the deceased. A young lawyer named Nutt, who had come to Dubuque from Virginia, presumably to settle, was found dead under circumstances that for the time being created a doubt as to whether death was the act of himself or caused by an unknown assassin. He had participated in an excursion up the river to Potosi, the evening previous, on the Lamartine, owned and commanded by Capt. Shields, and was discovered cold in death on the rear portion of the steamer's hurricane deck the next morn- ing. An examination concluded, after deliberation, with a verdict of suicide ; his father, who was employed in one of the departments at Washington, was notified of the sad occurrence, and the remains properly interred.

This year there was no building of consequence, and, as stated, dullness reigned supreme. As summer advanced, new recruits for California material- ized, and business revived for a short time, when it relapsed and came to a dead halt in the fall. The same influences which existed in 1849 obtained this season also, without variation.

The most important feature of the year was the discovery of an immense lead, made by Thomas Levens, who is still a resident of Dubuque, in the north- western portion of the city, on lands owned by Thompson & Gonder. It created a spurt of excitement, and, while being worked, revived the hopes of the people that better days were dawning. Mr. Levens secured, it is said, up- wards of $100,000 worth of mineral before the lode was exhausted.

During the previous ten years, four Lodges of Odd Fellows, and two of Masons, had been organized in Dubuque. Cooper's wagon and Herancourt's furniture factories had begun operations. M. Mobley & Co., F. S. Jesup & Co. and others, had organized banks, there were Christian, Methodist, Congrega- tional and German Presbyterian societies holding weekly services, and the city

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hall, with an engine company, was located in a small brick structure on Locust, near Fifth street.

Nothing occurred during the winter to disturb the sluggish current of events. The citizens, with a faith in the future, passing strange, continued to live on, buoyed up by the hope that the trials and tribulations they were compelled to endure would yield to time, energy and the logic of events. But it was a dreary period of inactivity, economy and burthensome influences, which left effects for many years afterward, when ease and luxury and flush times were substituted, and comfort and contentment found abiding places in the city on the bluff, partially dissipating a remembrance of days marked by suffering and embarrassments.

The California wave had spent its force with the close of 1850, and, in the following spring, the city was granted another lease of life, so to speak. The land office was located at Dubuque. Emigration was resumed, the new arrivals, hailing from the Eastern States, bringing with them, in addition to means and other resources, the thrift and enterprise characteristic of the people reared in that sterile, and inhospitable section, where man's daily bread is obtained as the reward of constant and laborious exertion. These new-comers entered lands and took to farming, invested in business ventures and added a new impetus to agriculture and trade. Pilgrims to California gave over their pursuit of gold and returned to their homes, while those on whom fortune had smiled evidenced the fruit of their labors by remittances to families and friends. In short, the city and county commenced to fill up again, real estate appreci- ated rapidly in value, new buildings were erected, societies, banks and associa- tions were organized, and the tears and lamentations of yesterday gave place to smiles and rejoicings. This influx and its sequences revived business, and so liberal were the daily accessions to the population, that, on almost every night during the ensuing months, there was scarcely a house in the city but what entertained travelers and prospectors. As an evidence of returning pros- perity, it may be stated that property near the present corner of Main and Seventh streets, which could not be sold at any price in 1850, was this year transferred for a consideration of $1,500. The owner to-day, refused $38,000 a short time since.

During this decade almost similar experiences greeted the inhabitants. One year fortune smiled upon the present, the next the fickle dame became reserved and next frowned in anger. It must have made the devil (if there is a devil) shake his tail (if he has a tail) with ineffable delight to witness the varying suc- cess and failure which attended the efforts of Dubuque's citizens and residents, in their pursuit of that which urges mankind to an exercise of every skill, science, self-denial and sacrifice. Early in the years of this period the cholera once more swept over the city, and carried off many who had survived its first visi- tation, twenty years before. Later, the St. Cloud Hotel, the largest caravan- sary west of the Mississippi when completed, was commenced. But before its opening day the establishment was swallowed up in a sea of flame, and an invest- ment of $100,000 was dissolved in smoke. Later came the panic, which engulfed the commercial world in a ruin from which recovery was impossible before another calamity, the war, succeeded. All these unlucky combinations produced their natural results. The panic of 1873, cannot. in the light of its effects, be properly so designated. It was rather a change of times. The rapid rate in which the American people had lived and transacted business, could not hold out. Black Friday came as a warning of the punishment that followed quickly in its wake, and the tight times which came in with the close of 1873.

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were simply in the nature of an admonition that happier days were in store ; that men had been denied the good things of this world in the past, because choicer blessings were hidden behind a near future. So men reasoned, and the sequel has confirmned the truth of their premises.

In 1854, a portion of the Key City House was built ; the original Miner's Bank was razed. and the present German Bank Building at No. 342 Main street was erected on the ruins by M. Mobley. The building now occupied by Myers, Tice & Co. was put up by Mr. Sullivan ; additions were made to the Germania House, etc. Residences, too, began to appear at points which but a short time previous had been vacant spaces on the city map. The railroad, then in progress, designed to connect Dubuque with. Chicago and the East, had become an assured fact. The knowledge of this attracted speculators from a distance, who visited the Key City and prepared for an anticipated rise that came with the completion of the road to Dunleith.

This decade also witnessed the organization of the Key City Gas Company ; the Dubuque & Pacific, and Dubuque, Cedar Falls & Minnesota Railroad Com- panies, all of which are to-day flourishing corporations.

In 1852, the limits of the city were extended to their present boundaries. Street improvements were commenced and vigorously continued through 1854, when the larger portion of Main street was macadamized. During these years, from 1851 to 1857, Dubuque made its most gratifying progress as a city. The population increased from 3,108 in 1840 to 15,957 in 1857, and large school- houses for the accommodation of 600 pupils each were erected in three of the wards.

The prospect of the Illinois Central reaching Dubuque in 1855, gave a new impetus to business and stimulated enterprise. Real estate once more ascended the plane of value ; lots in the suburbs were sold at so much per front foot, and prop- erty in the business portion of the city could scarcely be obtained at any price. The Germans began to come in and take up land for farms, gardens, etc. Manufacturing interests were regarded as valuable. Couler avenue was built up by the German element who toiled in the workshops and saved their profits to be invested and lost in the financial crash impending. Farm products were in great demand, and, as one of the then residents of Dubuque said on a recent occasion to the writer, the country folks were intoxicated with joy when they found the price of hog-meat had risen to $3.50 per hundred. These were the prosperous days of a golden age for Dubuque. The best times of record, or within the memory of the proverbial oldest inhabitant, occurred between 1853 and 1858.

Early in June, 1855, the last rail on the road-bed of the Illinois Central was secured in position, and a locomotive and tender with a number of freight cars halted in Dunleith for the first time. On the 18th of July following, the event was celebrated in Dubuque with ceremonies appropriate to so important an occasion. A procession was formed on Main, with the right resting at the corner of Second street, and, after marching through the leading thoroughfares, proceeded to West's Hill, where the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas delivered an address, followed by Gen. G. W. Jones, Ben M. Samuels and other silvery- tongued orators, who began by extolling Dubuque, and having expatiated on her glories, her sciences, her institutions, etc., concluded with a glowing tribute to the results they were called upon to commemorate, and by predicting one long summer's day of prosperity in the near future. Two years previous, the Dubuque & Pacific road had been incorporated, and was at this time making rapid strides in the direction of Sioux City. The railroad facilities, steamboat

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communications, moral atmosphere of the city, educational resources, manufact- uring success, financial outlook and other consummations for which the residents had been devoutly hoping had come to pass, and nothing thereafter could intervene to check the growth, wealth and importance of Dubuque. So thought the citizens, beyond which they took no thought of the morrow. Property in remote and inaccessible portions of the city was held at rates that ordinarily would have defied the ambition of any but capitalists. Residence lots on the hilltops, to be reached after fatiguing marches, readily commanded a minimum of $30 per foot, while lots on the plain, at the base of the hills, were sold at from $250 to $500. A gentleman owning two acres of ground on Third street hill refused $9,500 for its transfer, holding out for $10,000. He still pays taxes on the property. The lots on which the St. Cloud Hotel was afterward erected were secured to the originator of that enterprise by a long lease, the owner declining their sale except at figures not to be considered even in that day of fancy prices. The Congregational Church property, it is said, was sold for $22,000, but the sale never perfected. In short, the days of 1855 and 1856 reminded one of the times when Paris went wild over the schemes of John Law, and Brussels demented on the coloring of tulips.

Such was the condition of affairs when the spring of 1857 awoke the inhabit- ants of Dubuque to new enterprises, and a renewed faith in the destiny of their city. In January, the Dubuque & Pacific road was completed forty miles to Earlville, in Delaware County, a cross-roads at that time boasting two houses and a plentiful absence of material improvements in the vicinity. An excur- sion party went out on the road to that station to celebrate the progress of the enterprise in a becoming manner, but the lack of accommodations compelled a retreat, and they returned to Dyersville, then in its infancy, where the pro- gramme was carried out with the attendant concomitants peculiar to similar occasions.

As spring drew to a close, and the summer solstice bore down upon the city with its tropic days and nights, appearances failed to indicate the coming of the ruin that swooped down upon Dubuque before autumn. Warnings of its effects in the East preceded the arrival of the foe to prosperity on the banks of the Mississippi, and, while they may have occasioned speculation among reflecting citizens as to how Dubuque would weather the storm, or apprehen- sions of the city's inability to do so, no one was found bold enough to outline the impending troubles, which came too late for the victims to even protect themselves from their violence. It was first visible in the checked emigration ; hotels did not longer swarm with new arrivals, and the canvas-covered wagon of the emigrant could no more be seen upon every highway, trundling forward to the rich prairies of the West ; land offices were devoted to silence, and clerks cast out upon the world to wrestle with the stern necessities of life. These signs were soon followed by symptoms peculiar to a more advanced stage of the disease. The corner lots which had, six months before, sold for $500 per foot, were scarcely worth the assessment of taxes. Men who had constructed air castles in the realms of the bright ideal, and indulged in the wildest and most absurd speculations, fled to the wilderness, appalled at the spectacle which, by this time, was rapidly approaching a climax, and would burst over Dubuque before the commercial world would be able to check its approach or temper its ferocity. But the crash came at last, as the Assyrian cohorts, when the "blue waves rolled nightly o'er deep Galilee," and came to make a visit of an indefi- nite period. As a bank president observed, when commenting on the season of 1857, "the bottom fell out, and every one was left financially without even a

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The history of Dubuque County, Iowa : containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, etc., Part 63

Author: Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Number of Pages: 964

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical
Number of Pages: 964