USA > Iowa > Jefferson County > The history of Jefferson County, Iowa, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, &c., a biographical directory of citizens, war records of its volunteers in the late rebellion, general and local statistics, portraits of early settlers and prominent men > Part 41
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Among the settlers already mentioned, was the family of Amos Lemon (who settled on the farm now owned by Albert Howell), consisting of his wife and five children. Mr. Lemon was a preacher of the Baptist faith, and bore the name of an excellent man. Like many other preachers, however, he possessed but little of this world's goods, preferring rather to lay up his treasures in heaven, "where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." He came to found a home in the land of the Iowas for his wife and little ones, but came too late to raise a. crop of any kind. He brought but a small supply of provisions, expecting, no doubt, to be able to visit the trading-places before mentioned to procure provis- ions as the needs of his family demanded. But the winter came and the snow fell so as to render such trips beyond the power of human endurance. Their scanty stock of provisions disappeared day by day until the last crust of bread was gone, and the family compelled to resort to the bark of slippery-elm trees for the means of supporting life. It is said they actually subsisted in that way for several weeks before their condition became known, and relief rendered. The ordeal was so trying that, in pity and anxiety for her suffering, hungering chil- dren, the mother's reason partially gave way, and from which she did not fully recover for many a long, weary month.
The first to hear of the pitiable condition of the Lemon family, and to devise means for their relief was Mrs. Lambirth. They had laid in enough of bread- stuff to last the two-her husband and herself-through the winter, but no more. With a nobleness of heart that was an honor to her sex, Mrs. Lambirth determined to succor the famishing children of her distant neighbor. She reasoned thus : "We have breadstuff sufficient to last Thomas (her husband) and myself until the winter is gone. Thomas is making rails and doing other hard work, and needs bread and meat to preserve his strength. I can live on potatoes. The bread I would eat would feed those little children until other means can be provided to stay their hunger." Having reached this conclusion, she communicated it to her husband the next morning as they sat at their com- fortably-supplied table. "Thomas, Lemon's children are starving for bread, and I intend to divide our breadstuff in two parts. One part I will make in bread from time to time as you need it to preserve your strength that you may
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go on improving our claim. The other part I will carry to Lemon's, that the lives of their children may be saved. I can and will live on potatoes." The plan was carried out to the letter. Other relief soon came, and the children lived to bless the name of their benefactress. Meal after meal Mrs. L. sat at the table with her husband, but she kept her resolution, and never touched the bread she had set apart for her husband, and which she denied herself that the lives of the children of her neighbor might be saved.
AN INDIAN SCARE.
When the settlers of 1836 came to exercise dominion in the territory now included in Jefferson County, the Indians had disappeared as a body. Occa- sionally, however, some straggling ones would come along to frighten the women and children with their presence, and annoy the heads of households with their begging propensities. But very few of the settlers had ever seen an Indian, but they had heard and read of many of their bloody and cruel acts of atrocity toward frontier settlers. A goodly number of the pioneers were either born in Kentucky, the "dark and bloody ground," or were de- scendants of parents of that grand old commonwealth, and it would be strange indeed if, when the women came to consider the fact that they were on the frontier, on the grounds the Indians had recently occupied, and that they might come back some time and massacre the settlers, they did not sometimes almost tremble with apprehension. But the Indians came not, only as occasional stragglers and beggars. One of these came to the Lam- birth claim in February, 1837 ; an account of which is thus rendered by Mrs. Lambirth :
"My husband had eaten his breakfast and gone to work about a mile and a half from the house. I was doing up my morning work, when my attention was attracted to the fierce and savage barking of our dog. I went out of the door and looked in that direction and found the dog had an Indian ' treed' on the ash-hopper. I was scared, expecting that others were concealed near by, but I managed to pac- ify the dog, and get him away. The Indian got down from the ash-hopper and followed me into the house, where he gave me to understand that he was hungry, and that he wanted something to eat. I gave him some bread, which he stowed away in the folds of his blanket, and then he told me the Indians were coming to kill us. I told him that as I had fed him, he ought to be a good Indian, and that they ought not to kill us for we had never injured them. At last, I got him to go out of the house and to start away. He had hardly got out of sight of the house till our horse and cattle came running up out of the stock-field like they were mad, and believing that they had been scared by the Indians who were coming in force to kill us, I commenced calling at the top of my voice for Thomas and the other men, never thinking but that I could make them hear me, although they were a mile and a half away. But I took a second thought, and, catching the horse I mounted him and started for where my husband was at work, screaming at every jump the horse took. At last Thomas heard me and came running to meet me, and wanted to know what the matter was-if the house was on fire. I told him no, but that there were a hundred Indians at the house and that they had come to kill us. We hur- ried back to the house, but no Indians were in sight. Thomas wanted to know where my hundred Indians were. I told him I didn't know, but that I was certain there had been one, for I had given him something to eat. Hus- band laughed at my fright which was the first and last Indian scare I ever experienced."
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HARD TIMES AND HOMINY-BLOCKS.
In consequence of the severity and length of the winter of 1836-37, the set- tlers who were not fortunate enough to be able to bring a six-months supply of provisions with them, were sometimes reduced to very straitened circum- stances. There were no mills in the country-the nearest one was an hundred miles away, so that for breadstuff the corn raised the summer previous was as good as useless, unless some means could be devised to crush it, and the settlers fell back on their own ingenuity to meet the exigencies of the times. Hominy blocks were substituted for mills. The corn was crushed as fine as possible in these primitive concerns, and then sifted through a wire sieve and baked in " corn dodgers," Indian " pones " or "johnny-cakes." Such corn as the set- tlers used for bread that winter would hardly be considered fit feed for horses now, but most of the pioneers of 1836 were glad to get it. Those of them who had this kind of coarse bread and "hog and hominy " for a regular diet the first winter of the settlement of this part of Iowa were esteemed to be in " good fix." Deer, wild turkey, etc., were plenty, and if they grew tired of " pork and bacon," or if those articles gave out, the deficiency was easily supplied from the forests and prairies. Wild bees were plenty, too, and wild honey was to be found upon almost every table.
As the country settled up, however, mills were built, and " hominy-blocks" or " corn-crushers " went out of use until they only exist in memory. As rel- ics of the "long ago," a description of them will not be out of place.
A tree of suitable size, say from eighteen inches to two feet in diameter, was selected from the forest and felled to the ground. If a cross-cut saw happened to be convenient, the tree was "butted," that is, the "curf" end was sawed off so that it would stand steady when ready for use. If there was no cross-cut saw in the neighborhood, strong arms and sharp axes were made to do the work. Then the proper length, from four to five feet, was measured off, and sawed or cut square. When this was done, the block was raised on end, and the work of cutting out a hollow in one or the other of the ends was commenced. This was usually done with a common chopping-ax. Sometimes a smaller one was used, and in some instances a fire would be kindled on the end and carefully watched until a cavity or hollow was burned out sufficiently large for the pur- pose intended, when the ragged edges would be dressed away with some smaller sharp-edged instrument. When completed, the hominy-block somewhat resem-
bled a druggist's mortar. Then a pestle or something to crush the corn was necessary. This was usually made from a suitably-sized piece of timber, with an iron wedge attached, the large end down. This completed the machinery, and the block was ready for use. Sometimes one hominy-block accommodated a whole neighborhood, and was the means of staying the hunger of many mouths.
The houses of those days were only cabins-most of them built from round logs. The floors were made of puncheons split from trees of the forest. The doors, door-cheeks, window-cheeks, etc., as well as all other " finishing stuff," was made in the same way, and then dressed down with a broad-ax. The roof was made of clapboards or " shakes," split from some monarch of the forest. The boards were held in place by weight-poles laid lengthwise, and kept at con- venient and suitable distances by " knees." Very often a cabin would be com- pleted without the use of a single nail in the entire structure. A mud-and- stick or sod chimney and earthen hearth finished the "cabin." The women baked their " corn dodgers " or "johnny-cakes," cooked their venison or roasted the
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wild turkeys their husbands killed, by these old-fashioned fire-places in skillets, pots and ovens just as nicely as cooks and servants bake the bread and roast the meats on costly stoves and ranges now. They cooked their meals and entertained visitors-people didn't "call" then-at the same time and in the same room, and didn't consider it a disgrace either, to be seen molding their "jolinny-cakes " or bending over their skillets and ovens. And the mothers of those days-the brave wives of Iowa's pioneers-were just as happy as the wives and mothers who live in costly mansions in 1878. But by and by the primitive log cabin gave way to hewed log or frame houses with shingle roofs, plank floors with carpets-rag carpets, may be, that prudent housewives made themselves. They cut the rags, sewed them together, and, as likely as not, wove them with their own hands. Brick or stone chimneys took the place of the old-fashioned and primitive mud-and-stick or sod chimneys. The first hewed log or frame house was the pride of the neighborhood, and its occupants were considered the first families .- the aristocrats-of the settlement. The erection of the first frame house in the county is accredited to Thomas Lam- birth, and is still standing and occupied as a residence by Mrs. Lambirth and her son-in-law, J. P. Chezum.
In that neighborhood the settlers were mostly of southern descent, if not natives of some one of the Southern States. Some of them, and the larger part we believe, represented Kentucky customs and habits, and hospitality, and in traveling through Round Prairie Township one will notice that to all the old houses there are outside chimneys, and very often one at each end of the house. In the country districts of Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas an inside chimney, until within the last ten or fifteen years, was the exception and not the rule. In the Eastern States an outside chimney has always been an excep- tion. But as the country of the Iowas developed in wealth and prosperity, and the people grew rich, the fire-places to the outside chimneys were closed up, and heating-stoves substituted as a measure of economy. A large per cent of the heat that escaped "up the chimney " is thereby saved, and much less fuel is needed to keep a house warm.
The old primitive log cabins, reminders of the days of small beginnings ! But very few of them are in use now. They were abandoned many years ago for a better class of buildings, but a great many of them are still standing, and used for wash-houses, tool-houses, etc. They ought to be preserved as memen- tos of the "times that tried men's souls" (and women's), and vines and flowers planted around them. With such surroundings they would make nice summer- houses, and an hundred years hence would be a curiosity to the people who will then hold and exercise dominion in the commonwealth of Iowa.
SETTLERS OF 1837-THE OLD VILLAGE OF LOCKRIDGE-FIRST STORE.
In the year 1837, quite a large number of settlers came and occupied claims and commenced improvements in different parts of the county. All had to depend on the farms and mills " beyond the Mississippi " for their family sup- plies. Rall's mill was the acknowledged depot for breadstuffs. Corn-bread was the staple. Flour was only used on special occasions. The bread supply was hauled from the mills by ox-team. Joseph M. Parker was millboy for the entire settlement during that summer, and in which he made two or three trips, each trip occupying twenty-seven to thirty days.
In 1836, Col. W. G. Coop selected a claim in what is now the northeast corner of Section 1, in Cedar Township. In the fall of that year, he went back to the vicinity of Alton, Ill., and, during the winter, managed to trade some
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real property he owned there for a stock of goods. In the spring following, he shipped the goods by river for Fort Madison. On the way, the boat sunk and the goods were thoroughly wet and seriously damaged. In consequence of some defect in the insurance papers, Coop was left no redress, and was obliged to accept the goods as they were delivered, or suffer their entire loss. He chose the former alternative, and as soon as the building could be prepared on his claim, the goods were opened to sale, and " Coop's store " became the first trad- ing-place commenced within the limits of Jefferson County. About the same time, he laid off a town which he called Lockridge. In those days, the town- ship and section lines were established at random. A Congressional township is six miles square. The settlers took the last range of regularly surveyed town- ships as a basis of calculation, and measured or made a temporary survey there- from. When township lines were fixed, it was not a difficult matter to divide the township into sections and the sections into quarters, etc. In very many cases, the lines fixed by the settlers were almost directly confirmed by the Gov- ernment Surveyors. Some times, however, the settlers' lines would be pretty widely at fault. It not unfrequently happened that the house of one settler and the farmn of another would be on the same 160 acres, as established by the United States Surveyors. In each township the settlers had a Claim Association, and rules and regulations for the protection of each other. The rules required a regis- tered description to be kept of every man's claim as he located it. When the United States surveys were made, and there were found to be conflicting interests among the settlers, the Claim Committee were called together and the claimants and their respective witnesses cited to appear. Each party and their witnesses told their own story without oath or affirmation, for such proceedings were not necessary in those days to get the truth. The word of honor of a " squatter " was as good as his oath or his bond. After hearing all the facts in the case, the Committee would correct the register according to the evidence, and from that correction and the rulings of the Claim Court there was no appeal. An old settler says : " I never knew of injustice being donc in a single case."
When Coop built his storehouse and laid off his town of Lockridge, he sup- posed he was laying it out on the northeast quarter of Section 1, Township 71 north, Range 9 west. But when Uncle Sam's surveyors came along and fixed the line between Townships 71 and 72, they left the most of Lockridge in Township 72 (Buchanan).
At nearly the same time that Coop put up his stock of goods, a rival store was opened by Miles Driscoll, Samuel Moore and John Ratliff. This firm, if it was a firm, bought a lot of Coop and erected a store-building on it, and com- menced business. John Huff made the clapboards that roofed the building, as also some of the stuff for shelving, etc. These stores were a great convenience to the settlers, but they "had to pay" for almost everything they bought-that is to say, goods, groceries, etc .- was enormously high as compared with the prices that prevail now. Salt retailed at the rate of $7 per bushel, and corn- meal, hauled by ox-teams from Rall's mill, in Illinois, sold at $1.25 per bushel, and almost everything else in the same proportion.
When Col. Coop laid off his town of Lockridge, and aspired to found a city that would become a metropolis of this part of the "Beautiful Land," he " reckoned without his host," for it was written from the first that it should never become a great city. His ambition was laudable and praiseworthy. He hoped to be the founder of the county seat of a great and prosperous county. But all around there were other mnen equally ambitious, and they managed to coop Coop's plans, and he saw his fondest hopes fall to the ground and Lock-
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ridge's promise depart before the rising glory of Fairfield. When the county of Jefferson was created in January, 1839, it was generally believed that Lock- ridge would be made the seat of justice. But the Commissioners appointed to locate the county seat ruled it otherwise. After one meeting of the Board of County Commissioners there, in April, 1839, at which the county machinery was put in motion, Lockridge began to fall into decay. and the place and the people that once knew it, now know it no more only in name. Its " corner lots," public parks, streets and avenues are lost in well-cultivated fields. In- stead of thronged streets, crowded stores and busy shops and manufactories, there is naught to disturb the stillness but the lowing of herds, and the voices of prosperous husbandmen.
This year there was a very material increase in the population over that reported at the close of 1836. Every visitor or prospector to the frontier- every one who made claims, was well pleased with the country, and the golden stories they conveyed to their friends in the old homes excited admiration and a desire to come and possess some part of the land that needed but to be "stirred with the plow and tickled with the hoe," to render ample and remunerative returns to tillers of the soil. Many came in this year and made claims and perfected arrangements to permanently occupy them the next spring. Those who came in time, in 1836, to plow and plant that year, raised good crops in 1837, and prosperity hovered over the frontier settlers.
In 1836, Keokuk, for himself and immediate adherents, ceded his reserve from the Black Hawk Purchase of 1832 to the United States. As he and his followers disappeared in the west, "squatters" appeared on the east. On the 21st of October, 1837, a treaty was made at the city of Washington, between Cary A. Smith, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and the confederate tribes of Sauks and Foxes, which was ratified on the 21st of February, 1838, by which 1,250,000 acres were added to the tract of land conveyed by them to the United States on the 21st of September, 1832. This strip of land adjoined the Black Hawk Purchase on the west, was of the same length, twenty-five miles in the center, and tapered off to a point at both ends. This purchase extended west to what is now the west line of Jefferson County.
In anticipation of this purchase, "squatters" pushed on beyond the limits of the "Forty-Mile Strip" long before the purchase was ratified and confirmed. Among the first to enter upon this strip was Daniel Morris and his family. Morris was more hunter than farmer, and was never contented unless away on beyond the limits of civilization. He selected his claim on the extreme limits of what it was supposed would be included in the purchase. When the pur- chase was ratified and the western line established, it was found that his cabin was on the east side of the line and his farming land on the west. The Indi- ans, however, granted him permission to cultivate the land, and did not in any way interfere with his farming operations. This family, if not the first, was among the first white families to settle in what is now Locust Grove Town- ship
AN INDIAN WIFE ON HER MUSCLE.
Morris' family and the Indians became very intimate and friendly, and the latter were frequent visitors at the cabin of their pale-faced neighbors. On one occasion, an Indian named Shi-ash-kah and his wife stopped at the Morris cabin, when Shi-ash-kah was in a beastly state of intoxication, and soon went into a drunken sleep. Mrs. Shi-ash-kah was about twenty-five years of age, and said to have been a remarkably handsome woman. An impudent young Indian "buck," named No-tel-us-kuk, happened to be at Morris' at the
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time, and like many an one of his "pale-faced" brothers, succeeded in getting himself into trouble by attempting to be too familiar with the wife of a drunken husband. While Shi-ash-kah was sleeping off his drunk, Mrs. Shi-ash-kah went out to the stable to attend to her pony, whither she was followed by No- tel-us-kuk, by whom she was grossly insulted. She returned to the house, her cheeks flushed, and her keen eyes sparkling with anger. The impudent and shameless villain soon came in also, and seated himself in one corner of the room with as much nonchalance and sang froid as if he had been the most virt- uous being in the world. Mrs. Shi-ash-kah began exposing him by calling him "kee-ne-ket-chee wal-luki," which being interpreted means "you are a d-d rascal." Ne-tel-us-kuk, placing his hand upon his breast, declared that he was "nee-nee-ket-e-ko-pe"-a "gentleman," and that although he might be on the "ragged edges," he was guiltless of the "great transgression." The insulted Indian wife asked himn, "Wau-ke-low kee-ne-ket-e-ko-pe," or "What makes you a gentleman ?" "Kee-ne-ku-mo-tee nish-e-neck, a-tos-ke-see She- mo-ke-man," which meant "You stole two horses from a white man, and seven blankets from the trader." The indignant woman then turned to Mrs. Morris and asked her if to steal two horses and seven blankets, and then insult a mar- ried woman, when her husband was drunk, made a gentleman? What answer Mrs. Morris rendered is not stated, but after the quarrel had continued some time, Ne-tel-us-kuk called Mrs. Shi-ash-kah some disreputable names, which so enraged the already angered woman that she attempted to draw her knife ; but not finding it where she usually carried it about her person, she sprang at the object of her wrath with the agility of a cat, and dealt him such a blow with her hand as to send him sprawling to the floor. She then sprang upon him like a tigress, and stamped and beat him until the blood ran in profusion over his swarthy face, and finally caught him by the hair of his head and dragged him out of doors !
Mr. Morris subsequently removed to Southwestern Missouri and settled among the spurs of the Ozark Mountains. Not long ago, he wrote back that his home was in the paradise of hunters; that bears and other game were plenty, and that he was perfectly satisfied with the change from the prairies of Iowa to the mountain ranges and rocky slopes of Southwestern Missouri.
RETROSPECTIVE.
The preceding pages of this volume cover a period of nearly three years. Within . that time there were many occurrences of interest to the settlers, as they will be to their descendants and successors, that will be made to form a separate chapter.
THE LAND SALES-SQUATTERS AND SPECULATORS.
The first sale of Government lands in this section of the Black Hawk Pur- chase commenced in November, 1838. The land office at that time was located at Burlington. Many of the settlers who came to the country and made claims in 1836-37-38, had no means, except, perhaps, a yoke of cattle, or a pair of horses and a wagon, in which they hauled all their earthly possessions. Some of them, as for instance, John Huff, didn't have even that much. When he came to his claim, on the 17th of June, 1836, his earthly possessions were car- ried on horseback from the home of some of his wife's relatives, near Lowell. in the southeast part of Henry County. They were set down on the claim
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without any place for shelter. But a shelter was improvised from forks and poles and the bark of trees. Many of the other settlers commenced in nearly the same way. This class of settlers, the bravest among them all, trusted to luck and their own brave hearts and industry to earn the means to buy their claims when the land sales came on. Some of the other settlers were in better condi- tion, and brought money with them, or knew where to get it, when the time came to perfect their titles by "bidding in" the land covered by their claims.
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