The history of Lee county, Iowa, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, &c., Part 44

Author: Western historical co., Chicago. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago, Western historical company
Number of Pages: 898

USA > Iowa > Lee County > The history of Lee county, Iowa, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, &c. > Part 44

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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obituary notice, which, meeting the eye of Mrs. Sigourney, induced her to write some beautiful verses, which were first published in Dr. Galland's paper, under the title of

THE INDIAN GIRL'S BURIAL.

A wail upon the prairies, A cry of woman's woe, That mingleth with the autumn blast, All fitfully and low. It is a mother's wailing ! Hath earth another tone, Like that with which a mother mourns Her lost, her only one ?

Pale faces gather round her; They mark the storm-swell high That rends and wrecks the tossing soul, But the cold blue eyes are dry. Pale faces gazed upon her, As the wild winds caught her moan, But she was an Indian mother, So, she wept those tears alone.

Long o'er that wasting idol, She watched, and toiled, and prayed, Though every dreary dawn revealed, Some ravage Death had made ; Till the fleshless sinews started, And Hope no opiate gave, And hoarse and hollow grew her voice -- An echo from the grave.

She was a gentle creature, Of raven eye and tress, And dove-like were the tones that breath'd Her bosom's tenderness, Save when some quick emotion, The warm blood quickly sent To revel in her olive cheek, So.richly eloquent.

I said consumption smote her And the healer's art was vain, But she was an Indian maiden, And none deplored her pain ;- None, save the widow'd mother, Who now by her open tomb Is writhing like. the smitten wretch, Whom judgment marks for doom.

Alas ! that lowly cabin That couch beside the wall, That seat beneath the mantling vine- They are lone and empty all. What hand shall pluck the tall green corn, That ripeneth on the plain, Since she for whom the board was spread Must ne'er return again ?

Rest, rest then, Indian maiden ! Nor let thy murmuring shade Grieve that those pale-browed ones with scorn, Thy burial rite surveyed. There's many a king whose funeral A black-robed realm shall see- For whom no tear of grief is shed, Like that which falls for thee.

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. Yea, rest thee, forest maiden ! Beneath the native tree ; The proud may boast their little day, Then sink to dust like thee. But there's many a one whose funeral With nodding plumes may be,

Whom nature nor affection mourns As now they mourn for thee.

HARTFORD, September 12, 1837.

For several years after the Indians removed from the eastern slope of Iowa, they returned annually to look after the last resting-places of their dead, clear away the rubbish that had accumulated, etc. This practice was to them what Decoration Day is to the pale-faces since the close of the late internecine strife. There was this difference : Indian decoration day was observed out of pure affection and love for the dead, while Decoration Day among their pale-faced successors has more pomp and display and more or less of political significance.

POSSESSING THE LAND.

MEMORANDUM.

The history of this part of lowa comprises two distinct eras-the Half-Breed era and the Pioneer era.

The history of the Half-Breed era is fully covered in the " Recollections of Isaac R. Camp- bell," and the address of Capt. James W. Campbell delivered at the Old Settlers' Annual Re- union, at Warren Station. in September, 1875, both of which admirable productions are tran- scribed to these pages.

THE PIONEER ERA.

The Indian right to possession of the "Forty-Mile Strip " expired on the 1st of June, 1833, after which the country was open to white settlement and occupancy. The Galena section around Dubuque was the first great center of attraction, but as soon as the settlers commenced raising mineral, the United States appeared, by an agent, and assumed direct control of all the mineral- bearing land, and required the miners to take out permits for limited privileges, and to deliver the ore to a licensed smelter, who paid the Government a royalty on the lead manufactured. The restrictions became so exacting and so hard to enforce, that the Government abandoned them in 1846, and put the lands into market.

The men who first came to the Dubuque region were not long in dicover- ing the exceeding beauty and fertility of the lands embraced in the Black Hawk Purchase, and their fame soon spread far and wide. Indiana was pretty well occupied ; Illinois, admitted into the Union in 1818, had received a large rush of immigration, and, pushing on through these States, adventurous men and women soon began to cross the Mississippi River and to settle in various parts of the famous Black Hawk lands of Iowa. So great was the desire of some men to secure claims in the new El Dorado that they did not wait for the expiration of the Indian limit of possession, but with more courage than dis- cretion, more enterprise than respect for Indian treaty-rights, or the good faith of the Government, intruded themselves on the domain in 1832. But such characters were not numerous, and were generally removed by United States soldiers. The removals, however, were not always permanent, for as soon as the soldiers were out of sight, the intruding "squatters " turned around and re-occupied their claims, as will be shown in another paragraph.

Among others who came to the New Purchase before the expiration of the limit of Indian possession, was Mr. John Whitaker, now, and for several years,

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

a resident of Fort Madison. Mr. Whitaker is a native of Washington County, Va., where he was born on the 21st day of March, 1795, and was eighty-four years of age in March, 1879. When he was quite young, Mr. Whitaker's parents removed from Virginia to Tennessee. At the age of eighteen years, he enlisted in Capt. John Fagan's Company, Thirty-ninth United States Infantry, John Will- iams, Colonel, and Thomas H. Benton (afterward United States Senator for thirty years from Missouri), Lieutenant Colonel, and participated in the battle of Horse- Shoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa (Alabama) River, in the war of 1812, which was fought under the direction of Gen. Jackson. Mr. Whitaker remembers the old hero with feelings akin to reverence, and speaks of him with the sincreest respect-almost veneration.

After his discharge, at the end of his term of enlistment (one year), Mr. Whitaker returned home and married Miss Dorcas, daughter of George and Elizabeth Campbell, of Tennessee, and, after he became the father of five chil- dren. removed to Parke Co., Ind. He subsequently removed to Big Grove, Champaign Co., Ill, where he remained for four years. In October or November, 1832, he came to the Black Hawk Purchase, and selected a claim in the Skunk River bottom (north side), at the site of the present village of Augusta. On his first arrival there, Mr. Whitaker found that he had been preceded by Joseph Edwards and family, Jeremiah Buford, and his brother-in-law (a single man), William Lee and family, Young L. Hughes and family, Joseph York and family, Jeremiah Cutbirth and family, and John Moore and family, who, in spite of the restrictions to the contrary, had "crossed the river," selected claims, built cabins on them and were living there. While Mr. Whitaker was in the neigh- borhood, a detachment of United States soldiers came and ordered the squatters to remove. Their goods, families, etc., were hurriedly put in " marching order," and the little colony was escorted up to Schoc-ko-kon Island, where they were allowed to go into camp. The soldiers went on toward Fort Armstrong, and the next morning the " squatters " marched back again and repossessed their cabins.

Mr. Whitaker returned to Illinois, where he remained until February, when he came back and built a linn-log cabin, scutched down on the inside, into which he moved his family on the 12th day of May, 1833-a little more than a month before the Indian title to possession became extinct.

Mr. Whitaker states that when he moved his family to Skunk River, in May, 1833, there were only three or four cabins at Flint Hills (Burlington), and only two or three at Fort Madison. The settlers at the latter place were Peter Williams, J. Horton, August Horton, Richard Chaney, John H. and Nathaniel Knapp, Aaron White and Zack. Hawkins.

James Bartlett and family, consisting of three boys, Forsyth L. Morgan (a step son), Henry D. and James, and one daughter, Mary Ann Bartlett, landed at what is now Keokuk, on the 4th day of July of this year. In 1829, this family removed from the lead mines at Galena to St. Louis, on a flatboat. They returned from the latter place on the steamboat " Warrior," Capt. Throckmorton, at the time mentioned. The elder Bartlett died at Keokuk, about the close of 1834. The son, James, went to California, during the gold excitement, where he died. Mary Ann married, and subsequently removed to Missouri, where she died. Forsyth L. Morgan is a farmer in Van Buren Township, and Henry D. Bartlett is in the grocery and provision trade on John- son street, Keokuk. Of the settlers of 1833, Henry D. Bartlett and Morgan L. Forsyth are probably the only survivors. Mr. Whitaker did not become a resident of Lee County until a number of years after his settlement at Augusta,

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and. although he is one of the oldest pioneers to the Black Hawk Purchase, and for several years past a citizen of Fort Madison, he does not claim to date his residence in the territory of Lee from 1833.

John Box came over from Illinois, and selected a claim and built a cabin near the present residence of Jonas S. Knapp, Esq., in the fall of this year. He was a representative pioneer, and was chosen as one of the seven Representa- tives from Des Moines County (of which Lee County then formed a part), to the first session of the Territorial Legislature of Wisconsin, which met at Bel- mont, Wis., on the 25th day of October, 1836. [See page 174.]

It is not to be presumed that the names thus far mentioned, including Isaac R. Campbell and Valencourt Vanausdol and the names they give in their con- tributions to these pages, represent all the settlers that were here in 1833, but they are all of whom any direct or reliable trace can be had.

In 1834, there was an increased immigration, and a number of claims were made in different parts of the country. Among the settlers of this year the names of the following appear on the Old Settlers' record :

Alexander Cruickshank, a native of Norway, but of Scotch parentage, landed at Fort Madison on the 4th day of March, 1834, and has been a resi- dent of the county ever since. William Skinner and his wife, natives of Penn- sylvania, and George Wilson and his wife, Rebecca, of Tennessee, came during the same month. Devore Palmer came up from Missouri, in May. James C. Parrott (now Postmaster at Keokuk), of Maryland, dates his residence from September of this year. Henry Judy, of Ohio, came sometime in the fall. John and Joseph Hellman, natives of Germany, came this season, but the date of their arrival is not given. Susan Drollinger, was born in Illinois, and was a baby in arms when her parents settled here in 1834. A. W. Harlan, for twenty-five years a resident of Van Buren Township, came this year and helped build the Des Moines barracks.

As in 1833, there were unquestionably a number of other settlers in 1834, but their names and date of arrival have not been so preserved as to be accessible.

Mr. Cruickshank first visited "Foot of the Rapids," in the fall of 1832. At that time " Rat Row," comprised about all the buildings at that place. In the summer of 1833, he burned a kiln of brick at Montebello on the Illinois side of the river, opposite Price's Run (Price's Creek). He sold the brick to Nauvoo and Carthage. Dr. Galland bought and hauled to Nauvoo, what were sold to that place.

In the beginning of 1834, Mr. Cruickshank took unto himself a wife in the person of Miss Keziah Perkins, of Hancock County, Ill. A short time after his marriage, he started for the Black Hawk country to locate a home for him- self and wife. When he reached the Mississippi River opposite Puck-a-she-tuck, he hired a canoe, and being an old sailor he made a sail out of his blanket, and started up the river for Fort Madison. The river was rough and several times he expected himself and canoe would part company, but he weathered the gale and landed safely at Fort Madison. At that time, there was no sign of a settle- ment west of the few cabins at Fort Madison, but having come to locate a home for himself and the wife he had recently taken, he started back into the interior toward Skunk River. After prospecting a little, he selected a claim in what is now Pleasant Ridge Township, about two miles from that stream, and about the same distance to the southeast from the present village of Lowell. He pre- pared a shanty, and when the spring opened, he broke up about eleven acres of the virgin soil, which he planted to corn and raised a very good crop of sod- corn.

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HISTORY OF LEE COUNTY.

During the summer he assisted in building the barracks at Fort Des Moines (Montrose). He burned a kiln of lime that season, 596 bushels of which he sold to the United States at 122 cents per bushel. His limekiln was of the most primitive kind-a layer of logs and then a layer of stone. When the kiln was large enough the heap was fired from the bottom. The site of this first limekiln in Lee County was just below the " Old Orchard." He also built several of the stone chimneys to the barracks. When the troops came in from the plains in November, 1834, the barracks were ready for occupancy.

In the fall of 1834, Mr. Cruickshank sold his first claim, which is now cov- ered in part by the farm of the widow of the late Col. Price. After the sale. he selected another one near what is now Clay Grove, and included in the farm of Berry Wilcoxson, Esq. During the winter, Mr. C. lived alone in the midst of the wilderness, and once, for a period of six weeks, did not see the face of a white man. A large party of Indians were encamped that winter on the site now covered by the village of Lowell, but they never offered him any violence. In the spring of 1835, his wife and her family came from Illinois, and joined him in his wilderness home. In the season of 1835, Mr. C. raised about twenty acres of sod-corn on his second claim. In that fall, he sold this claim to a man named Davis, who in turn sold it to John Martin, who moved to and occupied it in the spring of 1836. In 1836, Mr. Cruickshank made a third claim at the site of his present homestead, which he has continued to occupy from the time his first cabin was built thereon.

Mr. William Skinner, the second one of the only four surviving settlers of 1834, was born in Franklin County, Penn., on the 5th of April, 1795. He married in 1816, and, in the next year, he removed to Ohio and settled near Cincinnati, where his wife died. In 1830, he married a second wife, Elenora Ferre, a native of Maryland. In March, 1834, he left his old home near Cin- cinnati, and came direct to Fort Edwards (now Warsaw, Ill.), coming by water the entire distance. At St. Louis, they took passage on the steamboat " Veteran," and were just one week in making Fort Edwards. After stopping two weeks at Fort Edwards, Mr. Skinner secured two canoes, which he lashed together, and on which he moved his family and all their household effects across the river to the foot of the Rapids, or the " Point." At that time, says Mr. Skinner, Isaac R. Campbell and his family, Moses Stillwell and family, and Valencourt Van- ausdol and the Bartlett family, were living there, and represented the bulk of the white population. Mr. Skinner moved into Stillwell's frame shanty, which he had built on the side of the hill, but which he was not occupying at the time.

About the time Mr. Skinner arrived at the " Point," Lieut. Crossman came up from St. Louis with a gang of men to build the barracks at the " Old Orchard" (Montrose). Skinner was employed to make 20,000 clapboards, the timber for which he cut along the river bluffs between Keokuk and the site of the barracks, wherever good timber could be found, and for which he was paid $20 per 1,000, delivered on the barracks ground. He completed the contract in June, and was then hired to superintend the erection of the log buildings, of which the barracks were composed, for out of his entire force Lieut. Cross- man did not have one man that knew enough to build a cabin. For this service, Mr. Skinner received a compensation of $60 per month. He also superintended the cutting of grass and making hay, and the general preparations for the dragoons who were expected to come in from the plains. His son Wilson, then a lad of twelve years, was also employed, at $12 per month, to drive an ox-team and do other light work. Mr. Skinner also built a house for Col. Kearney,

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when that officer arrived ; and Mrs. Skinner kept a mess-room, and several of the officers of the barracks boarded with her, until her husband removed from the barracks.

During that summer, Mr. Skinner selected a claim on Sugar Creek. On the 2d of December, he left the barracks and went out to occupy his claim. For the first two weeks, his family, consisting of his wife and three children (by his first wife) lived in an Indian camp that had been built by Black Hawk for use during the sugar-making season. It was built of poles and covered with bark, and stood on the east bank of Sugar Creek, near the present crossing of the Burlington & Southwestern Railroad. His first cabin was built on the west. bank of the creek, near the present residence of Henry Applegate. No one lived nearer than Fort Madison, and, during the winter (1834-35), the Skin- ner family were completely isolated from neighbors. Three years later, Mr. Skinner sold that claim to Henry Applegate, and bought a claim made by a man named Baker, which he has occupied ever since.

Gen. James C. Parrott, the third one of the four surviving settlers of 1834, and late Postmaster at Keokuk, whose arrival is credited to November in that year, came to Fort Des Moines with the troops, and was First Sergeant of one of the companies. He has remained a resident of the county ever since. He was Colonel of the Seventh Iowa Infantry, in the war of the great rebellion, and made a good record.

A. W. Harlan, the fourth citizen that claims a residence here since 1834, has maintained a permanent residence in Van Buren Township for twenty-five years.

Joseph White, Samuel Ross and Benjamin Box settled in what is now Washington Township. Previous to crossing the river, Joseph White had lived at Commerce, now Nauvoo. Samuel Ross came from Louisville, Ky. "He was," says John O. Smith, " a polished gentleman, of fine education, and too good a man to settle in so new a country as this was at that time."

Hiram C. Smith made a claim on what is now known as the Graham farnı, on the Fort Madison and West Point road. The next spring, however, he went to the present site of Lowell, in Henry County, and built a mill ; so that, in point of fact, he can hardly be recognized as a settler in what is now Lee County, as his residence here was only temporary .. He died in 1839, from dis- ease and sickness brought on by overexertion in shouldering and carrying sacks. of corn from canoes up to his mill, as described elsewhere.

John Gregg selected and improved the claim that is now covered by the beautiful farm of William Winterbotham, in Washington Township.

FORT DES MOINES.

The barracks known as Fort Des Moines, were built under the supervision of Lieut. Crossman, in the spring and summer of 1834. They were occupied the 1st of November, by three companies of the First U. S. Dragoons, under command of Lieut. Col. Stephen W. Kearney. The command consisted of Companies B, H and I, of which E. V. Sumner, Nathaniel Boone, a son of Daniel Boone, of Kentucky, and Jesse B. Browne were the respective Captains. Each company occupied one long building, with a stone chimney in the center. The two end rooms were used as sleeping-quarters, and the rooms on each side of the chimneys as mess-rooms. Col. Kearney's quarters were built of willow logs, cut and hauled from the island. The logs were lightly " scutched " on the outside, and, the next spring, the building was covered with green sprouts that grew out from the scarified logs. Col. Parrott says it was then the prettiest

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house he ever saw. After the barracks were abandoned, the Colonel's building was used as a hotel, and was called the " River House." It was kept by Will- iam Coleman. The stables were framed at Jefferson Barracks, at St. Louis, brought up by boat and put together on the ground.

The barracks were occupied until the spring of 1837, when the troops were removed to Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Col. Kearney was highly esteemed, by the settlers of that period, for his successful efforts in teaching the ruffians that flocked here in early times their first lessons of civilization and respect for the rights of their fellow-men. He proclaimed martial law throughout his district, out of which grew the full exer- cise of the civil code. Before the arrival of the dragoons and the proclama- tion of martial law, there was no recognized law, no courts or justices of the peace, until 1834, and the honest, well-disposed settlers were at the mercy of the bold, unprincipled cut-throats that always hover around the borders of civ- ilization like scouts before the march of an invading army. Under Col. Kear- ney's firm, determined rule, with the Capts. Sumner, Boone and Browne, to see that his orders were enforced, the pillaging, dishonest adventurers and disturb- ing elements were soon taught to respect the rights of their fellow-men or forced to flee the wrath to come. Mr. Isaac R. Campbell, in his " Recollec- tions of the Early Settlement," which is elsewhere published, pays a very graceful tribute to the memory of Capts. Sumner, Boone and Browne when he says they " will ever be remembered by the surviving pioneers of the Half- breed Tract, for it was through their vigilance that civilization received it first impetus. Their bayonets taught us to respect the rights of others, and from martial law we learned the necessity of a civil code."

The officers at Montrose were great friends of Campbell, particularly Sum- ner and Browne, and the latter often stopped with him for days at a time. These two officers, on different occasions, would come with details of soldiers for corn to feed the horses of the United States Dragoons at that post, and when Sumner and Browne came, they always were liberal with the soldiers, giving them all the whisky they could drink or stow away in their canteens, and also took a liberal supply themselves, as Campbell was generous with his whisky, which he had to keep in those days or not keep a store, but never drank a drop himself. As a consequence, the corn for the horses was strewed along the road from Keokuk to Montrose.

RELICS.

The furniture used at Fort Des Moines is now in the possession of J. B. Knight, Esq., of Keokuk. It is in a good state of preservation, and consists of two cherry-lumber falling-leaf tables; a large, old-fashioned haircloth sofa, which opens out and can be used for a bedstead, as, when opened, it has a hair mattress inside; also a large haircloth-covered rocking-chair, in which Gens. Scott, Robert E. Lee, Sumner and Browne, then Captains. Lieut. Roberts, Jeff Davis, Harney, Kearney and many other distinguished men have been seated.

PERSONAL SKETCHES AND ANECDOTES.

For the following personal sketches and anecdotes of some of the officers and times of Fort Des Moines the readers of this volume are indebted to Col. J. M. Reid's " Sketches and Anecdotes of the Old Settlers and New-Comers," published in 1877 :

" The military post at Montrose was commanded by Cols. Kearney and Mason as Fort Des Moines from 1834 to 1837, and for three years got its supplies from Keokuk. Capt. Sumner, a General in the war of 1861, who was every

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inch a soldier, was stationed at Montrose, as also Capt. Jesse B. Browne. Browne subsequently figured as a politician after his resignation from the service, of whom many good stories are told, his sobriquet being, the ' Tall Cedar of Leb- anon.' Ben S. Roberts was then a young Lieutenant, but in later years, be- came a full-fledged Captain, and made a gallant record in the Mexican war, where he distinguished himself by capturing Gen. Torrejohn, whose sword is now in the Adjutant General's office at Des Moines. For this act the Legisla- ture voted him its thanks and a sword. Roberts was a Brigadier General of note in the late war; was Chief of Gen. Pope's staff at the second battle of Bull Run; was the principal witness against Fitz John Porter when he was court-martialed and dismissed from the service, and afterward a commandant of this State, with headquarters at Davenport.

" ' Benny,' as he was familiarly called, was a character, and one of the best story-tellers we ever heard, and could relate many very amusing incidents about the military post and the old settlers. When first assigned to duty, after he graduated at West Point, he reported to the commanding officer at Montrose in full dress. inexperienced and verdant, with full beard and hair a little too long to comply with the strict requirements of the army regulations. Kearney, a bluff old soldier, immediately ordered him to get his hair cut and cleanly shaved. Soon after he was sent with a detail of men to build a log cabin for quarters. . Benny ' succeeded in getting the cabin raised, and covered and then discovered that it was without doors and windows. He didn't know enough to know that pioneer cabin-builders always cut out their doors and windows after their cabins were raised. West Point didn't teach the art of cabin-building, and so he ordered his men to tear it down and cut out the doors and windows, much to the amusement of the pioneer soldiers, who knew how to build cabins. In after years, Roberts used to tell this story on himself and enjoy the laugh that followed as heartily as any one.

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The history of Lee county, Iowa, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, &c., Part 44

Author: Western historical co., Chicago. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Chicago, Western historical company Number of Pages: 898

Author: Western historical co., Chicago. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago, Western historical company
Number of Pages: 898