USA > Iowa > Clinton County > Wolfe's history of Clinton County, Iowa, Volume 1 > Part 10
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Fourth Regiment became the Fifty-second Regiment. These regiments were mustered into the United States service as follows: The Fiftieth Iowa Volun- teer Infantry, May 17, 1898; the Fifty-second Iowa Volunteer Infantry, May 25, 1898; the Fifty-first Iowa Volunteer Infantry, May 30, 1898, and the Forty-ninth Volunteer Infantry, June 2, 1898.
These four regiments left their state rendezvous on the following dates: The Fiftieth Regiment, May 21, 1898, for Jacksonville, Florida; the Fifty- second Regiment, May 28, 1898, for Chickamauga Park, Georgia; the Fifty- first Regiment, June 5, 1898, for San Francisco, California; the Forty-ninth Regiment, June 11, 1898, for Jacksonville, Florida.
In June, 1898, the department called upon Iowa for two batteries of light artillery. Several responded and there were finally chosen: The Fifth Iowa Battery, Cedar Rapids, Capt. George W. Beaver, commanding, and the Sixth Iowa Battery, Burlington, Capt. Frank S. Long, commanding. Each battery consisted of three officers and one hundred and six men. They were never equipped, but held in readiness until mustered out, September 5, 1898, the war having ended on the high seas, practically.
Clinton county was represented in the Forty-ninth Regiment, Company L being largely from this county. The adjutant-general's report for 1909 shows the following officers to have served from this county : Captain, Chester C. McCollom; first lieutenants, George M. Michelson, John S. Nattinger; second lieutenants, John B. Nattinger, John C. Goodwin; quartermaster ser- geants, John J. Dayton, William J. Hundley ; first sergeant, Frank E. Leffing- well; sergeants, Emil Tiesse, John J. Dayton, William C. McAllister, Benja- min Brooks; corporals, William W. Paddock, Frank Spencer, Joseph E. Car- michel, Frank W. Whitson, William J. Hundley, Chauncey L. Berrien, John C. Goodwin, Herbert B. Taylor, Harry W. Cowles, Adolph Peterson, John B. Doran, Stephen D. Haller, Fred R. Boughner.
There were privates in this company numbering eighty-six, but it is not practicable to insert so long a roster of names in this connection.
Col. William G. Dows, who was in command of this regiment, made a report to the adjutant-general of Iowa, from which many of the facts herein stated are gleaned. Of the service his regiment saw, including Company L, he says, in substance, in his official report :
"We held drill service daily at Des Moines, and took school of instruc- tions from regimental and brigade commanders. As soon as mustered into the United States service as a part of the Forty-ninth Regiment, June 2, 1898, I reported for service to the war department and on the 9th of the month named received orders to proceed with my regiment to Jacksonville, Florida,
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and, on my arrival there, to report to Major-Gen. Fitzhugh Lee. By direc- tions of the war department, we traveled over three rail routes, the Milwaukee, Wabash and the Great Western railroads. We were greeted heartily at every station between Des Moines and Jacksonville by enthusiastic patriots, arriving in Jacksonville Tuesday, June 14, 1898, at about noon. We were assigned as a part of the Third Brigade, Second Division. We soon met the Fiftieth Iowa Regiment, who gave us a hearty welcome. We encamped about a half mile from the center of the city, which proved to be too swampy, and after the heavy rains set in it was unfit for camp life and we finally obtained permission to camp two miles out, near Panama Park, to which we moved on August 18, 1898. We remained in camp until October 25th, when we went to Savan- nah, Georgia, where our camp was indeed most enjoyable. December 19, 1898, we embarked on the transport 'Minnewaska,' for Havana, Cuba. We left Savannah at noon, midst the blowing of whistles and loud cheers. We arrived off the coast of Cuba, December 21, 1898, entering the harbor at Havana about nine o'clock in the evening. During our entrance to that city the enthusiasm of our men was great, the band playing 'The Star Spangled Banner' and 'Yankee Doodle.'
"During our stay in Cuba our regiment furnished companies for the pur- pose of guarding water supplies for the city and performing provost duty, as well as taking charge of Spanish forts surrendered to our army. We were also ordered to march through a portion of the island of Cuba, which was a pleasant change from camp duties. April 5th and 6th we had orders to sail for Savannah, Georgia, and we arrived there April 10th, where we remained about five days. Our camp was on the Thunderbolt road. Work was at once commenced on our muster-out rolls and on May 13, 1899, we were duly mustered out. While the regiment was in no battles, yet the service it per- formed was most hard and trying. The entire regiment conducted itself hon- orably and was a credit to the state of Iowa and the National Guard from which it had emanated.
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CHAPTER VIII.
RAILROADING, STEAMBOATING AND TRANSPORTATION.
In the opening up of any new country, the first consideration has always been, "How far are we from market?" This was the case with the hardy pioneers of the New England states when they sent forth emigrants to beyond the Alleghany mountains a hundred and fifty years ago. Philadelphia and, later, Pittsburg were the nearest market points. When Illinois and eastern Iowa were settled, Chicago was the place to which most of the products of the early farms had to be hauled by teams, consuming a week or ten days to make a trip. Live stock was driven and sent by boat down the river, until railroad days brightened the prospects of the farmer and stockman. First the small boats had to bring in the first supplies to all these Mississippi river points. Then a crop was raised, and if perchance any was left to sell, then boats and freight wagons had to be the means of conveying it to market. The freight wagon and stage coach were the forerunners of better means of for- warding and receiving freight and mail ..
Fortunate indeed was Clinton county in that it bordered on the greatest river of the continent; on the current of the Father of Waters has been borne many a valuable cargo, which went into the homes and upon the farms of eastern Iowa. St. Louis being a good city even when Clinton county was organized, she sent forth her merchandise, as did New Orleans, to points as far north as Fort Snelling and St. Paul, the head of navigation on account of St. Anthony Falls.
Be it remembered that the first settler of this county, Elijah Buell, of Lyons, stepped from a Mississippi steamer when he first came here in 1835. He later brought his family and first supplies here by means of a boat. In brief, it may be said that for about the first quarter of a century after Clinton county was entered for settlement, it had to depend upon the river and the freight wagon, with an occasional stage coach, or horse mail-carrier, for all that it received from the outside world.
During the days before the iron horse steamed over our Iowa prairies, teaming was a business-now it is almost a lost art. Then might have been seen almost any day, scores of teams-horses, mules and oxen-drawing loads of merchandise, corn, hay, vegetables, etc., and not unfrequently was it the
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teamster's misfortune (he hourly looked for it) to settle down up to the axle in a bog, or, to speak after the true Iowa style, a "slough," and there he was doomed to remain until some other teamster came along over the same trail, when they would double and thribble their team forces and all finally land safely on solid ground. To refuse to help a brother teamster was to betray the confidence of the man for all time. Sometimes, farmers would charge a poor immigrant, going toward the setting sun, for assisting him over a stream, but as a rule these pioneers were ready to help in the hour of need, be that need what it might be.
It was also difficult, especially in the autumn and winter, to travel, and dangerous, too, to face the open prairies, when whitened with snow. In the frequent blizzards of the forties and fifties, many a traveler has met his death by being lost and finally overcome by the intense cold.
SEVERE WINTER OF 1856-57.
To illustrate the point at hand, here will be reproduced an incident given in Allen's history of Clinton county, and many another similar instance might be chronicled-things the present generation would scarcely believe :
In the severe winter of 1856-7, an adventure, of which H. V. Morrill, of the Lyons and Elvira firm of Gates & Morrill, was the hero, furnished "the boys" at the time with considerable fun at his expense. Having left his wife at a friend's house, near Mill creek, about four miles west of Lyons, he started at about eight o'clock in the evening to drive homeward during a severe wind and snow storm. His turn-out was a crockery crate rigged upon runners, suitable to the irregular track the ground afforded, and, as he was well muffled in buffalo and bear robes and the team was good, he expected to very speedily arrive in town. But as he drove busily on through the driving tempest, no sign appeared of city lights or of any of the familiar surroundings. Still he drove onward, expecting every moment to be able to take his bearings. Final- ly it seemed that he must be north of Lyons, and nearing the precipitous bluffs which were then open clear through to the wide prairies. Fearful of driving over some treacherous precipice, Morrill concluded that it would be wise to bivouac. Accordingly, he bound blankets on his horses and turned them loose. Then he tipped his sled on its side as a barrier against the icy wind and rolled himself up under its lee in many folds of warm fur. But the in- tense cold pierced through them all, so that he was often fain to rise and antici- pate the long-distance pedestrians of future years, by walking in a circle to keep his circulation awake. After, as may be imagined, a long and dreary
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night, morning slowly dawned, and a barn became dimly visible through the snow. Going there, he found that he had passed the night within twenty-five rods of the house whence he had started on the previous evening, having, as may be readily supposed, actually driven in a circle. He was naturally in- vited to stay for breakfast, and also on the story leaking out among his ac- quaintances, the propriety of treating was delicately but forcibly hinted at.
The best road in the old times was the one which the ice afforded; an unbroken stretch for miles over the frozen Mississippi, sheltered by the high bluffs from the west and northwest winds. A sharp lookout for air-holes was the price of safety, or at least of comfort, though an adventurous citizen, some- what exalted by potations, once refused to go round half a mile, and,"ac- coutered as he was," plunged in and succeeded in crossing the dangerous icy pitfall. Caution was also exercised when the ice in spring began to rot and wear away underneath by action of the swift current.
The Lyons (Iowa) ferry-boat system is recalled by multiplied thousands of immigrants and emigrants, who slowly wended their way westward be- tween 1840 and 1858. Their sons and daughters date their first recollections of Iowa from the dull, wet, gloomy morning on a spring day, when, with cov- ered wagons and all the family possessed, they stood on the deck of the old Lyons ferry-boat, conveying them from the land of their nativity to a land of which they knew not, save by letters sent back to them from some friend, neighbor or relative who perchance had gone over on the same boat and found a desirable location in central or western Iowa, leaving behind better land and better facilities than they obtained farther west. This innumerable caravan kept the Lyons ferry-boats busy, and was a source of laying many a foundation for future fortunes.
Then the government land office, located at Dubuque, called its thousands of home seekers and cunning speculators through this gateway to the north- west-Lyons and its ferry system at the "narrows." Any person coming from a latitude corresponding generally with that of Clinton county, naturally inquired for the route to the land office, and that took them across the Missis- sippi at Lyons. Lyons was known, east and west, by a majority of the emi- grants who left the old Eastern and Middle states for the far West-that "vast, illimitable, and ever changing West," as Howe, the historian of 1850, called the country west of the Mississippi river.
But the stage coach, good in its day; the freight wagon, convenient as it had grown to be, and even the Mississippi steamer, with all the majesty it presented as it puffed away against the stiff up-stream current, were all doomed to oblivion, on account of the advent of the railways that steadily kept wending their way to the West.
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MAIL ROUTES.
It is probable that the arrival of the mail was, from the first, looked for with just about the same eagerness as now. Human hopes, desires and affec- tions are unchanged from one generation to another, and while, on one hand, tidings then came more seldom, and might therefore, presumably be more highly prized, the greater intensity of modern business life, and wider spread of interest in the world's affairs, due to the telegraph, has made the morning and evening mail almost as much of a necessity as was once the tri-weekly or even less frequent one. The first news of importance, of foreign or domestic events, usually arrived in New York papers during the era before Chicago dailies began to reach Clinton county by rail. As America was more provin- cial before the war than after, when she passed at one bound into national maturity, there was undoubtedly, relatively, a greater interest in foreign affairs than can now possibly be developed. Since the West has grown to be the fullest exponent of the national life, its citizens are not likely to ex- perience anything like a repetition of the American enthusiasm over the Hungarian revolt, or the exploits of the liberator Garibaldi. Any possible foreign war since the Rebellion seems petty by comparison with that colossal struggle. There was possibly far more excitement over the news of the Crimean battles, and of Solferino and Magenta, than there has been over the news of any similar events since, except when the Northwestern regiments hewed their way to the sea. When foreign news arrived by steamer, fre- quently one would bring the tidings of two weeks' events that changed the map of Europe and affected the price of commodities in the remotest hamlet of Iowa. But now news comes in such light daily installments that it is not nearly so impressive as it was then. But it is probable that a larger propor- tion of financial, business and political advices were received in Clinton county previous to the completion of the telegraph line and advent of Chicago dailies, in sealed letters, than there has been since. Accordingly, the post- office was the general exchange and forum where neighbors expected to find each other, as a matter of course, upon the arrival of the mail, and, when it was tardy or long distributing, the long hours of waiting were beguiled in dis- cussion and argument, carried on with a zest unknown in these days of ubiqui- tous newspapers and enlivened by spicy stories and practical jokes. The post- office, then as now, was a favorite trysting place for swains and l'assies, and the corn-colored and fantastic envelopes of the time decorated with cupids, turtle-doves, etc., carried as expressive messages as those contained in today's artistic covers. Among the other towns on the river between Davenport and
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Dubuque, it was a great day for those in Clinton county when they knew that Uncle Sam had arranged to give them a mail three times a week. One Mark Westlake, who kept the Ohio House, upon the river bank in Flat-Iron square, since the Five Points and cholera nest of Davenport, was the opulent mail con- tractor who, for the sum of about four hundred dollars, furnished a horse and boy carrier for that portion of the route lying between Sabula and Davenport. Six dollars per month was the boy's salary and for this sum Boy No. I arose at three o'clock A. M., took a cold lunch and, "rain or shine," rode till noon, when at Camanche he met Boy No. 2, who, with another horse, continued the journey to Sabula and returned.
A SERVICE OF UNCERTAIN REMUNERATION.
The summer of 1851 was a wet season, and the raging Wapsie held the upper carrier for two months to his end of the route. He made headquarters at the famous Camanche boarding house of the bustling Madame Aubrey, where the celebrated Uncle Johnny Doolittle (whose name was well deserved), a grey-haired bachelor, made fires and did chores, occasionally presenting his landlady with the deed to a piece of real estate, in order to hold the situation. During that season of high water, one boy was withdrawn and the other car- rier made an occasional trip to Davenport by the Illinois shore, or on a friendly steamer, and in those cases continued to Sabula, which town was reached by a horse ferry-boat. At one period of this flood, two weeks elapsed with no mail, and the topic of debate in the circles of wiseheads that gathered at Pearsall's store at Camanche, McCoy's tavern at Lyons, at Billy Haun's at Hauntown, and at Stein's Hotel at Sabula, was, who should foot the bills of the extra mail service performed by these extraordinary routes not speci- fied in the original contract. The mail boy, thus left with all the responsibil- ities of the situation, in order to make up his financial deficit, sewed grain sacks at Burroughs & Prettyman's warehouse, at one cent per sack, till he had earned six dollars, which the Fagin-like contractor deducted from the lad's salary at the final settlement. But the contribution by the citizens for the extra mail service were never allowed either by government or contractor.
A BATH MORE IMPORTANT THAN MAIL.
Among the instructions by the Davenport postmaster was that ten minutes was the limit of time for changing mail. Postmasters would, however, not- withstanding the remonstrances of the carrier, while selecting the matter
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directed to their offices, leisurely examine, criticise and remark upon the vari- ous packages for other offices. Had postal cards been then in use, the mail would probably have had to make up much more lost time. It was not at all uncommon for the papers en route to be coolly opened and the news read and discussed. At other times it was necessary to wait for a customer to be served, or a game of cards to be finished. One day, arriving at Stumbaugh's store at Princeton, the faithful Mr. United States official, later a resident of Clinton, found the postmaster and waiting citizens all swimming in the river, while their clothes were piled on the rocky shore in front of the postoffice. Standing on the steps, he warned the splashing triflers that time would soon "be no longer," and after waiting a full ten minutes, reloaded his saddle-bags and journeyed on. That happened to be an unusually important mail, and by the time it had made the round trip to Dubuque, the Princeton folks had held an indignation meeting, lasting several days, and when the boy returned, like "Bill Nye," their remarks "were frequent and painful and free."
THE LAYING OUT OF A ROAD.
One of the most ludicrous incidents that diversified the early history of the county was the laying out, in 1842, of a territorial post road from Daven- port to Dubuque. Edward Barrows, of the former city, a brother of Dr. Henry Barrows, familiar to old residents of Clinton, obtained from the United States government during Tyler's administration the commission to establish the route between these two important settlements, by the way of the evidently growing ones of Clinton county. . In order to fulfill his commission with proper eclat, Barrows secured a four-horse coach, well filled with commissary stores, both solid and liquid, and engaged about a dozen kindred spirits as "assistant surveyors." They went about their task in much the same spirit as that later corps whom Governor Nye, of Nevada, instructed to survey across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, then "bridge the ocean, and then return and report." With due form and gravity, the Barrows engineering corps surveyed until well out of Davenport, when they mounted their coach and drove merrily along the emigrant road till they arrived at the wire ferry on the Wapsie, southwest of Camanche, kept by Follett, who happened to be away from home. The chief engineer politely accosted Mrs. Follett, a perfect type of the strong-armed and resolute pioneer woman, and blandly informed her that in order to lay out a new government road it was necessary to drive a stake directly in front of her door where the road would have to pass, at the same time expressing his regret at thus being compelled by official duty to
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spoil their primitive homestead and door-yard. At the same time one of the assistants solemnly produced a stake of a magnitude equal to those at which martyrs were wont to suffer. But as the lady was busily engaged in making soft soap, she was not in humor to take any of that article from the strangers who proposed such a desecration of her grounds, but, on the contrary, pre- pared to give them a liberal supply of her manufacture. Dipping a brimming ladleful from the boiling caldron, she stood forth defiant and prepared to slush down with the scalding mixture any rash individual who dared to drive a stake near her door. Of course, a weapon with such a scatter compelled a masterly retreat out of its range. After some parley, the insinuating chief engineer obtained permission to drive a much smaller stake merely as a guide mark, promising that her inclosure should be respected by the road. But scarcely had the comedy been finished and the party disappeared, than the vigi- lant Amazon repented even her partial concession, tore up the stake and cast it into the river.
The engineers drove on to Camanche where, on making known their errand, they were received by the settlers with open arms. Summoning a meeting of the neighborhood, the "commissioners" consulted the citizens as to their wishes concerning the location of the proposed route. After that had been satisfactorily settled, followed by a night of conviviality, the survey- ors, with due formality, next morning, watched by a crowd of admiring settlers, laid out a road until out of sight, when they remounted their coach and drove gaily along the trail past the future sites of Clinton and Lyons, exchanging greetings at the latter place with Elijah Buell, Daniel Hess and the Aickmans, and other neighbors, and thence to Bellevue, where the same farce was essentially repeated. Through Clinton county they followed the romantic road, already well worn by emigrant wagons, following the base of the bluffs, which is now occupied by the Midland and Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul tracks, and superseded by a boulevard between Clinton and Lyons in the seventies. Wherever Barrows and his party were overtaken by night, on their extremely easy journey toward Dubuque, they camped and made the woods echo with merriment. Game was plenty and the larder was well sup- plied. At the end of thirteen days, they arrived at Dubuque, made and for- warded their report, and the entire party received pay for that time as em- ployed in the arduous labor of establishing a post route over the emigrant road. James Hazlett, afterward an esteemed merchant and lawyer of Lyons, was one of this party of bold explorers, and frequently created mirth by re- lating it to an applauding group, and having it confirmed by Buell, Hess, or any other "grey-haired sires who know the past" who might happen to be at
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hand. But the excursionists did their duty, at least, for the mail was event- ually carried over that road, so artistically and scientifically laid out.
RIVER REMINISCENCES.
(From a Former Historical Work.)
Without reference to the great river that washes its eastern border, any history of Clinton county would be decidedly incomplete. Not only has the Mississippi been one of the principal factors in the material development of the county, but, by its providing natural and ample drainage, it has exercised a decided influence upon the health of the community, to say nothing of the magnificence that the rolling flood, whether tawny with melted snow or glow- ing in the summer sun, lends to the landscape. For thirty years the river steamer, except the crawling wagon or stage, was the only means of public transit or transportation. Without steamboats to stem the rushing current of the river, the full settlement of the Northwest, and especially of eastern Iowa, would have been delayed, at least a decade or two. While no town in Clinton county became so exclusively interested in navigation as several fur- ther down the river, yet, during their early days, the arrival of the steamer was the principal event in their somewhat monotonous life. The irregularity of their movements naturally stimulated the public interest. "As uncertain as a steamboat," was a popular expression that testifies to their erratic time- tables. However, in those days, travel on Mississippi crafts was more de- lightful in some respects, than it has ever been since. The stream was, com- pared with its present pollution by the wash from fields and town debris and sewage, clear and translucent, the bluffs had not been shorn by the axe, the prairies stretched like a carpet down to the water's edge, or heaved their "soundless breakers" of vivid green against the horizon. Nor was there any lack of life, either, on board the boat, crowded with the diverse elements that flock to a new country.
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