Earlly Iowa Days -Frank Mathews 1899

MATHEWS, BRADLEY, LESTER, BOX

Posted By: debbie (email)
Date: 9/20/2007 at 10:17:54

Mt. Pleasant Weekly News
July 19, 1899

EARLY IOWA DAYS

Interesting Historical Sketch of this Section of the State of by Frank Mathews

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Early Pioneer Writes Exclusively for the News – Unpublished Account of Pioneer Life in Iowa – A Valuable and Interesting Article

(Written for the News)

The Early History of Iowa

My grandfather, Jesse Mathews, was born in New Hartford, Connecticut, January 20, 1777. Abiah Bradly, his wife, was born in the same place, February 7, 1779. Her father, Justin Bradly, was a Revolutionary soldier, severely wounded at the battle of Long Island. My grandparents were married, October 20, 1800. Their oldest son, Hermon Mathews, my father, was born at the same old town, April 2, 1804. In 1810 his parents moved to Woolcott, Wayne County, New York. It was then thinly settled and was indeed a wilderness. In January 1828, my father married Ann Lester, a lady of Holland extraction. Her father’s name was Peter Lester.

I was born December 3, 1829, in the town of Woolcot. My brother, Jesse Mathews, was born in January 1831. My father and mother with us immigrated to Michigan Territory in 1831; settled four miles from the town of Monroe, in Monroe County on the bank of the Maumee Bay. We were the fourth English speaking family in the neighborhood, although there was a large neighborhood about us of friendly Canadians. Their church was (Catholic) was near us. And when the bay was frozen over it was a sight to see them come to church. They had no horses, but the little bay pony. They hitched them to the front of a low down sleigh, called a pung, having neither pole or shafts, but steered with a sharp stick. The pony was never shod, but would trot on the smoothest ice, harnessed with a straw collar, with large wooden hames, rawhide back and belly band, and either bark or rawhide traces. The people would come to church in the morning and then got to the saloon and provision store combined, and spend the afternoon socially. Many of the older ones would be pretty full before getting home. But the always appeared sociable and happy. They always had cut their grain with a sickle and bound it with bark. My father used the first grain cradle in the settlement.

Owing to a mistake in the original survey, the stretch of territory where we lived , ten miles wide, was claimed by both the state of Ohio and territory of Michigan. Each claimed jurisdiction and each undertook to hold court and collect taxes. This brought on what was called the Toledo war. When the state courts would convene, the Michigan sympathizers would call out a posse and arrest the Ohio crowd, take them to Monroe and put them in jail. And when the territorial courts would meet the Ohio friends would arrest the Michigan crowd and take them up into Ohio and hold them as prisoners. The consequence was that the judges and officers selected, or appointed, were put in the office more on account of the physical ability, than their legal attainments.

In these scrimmages two or three men were killed and several wounded. The consequence was that each called out an army of militia. Ohio had about 1,500 and Michigan had about 500. The Michiganders reached the ground first, and when the Ohioans got within five miles of them each army received orders from President Jackson to disband and go home; that the ground should be neutral until it could be settled by a commission appointed for that purpose. When they adjudicated the matter they gave the strip of land to Ohio, and in lieu of that they gave to Michigan that country up among the lakes called the Peninsular country. Its mineral values at that time was not known, and it was considered by most people as worthless. Great was the dissatisfaction. It was claimed that the state of Ohio had to have it so that she could bring her canal to Toledo. My father, although raised on the frontier, had acquired a good education, considering the time and place where he lived. He taught school and learned to survey the land. He had taken an active part in behalf of Michigan, and was elected or appointed one of the two associate judges whose duty it was to sit on each side of the presiding judge, so that he could consult them at his pleasure. Father taught school in the French settlement; had from fifty to seventy-five scholars and when he commenced they could not understand anything he said and he could understand but little that they said, yet at the end of six months they all could talk and *understand English and most of them could spell and read some, but scarcely any of them pronounced the th. They called him Mr. Machjis. But he had talked with trappers and hunters about the great prairies of the west, where you could raise a row of corn a mile long and not have a stump or stone in sight. And he got a large yoke of oxen and a new wagon and started, but when he got as far as Elkhart county, Indiana within four miles of the town of Elkhart, he liked it so well that he bought land and commenced to improve it. It was very dry the next fall, and the land being sandy did not appear to stand the drought well. He got three yoke of oxen and started west, he did not know where. Where we were in Michigan the Indians were very plenty, but notorious beggars and gluttons. The first winter and spring we were there, father could buy venison and wild turkeys of them, is appeared fresh and clean but one hot day in June an old squaw came with the whole carcass of a deer, hung astride of the bare back of her pony, and her majesty’s bare person astride the meat, with a string of blue flies a hundred feet long accompanying them. She was much put out because father would not buy it. At one time when the government was making payment to them. There were about 3000 of them camped about three quarters of mile from our cabin. I saw them march past the house in the evening. There were two or three white men as agents with them, they were a foot, on horseback and some were in a kind of basket or poke hung on each side of the pony. There were children, some of them naked except a brass ot copper wire bent around their neck and ankles. When the Indians got to camp some of them got some whiskey and started on a drunk and the squaws commenced to disarm them. A little squaw would come up in front of her buck, look him in the eye and jabber at him awhile. He would grunt and hand her his knife or whatever he had then she would go out and hide it. The little papooses were strapped on a board with holes through it, a strap around the neck, around the waist, and around the thighs with a wooden bow bent over the breast, hung full of beads and trinkets, just far enough away so that he could claw them with his hands. Over this was hung a piece of cloth to keep off the flies and mosquitoes. Two holes were burned in the top of the board through which was a strap that went around the mother’s forehead. The lower end was sharpened so that they could stick it in the ground if there was no tree to lean it against. The woods where they camped was full of wild hogs, and the squaws leaving, the hogs came along and went to sampling the papooses. They devoured one before the squaws could prevent it. The next day after they had sobered up, a delegation came to our house to tell what had happened. Father was away and mother could not understand them. They would grunt and squeal like a hog and point to the cradle, where my brother David lay. This alarmed my mother and she would say, “go way, go way”. At last she picked up a long handled fire shovel. They then got out and said, “mad squaw, mad squaw”. They were of the Pottowattamie tribe.
Well, my father drove up to what was then Michigan City. I remember seeing where the sand had drifted around the pine trees until but little of tops stuck out. We went on up to Chicago and a more desolate place would have been hard to find. This was in the fall of 1835 and from memory I would think there was from ten to fifteen hundred inhabitants. The main street had been graded by digging ditches on each side about a foot to eighteen inches deep. In the bottom of the ditches you could see the white limestone and they were about half full of water, and the black mud nearly up to the axle of the wagon. Some men hailed us and wanted to know where we were from, and where we were going. They wanted father to buy, or trade his team and wagon for lots. I remember he said “gentlemen when I stop it will be where there is dry ground enough to bury the family on at least.” He went on down to Hancock county, Ill. and cold weather was coming on he stopped at a little town called Plymouth, rented a house and looked around for an opening, as they called it then. Here he got acquainted with a man who was an agent of an eastern company that bought up a large amount of what was called the “military tract,” lying in Hancock and adjoining counties. They wanted someone to make a topographical survey and plat it, so they could sell it. Father agreed to do it for 160 acres of the land and expenses, he to have his choice of any quarter section in the tract. In selling his team he had taken a fine gray mare as part pay. Snow coming on he built a large jumper, put his surveying tools, blankets for himself and horse, provisions, frying pan, kettles, etc., and alone he set in for a three month’s job. It was a very cold winter, and the country settle only with here and there a squatter, often twenty miles apart. He had to camp out most of the time, and bought provisions and horse feed of the squatters. While in Henderson county, opposite Burlington, he drove over the river and went as far as Mt. Pleasant in the Black Hawk Purchase. He surveyed a few lots for Mr. Presley Saunders, went to J.P.A. Box’s in Baltimore township, and recrossed the river at Ft. Madison. When done with the work and in choosing his land he took a quarter of timber land on Crooked Creek not far from Plymouth with a mill site on it. He then proceeded to build a saw and grist mill. He might have taken a choice quarter that some squatter had partly improved, but he did not have the heart to say to them, “Get off”. This is my land,” as many do. But built his mill, and sold all of the land except enough for the mill yard. Speculation ran high at that time, and he was offered five thousand dollars for the mill, one thousand down, the balance in two and three years. He accepted it, taking notes and mortgage for deferred payments. He then said that he was going to look at the whole of the country that was worth anything. He then went up to what was then called St. Anthony’s Falls(now Minneapolis) and went down south through Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and to the coast countries of Texas.

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