Early Iowa Days - Frank Mathews - 1899 - No. 2

MATHEWS, BOX, MOFFATT, SMITH, CORDELL, WILSON, FRANCEY, MELTON, COLLINS

Posted By: debbie (email)
Date: 9/20/2007 at 13:46:18

Mt. Pleasant Weekly News
July 26, 1899

EARLY IOWA DAYS
Interesting Incidents Relating to the Early Territorial Days

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Mr. Frank Mathews Writes Interestingly of his First Experiences in the State – Tells a

Good Snake Story.

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(FOR THE NEWS BY FRANK MATHEWS)

[continued from last week]
My father’s trip down through the states to the coast county of Texas was very interesting.
During this trip he traveled by stage, on horse-back, by private conveyance and on foot a great deal of the time. He was pleased with portions of Texas and Arkansas, but did not like the natives very well. While on the coast country of Texas, he stopped at a house and stayed all night. The landlady was a widow with two large boys. She made excuses because they had no meat for supper; said one of the boys had gone out to try to shoot or catch something, and had not yet gotten home. He heard him come in during the night, and in the morning before he got up, he could smell something frying, thought it was a savory dish indeed, and when he came to the table there was a good breakfast, with plenty of fine looking meat. He noticed that it looked white, -had a back bone, nice little curling rigs. Having dined on rusty bacon a good deal of the time before he ate very hearty of the meat, thinking it was fish, or something of the kind. But when nearly satisfied, the landlady asked him if he would not have more of the snake. He exclaimed “Good God! Madam, you do not eat snakes here, do you?” She said that there was one kind they ate. “How did you like this one?” Just then there was a rebellion in his stomach. He got out doors and cast up accounts in a hurry. The lady was very sorry for him, and explained by saying that they were not poison but harmless; they did not bite anything, lived on vegetables, and would suck the cows if they found them lying down particularly if the milk was losing out. She said that they were very large and very clumsy and could not run faster than a man could walk. Well she would not charge him anything for lodging. He saw several of the snakes afterwards, and came to the conclusion that they were link between fish and reptile, but he did not hanker after them, though he was often hungry. He went to New Orleans and took a steam boat for home. He made up his mind to settle west of St. Louis but before he got started Owen Lovejoy was shot and killed and his printing press thrown into the river. He decided that he would not settle in a slave state, as did thousands of other people on account of that lawless act. About this time he met J.P.A. Box, of Henry County, who was visiting relatives at Plymouth. Box had been over a large portion of the south end of the Black Hawk purchase. He described it very accurately, and said that Smith and Cordell, of Baltimore (now Lowell) wanted son one that understood building mill dams, and to superintend the building of one at that place. During the months of January and February 1838, he went over there, took a contract to help build the mill and preempted some land in Garden Grove township, Lee County. At that time there was a difference of opinion which would be best: To dam up Skunk river and build mills on it, or leave it open for navigation. Father when a boy had worked on the Erie Canal, and he advocated the building of dams with locks, as the general government had decided it a navigable stream. This plan was settled upon and Moffatt Brothers at Augusta, in Des Moines County, and Smith & Cordell, of Lowell and Robert Wilson, at Oakland , in Henry County, commenced to build the first mills. They did not wait to get charters from the legislature, but went right to work at once with the understanding that they were to do it when the legislature met. The act of granting the charters in Henry County were the one at Oakland January 19, 1839, and the one at Baltimore (Lowell) January 28, 1839. Moffatt brothers, at Augusta, Smith & Cordell, at Lowell, and Robert Wilson, at Oakland employed my father to attend the legislature and lobby for the charters. He went to Burlington talked with most of the members; built a little dam on Hawkeye creek, made something representing a lock and boat and took the committee, whose duty it was to look after such things to examine it. The consequences was that they reported unanimously in favor of it. In May 1838, father moved the family. We crossed the river at Ft. Madison May 20th, 1838.

This was the first time that mother and the children had ever seen the Mississippi River. The children were then six in number as follows: Francis or Frank, better known as Frank, Jesse, David Crockett, Henry C., Charles, Edward Folsom. We had delayed coming on two accounts, first my brother, Ed, was only six weeks old when we started. The other was that there was to be a steam ferry boat at Fort Madison, it arrived three days before we crossed. The name was the “Caroline”. It had the head of a woman carved and painted on the prow. The engine had about three feet stroke, but had no cut off as they now have. The steam as I understand it shoved the piston head to the far end of the cylinder and escaped, the piston rod was brought back by the gearing from a large balance wheel ten feet in diameter. The consequences were there was a momentary stop of the water or drive wheel, which made the boat go in jumps, but it beat rowing very much. In the afternoon we started to H.C. Smith’s. After getting out in the prairie between Fort Madison and where Denmark is, the road dwindled down to two beaten tracks. In the middle of the road the grass was growing and there was no habitation in sight. Mother said with tears in her eyes, that it seemed to her as if we were going out on the ocean, never to see a house or any improvements. Again father said, “never mind, it will not be long until we have a one hundred and sixty acre farm, every inch as rich as Mohawk or Genesee Valley, without a stump or stone insight; where we can raise all the wheat and oats we want and fifty bushels of corn to acre; and as for grass, just look as far as you can see.” Well, about nine o’clock that evening we reached Smith’s cabins. He had two large heavy cabins of round logs with a ten foot entry between. They stood on the top of the hill nearby, south of the mill on the south side of the river. As he could not get any well up there, water had to be carried from a spring in the branch, a little south of the house, about twenty-five rods, I should think.
Someone asked Mr. Smith why he built in such a place.
“Well, when I came here in 1835, I did not know but that the Indians might take it into their heads to come down here on a scalping bee. And as you see the hill slopes off every way. It would make it easy to defense.”
Cordell’s cabin stood west of Smith’s on the lower part of the backbone of the ridge. About ten or fifteen rods west of Smith’s was a large cabin with a leanto back made of logs.
Fort Madison, as I remember it, was a string of log cabins along next to the river, with two or three cabins near the bluff. The fort was in good state of preservation, with palisades around three or four cabins, and a large block house, then used as a jail and penitentiary.
The next morning after arriving at Mr. Smith’s, his oldest son, Gusbert, asked me to go and see his garden, which was east of the cabins. They had a very thrifty garden – in fine condition.
While pointing the large stone chimney I saw a large flat rock with a crease around the edge, leaning against the chimney. I asked Gusbert what it was used for.
He said, “ that is Dr. Jim’s rock. He uses it to melt lead on.”
He would put on hickory wood, then lead ore, then more wood, then more ore, and it was so pure that they often ran bullets from the first melting. Dr. Jim was a medicine man. He as a poke hung over his shoulder filled with barks, roots and herbs. He would diagnose a case, prescribe and look as wise and bat his eyes like any M.D. He could talk English considerable. While in a drunken row he had killed an Indian and dared not stay with his tribe for fear that they would kill him. He stayed most of the time with a man by the name of Friend, who lived up where Mr. Wm. Francey now lives. Friend’s children were all of them girls, if I remember right. Dr. Jim would hunt deer, which kept the family in meat, and Friend would tan and sell the hides on the shares, which brought in some money. Dr. Jim would come in once in a while with all the lead that he could carry. He was very generous with it and would give it to his friends, but could not in way be induced to tell where he got it. He would promise if they would give him whiskey enough to tell, but when he got enough he was to full to tell.
Allen Melton, who was a brother of Mrs. J.P.A. Box, and a celebrated hunter, concluded that he would get the secret out of him. He treated him, danced Indian, slept with him, watched him incessantly. He would hide or steal his lead so that he would have to go for more. And while he was watching all at once he would be gone. And though he watched for him to come back he could not tell which way he came. But he would have lead.
Once in the winter he had ice on his leggings and blanket, and they thought from that he had waded the river. If that was so he had crossed from the north to the south side. Melton finally went back to Plymouth, Ill., and gave up finding the lead. Then Louis Collins, a half blood negro from Arkansas, undertook to unravel the mystery. Collins was a giant in strength, weighing about 220, a good hunter, honest and very shrewd. He was a slave in Arkansas, his owner being a widow. She became so interested in the Black Hawk Purchase that she made a bargain with Louis that if he would come out here and make a claim of all the land he could, and fence and break eighty acres of it and build a double hewed log house she would give him his emancipation papers. He did just as he agreed and moved her out on a claim. The if I remember correctly, was west of Bethany chapel. But the widow could not stand our cold winters, sold out and went back. Louis Collins and Dr. Jim got like Mary and her little lamb. So one day the Dr. told him that he was going back to his tribe. It had been three years since he had killed that Indian and he was not afraid now, and that he would be so many moons, and when the planets and the stars were in a certain condition, which he described, then the sign would be right and would come back and would then take him to the place where the lead was. Collins urged him every way that he could think of to show him before he went away, but Dr. Jim shook his head, said the great Spirit would be angry with him if he did. He went back to his tribe and got drunk. A relative of the one he had killed, killed him. Collins tended the mill on the north side several years and was highly respected for his many good qualities. He married a colored woman living in Danville, Iowa and emigrated to Oregon about 1848. He lived to be about eighty-five years old.