"An Interesting Early History of Decatur County"by Mrs. O.N. Kellogg |
| Chapter Nineteen MORE OF THE EARLY SETTLERS-1,000 ACRE FARM-IMPROVEMENTS |
| Mr. Woodmansee built the first water mill in the county in 1854 on
Thompson Fork of Grand River. William Davis the same year built a saw
and grist mill on the same stream. John Clark came at quite an early day
and settled in the south part of the county. He is a man of enterprise
and has been eminently successful. His position as Present of the
National Bank of Leon suggest this but he is still actively engaged upon
improvements that are public as well as private benefit. He has lately
built a woolen factory and grist mill at Davis City-the buildings brick,
the foundation of stone-so arranged that it can be operated by steam or
water power, costing $25,000. Maley McDonald was brought up near Columbus, Ohio. He is an old resident of the county, having settled here in 1854. He entered one thousand and eighty acres of land where he now lives, all but forty acres of it being in a body and comprising as beautiful a tract of farm land as can be found on our fertile prairies. One thousand acres is now enclosed in one field, all of which is in cultivation, four hundred acres having been leased out to parties for from three to five years, whose time is beginning to expire. One man having a lease of eighty acres, whose time would expire this year, sold out for a hundred and ninety dollars. Taking this as a basis, the yearly rental of the whole farm would be nearly two thousand dollars. There are four miles of hedge started on the farm and it seems the time is not far distant when this beautiful farm will be enclosed by a living fence. When he settled here there were but three or four other families in the township, one of whom is the old man Springer. The township is now pretty well settled. There is a good school house on the farm, one mile from McDonald's residence. His post office address is Tuskeego, which is less than a mile of his house. Prior to the establishment of this office, which was done in 1873, he had to go ten miles for his mail. What a change has taken place in the last twenty years in the neighborhood of his home, to which he had contributed so largely. He is 53 years old and is a sprightly, energetic man, of genial manners. He is a man of capital and has invested largely in the Leon Bank of which he is a Director. When he came there the settlement was in the timber. Among the earliest settlers in this vicinity were Reuben and Benjamin Hatfield, George Wood, Stephen Leveridge, Wyllys Dickinson, Old Squire Pitman, George McDaniel, Mr. Wilcox, George Ekton and Wm. Snooks. The latter, if we mistake not, laid out the town of Pleasanton, formerly called Pleasant Plains. The latter expressed the character of the plains or prairie upon which it is situated and is modest praise. A lovelier stretch of prairie than that, relieved on either side by dark lines of timber on Little River and Grand River, the eye need not desire. The same prairie runs twenty miles south and in Missouri is called Goshen Prairie. The town seems to have been laid out with taste and regularity, and its inhabitants have had noble aspirations, not the least of which was the founding of a college. Misfortune, however, attended that enterprise as the building, of brick and three stories high, fell during a severe storm and never was completed. This was in 1862. Worst of all misfortunes, intemperance, has brooded over the place like a foul spirit of evil to destroy it. Allen W. Daly came to this county in the Autumn of 1854 and settled in Eden Township. He has a good farm, well improved, well watered, with the excellent timber attached to his prairie, has a comfortable beautiful residence, and a fine large family of sons and daughters about him; his wife looking about as young and blooming as the young folks themselves though she is the mother of them. Mr. Daly is a local preacher in the Methodist connection and has labored faithfully and with good success in several different localities within the county. Eden Class, with which he is connected, has preaching in the brick building school house near him, on Pleasanton circuit. Bethel church, near by, Baptist, a brick building, though not imposing in appearance upon a near view, is so situated that it can be seen eight or more miles on the Davis City, New Buda and Pleasanton road. William Loving moved to Hamilton Township, January 19, 1855. He had visited the county and bought land a year previously. His location on Goshen Prairie was partly in Iowa and partly in Missouri, an excellent farm of 800 acres. His quarter section of timberland belonging to a strip where the old and the new surveys of the State Line failed to connect, the land could only be bought by pre-emption, and he moved his family on it and went through the forms required of pre-emption. He and his wife are Virginians-the latter a distant relative of General Lee. They have been substantial supporters of all good enterprises and contributed largely to the prosperity of that part of the county. The Methodist church of which they are members was organized in 1854. |
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