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VOL. XV.
April, 1899. No. 2
JEFFERSON COUNTY PIONEERS
[CONTINUED FROM OCTOBER, 1898]
BY H. HEATON, GLENDALE, IOWA
Any effort to reproduce events "of long ago" meets
with great difficulties; either the present generation is
unacquainted with conditions that surrounded that former day,
or the occurrences are so meager that the coloring is vague
and imperfect.
While Sullifand Ross came in contact with all of the
pioneers of Jefferson County, very few of these pioneers
remain to this day to tell of their acquaintance with him, and
very few of the happenings of those early days were committed
to writing or to the "art preservative."
Some mention has been made of the
marriage of Dr. Wm. R. Ross, at Burlington in 1833, and of the
interest felt by the entire community in that wedding. No less
interest was felt by the neighbors of Isaac Blakely and Nellie
Lanman, who were the first to wed in Jefferson County, in
1837, at the home of the bride's parents, who lived where Wm.
Case, of Round Prairie township, now lives.
Mrs. W. W. Stewart, of Glasgow, then a young girl, was at
the wedding, her father, Alfred Wright, taking his family on a
sled, although the ground was bare of snow. An incident in
preparing the feast was that there were no preserves or
sweetmeats in the community, and it was felt to be a reproach
on the housekeepers who had the dinner in charge; and to meet
the want, wild crab apples were hastily preserved in a tin
coffee pot. So early in the history of the county had the
settlers acquired a love of good living.
Since that day no housekeeper feels contented with her
lot if she is unable to place at least two kinds of preserves
or sweetmeats before a guest. No doubt a love of a full board
was introduced by the Virginians and Kentuckians; and it has
been a subject of remark that the original inhabitants of a
country give customs and characteristics that subsequent years
seldom obliterate.
The first white inhabitants came to Iowa before the
machinery of laws could be set up, and for a while there was
absolutely a state of anarchy existing, every man doing that
which seemed good in his own eyes. In an address before the
Old Settlers' association of Jefferson County, Judge C. D.
Leggett eulogized the men who, without laws, were a law unto
themselves, so much so that at no subsequent time have life
and property been more respected.
The people who took possession of the lands before the
legal authorities were prepared to give titles were called
"squatters," and no doubt it was largely due to their
comparatively small number that there was so little violence
and dishonesty to trouble them. But at Burlington, in 1834,
there was already a considerable population, and it was very
evident to many persons that anarchy would not do, and
Sullifand Ross was asked to draw up a set of provisional laws,
or perhaps it would be more correct to call them "by laws,"
for the orderly conduct of life until a settled state of
affairs could take their place. This he did, and Mr. Ross's
laws were not only respected as if they had authority, but
they met all the needs of a community.
That this want of settled laws was not a light matter,
may be inferred from the trouble that was met by this first
couple that was married. Blakely got a license to wed in Des
Moines County, but fearing that there was some illegality in
it, they were soon after re-married, and even then, lest there
were some informality in the marriage, they were married a
third time. By this time the first territorial legislature had
met at Burlington, and it legalized all marriages preceding
its assembling.
In the second territorial legislature Dr. Wm. R. Ross was
a member for Des Moines County. One cannot go far in the
history of Iowa without meeting with mention of the ' Black
Hawk Purchase." This is the title that was given to a strip of
land on the west side of the Mississippi river, fifty miles
wide, that was purchased of an Indian chief named Black Hawk.
This Indian chief had been much wronged by the white
inhabitants of Illinois, and like the worm that is trodden on
and turns, so he at length turned on his persecutors and began
a war, in which a number of white men were killed. At the time
of this Indian outbreak John Huff was chopping cordwood on
Spoon river, in Fulton County, Illinois, and rafting it down
to the Illinois river; and he saw hundreds of terror-stricken
inhabitants of the country from about Rock Island fleeing for
safety from the bloody Indians.
It is safe to say that if men like Mr. Ross had dealt
with Black Hawk, there would have been no outbreak, for savage
as were the Indians, many of them, particularly their chiefs,
were men of honor and of great breadth of character. The white
man wanted the lands of the Indian, and it seemed more honest
to call it a purchase by which he came into possession of the
lands than to call the transaction by any other name.
To prove how hopeless it was for the Indian to resist the
wishes of the white man, Black Hawk and a number of Indians
were taken from city to city, by President Van Buren's
direction, that they might be able to judge of the
overwhelming number of white men there were to contend with.
The late James A. McKemey, of Fairfield, saw this company
of Indians at Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1837. Mr. McKemey
was looking at the stage coach that was coming into the town
very heavily laden. There were eleven Indians in the stage,
and an interpreter, who was riding by the side of the driver.
Mr. McKemey's attention was given to the strange conduct of
the driver. In 1837 the brake-lock to wagons had not been
invented, and it was necessary to stop and chain a wheel
before descending a hill. Stage coaches seldom stopped to
chain a wheel, but trusted to the strength of the breast
straps of the wheel horses to control the speed in descending
a hill. In this instance the strap on one of the horses had
broken, and the street being very steep the driver endeavored
to control the speed by cramping the wheels, and thus breaking
the descent, just the reverse of what a ship does when tacking
against the wind. Mr. McKemey saw that the driver would be
unable to carry out his intentions and that the coach must
upset, and sure enough just as it came opposite him, it lost
its balance and emptied its load of Indians, driver and
interpreter at Mr. McKemey's feet. One of the Indians leaped
to his feet and in an excited manner exclaimed, "This breaks
the contract, this breaks the contract." He was Black Hawk.
In 1839 Mr. McKemey was at the Indian village opposite
Iowaville, and the interpreter introduced him to young Black
Hawk. The young chief could not converse in English, but when
he learned that Mr. McKemey had seen the accident to the stage
coach, of which he had heard, he became very friendly and
affable. His demeanor was that of a refined and polished
gentleman. Black Hawk died in 1838, and his people buried him
fully equipped for the warpath, in a sitting posture. A
certain Dr. Turner of Keokuk, conceived the detestable scheme
of stealing the chief's body and of obtaining money by
exhibiting it. After exhuming the body he boxed it and hired
Robert Moore, now a well-to-do farmer of Glasgow, but then a
young man living at Lexington, on the Des Moines river, to
take the box to Keokuk for him. Moore was going with an empty
wagon, to procure a load of merchandise for a man named
Sinnard, and took the box to Keokuk, entirely ignorant of what
it contained. When Turner reached St. Louis with his ghoulish
capital, he found himself despised by all classes. The Indians
grieved so much over the loss of their great father that the
government officials interested themselves in recovering the
remains, with the intention of restoring them to the Indians,
but they were committed to the keeping of a doctor in Quincy,
Ill., who forwarded them to J. C. Hall of Burlington, who
placed the box in the care of Dr. Hicox, but they were
unfortunately consumed in a fire that burned the office, and
of course could not be returned to the Indians.
This entire transaction is of a piece with much of the
dealings of the white man with the Indian.
It is not an easy task to describe the shifts which the
pioneers practiced to supply themselves with sawed boards. To
build a house without a solitary piece of its material
receiving shape but from the woodman's ax would seem a task
for Robinson Crusoe, but it was the first labor that
confronted the pioneers. Logs were hewed and joined from the
ground to the top of the gable; poles, that served for rafters
were built into the gable ends on which were laid the
clapboards, that were again held in place by other poles
weighing them down, and the floor made of puncheons, that is
of planks hewn out of a tree that had been split across, and
one side smoothed with the ax. When one takes into account all
of this labor, and the very moderate result, in many
instances, he cannot but understand what a relief was felt,
when the sawmill made it possible to supplement much of this
rough workmanship by the use of boards at the gables of the
houses, of sawed flooring, doors, and many minor parts of the
rude cabins. A house of this improved workmanship, built by
Rhodham Burnifield, in 1838, the year that Ross brought the
saw-mill to Brush Creek, is still habitable, being the
residence of Squire Rizor, of Glendale.
[ TO BE
CONTINUED.] |
