CHAPTER I.

The minds of children and young people generally, are so much taken up with the present that they are not greatly interested in things that happened and the people who lived long ago. Mahaska county's boys and girls are no exception to the rule. But to some of them a time will come when they will have become mature men and women, and will have lain off childish things and childish thoughts. Now when they hear old people tell of their early experiences it sounds old fogyish and uninteresting ; they wonder why father and grandfather and other old folks want to be forever talking about living in, log cabins and breaking prairie, old looms and spinning wheels; but where is the man or woman forty or fifty years old who would not seize with delight and read with intense interest any true account of their ancestors, especially if they were good people? How they would like to know what kind of looking people their great grandfathers and their great grandmothers were, what their habits were, how they lived, how they got married and how they buried their dead.

Every school boy and girl has heard much of the early life, habits, struggles and privations of Lincoln and Garfield and others who have risen to great eminence, but know nothing of their own grandfathers and grandmothers. Many a good honest man or woman who could not find it in their nature to do a mean or dishonorable thing, never think of how much, they ought to thank the Lord that they sprang from God-fearing, honest, honorable and industrious ancestors. Perhaps Timothy had never thought of his indebtedness to, his grandmother, Lois, and his mother, Eunice, for the gifts within him until Paul called his attention to it. Solomon said:

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and, when he is old he will not depart from it." They often depart from their parents training when they are young, they sow wild oats, but after a while they find the crop not profitable; they begin to be dissatisfied; in fact, they have been dissatisfied all along, so when they find themselves growing old they begin to look back, to admire, and finally fall into the faith and habits of their old fathers and mothers.

I once knew a young man whose parents were honest, industrious farmers-not rich, but-well-to-do, They were old-fashioned Methodists. This young man, when about twenty, left home and went west to make a fortune. He was energetic and shrewd, and from a hired laborer he rose to a great contractor, made much money and sent many handsome presents to his parents and sisters. On one of his visits home, after being absent many years, he called to see me. He was a fine, gentlemanly-looking man, with the manners of one who had seen much of the world. I was rejoiced to see him, and after telling him how glad I was to see him and how well he looked, I said: "Now, David, tell me about some of your experiences and some of the sights you have seen."

"Well," he began, "I have made and lost several fortunes, have been from Alaska to Terra Del Fuego, have seen nearly every principal city on the continent of America, have been among the coffee plantations of Brazil and the sugar plantations of Cuba. I have been associated with every kind of people in the western world; have been in all climates, have wandered through orange groves and vast vineyards of California. Well, it's not, worth while to try to tell of half I have seen and experienced. But whether among the great cities or vast plantations of the western continent, my thoughts ever and anon, would dart back to the humble, peaceful, unpretentious Christian home away back in Iowa, where I knew my old father and mother, brothers and sisters, morning and night gathered around the family altar and I with simple faith asked God to give them their daily bread and watch over the wandering one so far away; and now, after wandering up and down, and seeing so much of the world, I have come to the conclusion that much of it is vanity and vexation of spirit, and I would have been happier if I had have settled down in Iowa and lived more like my parents have lived. In my intercourse with men and affairs I have learned much which I would not have obliterated from my mind.

"I love to think of the oceans, islands, valleys and mountains which delight the vision. The luxuriant tropical foliage and flowers are pleasant to remember, but nothing new gives me the pleasure that the thought does that I sprang from and had the example of honest, honorable, Christian parents. I have had in my employ hundreds of men, have dug down hills and filled up valleys, have tunneled through mountains and spanned chasms, have had conflicts without and conflicts within, but amidst it all I never quite lost my faith in God and the religion of my old father and mother. These thoughts come to us when we begin to discover that time is fleeting and we are nearing the place where we will begin to go down the hill of life."

Some one has said that "forty is the old age of youth and forty is the youth of old age."

I remember a time when, every man or woman I knew was older than myself; now nearly every man and woman I know are younger than myself. Only here and there a feeble, bent and white-haired man or woman who have seen the snows of more winters or the waving corn and green meadows of more summers than I have.

I have seen a time when I thought a person old at forty. I have lived to see the time when men and women who are not beyond forty seem hardly to have arrived at mature manhood or womanhood.

Three score and eleven years seem a time late in life to undertake the task, of writing for the perusal of the present generation my recollections of the early
settling of Mahaska County, and their ancestors who were the early settlers, but that is what I propose to do if the Lord spares my life and mental faculties.

Many of my friends and acquaintances seem to think that I have a dearer recollection of the early days and events than some others who have been here quite as long, and have urged me to write, until I have finally "screwed my courage up to the sticking place."

So many things come looming up in my mind I can hardly decide on what to ten first. Away back in the forties and early fifties I knew nearly every man, woman and child in and around Oskaloosa. A few of them are left here and there, but only a few, and if I don't tell the story of the times when everybody lived in log cabins, who will?

Oskaloosa has grown to be a considerable city, but there is another considerable city not far away, a silent city, many of whose inhabitants are the men and women who with honest purpose, courage and pluck helped to make this grand and glorious country what it is today. Here and there a block of granite or a marble slab have carved in them a few letters and figures, telling their, names, when they were born and when they died. Some haven't even that only a little mound overgrown with grass. I wish I could tell to this generation the heroism; hardships and self-denial endured by many of the inhabitants of that silent city. As I drive about the streets of that city I seem to be living in the past. The friends of my youth are lying on every hand, I stop and make them a little visit, and think of the times we, laughed and talked and ate and sometimes wept together.

I dislike very much to have the pronoun "I" appear so often in my story, but don't know how to avoid it and tell my story at all. I am mixed up with much of it in one way or another, and in telling of other people's affairs I must of necessity tell some of my own, The capital "I" business has been worrying me ever since I began to think seriously of writing this story. I have tried to think of some way to tell my recollections of the people and unwritten events of the early days without using the obnoxious "I," but have not succeeded. So I have given it up, and concluded to let the "I's" come in wherever they seem to be needed. My object is to tell a true story of c the early days and make things as plain as I can. I have great respect and admiration for the people who first settled this wilderness. When I think of the character of those early settlers I feel that they were chosen of the Lord to lay the foundation of things in this goodly land.

The greater number of the earliest settlers of Mahaska County were from Ohio and Indiana; some were from Illinois, a few from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Tennessee. Ohio furnished the greater number. The Ohio people are proud of their native State, and with good reason. Some of the best people I ever knew are from Ohio. Virginia is called the "mother of presidents," but the way things look now they will soon be calling Ohio "the mother of presidents."

The old Hoosier State is not very far behind in brains and good citizenship, though I can remember a time when Indiana was the subject of many jokes and uncomplimentary remarks. But since Morton was governor and the Hoosiers acquitted themselves so honorably in the civil war, and General Lew Wallace wrote "Ben Hur ", and James Whitcomb Riley has charmed the English speaking world with the incomparable products of his brain and pen, Indiana has gone several steps higher on the social ladder. Indiana never did deserve the scoffs and sneers and unkind epithets -which used to be heaped upon her. "Posey County" was a by-word much used, by persons who were altogether ignorant of the beauty of its scenery, richness of its soil, and the grand old hero for whom the county was named. But that is the way of the world. States, like people, are sometimes thought to be of little account until they by accident or otherwise perform some heroic deed. Many a wordy battle have I had with those scoffers, trying to defend my native State. My first recollections are of the little gravelly creeks, springs of clear, delicious cold water rushing out of hillsides and forming little brooks and tiny waterfalls, then meandering away off through meadows or woods, and finally losing themselves in the greater creek.

The great tall poplars, sugar trees and beech, and the paw-paw bushes growing along its banks; the old log school-house where I first went to school when I was
only three years old. I can shut my eye and see the old Webster spelling-book with its pictures of the boy in the apple tree and the milk maid and her pail of milk, spilled and running all over the ground. Iowa is a grand State, with charming landscapes and many other splendid qualities, but where is the man or woman living in Iowa whose childhood and youth were spent in Indiana or Ohio, who does not sometimes long for the sugar-making times in the spring, and the gorgeous red and yellow foliage of the sugar trees in October? I don't suppose they would thank me for my sympathy, but I sometimes feel a real pity for the boys and girls who have never known the supreme delight of gathering around a kettle of sugar out in a camp when it is just ready to stir often armed with a tin cup of cold water and a paddle. We didn't mind mud and slush and wet feet, which always went along with sugar-making.

Indiana was new in my childhood, but not too new to have big apple trees and peach trees and pear trees. Every farmer had an orchard, but if they had a big crop of fruit there was no market for it worth naming unless they dried their fruit. What a splendid time the young people used to have at apple cuttings and apple butter boilings. No well-regulated family was without their barrel of apple butter. Apple butter was made by boiling down cider made of sweet apples to about one-third of the original quantity, then peeling and quartering and coring great mellow rambos and pippins, then putting them in that condensed cider, which was kept boiling continuously until the mass was done. The apples could not all be put in at once, but had to be added at intervals and stirred every moment from first to last. If the stirring was neglected for ever so short a time it was sure to stick to the bottom of the big copper kettle and burn. Some of those kettles held fifty gallons. It was considered a great calamity to have one burned, for they cost an immense sum. I knew an old Pennsylvania German who was the envied possessor of one of those great kettles. He was a kind neighbor and would lend it all around, but always with the injunction, "be sure and not let the butter stick." An apple butter stirrer always went with the kettle. This stirrer consisted of a handle many feet long, with a board with many big auger holes in it, firmly fixed at one end in an upright position and long enough to reach from the top to the bottom of the kettle. By this means the persons operating it could stand several feet away from the fire and smoke.

Usually at these "functions" a boy and girl would take hold of that long handle and stir together, and when one couple would stir awhile another couple would relieve them. What an opportunity that was for we boys and girls to talk "nothings." We talked as learnedly as we knew how about the last spelling school, who was the best speller, and who was going to "choose up" at the next one. I mean. the boys and girls of my age, from twelve to fifteen; were the ones most interested in spelling schools. There was a set a little older who, perhaps were engaged in more serious conversation.

I attended a country school once whose teacher was, a young man who enjoyed spelling schools as much as any of us; he allowed us to choose up and spell every Friday afternoon. The boys played ball every day during the noon recess; they chose up to play ball as well as to spell. There was a big, good natured boy in that school whose name was Jordan Pike. Jordan was always first choice in the ball game, but in spelling school was always last.