|
|
Shelby County |
Home 1915 History Index |
|
|
Shelby County |
Home 1915 History Index |
CHAPTER VIII - REMINISCENCES OF THE PIONEERS (CONT'D)
[The facts in the following interesting story of pioneer life in Shelby county were furnished by H. P. Hack, of Fairview township, a former county treasurer of Shelby county. The story is in part one published in the Iowa Homestead at Des Moines, Iowa, and is based upon the recollections of Mr. Hack and also upon the traditions handed down to him by his parents. One of the pioneer settlements of Shelby county, situated about two miles south of Corley on the east side of the Nishnabotna river, was known as Hacktown, and was named for the Hack family, of which H. P. Hack was a member. –EDITOR.]
It was in 1853 thirty prairie schooners left western Indiana. There was a colony of homeseekers looking for a new dwelling place west of the Mississippi. A few stopped in Illinois, having wearied of the journey. Some went on to Monroe county, Iowa. The father and mother and uncle of H. P. Hack pushed on through the wilds, over the Indian trails, fording the unbridged streams until they reached the West Nishnabotna river, near the Pottawattamie and Shelby county line. Here on a strip of land which afforded good timber Albert Hack, the father, pre-empted a quarter-section of land and the foundations were laid for the present farm upon which the son lives. The senior Mr. Hack erected the third log house that was built on the strip between the Nishnabotna rivers. The house was finished November 2, 1853, and it was regarded as a palace. The land upon which the house was build cost only one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. There are many farmers in the neighborhood today who would not sell for two hundred dollars an acre. The Pottawattamie Indians were frequently in this vicinity and oftem camped four or five hunderd strong in a big grove not far from the Hack homestead. In those days farm living was of the most meager sort. It was forty-five miles to Council Bluffs, the closest store. Mr. Hack, senior, couldn’t even get a match or candle any closer. To make the trip by wagon took four days, two each way, and marketing in town was done only twice a year, once in the spring and again in the fall to lay in the winter supplies after disposing of the crop. One year, 1867, dressed hogs were taken to market and sold for one dollar and twenty-five cents a hundred. Wheat sold in Council Bluffs at thirty-five cents a bushel. Mr. Hack remembers working for some days shelling corn by hand and then hauling the corn to Council Bluffs, forty-five miles, to be sold at twelve and one-half cents a bushel. He also remembers one trip where the farm crop of one year was hauled to the Bluffs and sold on the market there. After paying for the keep of their horses at the livery stable and for their board at the hotel, the Hacks had fifteen dollars left to show for their summer’s work and purchase provisions for the winter. In these days of plenty the young folks cannot understand the hardships suffered by the pioneers. For seven years Mr. Hack’s father struggled against debt and bad weather. He finally broke down. The nearest doctor was forty-five miles away and he could only be secured by advancing one hundred dollars cash for the trip. It was much harder to get that one hundred dollars before the sixties in Iowa than it is now to get two thousand with which to buy a new car. Hack was in debt because he could get no market in which to dispose of a crop if he raised one. In the winter of 1856, the hardest winter Iowa has ever seen, he walked to Council Bluffs to get a loan of a small sum of money to tide him over. For this money he paid forty per cent interest. He was five days making the trip. There were no roads and no good trails. About every time a man went to Council Bluffs he made a trail or road of his own. The location of roads was governed by the points at which the streams were most easily forded. In this same winter of 1855-56, the Hacks and their neighbors suffered from the intense cold and lack of food and water. The snow came on deep before the corn had been gathered and their entire patch of corn was covered so that not even the tops of the stalks could be seen. It was a case of digging out enough corn to eat. The deer running at large in the neighborhood soon got wise to this granary under the snow and made away with a large part of the crop, as practically everything which they usually ate was covered with snow. The snow was three and one-half feet in depth on the level and in many places drifted higher than a man’s head. Two women named Overby, living west of the Hacks, started out in a storm one day and losing their way were frozen to death. A fourteen-year-old lad who was with them managed to find his way back to the house, but his legs and hands were frozen stiff when he was found. During that winter the Hack family larder ran low. Groceries gave out entirely. There was a supply of buckwheat in the house, and corn was gathered by digging in the snow-covered fields. Occasionally Mr. Hack’s father bagged a deer and the family enjoyed a feast of venison. For months they had no coffee or tea. They had no ground meal in the house and no chance to get to market. A hollow place was dug out of a log and sued as a mortar in which to crack the corn and grind it as best they could so that it was fine enough to make into cakes. A good idea of the rugged pioneering can be secured by a glimpse back at the old school house in which H. P. Hack got his first smattering of education. There being a few children growing up in the neighborhood it was decided to erect a school and the settlers gathered and burned brick from mud. A brick building was erected and a teacher by the name of Miss Randall, from Shelby, hired to take charge of the school. For three years there was only one book, an elementary speller, used in that school. Each morning and each afternoon the scholars were put to work mastering page after page of this spelling book. That speller was the sole equipment furnished the teacher by the school district. There wasn’t a blackboard, lead or slate pencil, desk, chair; no writing paper, no pen, no ink; in fact, nothing but the speller. First, slabs from logs were taken and placed flat side up, with pegs underneath, for school benches. The flat side of the bench where the boys and girls sat proved to be very rough. As there were no places and no sandpaper near at hand in those days it was a problem to solve the removal of the splinters. The boys at last hit upon a plan. There were many brickbats left from the building operation and the benches were taken into the yard before school each day and given a thorough scouring with the brickbats. This soon reduced the rough timber to a smooth surface and made it possible for the boys and girls to squirm about on their seats without disastrous results. The teacher, Miss Randall, had a Bible from which she always read at the opening of school. There was no one who objected to the Bible in the public schools in those days. After reading the morning scripture lesson Miss Randall offered prayer. In these prayers she asked that the boys and girls in her school might live to see the time when they would have school conveniences, books, desks, pencils and modern equipment of a school-room. As a student in those early days Mr. Hack says that morning prayer made a strong impression on his mind. He resolved that if he were ever able, when a man, he would do something to make the schools better. And that boyish resolve bore rich fruits. For thirteen years he served unselfishly on the board of education of his district after he had grown and established a home of his own. And today he takes a keen interest in the country school, remembering often the time when he studied three years with the one speller as his only textbook. When the first district school had been established three years, slates and pencils were introduced. Thus the small boy progressed into the days of the slate and the red-topped boot. One slate pencil was all a boy was allowed for the year. To keep the pencil from wearing away too fast the scholars used “keel,” a sort of slate rock found along the banks of the stream, which would make a fairly good pencil mark. In the years 1864 and 1865 the Hacks came into their first real “windfall.” For three years the corn crop had been cribbed. Cribbing in those days consisted of a covering of slough grass. About one thousand eight hundred bushels were accumulated and it was about this time many emigrant trains began passing through the country to the West. Some were bound for Idaho, others for California, and others to the Pacific Northwest. One morning as young Hack was standing out in front of the house near the trail he spied one of these trains coming over the hill. He was stopped by the emigrants and asked if he would sell any corn. Replying affirmatively he was asked the price. “I didn’t have the slightest idea what corn was worth, but my nerve was up pretty high that day and I said fifty cents a bushel,” says Mr. Hack. “Well, they took some corn at fifty cents and I tell you we were all pleased and excited over that money. Only a few days later another train came through. I asked these men one dollar a bushel for the corn and they seemed very willing to pay it. Before the winter rolled around we had sold the entire one thousand eight hundred bushels of corn at one dollar a bushel and that was the first real money in any considerable amount that we ever had on the place. We had no bushel measure on the farm and simply called a sackful a bushel. Any man to who came along with a grain sack was charged for a bushel when he had filled his sack.” When the Hacks first moved to Shelby county their equipment of farming implements consisted only of a cast-iron moldboard single-shovel plow and an old harrow with wooden teeth. As a young man, H. P. Hack often hired out at twenty-five cents a day to break prairie sod. And a day in those times began when the stars were twinkling in the morning and closed when they again appeared in the heavens at night. Young Hack wore sandals and had trouble with the heavy prairie grass cutting his feet. To avoid lacerating his feet he had to wrap them and tied on the wrapping with grass. String in those days was seldom seen, and when a string did come to the house on a package from the store, it was saved as an object of great value. Clothing for the Hack family in the early days was made by the mother with an old-fashioned loom. The boys got a suit once in two years of wool cloth and were provided with cheap flax cloth for working clothes. Some time after 1860 the old-fashioned blue denim came into general use and the working clothes were made of it. Farmers of Shelby county and western Pottawattamie did not have a market for their stuff until 1869 and 1870 when the Rock Island railroad was completed. Mr. Hack had advised his mother that he intended to quit farming. “What’s the use of working all summer to raise crops when there is no place to sell them?” was his reason. He insisted they move back into a country where there was a market. But early in 1870 he made a trip to Avoca. He returned with a new idea of life. He had learned that he could take in any amount to market and get cash for it on delivery. He took a load of corn to Avoca and sold it for thirty-five cents a bushel and was back at work on the farm in half a day. “If that system can be kept up,” he told his mother, “I’ll stay on the farm.” Ever since the railroad came the farmers have had a market. Mr. Hack says the real days of prosperity came with the railroad and that profitable farming since that time has been merely a case of working and attending to business.
|
