Kimballs Watch As Prairies Turned Into Fertile Fields

KIMBALL, GREEN, EGGERS

Posted By: Kelli Wilslef (email)
Date: 10/27/2010 at 22:45:46

Determination Pays Off
Kimballs Watch As Prairies Turned Into Fertile Fields.

The Maquoketa Community Press
Maquoketa, Iowa, Tuesday, January 17, 1967

(This is the second in a series of articles about Kimball Hollow, Jackson County, Iowa, written by Mrs. Garnett Eggers of Miles. The story presents the story of early Iowa Township settlers.)
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The Kimballs were a mild, easy going type of family. George Green, Nelson, Lucius and Nathanial Kimball became extensive farmers and stock men, having the privilege of seeing the grand old prairies with its wealth of beauty and flowers, turned into fertile fields all done by crude tools, along with other hardships of early pioneer life.
They were poor, but young, and plenty of pluck and ambition to keep them going. They had little money to buy farm tools, their plows had wooden mold boards and their harrows were made out of forked trees with wooden pons for teeth. There were very few horses at this time, and oxen were used for work of all kinds.
Corn was dropped by hand and covered with a hoe and worked with a one-horse or oxen plow. Wheat was sown broadcast by hand, dragged in with their rude harrows cut and bound by hand, tramped out on the ground with oxen, and cleaned by the wind.
Later on when the first threshing machine was used it was a McCormick four-horse machine with straight knife with sections, for a sickle the driver rode the wheat horse and the raker ran by the side of the machine and raked off the grain.
When the farmers has a surplus of produce they had to sell at low prices…30 to 45 cents per bushel for wheat, it was sold at Sabula and shipped to St. Louis.
They got two to three cents per pound for dressed pork, and one and one-half to two and one-half for dressed beef sold at Galena. A cow and calf in the spring of the year was worth $10 to $12.00.
Prices here ranged similar to those of prices in Connecticut. An entry in Mr. Green’s ledger of Jan. 12, 1842, mentions getting two cents a pound for beef and one and one-half cents a pound for butter, at Galena. That was the price at which the pioneers had to dispose of their produce, and the trouble they had on getting it to the market.
The prices were a little better in 1845, when on Jan. 13, he went to Galena with pork and cheese, selling the pork at three and one-fourth a pound, and the latter at six and one-fourth cents. In 1848, the prices were worse, having sold a load of dressed pork in Galena on the 10th of February for two and one-eight cents per pound. The above prices would little more than pay the expenses of the trip, but it was the only way the pioneers of those days could get the money that was necessary to pay taxes and other expenses where there could be no “Trade”.
The prevailing wages in those days appears to have been 75 cents per day, except in harvest time, when it was $1. The laborer could buy almost all the actual necessities of lie, for flour was two cents a pound, beef, pork and veal three cents, lard five cents, butter 10 to 12 cents, coffee 13 cents. It is true that sugar was 13 to 14 cents per pound, but when it came to making that ever popular mixture, whiskey, it being 35 cents per gallon, the general average in that line was not unreasonable. The earned 75 cents a day had good purchasing value.
Clothes too, were reasonable, a pair of pants and vest made up at $1.16. The price of board was also correspondingly low, the prices show in many entries being but $1 a week. By the day it was charged up at 17 cents a day and some instances 12 cents for two-thirds of a day, which we presume meant two meals.
Mr. Green kept a very good ledger of each days happenings. Each day of plowing, planting, cultivating and harvesting is carefully noted and proof that as a whole the seasons have not changed half so much as many persons try to make believe by talking from memory; as a whole the sowing, planting, and harvesting was done about the same time as they are now.
The “Terrible winters” we also hear so much about appeared to average about the same as they do now, both in snowfall and severity. A few exceptions that might be noted are in the spring of 1842, when he commenced corn planting on April 29, and the frost killed all of the corn on September 25th.
In the winter of 1842-1843, there was plenty of good sleighing from the 24th of November until the 5th of April, making 130 days of continuous sleighing. Mr. Green also noted that he did not finish husking until the 16th of April, and that there was a heavy snow storm on the 17th.
On the 18th of March, 1844, he threshed his oats of the previous crop, the ground being frozen hard and covered with snow, and that spring there was a frost that killed tender vegetables on the 15th of May. Another late frost in noted in 1845, when corn a foot high was killed on the 17th of June. In 1847, there were two late frosts, one killing on the 26th of May and a white frost that did no damage on the 29th of July.
On the 1st of April, Mr. Green notes starting for Chicago with his family, arriving there on the fourth, and making the return trip from the 15th to the 19th. In those days it required four or five day’s hard travel and camping out at night in most instances.
(The Kimball Hollow story will be continued in the next issue of the Community Press.)