Lucas County, IA history

ALLEN, BALDWIN, GOLTRY, HIXON, MCDERMOT, PERSHING, PRATHER, ROBINSON, SELLERS

Posted By: Luise Poulton (email)
Date: 6/9/2005 at 16:54:33

Transcribed from incomplete newspaper article, name of newspaper and date unknown. Surnames in caps by transcriber.

Veteran County Teacher Reminisces at Age of 91
Countyan Recalls Death of Lincoln - School Mourned
Attended Same Institution as General John J. PERSHING
Eds. Note: Miss Carrie E. ALLEN, Russell, observed her 91st birthday Dec. 15. This makes her, undoubtedly, the oldest native resident of Lucas County. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Tandy ALLEN, were parents of 12 children, of which Miss Carrie is the eldest. Her story of how she attended Lucas county schools and grew to womanhood, engaging in teaching in the county, is entrancing. She was Lucas county superintendent from Jan. 1, 1890, to Jan. 1, 1896. She has had a remarkable life of Christian service. Her story, filled with happenings of a bygone day, was written by her at the request of the editor. We know you will enjoy it as much as we did.

When you requested some data for a resume of my 91 years, you probably knew that my life and that of the state of Iowa almost coincided in time, and thus I have been on the scene, so to speak, in Lucas county through most of its history.
The state was admitted into the union in December, 1846, and the writer had the grace to make her entrance in December, 1856, in Cedar township where the first permanent settlement in Lucas county was made in 1847. Thus, I have had opportunity to observe the vast and varied changes which have come about in the span of one life-time, and the far reaching effects of such changes on both the state and in the mode of living of its people. It is interesting to note the contrast in each.
I have never kept a dairy [sic] for any length of time (a fact which I now regret)and so I must depend on memory, but it still serves me fairly well.
In comparing early pioneering life with that of the present, let us imagine, if we can, the setting or surroundings of the house of William McDermot, Lucas county's first settler. Their first home was a one-room, built of logs as were all the other homes in this region, and also the stables and shops, if any, and churches, even. They were heated by big fireplaces that literally ate cords of wood on cold days. Cooking was done by the same fire. There were no roads, except the "State Road," for many years. No fences, no houses near, no orchards nor gardens and fields until time elapsed in which they could be grown. This place was near the preent Dickerville school. A neighbor named BALDWIN came soon but soon sold his place to Matthew HIXON and he still owned it in 1872. The Perry SELLERS family came in the early '50's and at the east of the county. Uncle Douglas ALLEN and his sons, Milton and John, came to make their home in 1848 and they were followed by Elijah and Edgar ALLEN and James ROBINSON. Elijah was my father's brother and the others were first cousins. Their farms were adjoining and occupied about all the east third of Cedar outside of LaGrange.

LaGrange
I frequently hear the question, "Was there ever a town on the spot they now call LaGrange?"
History says there was, and I quote, "Samuel Prather of Cedar township owned a 40-acre tract adjoining the Monroe county line which he decided to lay out in a town. He had this surveyed and plotted into 12 blocks containing 88 lots.
"The blocks were designed by the letters of the alphabet."
Not all the lots were sold but most of them were. That was in 1856, so I was a near neighbor of LaGrange all its corporate life. As a child I often went on errands to the village postoffice and stores with the children of John and Aaron GOLTRY, who lived west of us.
LaGrange was a two-street town in the shape of the letter "T," the sate road, now Highway 34, composing the cross bar and the upright froming the road leading to the cemetary north of town, then on to the homes of Douglas ALLEN and his two sons, Milton and John, who had settled there in 1848. Two other sons, Joseph and Franklin, had died there unmarried, in 1853 and two cousins, Elijah and Edgar ALLEN, had established homes adjoining them on the west. I do not know the date but they were charter members of the Cumberland Presbyterian church, organized in LaGrange in 1851. The town was a stage coach station whey my father, Tandy ALLEN, first came to Iowa in 1852, too young to enter land. But he returned in 1854 and entered some adjoining his brother, Elijah, and purchased the claim of one of his deceased cousins. "LaGrange," again quoting, "had two hotels, one drug store, four dry goods stores, two blacksmith shops and numerous other shops and at one time, three churches, the Presbyterian, Christian and Methodist. A great deal of business was carried on before and during the Civil War, but all this was before we had a railroad nearer than Eddyville."
As young people we rode on horseback wherever we went, as not even spring wagons had reached the Iowa frontier then. My father gave each of his six daughters a side saddle when she reached her middle teens. And I think that in my case that occasion furnished about the biggest thrill of my life, to that date.
But, again, CHANGE, for while some women ride no one would be seen now on a side saddle or in a

Pioneer Teacher -
(Contiued on page 2)