Hitchings, George

HITCHINGS

Posted By: Roseanna Zehner
Date: 7/22/2006 at 12:43:45

HITCHINGS, GEORGE

George Hitchings was born at Calais, Maine, May 24, 1848 and came of an English and Scotch ancestry running back through the families of Livingstone, Bond and Elliott. His parents were born in New Brunswick and moved to Maine. Jonas Bond, his grandfather, was a veteran of the Revolution and served with Washington at Valley Forge.

George Hitchings removed to Wisconsin when he was seven years old. At the outbreak of the Civil war he hastened to answer the call of his imperiled country, enlisting December 1863 in the Eighth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. He served continuously in this unit until he was mustered out at Demopolis, Alabama, September 16, 1865. He was among the first settlers of Lyon County, coming to Larchwood in 1877.

He was educated under peculiar and at the same time uncommon circumstances. He was graduated several times, the first being from a pine board shack on the prairie where the grass and the squirrels came up through the floor, (to say nothing of the rattlesnakes.) He again graduated from Albion College in Michigan.

He hauled freight to the forts in the Far West; was stranded on an island in Mobile Bay; helped build Duluth; assisted in the construction of the high trestle bridges on the Northern Pacific.

Mr. Hitchings graduated again. He went to lumbering, and passed his "great heroic days" with the great common-sense people-"lumber jacks"-who did so much in war times to unite conflicting parties and sectional interests.

Mr. Hitchings graduated again. He worked in and among a crew of unwashed Swedes on the railroads running west from St. Paul-hauled freight from the terminus of the railroad, Benson, Minnesota, to the Red River, where "Jim" Hill, the railroad magnate, had a small steamboat, which he had hauled across the country and put together for the trade of the Hudson Bay Company at Fargo where the grade stakes were driven. There were no other signs of progression that at that time.

Again he graduated, and left the Republican Party. That party had gone into camp, and its days were passed in banqueting and its nights were given over to feasting and debauchery. Its leaders glorified each other, and brazen adventuresses in petticoats made love to the army officers elected to Congress. Its platform builders and tariff adjusters were distributors of spoil, and its machine managers were gift bearers. In exchange for certain legislation at opportune time great donations were made, pine land grants and concessions and appropriations for building dams on upper rivers-and what they did in the days of their power and wealth gave a start to that great nursery of native-born millionaires who now oppress the people. So he left the party that prayed to God each morning for wisdom, and prayed each night for forgiveness of sins which had been done in the light. In politics Mr. Hitchings is independent but has voted twice for Bryan.

In religion our subject takes a progressive stand-not attached to nor has he ever been connected with any church. Eliminate the idea of God as controlling human affairs, the destinies and lives of nations and individuals; and then cause and effect follow each other as sunshine and shadow chase each other across the summer fields. Results are reached after awful experiments and costly sacrifices. Obedience is better than sacrifice, but the undeveloped man, the man with moral sense, or any sense of duty, is the controlling element of that savagism which is still at large in our civilization. Hence the greed for land, the aspirations, so called, after property, the desire for commercial expansion beyond the fitting medium of desire, the armed forces necessary to police power to follow these business interests. Restore the idea of God as One Supreme Intelligence over all this, and man a subordinate intelligence, used for a purpose, his short life hastened by the strenuosity, and mangled in the race by the machinery of competition-and you have the best idea of a devil that can be painted up to date. To secure liberty and enjoy the same will be the white man's burden to the end of that future eternity of enlightened thought, when independence will be in discord with explosives. Adaptability explains much. All life adapts itself to its environment; and in time, that becomes natural which once was hardly endurable. The world grows toward socialism, and conditions will be ripe for socialism before the minds of the people will admit or permit.

The most of the ancient deviltry that oppressed the people originated in a single human mind, some fanatic with more self confidence than good sense, withdrew from his kind, and meditated until he became a god unto himself. His thoughts they called inspiration. Such minds had wonderful influence over the ignorant, especially under religious and military ruling. Along this route came Mahomet, Rosseau, the philosopher, and Napoleon-parental influence shaped his soul for war! and with natural vanity and some ability, audacity bore him onward until he became insane over the idea that he was God selected, a man of destiny. For this he was thankful. For God has been thanked for every battle won, for every ruler assassinated. And for every soldier boy asleep today under some palm or pine, whose eyes were closed for good by some attendant nurse, some one thanked God that his sufferings were done, that it had been he and not they. Consequently this fact being once discovered, that a human mind is a creative force sending its influence far into the future, perhaps for a hundred years, the supreme intelligence is overruled thereby. This being a truth no one dares deny, the very knowledge of it has encouraged Mr. Hitchings to formulate a religion of his own for daily use.

Mr. Hitchings is at present a fruit grower and a nurseryman. He dabbles slightly in literature, but when the desire comes to drop into poetry he hitches up and goes fishing. By so doing he turns the inward eye of the mind outward toward the visible world in which lies our redemption, salvation and very means of existence.

Mr. Hitchings helped plant some of the hedges around Larchwood and much pain were taken to get them planted, while others were to come after and spend much time, labor and profanity to get them uprooted.

It was a glorious day in October when we first saw Larchwood. We had never heard of the place. Our horses unchecked went feeding from the tall blue joint grass by the roadside as we journeyed at our own sweet will, wrapped in a day dream, and nothing to do, and going nowhere in particular. We had traveled for days over $60-an-acre land (then worth $3 or $4) with no desire for owning a foot of it.

Larchwood, with its three homes and a granary with a straw roof, seemed asleep in the sun's departing smile and the only sign of life was a man making some repair on the straw roof. That man had been a paymaster appointed by Lincoln, when Lincoln said: "Mr. Fell, you and I have ridden behind the same horse on our law circuit; you have done much for the country; what will you accept?" And Mr. Fell cared for no soft snap in the Quartermaster's Department, where the salary was inconspicuous compared with the stealage; but he chose a paymaster's place-a position requiring character and probity. Mr. Fell owned 20,000 acres-to his sorrow. The locusts were bad, and to add to trouble, Governor Pillsbury of Minnesota had days appointed for fasting and prayer; and such earnestness had been shown at these meetings as to cause the insects to arise and fly. They came down into Iowa, the vicinity of Larchwood getting a good share.

Mr. Fell tried to colonize his lands with Quakers from Pennsylvania. He tried to sell his land. The east was turned against the west. The truth never travels fast enough to overtake a lie; and the east still thought of blizzards and Indian outbreaks in Larchwood. In the meantime Mr. Fell planted trees and laid out a park. The years would drag by, and traveled men from foreign lands would wander across this green expanse, and wonder what ailed this "bloody country" that it didn't settle up.

And one day an Englishman with money he never earned, but had it fall to him as inherited capital invested in the cloth business at Manchester, came stalking across the prairie like a God, with his dogs and his eye glass, and a tin bathtub bigger than a claim shanty! So he buys the whole business, park and everything else for about $5 per acre, and wins immortality, and perhaps a monument by giving the park to Larchwood. And the years will drag by no more, but fairly fly. The population will increase wonderfully as we approach old-world conditions. The crowded city tenements will send their inhabitants to the Larchwood Park in summer. For it's a wonderful place; it stretches away into woodland scenery and far dreamy vistas of foliage and flowers like the gardens of Daphne.

And the people resting here from heat of the cities, enjoying the world famous Larchwood strawberries, will bless the great Englishman who gave away the park, but none will think of the man who planted it. And such is life. So it is with the pearl diver and his gem. Unknown it was buried in the primeval mud until some heroic exertion brings it to light. It shines at the festival; it appears on great occasions; its price is the worth of a kingdom-but the pearl diver in his short life is unknown. And so it is with thought, with those who dive for ideas. As ideas they appear, they circulate, they change, they mold the life of nations and peoples, --but the discoverer dies unknown, or else is quickly forgotten.

Source: Compendium of History Reminiscence and Biography of Lyon County, Iowa. Published under the Auspices of the Pioneer Association of Lyon County. Geo. Monlun, Pres.; Hon. E. C. Roach Sec’y; and Col. F. M. Thompson, Historian. Geo. A. Ogle & CO., Published, Engravers and Book Manufacturers. Chicago, 1904-1905

Transcribed by Roseanna Zehner, Darlene Jacoby and Diane Johnson