Andrew Hubbard Family (1926)

ARMSTRONG, ENGLAND, FLYNN, HUBBARD, LEE, MUELLER, ROBERTS, SMITH, WALKER

Posted By: Judy Wight Branson (email)
Date: 9/29/2007 at 15:24:12

Winterset Madisonian
Winterset, Iowa
November 4, 1926, page 2

My father, Andrew Hubbard was born in Indiana and moved from there to Iowa in the year 1850, driving through with two yoke of cattle hitched to a covered wagon, and it was a big wagon as the box was six inches wider than our boxes of today and twelve foot long, which is two feet longer than the boxes of the present day.

I, though only a little past six years old, can remember many things which happened on the way. We landed in Dallas county on the 20th day of November, 1850, where my father entered a piece of land and lived there until June, 1854, at which time he moved into Madison county when the writer was about ten years old, and settled in what is now Lee township, but at that time it was composed of what is now known as Lee, Jefferson, Union and Crawford townships.

The first ballot that my father cast in the county was cast at an election in the residence of George Armstrong, about three miles north of Winterset, in 1854.

Harvey Lee moved with his family into the township in 1856, for whom it was named and whose daughter, Mary E. Lee, the writer afterward married in 1868 and who is still his wife after 58 years.

My father brought a large family into the county when he came, most of whom have passed on to the great beyond. His two sons by his first wife enlisted in the Civil war in 1862. Isaac was wounded in the battle at Atlanta, Georgia, on the 22nd day of July, 1864, and died on the 24th, two days days later, and Robert was wounded in the same battle and was never able for service afterward.

We encountered many hardships as most all of the pioneer settlers did when they came into the county. We had to go to Des Moines to do all of our trading and there was only one house between my father's place and Des Moines, a distance of 16 miles, and usually we would be all day and part of the night making the trip, and sometimes it was very cold weather and no place to stop and warm. Sometimes our feet and faces were frozen.

In order to have our wheat and corn ground into flour and meal we had to drive to Indianola, in Warren county, to a mill, a distance of 25 miles.

Of my fathers family of sixteen children, there are only five now living, namely, Jacob A. of Greenfield, George W. of Harrington, North Dakota, Douglas of Booneville, Angelina Stockwell of Danville, Illinois, and the writer, Peter, now residing at Guthrie Center, Iowa at the age of 83.

As I remember it, when my father settled in Lee township in 1854, for a year or two there was only one other family in the townshp and that was Ira Walker and they were in the extreme southwest, and we in the extreme northeast part of the township., but after that it began to settle quite rapidly.

About that time my uncle Squire Flynn came in with a large family, next came George Roberts from New Hamphire, next came Leonard Smith and Ira Smith, his brother, all having families and settled near us. Later T. J. England and his family moved into the neighborhood coming from Indiana. With this many families they began to think of a school house, and with a little help from the public funds and personal subscriptions, what was known as the Old Red School House was erected about two miles from my father's place.

Sally Ann Flynn was employed to teach the first term of school in the township at the enormous salary of ten dollars per month, boarding a week about with the families attending the school.

About the saddest thing that I have to record is that there never was any church built in the township or any congregation of worshippers organized, and so far as I know there is not a church building ever been built in the township, though there was Sunday school and church services held in the schoolhouse above named. The township was largely democratic, politically; religiously, it was largely Catholic.

Now I must digress a lttle right here and step over into Jefferson township to speak a good word for my old friend, George Mueller, for it is said and truly too, that a friend in need is a friend indeed, and that is just what the writer found in George Mueller, and it was there I found my wife in 1868 and made the acquaintance of our esteemed friend, Herman Mueller, when he was only a few months old, and at whose request of a few weeks ago that I write this brief history of the Hubbard family and Lee Township of Madison county, Iowa

Peter Hubbard - Guthrie Center, Iowa, September 11, 1926