Parmelee, John D.

PARMELEE

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 7/9/2021 at 16:56:44

History of Warren County, Iowa; Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns & Etc., by Union Historical Company, 1879, p.441

PARMELEE, JOHN D., Long before this county was open for settlement, long before Iowa had become a State in the Union, Warren county had a settler who had come to stay. In 1836, from a Vermont village, a young man, John Denison Parmelee by name, hampered in his native woods, and hills, and mountains, began to obey the command - which was later formulated by Horace Greeley - "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." He made the journey by degrees. In that first year he went to Massachusetts, the next to New York city, the next to the South, the next north again to Indiana, where he remained about one year, leaving which, he came to Iowa in 1840, as the agent of a company of traders in furs. Thus John D. Parmelee was the first man to locate in what is now the city of Des Moines. He came in May to stay, but only for a short time, but, finding that his employers had neglected the little matter of paying his salary, which then amounted to something over five hundred dollars, a very fortune of itself in those days, in the month of June, 1843, he therefore quit their service, and, as he himself writes in 1847, "took the place of cousin Moses Barlow as a partner with Captain James Allen in building a saw-mill." "The work at that time," he says, "was but just commenced. I took charge of the work, completed the saw-mill that winter, and furnished lumber to build Fort Des Moines, and since that time have added to the building sufficiently for a grist-mill with four run of burrs. ...
At another place in this work we have referred to the work of this pioneer - this man who left the comforts of the paternal home in the East to brave the dangers and trials incident to pioneer life in the west. We now propose to refer more fully to his characteristics and to his life since he left Warren county. Mr. Parmelee was the eldest son of Rev. Simeon Parmelee - a Congregational clergyman, who, at the ripe old age of ninety-eight, still lives in his native State - and was born at Westford, Chittenden county, Vermont, on the 3d of December, 1813.
In 1836 he started West, and, after many delays, reached Iowa in October, 1840. He was in the employ of G. W. and W. G. Ewing, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who were then extensive traders with the Indians. His first trading point was located about two miles below the point on which Ottumwa now stands, and was in the country of the Sacs and Foxes. Here he married Miss Hulda Jane Smith, whose father was also connected with the Indians as a trader, on the 22d of February, 1843, and left the camp of the 12th of the following month for Raccoon Fork, where the new post was to be built. He made the journey with two sleighs containing twelve men and provisions for building the trading post. He located the post at the east end of Court Avenue bridge, and began and completed the construction of the first house in Des Moines on the 15th of March, 1843. In the following June he quit the employ of the Ewing Brothers and took an interest in a saw-mill with Captain James Allen, at the point now known as Watts' mill, formerly Parmelee's mill, and thus known to all the old settlers. This he completed in March, 1844, and in 1846 put in a run of burs for grinding, which was the resort of the settlers for seventy-five miles around. As the population increased, Mr. Parmelee built a sawmill about three miles below his previous location, on the land now owned and occupied by Mr. B. F. Roberts.
About 1849 Mr. Parmelee brought his first stock of goods into the county, and was actively engaged in merchandizing for the next ten years.
In April, 1860, he left the State and removed to Colorado, and was again soon engaged in running a saw-mill in South Clear creek. This he disposed of in a short time, when he tried gulch mining in the same section until, as a friend expressed it, "he was gulched out." Then he removed to Deer Valley, where he engaged in keeping hotel and running a ranch, and at the same time built a toll road up Turkey Creek canyon, and then again in the saw-mill business, which latter he kept until the spring of 879. He is now engaged in ranching, and is commissioner of Park county, Colorado. Mr. Parmelee is a true man - one who never forgot a friend - with much of that bluntness of manner which is characteristic of the pioneer and the outspoken man, but he was always kind-hearted and charitable. To him many an early settler, who was poorer even than his neighbors, owes many thanks for favors conferred, when no other man could or would accommodate him. His position as the early miller of this section, made his the great begging place on the way of travel, and also from impecunious emigrants. Yet he did all in his power to relieve the wants of all, and often showed too great a liberality on such occasions. Mr. Parmelee has done well since he emigrated to Colorado, and is in such good health that he continues to work with much the same energy which characterized his young days. Let us hope his life may be spared for many years yet, and that among the recollections of a green old age the least may not be that he was the pioneer white man of Warren county.