Charles N. OVERBAUGH

OVERBAUGH, OVERBACH, MANNING, DWIGANS, HILL, FRANKS, BRACKETT, HUYCK, HANNA, PARMALEE, HOOVER, MELROSE, HARTSOCK, GREEN, WOOD

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 3/9/2013 at 15:45:08

Charles N. Overbaugh

The name Overbaugh is one familiar to nearly all Hollanders. It was probably originally written "Overbach" and is said to mean "over the creek," or "the man across the creek." In eastern New York the name is met with very often. Sixty to seventy years ago Greene county, New York, contained as many or more people by the name Overbaugh than any other name. According to the best information obtainable the Overbaughs in this country had their origin from two brothers who settled on the Hudson river, in Greene county, New York, in the seventeenth century, probably 1665 or 1670. When Charles N. Overbaugh was a boy the descendants of these two brothers had diverged so widely that they did not recognize any immediate relationship. The following biography is written by John M. Overbaugh, a son of the subject of this sketch.

Charles N. Overbaugh was born in Greene county, New York, on the 14th of May, 1820. The place where his parents lived and where he was born was at Kiskatom, at the foot of the Catskill mountains, and six miles from the city of Catskill. His father was John Overbaugh, and his mother Helen Manning. Charles N. was the fourth child in a family of nine children. The names in order of birth were about as follow: Jane, Sally, William, Charles, Elizabeth, John, Cornelia, Theodore and Charlotte. The father of this family was for several years before he died an invalid, his death occurring at the age of fifty years. The farm, if it was worthy of the name of farm, on which the family were born and reared consisted of thirty acres of land, at the foot of the Catskill mountains, and was as poor a tract of land as can be found in the state of New York, and that is saying a good deal. It was little more than a stone pile. It was fenced all round with stone taken from off the land and I have heard my father say that each time the land was plowed, large quantities of stone were hauled off, with but little appearance of diminution of the amount left. My readers who live in this land of fertility can imagine what is meant to rear a large family on such a farm as I have described.

The family did not depend entirely upon the proceeds of the farm for their support. If they had they could not have lived. The mother was a tailoress and in addition to doing the work for her family, she made coats and vests, etc., for others and would frequently sit up till twelve o'clock at night, stitching and sewing on some garment for which she received a mere pittance, compared with what tailors receive at the present. The labor and struggle of this noble woman are readily pathetic and I have often heard my father tell with husky voice and with tears in his eyes, of the heroic struggles of his mother to provide for her family, so they might have sufficient food and clothing. On the mountain sides there were many huckleberry bushes and, in the bearing season, I have heard father say his mother and all of the children who were old enough would spend the day gathering huckleberries and the next morning the mother would start off early with half a bushel of berries which she carried to Catskill, a distance of six miles, returning in the evening. As soon as the girls were old enough they went out to work and the boys worked at home until old enough to make a farm hand when they went out to work. I have heard my father say he and his brother, William, cut cord wood in the winter for some of the neighbors when it look both of them to cut a cord of wood in a day and for which they received the sum of thirty-seven and one-half cents. The house in which the family lived was small, poor and open, and the snow would drift in so that the beds in the loft or chamber would frequently be covered with snow in the morning.

The mother, not with-standing the fact that she sewed for others, made all the clothes for her numerous family in addition to doing her housework and knit long woolen stockings for her boys, so long as they remained at home. I have heard father say that after he went to work for himself he bought short socks and was chided by his mother for doing so, saying that as long as she provided for him he had good long stockings. When we consider that all this occurred before the invention of the sewing machine and had to be done, all by hand, we can form some idea of the Herculean work of this noble woman.

As I said before, the boys, as soon as they could make a hand, went out to work and I have heard him say he made a full hand in the hay field doing his share of mowing and pitching when he was sixteen years of age. When he was nineteen, he gave his father seventy dollars for his time and started out in the world for himself. His opportunities for receiving an education had been but meager, though I am of the opinion that he made good use of the advantages he had. He was brought up in the Reformed Dutch church, that being the leading church in that part of the country. When he was about twenty-one years of age he made up his mind to secure a better education and with that end in view, went out to Ohio and entered a small but excellent institution of learning called Grand River Institute, at Austinburg, in the Western Reserve. He remained there two years studying in addition to the common branches, Latin, algebra, philosophy, chemistry, logic, and to a certain extent theology. He was of a religious turn of mind and had when he went west serious thoughts of entering the ministry. He was, however, in addition to being of a religious turn of mind, also of a philosophical and investigating turn of mind, and his reasoning and investigating so disturbed his former faith—the faith he had been taught in his boyhood days, that he gave up the idea of becoming a minister and directed his mind into other channels. At the end of two years in school at Austinburg, he went down to Guernsey county, Ohio. There he met and fell in love with Eliza J. Dwigans whom he married, after a courtship lasting one or two years, in the month of October, 1845. After his marriage he taught school for a short time when he conceived the design of studying law and commercial work in earnest. He read quite a number of books, such as lawyers used in those times, including Blackstone's "Commentaries," Kent, "Chilty on Pleadings," etc., and I have heard him say not many years before his death that the position of Blackstone on almost any question of common law which arose was fresh in his mind at that time. About this time his favorite brother, William, died which was a great shock to him. They were bound closely together, by the memories of common struggles and hardships endured in boyhood, by intimate association and by all of those ties of endearment which cluster around two brothers of nearly one age.

The study of law did not continue for a very long time. Children soon began to arrive and with no means at hand for support, Mr. Overbaugh was compelled to go to work to provide for his family, he taught school at first for very low wages, but later he taught in Cadiz, Cambridge and other places where wages were better. During the time he taught in Ohio, and after he came to Iowa, be would each year raise a patch of broom corn and at night after having taught all day, make a half dozen brooms and on Saturday he would make two dozen. This was a great help to him and really furnished a living for himself and family.

About 1850 he moved to the Village of Birmingham, Guernsey county, Ohio, where he taught school and continued to make brooms. He remained there until 1853, when he moved to Knox county, Ohio, where his brother-in-law, Joseph Hill, resided. Here he took up the business of farming which he continued for two seasons and in the fall of 1854 moved to Iowa. Of this trip I remember a good deal, although but six years of age at the time. I remember when we were all loaded in our covered wagon, with old "Lydia" and "Dart" hitched proudly to it; of the tearful good-byes, of the last embrace between my mother and her sister Mary, and finally of the reluctant start to the land of promise—our own beloved Iowa.

We were about five weeks making the journey of seven hundred miles to Benton county, Iowa. The weather was generally nice on the trip—the roads were fair until we reached Indiana. There they would have been impassable for miles at a stretch had it not been for the corduroy roads which consisted of round logs laid side by side in the mud, and over which the wagon jolted with one continuous thud for hour after hour. We camped out nearly every night, sleeping in the wagons, and on the whole, we did not consider it a bad experience. We crossed the .Mississippi river at Muscatine, on an old ferry-boat which we did not consider very safe. I remember this was on Saturday evening. We camped just at the edge of town at the farm of a Mr. Horton. At night our best mare "Lydia" was taken sick and though all was done that could be done at the time to save her, she died before morning. This was a sad loss to father and mother and I well remember the tears mother shed over the death of our favorite mare. Mother had an uncle Calahan Dwigans, living near Tipton, Cedar county. Father borrowed a saddle of Mr. Horton and rode the other mare up to Mr. Dwigans and there borrowed a horse to take us to his place, where we visited a week. While we were there mother's brother, B. R. Dwigans and his wife came down there with a two-horse team to visit at Calahan Dwigans who was the father of B. R.. Dwigan's wife. When we were all ready to continue our journey we hitched three horses to our "Concord" covered wagon and hitched uncle's wagon behind and so made the balance of the trip to Benton county. The first year spent in Iowa we lived with my uncle, B. R. Dwigans, in a small one-room log house with a loft or attic overhead in which we three children slept.

In the spring of 1855 father planted a crop of corn on some land which he rented from a David Kirkpatrick, who had been in the county several years and had acquired a large amount of land and was considered the wealthiest man in the community. One would think Benton county was new enough for anyone at that time and so it was, but timber land was in great demand as this was before the enactment of the herd law, and the farm land had to be fenced to protect the crops. Timber accordingly was quite high in price and as father had but little money and desired to enter some government land and also some timber near to his prairie land, he therefore mounted old "Dart" and in June, 1855 started out to find such a place as suited his ideal and also one that would conform to the dimensions of his meager pocket-book. He went northwest and the first night he was out camped in Fifteen Mile Grove, Tama county, with a couple of other men who were also looking for government land. They were going up to Ft. Dodge, the government land office then being located there. They persuaded father to go along with them. While at Ft. Dodge he accidentally met a man by the name of James L. Franks, who lived over on the Boone river in Wright county. He told him what a fine country there was over on the Boone, and as father had told him of his desire to enter some land and get some timber near by, he said he had come over to Ft. Dodge to enter an extra nice quarter section of land of which he had the numbers with him and if father wanted to go with him he would let him have the said tract of land and would also sell him some limber within one mile of the land, at ten dollars per acre. Father went with him, entered the tract of land, bought the timber and got back to Benton county about the first of July, it will be seen from the foregoing statements that father's locating in Wright county and on the Boone river, was owing to a couple of accidental circumstances. Had he not met those two men at Fifteen Mile Grove he might not have gone to Ft. Dodge at that particular time, at least, and had he not met the man Franks he would not have come to the Boone river or to Wright county

We remained in Benton county for three years after father entered his land in Wright county. During the summer of 1856 father built a house in Shellsburg, and the winter of 1856-57 he taught school at Shellsburg. This house was a small one-story affair, built of hewed logs and was situated about one-half mile east of the village. That winter was one of the most severe ones that has ever been known in the state of Iowa. The snow was very deep—about two and one-half feet on the level—and was drifted clear over the tops of high stake -and-rider fences. The next spring (spring of 1857) father sold his house in Shellburg and bought forty acres of land one mile west of the town and farmed it during the summer. The next spring he sold the little farm and in the month of June, 1858, we started for Wright county. We came with two yoke of oxen hitched to a covered wagon. We camped out and slept in and under the wagon. The summer of 1858 was one of the wettest on record. There were no bridges over the sloughs or streams and our trip was one continuous wallow most of the way from Benton county to Wright. It was no uncommon experience to mire down two or three times—sometimes three and four times—a day and have to unload the wagon and carry the contents over the sloughs, pull the wagon out of the mud backwards and go over the slough empty at some other place. Finally, after about two weeks we arrived safely at our destination. The last day of our travel we came to Eagle creek, on the road or track running from Wall lake to Goldfield, the creek was high and wide, and the question was how to cross it with the family. Father went into the creek and found he could just wade it. So the thought occurred to him to ferry the family across in a large wash tub. There were five of us children and the three eldest he took across one at a time in the tub, and the two youngest who were only about three and five years of age, he took across at one trip. When it came to mother he tied a small tub beside the larger one and she was taken across sitting in the big tub but resting part of her weight on her hands in the small tub. When the family was all safely over, he swam the oxen and wagon across and we proceeded on our way rejoicing.

Well, we were finally in Wright county and on the Boone river at the place father had visited and brought his land three years before. The mosquitoes were a perfect fright and we suffered greatly from them night and day. There were no such things as screens in those days and we lived in a log shanty about a mile from our place; it was so open that one could throw a cat through it must any place. Father had to go into the timber, cut logs and haul them to the saw-mill and have the lumber sawed to build the house. Luckily, there was a good steam saw-mill within one-half mile of father's timber. He hired a man by the name of Alexander Usher to help him and they soon cut and hauled to the mill enough logs to build a small frame house. He hired two or three carpenters at one dollar and fifty' cents a day and they soon had the house enclosed and the roof on and we moved in. The house was built in the most primitive way—the siding being nailed directly on the studding, without sheeting or paper between the siding—being sawed out of our native timber. It is easily seen that it would not make a very tight or close job. With the house in this condition we spent our first winter in Wright county. Luckily, the winter was an open one and we did not suffer greatly with the cold even though we had no means of heating the house but a cook stove and wood.

That winter father taught the school in Goldfield, three miles away and my sister Mary, aged twelve, brother Will, aged eight and myself went to his school walking all the time, sometimes through quite a deep snow. We were not warmly clothed like children are at the present time. We had no overcoats and did not know of such a thing as underclothes, but we were young and tough and were as well clothed as the other children of the neighborhood and so we were contented. Father continued to teach school in the winter for quite a number of years and just as soon as he got some land under cultivation he raised a patch of broom corn each year and in the winters made his quota of half a dozen brooms each night and two dozen on Saturdays. He also acted, at times, as neighborhood cobbler for which he took in a little money and on the whole got along pretty well for those times. He gave a good deal of attention to the business of cattle raising, and as there was an unlimited range as well as hay privileges, the only limit to the number of cattle one could keep was his capacity to put up hay for them. Cattle brought good prices, considering the cost of raising them—a three-year-old steer bringing from thirty to forty dollars. And so the years rolled on—the family was growing up—working on the farm in summer and going to the district school in the winter—thereby getting a fair education, as well as learning the essential lesson of industry. Mary and I began teaching when we were sixteen years of age and I taught each winter but one, for seventeen years.

The fall of 1867 father was elected county treasurer. The county seat had then been located at Clarion and a court house was built. Father, in fulfilling his duties of the office, would walk to Clarion on Monday morning and back Saturday evenings—doing all the work of the office himself, he slept in the court room at night and was sometimes a little uneasy on account of the responsibility he was under as custodian and guardian of the public funds. There was then in the treasurer's office an old safe which locked with a key and which would have been just a plaything for any safecracker who knew anything about his business at all. In this safe the funds of the county were kept. There was not at that time a bank in Wright county and he had to keep an account at one of the banks at Webster City, in order to float the drafts which he continually received in payments of taxes. Most of the land was then owned by non-residents and most all of the taxes were paid in drafts. After leaving the treasurer's office, which he did in 1870, he built a new house on his farm and settled down to enjoy the comforts of a good home and the peaceful employment of agriculture and stock-raising. The eldest daughter, Mary, was now married, the two eldest boys were gone for themselves and only the two youngest boys, Lon and Ed remained at home to assist father with his farm work.

About this time a lyceum or debating club was organized at Goldfield, in which father took a prominent part. That society continued to exist for a good many years, through the winter seasons and there were no questions of politics, finance, ethics or religion that was too big for them to tackle. These were ably debated, too. Some of the ablest discussions to which I have ever listened were held by that debating club. Among those who were prominent in the society were C. N. Overbaugh, S. M. Huyck, John Hanna, George W . Hanna, Dr. A. B. Brackett and J. W. Parmalee, while among the lesser lights were J. M. Overbaugh, M. Hoover, George Melrose and a few others. I wish here and now to hear testimony to the great benefits of the old-fashioned debating clubs. I do not know of anything that has started so many young men on the road to effective public speaking and shown them the powers that were within them. A good many of those who took part in that lyceum are now in their graves, but those who survive, as well as large numbers of citizens of those times, both old and young, remember the good times they had at the lyceum in that old school house in Goldfield and speak of them with pleasure to this day.

In his early manhood, Mr. Overbaugh affiliated with the Democratic party, he voted for Franklin Pierce for President, which he regretted later on account of Pierce's disposition to truckle to the institution of slavery. He became a Republican with the organization of that party and voted for Fremont in 1856, and he voted for every nominee of that party for President as long as he lived. But while he was a Republican he was a very independent one and did his own thinking and frequently disagreed with the policies and acts of the Republican party.

In his religious opinions he was very independent. He refused to be governed or restricted by dogmas or any so-called authority which did not appeal to his reason and his own best judgment. He was an extensive reader; was well informed in the matter of religious history; was a good thinker; a close and exact reasoner and was able to give a reason for the faith within him.

Few men were his equal in the discussion of religious questions. Being of an argumentative turn of mind, and also thoroughly posted in the field of religious thought and religious literature, he was no mean antagonist. He was, however, a man of a broadly religious nature. He believed fully in the great and noble doctrine of doing good and no man in the community was more ready then he to give of his means or his time, to minister to the wants of the needy or distressed. When the grasshoppers devoured the whole crop of the people of northwestern Iowa and when the drought and heat burned up the crop of South Dakota and Kansas, he was the first man in the community to make a move to raise means for their relief. He was a man of great integrity of character, strictly honest and honorable in all his dealings as well as in his thoughts and purposes. He never contended or stood for anything in which he did not fully believe, nor take or hold to any position just for the sake of argument. In July, 1889, his third son, Alonzo, died, and the next spring his daughter, Hattie, wife of Ed Hartsock, also went to her grave, and from this time on he seemed, in a measure, to lose his interest in business and also to some extent his hold on life. He soon after had a slight stroke of paralysis, from which he soon recovered. In the fall of 1892, he sold the old farm where so much of his life had been spent and which had been his joy and pride, to D. D. Wood, who had come out from Illinois on a visit to his brother-in-law, a Mr. Green, who resided west of Goldfield. He got forty dollars per acre for the farm of two hundred and eighty acres and this was the top price any farm on the Boone river had brought up to that time.

The next spring (1893) he moved with his wife to Clarion and built a house during the summer, his health was poor during the time he was building and he also missed and mourned for his old home and farm. He was not contented in town and did not see much comfort after leaving the farm. He got his house finished and moved in but lived only five weeks afterward — dying on the 9th of November, 1893. His remains were buried in the beautiful cemetery at Goldfield in the lot where his son, Alonzo, had been laid. The Rev. Mr. Findlay of the United Presbyterian church gave a short discourse at the grave and Hon. J. E. Rowen paid a beautiful tribute to his life and character.

In conclusion I will say that I regard C. N. Overbaugh, my dear father, as one of the best, noblest and truest men I ever knew. His influence was potent for good in his family and in the community and I am glad to have derived my origin from such a good, true and able man.

History of Wright County, Iowa, by B. P. Birdsall, 1915, page 385.