TRIBUTE TO TWO DECEASED OLD SETTLERS AND OTHER INTERESTING DATA.

Pursuant to a promise made to you, in response to your request, I will scratch off some recollections of the pioneer days of Bremer county in general and Waverly in particular. I have no data or notes to refer to, so what I shall say will be wholly from recollection. The dates may not be exact, but the facts in all cases are essentially correct.

First of all, I want to pay a slight tribute to the memory of the two old settlers, and among the best of Bremer county’s women, whose obituaries I read in your paper of the 14th inst.

When I landed in the smart and pretentious little village of Janesville in April, 1856, two of the best known families of that section lived on farms east of town. None were better known than the McHenry’s and the Bridens. Lizzie McHenry was a small miss of many charms and sunny disposition, which made her a favorite of the neighborhood. There she grew into womanhood, and after the close of the Civil War she married Guy C. Farnsworth, one of my best boys in old Company B, 14th Iowa, who to me is more like a brother than otherwise today. Thus she became very near to me, and I regarded her as a sister or daughter. She spent her life in the vicinity of her childhood, and a busy and useful life it was. A model wife and mother, a good Samaritan who did, as the Good Book says, “what she could.”

Susan Gish came to the county a few years later with her parents, and spent all the rest of her days very near Mrs. Farnsworth. She was a rosy-cheeked, vivacious girl, highly respected by all who knew her. She married Horsman Briden, a son of William Briden above mentioned, and gave her life to the family and the community, gladly and freely. That she made the world better by living in it, no one will doubt, who knew her.

In the death of these two women the Old Settlers’ Society loses two of its best members. They set examples that the young women of the day will do well to imitate.

When I first reached Waverly, in the last part of April, 1856, it was a romantic but struggling village, tucked away among the young trees and brush. Bremer avenue had been opened up from the river east to the top of the hill. and there for the first time I met Theodore Hullman in his store. The avenue was so full of stumps one could hardly drive a team and wagon thru it. Most of these stumps were hickory, and of good, fair size. It was comical to watch the wagons bounce and twist about to pass thru. It was a poor outlook for a town then.

Later on W. P. Harmon organized a grubbing crew to clear out the stumps, of which crew Mose Lehman was foreman. The grubbers were Dow Hinton, Jack and Joe Chandler, Sam McClure, A. C. Barrett, Henry Bell, myself and several others who were transients and whose names I do not remember. We tore the stumps outby the roots, and in a week or so the avenue was a respectable highway.

When I quit the grubbing crew, I hired out to John Tyrrell, who was doing the mason work on the Bremer House, to attend him as mortar “jacky.” Great haste was being made to have the hotel finished before the 4th of July arrived, for great preparations were being made to celebrate the day, and the hotel had to be finished so as to open with a big ball. Squire Matthews had leased the hotel and while Tyrrell was straining every nerve to finish his part of the work, the Matthews family was moving in. Such confusion as reigned thruout the house past description. The chimneys had not been built, which was a handicap to the cooking department. John began the kitchen chimney in the afternoon of the 2nd day of July, and he and I worked until it was so dark we could not see. The morning of the 3rd he chimney grew in length the hotter it got, for Mother Matthews had ordered a fire started below, so as to be able to do some cooking for the next day. All day long the bread, cakes, doughnuts and pies were being shoved in and taken out of the red-hot stove, while the heat and smoke at times strangled John as he could hardly do a good job of swearing, to say nothing of a good job of swearing, to say nothing of a good job of laying brick. When I suggested they were testing his ability to build a chimney that would draw, he leveled his artistic cussing at me, and when I taunted him with posing gracefully before Esther and Mandy Mathews and Mrs. Reeser, who were covered with flour and pie dough, as the sweat rolled off their faces, I reached the limit of his patience, and he threatened to throw me from the top of the building. All day long I mixed mortar and lugged it to the top of the hotel, and as the sun went down out of sight the chimney was finished. John was as black as a negro, from working over the chimney in the smoke and heat. My consolation was that the girls from the kitchen had kept me well fed on pie and cake all day, at which Tyrrell growled because he could not stop to eat. But we were ready for the celebration the next day. Many a hearty laugh Mother Mathews had in after years over the stress and strain of that day.

In those days Waverly had a bunch of as bright and keen young men as ever gathered in a new frontier town. As I recall their names I wonder how many, and which ones, of them remain. The list as I think of them were W. W. Brown, Mayor Wood, William Battams, Alb. Goddard, J. P. Olds, H. K. Swett, Elias Groves, S. H. Curtis, Theo. Hullman, Alonzo H. Curtis, H. J. Hoffman, Louis Case, Geo. W. Briggs, Del Lawrence, Al Lawrence, Dave Clark, H. A. Miles, Mose Lehman, John Tyrrell, G. W. Ruddick, G. C. Wright, O. P. Haughawant, R. W. Hills, Geo. G. Evans, D. M. Cool, J. C. Pomeroy, William Mooney, John J. Smith, Wm. O. Smith, Oscar Burbank, Roswell Keith, Wm. Reeser, Jack Stroh, John W. Piggott, W. P. Reeves, Bide Ellsworth, Gorham Ellsworth, and perhaps some others whom I do not recollect. Of all those named, I am not certain that any are living but Louis Case and Al Lawrence.

At this point I will relate a circumstance. In the very early days Alonzo H. Curtis and Hink Beebe operated a restaurant on First street (now East Water street) in a building opposite the grist mill. The business was not a success, and Lon left the town, and so far as I know, no one knew where he went.

At the battle of Pleasant Hill, La., in April 1864, which was a hot and bloody field, just before dark in a rush on the enemy, our troops captured several hundred prisoners. They were sent to the rear and herded under guard. After dark I received a detail to take charge of the guard and the prisoners during the night. The evening was cool, and little fires were started, around which the prisoners were grouped. As I was passing a bunch of them I noticed a fellow who was watching me attentively. A little later I passed the group again and the same fellow looked intently at me. I inquired what I could do for him, for I was curious to know why he was so interested. He stepped up close to me and said, “May I ask what state you are from?” When I told him he said, “And from Waverly?” I said, “Yes.” He gazed at me a moment and replied, “And your name is Lucas.” I told him he was correct, and then he asked, “Do you knoe me?” I could not recall ever having known him and told him so, upon which he told me his name. I at once recognized him as Lon Curtis. He then said, “There are three other Iowa boys among the prisoners, Jones and two Quigleys, all from Dubuque.” I spent a couple hours with Curtis, during which time he told me that when he left Waverly he went to Missouri and later married the daughter of a prominent man there, who became an intense rebel when the war broke out. He said his wife and his two children, all that he had in the world, were living there, that his father-in-law was in the rebel army and there was nothing he could do but join the conferederate ranks. He did so much against his will, but once in the service he did his duty as best he could as a soldier. His story was a pathetic one, and I pitied him, of course. He inquired eagerly about all the men I have named above, and as I told him of those in the Union army he was much affected, and said, “I thought they would go.” We spent most of the bight in rehearsing old times and incidents, much to his evident gratification. I was relieved at 8 o’clock the next morning, and shook hands with him as we parted. I never knew where the prisoners were sent, and I never heard of Lon Curtis afterward. The incident brought very forcibly to my mind the cruelty of that war between friends and blood relations. Sergeant Keely and Steve Dicken, of my own company, each had a brother in the rebel army, and they always, when they could, examining the batches of prisoners, expecting they might find a brother among them, but they never did. Steve’s brother lived to get home, but Keely’s brother did not, as I learned years after the close of the war.

In subsequent chapters, I shall refer to some unique characters we had among the pioneers, and to incidents of early days.

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