H. WHIPPLE
Dec. 22, 1853, H. Whipple moved into a log cabin not far from the present site of the bridge across Troublesome creek, just north of Atlantic. He had great difficulty in getting across the creek, as there was no bridge. In order to get a crossing made, he built a log-heap fire on either bank, to take the frost out of the ground so that he might dig it away and make a crossing. The second night that the family were there, Mrs. Whipple stayed all night in the cabin with no company but her two small children. Mr. Whipple had gone to Iranistan for lumber with which to make a floor, and did not get home until the next day. The cabin had no door-shutter, and Mrs. Whipple Set the kitchen table up to stop the aperture, which it did not quite do. The wolves came around the house and put in the night snapping and growling over the meat rinds which had been thrown out. They made night hideous and Mrs. Whipple being unused to such things could not sleep. Indeed it was no wonder, for the family were just from a thickly settled part of Ohio, where wolves did not annoy folks in their own homes. It was six months after Mrs. Whipple began keeping house in their cabin, before she saw another woman. Mr. Whipple being a cooper by trade, made the first barrels that were made in the county, more than twenty years ago, and some of those barrels are still in the county, in a good state of preservation and continue to do good service.
Contributed by Lisa Varnes-Rex from "History of Cass County, Iowa. Together With Sketches of its Towns, Villages and Townships, Educational, Civil, Military and Political History: Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Old Settlers and Representative Citizens." Springfield, Ill.: Continental Historical Company, 1884, pp. 250.
