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         The settlers who came in 1836 were very great sufferers. The Winter (1836-7) was terribly severe, and one for which the settlers were illy prepared. Their cabins were poor protections against the wintry blasts, and there was a great deal of suffering. Many of them lost more than one-half of their stock. The ground around the cabins and prairie stables was strewn with bones, and the prospect was anything but inviting.

         One incident, as showing a woman’s provident care, occurred during the Winter, that deserves to be recorded: Solomon Knott and family came in the month of October, too late to provide a sufficiency of good food for their stock. There was no corn to be had anywhere west of the Mississippi River, and little hay, except what had been made at Pioneer Grove and by Col. Hardman, that could be had for love or money. Hardman, Crawford, Roberts and the others who came with them, in June and July, had made some, but only enough for their own use. No one anticipated such a Winter as fell upon them; and, as a consequence, the pioneers and their stock were left at the mercy of the pitiless elements; and it was with utmost care and attention that any stock was carried through until Spring came. It is related of Mrs. Solomon Knott, that she took every blanket and bedquilt that could be spared from the house, and had them wrapped around her cows, to keep them from freezing to death; and only by that means were her cows saved.

         This is certainly an instance of care for poor, dumb, hungering animals, that is to the credit of Mrs. Knott, and entitles her to rank with Bergh, the Manager of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dumb Animals. Most housewives would not have taken up the commonest rag carpet for such a purpose, let alone their blankets and quilts.

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         The seeds of Christianity, religion and church influences were planted when Martin Baker, already mentioned as settling two miles south of the present village of Rochester, in July, 1836. The very first Sunday after his cabin was completed, its one door was thrown open and the neighbors assembled there in a prayer meeting capacity—Mr. Baker conducting the exercises—which was the first meeting of the kind ever held in this part of the Cedar River country. And it is very questionable if songs of praise, prayer and thanksgiving were ever heard in any part of Iowa previous to that time.

         But the seed sown by Mr. Baker in his humble log cabin in the late Fall of 1836 grew and ripened into the fullness of a plentiful harvest. Until then, the stillness of the central and western part of the Black Hawk Purchase had never been broken by the voice of prayer and praise, unless the songs the birds sang were offered as a tribute to the glory of the Great Architect, whose hand unfolded these rich prairies and reared their grove-covered hillsides. Since that meeting of a little band of praying pioneers, however, a population of about 23,000 has grown up in Cedar County, who

“_____ sing of God, the mighty source
Of all things, the stupendous force
On which all things depend;
From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes,
All period, power and enterprise
Commence and reign and end.”

         Soon after the prayer meeting referred to above, Mr. Baker commenced preaching at different points in the settlement, and in the latter part of 1836 preached regularly at Col. Hardman’s and at Burnside’s, the last named then occupying the place subsequently owned by William Ocheltree.

         Those pioneers of 1836, as already shown, who were so unfortunate as to come too late in the season to provide comfortable cabins for homes or hay for their stock, encountered severe trials in meeting and buffeting the emergencies of Winter. Money was scarce, provisions of all kinds were dear, and not to be had nearer than the mouth of Pine or Rockingham,* then small trading posts, Davenport being unknown. To make the situation and surroundings still more difficult, every little slough and creek between the settlements of Sugar Creek and the Mississippi were treacherous quagmires, in which wagons going for or returning with provisions were sure to settle with almost inextricable tenacity; and when once in the mud, there was no alternative but to leave the wagon where it “stuck” and go to the nearest settler for help, which, it is needless to say, was always readily tendered. Sometimes the assistance of two or three additional teams of oxen were unequal to the task of removing a loaded wagon. In such cases, the goods were taken from the wagon and carried by hand to the nearest elevation; then the wagon would he “hauled out,” the goods re-loaded and the journey resumed. These were the ruling circumstances of Spring and Fall travel, not only during 1836-7, but for some years thereafter.

         The Winter of 1836-7 commenced early, the last of November snow fell to the depth of eighteen inches, and its depth increased as the Winter advanced. It did not melt away, as the people have seen it melt almost every Winter since, but shut in the settlers and almost completely interrupted neighborly intercourse until the middle of April. The snow melted away before the last- …

*In the Spring of 1836, Benjamin Nye built a small mill at the junction of Pine Creek and the Mississippi River about twelve miles above Muscatine. He also opened a store, started a blacksmith shop and made some other improvements, and having city aspirations, named the place Montpelier. By common usage, however, the site came to be called Mouth of Pine. Rockingham was a trading place on the Mississippi River, four miles below the site now occupied by the city of Davenport and immediately opposite the mouth of Rock River (Illinois). Rockingham was “laid out” as early as 1835, and forty years ago was quite a village, and boasted the best hotel on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

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. . . named date, and the streams were swollen to impassable torrents, their banks were overflowed, and the lands adjoining became quagmires. Provisions became exhausted, sickness came upon many families, and the general condition of affairs was deplorable to contemplate. Stock died from sheer starvation, and the people themselves began to think that they would be forced to share the same fate.

         Before the Spring suns began to melt away the snowy barrier, some of the more intrepid and self-sacrificing pioneers made journeys through two feet of crusted snow to Mouth of Pine, and Rockingham, a distance of thirty to forty miles, for provisions. These journeys were oftener undertaken on foot than with teams. They were attended with exposure, danger and peril that but few people would be willing to encounter now. On the prairies, in many places, the snow was piled up in great billowy drifts of five to seven feet in depth. To pass them with ox teams was out of the question. Provisions must be had. The only way to obtain them was for the pioneers to go on foot to the nearest trading place and carry them home on their backs. Who of the people of Cedar County, in 1878, would think of going on foot, even in the Spring, Summer or Fall season, over good roads, a distance of thirty, aye, even ten miles for a supply of family necessaries? The stoutest hearts will almost quail at the thought.

         In making one of these trips of love and necessity, Andrew Crawford almost lost his life. He started from Rockingham to wade home, thirty miles, through the snow, with a back load of provisions, for which he knew his family were hungering, if not suffering. When he had made about half the distance, a blinding snow storm set in, and every hour the snow drifted higher and higher. He lost his way, or, rather, the points of the compass, and guided his course by the wind. Late in the evening, he arrived at the banks of Sugar Creek, about two miles above his residence, but was so bewildered or blinded that he could not distinguish his whereabouts. Despairing to find his way home in the dark and snow drifts, he determined to walk on the ice until morning, and, although well nigh overcome with fatigue and cold, he did not dare to cease walking his lonely, snowy, icy “beat;” to do so was only to invite certain death. After a night of terrible suffering, the morning revealed to him his situation, and he started for home, but soon became almost hopeless of ever again seeing his wife and children, or of delivering to them that succor for which he knew they were almost famishing. At last, just as he had determined to lie down in despair and submit to the fate that stared him so boldly in the face, he caught sight of a disturbance in the snow, and, making a last, desperate effort, he reached a pathway that James Burnsides had shoveled out to allow his cattle to get to the creek for water. That path was the means of saving his life. Dragging himself to Burnside’s door, he fell there, more dead than alive. He was taken into the friendly and hospitable cabin and kindly cared for, but, while his life was saved, he was rendered a cripple for the remainder of his days. The flesh peeled from his face, his hands were badly frozen, and the ends of his feet fell off, leaving only the stumps or upper part the ankle joint. He suffered the most excruciating agony for a number of weeks, but finally so far recovered as to be able to go around with the aid of wooden helps. He was given the office of Constable of Cedar County, a position he held for a number of years previous to his death, which occurred in 1856.

         Hector Sterrett had a similar trial, although it did not result so seriously. He had gone to one of the trading posts, and was returning with a load of provisions. In attempting to cross Sugar Creek on the ice, his team and wagon broke . . .

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. . . through where the water was about six feet in depth. Taking in the situation at a glance, he unloaded his meal on the ice on either side of the wagon, and then sprang into the water to rescue his struggling oxen. After being in the water about an hour, with the thermometer below zero, he succeeded in unyoking his cattle, but they were unable to ascend the steep bank. Mr. Sterrett was obliged to go to Mr. Bratts, a quarter of a mile distant, for help. A team of oxen was yoked, and Messrs. Sterrett and Bratts returned to the relief of the almost stiffened oxen. All this consumed time, and when they reached the place of the mishap, Sterrett’s oxen were standing on their hind feet against the bank. There was no remedy but to hitch a chain around the necks of each of the four suffering brutes and drag them up the bank. The most remarkable circumstance connected with the adventure, was that, as he afterward affirmed, Mr. Sterrett experienced no unpleasant consequences, neither at the time nor subsequently from the exposure incident to the occasion. He attributed this fact to his continued exertion and excitement, which kept his blood in active circulation, and also to the further fact, that upon leaving the water his clothes instantly froze stiff upon his person, thus preventing the wind from coming in contact with his body.

         While many of the pioneers were often reduced to scant rations, and often suffered hunger in consequence, the family of Mr. John Finch were perhaps the greatest sufferers. Mr. Finch had but limited means when he came to the country, and he was unable to lay in a stock of provisions sufficiently large to last his family during the Winter. The family fell sick; the roads were blockaded with snow, his larder was soon exhausted, with the exception of a small quantity of frozen potatoes, upon which the family subsisted six weeks, without even salt to season them.

         Many of the pioneer families lived for weeks at a time on corn bread and coffee; some other families were known to have been six weeks without the sign of bread in their houses. When they were unable to procure corn meal, which was not unfrequently the case, and could get corn or wheat, they would boil and eat it like beans. A number of families lived in cabins that were neither “chinked” nor “daubed.” The whistling winds and drifting snow were kept out by quilts and blankets suspended from the joists or upper floor, if there were upper floors, which was but seldom the case. In one or two cases the settlers used hollow trees for chimneys set on end over the fire-place. Such chimneys needed constant watching to keep them from taking fire. Other settlers, instead of building cabins, made temporary dwellings by digging out a place sufficiently large to temporarily accommodate the family in the side of a hill. There the cooking, etc., was done, while the unfinished cabins a short distance away were used as sleeping rooms. “R.L.R.,” in a series of articles entitled “Outlines of the History of Cedar County,” published in the Cedar Post in 1872, says: “one old settler informed me how he slept in a cabin over which there was only half a roof. He could reach out from his bed and put his hand in a snow drift two feet deep, and that he used to get up and run bare footed to his “side hill” shanty (dug out, more strictly speaking), some fifteen or twenty rods distant to make a fire, and that he ‘didn’t think nothin’ of it.’”

         Those who had their hay burned, and had the means, bought corn meal at Rockingham upon which to winter their cattle. Corn meal was worth two dollars per bushel, and the readers of these annals will readily see that it was costly feed. Those who did not have the means to buy corn meal, and who had lost their hay by fire, lost nearly all their stock by starvation. Those were hard times—times of trial and tribulation.