West Branch Times, West Branch, Iowa, Thursday, March 20, 1924
Transcribed by Sharon Elijah, June 17, 2018

AN OLD SETTLER’S STORY

The old mail carrier’s story from the days of the coach to the night plane.

By
Dorothy Hemingway

For the facts of this story I am indebted to my Great Uncle, Joseph Albin.

     “My father, George Albin, his wife, and several children, came from Indiana to Iowa in 1839. We came in a prairie schooner, an immense boat-shaped wagon containing all our possessions for house keeping in the new home. Indians and highwaymen were common along the route so our money was rolled up in balls of carpet rags and hung to the bows of the schooner for safe keeping. Father brought with him horses, cattle and sheep. Although but a small boy, I rode the bell horse nearly all the long way. We were ferried across the Mississippi at Davenport and settled on Sugar Creek near Rochester, close to Uncle Hector Sterrats, who came to Iowa a few years previous. The playmate of my own age was Cousin Margaret Sterrat, the first white child born in Cedar county.

     “My father cut and hewed logs for his cabin. They were chinked with mortar of straw and clay. The cabin was lighted by day with windows of oiled paper, at night with a grease dip, a twisted rag fastened to a button placed in a saucer of melted grease.

     “My father built his own fireplace for heat and cooking. The fire was lighted with a burning brand carried from a neighbor’s home. The door of the cabin was secured by a latch string, which, if out, was the symbol of pioneer hospitality. The ventilating system was not more complicated than a ‘cat hole’ cut in the door.

     “His larder contained deer, wild turkey, prairie chicken, and other fowl common to that day. Wild fruits abounded which they sweetened with sugar made from the sap of maples and boiled juice of water melons.

     “Uncle Will Sterritt hauled the neighborhood grist to mill and stored the meal in a newly completed cabin. Visiting the cabin one day he found that the Indians had taken possession. In his wrath he cut a large thorn bush and flayed each Indian as he came through the door. The Indians considered this a huge joke until Uncle Will grabbed an axe standing near, then they expressed their disapproval by inarticulate sounds and grunts. Entering the cabin Uncle Will found that the squaws had been making bread by mixing meal and water, together on the fresh earthen floor.

     “Subscription schools, a dollar per pupil, were maintained for a few weeks through the winter. A reader or speller of one’s own was a treasured possession. Fortunate indeed was a school to secure a penmanship teacher or a singing master. Crude as these schools were many a child was unable to attend and the pioneer mother added to her many other duties the education of her little ones.

     “In those days superstition held sway. If any one was “bewitched” the witch’s profile was drawn and shot with a bullet made from a silver dollar. Father, being an excellent shot, was usually called upon to break the witch’s spell. A highly prized old bureau is still in the Albin family, won by father for skilled marksmanship.

     “About 1845 father moved to Davenport to carry mail from Davenport to Iowa City, first by horse-back and later by stage coach, an old fashioned carriage purchased from Quaker immigrants from the east.

     “At that time from Rochester to Iowa City was a vast expanse of prairie. Hardly a tree or a bush large enough to cut a switch from was to be found. In fact, there were but two cabins on the twenty mile trail. These were taverns operated by James Townsend and David Wilson.

     “Albert Negus tells in his reminiscence, ‘One day I noticed a little boy on the seat beside the stage driver, George Albin. The next day the little boy came alone and ever after came alone. It was the son, Joseph Albin, who then became the stage driver and mail carrier’.

     “Mail at that time was carried in double leather pouches. Postage was twenty-five cents, payable on delivery.

     “I forded the Cedar river at Rochester; later crossed by ferry, and when the ice was running in the spring I took the lea ropes off the ferry, wrapped them about a plank, and in this crude swing crossed, hand over hand, on the ferry wire.

     “Rochester, at this time, was a thriving village, the county seat of Cedar County, and much larger than Cedar Rapids at that time. It boasted three hotels, two grist mills, a saw mill, a dry goods store, two drug stores and a stillhouse.

     “To illustrate the concern that old settlers had for one another, during a terrible blizzard when I had been delayed, David Wilson, the tavern keeper, walked several miles to meet me, fearing that because of my extreme youth some disaster had befallen me. I, perhaps in one of the most terrible blizzards ever known in Iowa, remember being on the trip the night the Waldren family perished near Brick Chapel.

     “I was driving the stage the winter the Asiastic cholera broke out along the river. For many, many weeks I would not see a living person from one journey’s end to the other. People who were about in the morning were suddenly taken ill and were buried by nightfall.

     “When I was sixteen years old I stopped one day at James Townsend’s Inn, ‘The Traveler’s Rest,’ at Springdale. John Brown was also there with a number of escaped negro slaves. As we were washing at the bench outside the door, James Townsend said, “John Brown, let me introduce thee to Joseph Albin, and the only thing in the world I have against the boy is that he doesn’t like the negroes.’ John Brown grasped my hand and said, ‘James, I don’t think any less of the boy for that, for people have to be educated to this cause of freedom.’

     `”I started out of Davenport one day with a load of passengers. When we were several miles out I noticed from their conversation that they were southern slave holders, seeking run-away slaves. When we were a mile east from what is now West Branch, one of the party said, ‘I’ll bet our driver knows more about these slaves than he is willing to tell.’ I whipped up the horses and drove hurriedly on. They never knew, while they were making that speech, that we were less than a hundred feet away from a cabin, a so-called underground station, where a dozen slaves were hiding while being smuggled north. I never was so glad in all my life to get rid of a load of passengers as I was those men.

     “About this time, the Vigilance Committee was organized. Settlers were accumulating property, and above all other livestock, horses were the most valuable. Many horses were stolen and some murders committed. The Vigilance committee caught, tried and administered punishment to the offender, usually in the form of hanging.

     “While hauling a load of eastern passengers, we were held up by the Vigilance Committee, which refused to allow us to proceed on our way until the party they were searching for was found. They told us they did not want us but neither did they want us to hear any tales of what they were doing. The passengers, however, were all badly frightened.

     “Our family had moved to Iowa City by this time, and while there a large company of Mormons, traveling with push carts, gaining converts and stealing as they went, passed through Iowa City from Nauvoo to Salt Lake City. They stole all of my father’s cattle and a yoke of oxen belonging to me as well. Another stage driver Mose Lavery, and I, followed them to their camping grounds and demanded the cattle. They refused to part with them, and Lavery cut the ropes within which they were corralled and I rode in and drove my cattle out.

     “I was in Davenport and saw LeClaire, a prominent man of that time, throw the first shovel of dirt that started the building of the first railroad in Iowa, from Davenport to Iowa City. In 1845 the first locomotive engine was ferried across the Mississippi at Davenport, and in 1856 the first train entered the State Capitol at Iowa City.

     “The old mail route had been extended from Iowa City to Cedar Rapids. I was still carrying mail during the stormy period of the Civil War. Kirkwood, the war governor famous in Iowa history, was then governor of Iowa. It was my privilege to carry the news from the Capitol at Iowa City to Cedar Rapids of the surrender of Vicksburg. `

     “At a pageant of pioneer days, given in West Branch a few years ago I had the pleasure of once more driving the old stage coach, and with me rode two of my former passengers, Hannah Ten Eyck, the first white child born in Johnson county, and my sister, Mrs. M. E. Hoover.

     Memories of long, long ago! A retrospect of eighty-eight full years, and tonight, in my home on the Hoover Highway, on the old Hoover Homestead, purchased of Herbert Hoover’s grandfather, Eli Hoover, I hear the night mail plane whir overhead as it follows the same trail I followed, so slowly, in the years so long ago.”