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Biographical and Historical Record
The Lewis Publishing Company
1887
Introductory page 459

Go to 1887 History Index

Go to 1877 Biographies Index

Within one brief generation the wild solitude of the prairie has heen transformed into a cultivated region of thrift and prosperity, by the untiring zeal and energy of an enterprising people. The trails of hunters and trappers have given place to railroads and thoroughfares for vehicles of every description; the cabin and garden patches of the pioneers have been succeeded by comfortable houses and broad fields of waving grain, with school-houses, churches, mills, postoffices and other institutions of convenience for each community. Add to these numerous thriving villages, with extensive business and manufacturing interests, and the result is a work of which all concerned may well be proud. The record of this marvelous change is history, and the most important that can be written. For more than thirty years the people of Greene County have been making a history that for absorbing interest, grand practical results, and lessons that mav be perused with profit by citizens of other regions will compare favorably with the narrative of the history of any county in the great Northwest; and, considering the extent of territory involved, it is as worthy of the pen of a Bancroft as even the story of our glorious republic. While our venerable ancestors may have said and believed "No pent up Utica cnntracts our powers, For the whole boundless continent isouis," they were nevertheless for a long time content to occupy and possess a very small corner of it; and the great West was not opened to industry and civilization until a variety of causes had combined to form, as it were, a great heart, whose animating principle was improvement, whose impulses annually sent forward armies of noble men and women, and whose pulse is now felt throughout the length and breadth of the best country the sun ever shown upon—from the pineries of Maine to the vineyards of California, and from the sugar-canes of Louisiana to the wheat fields of Minnesota. Long may his heart beat and push forward its arteries and veins of commerce. Not more from choice than from enforced necessity did the old pioneers bid farewell to the play-ground of their childhood and the graves of their fathers. One generation after another had worn themselves out in the service of their avaricious landlords. From the first flashes of daylight in the morning until the last glimmer of the setting sun, they had toiled unceasingly on, from father to son, carrying home each day upon their aching shoulders the precious proceeds of their daily labor. Money and pride and power were handed down in the line of succession from the rich father to his son, while unceasing work and continuous poverty and everlasting obscurity were the heritage of the working man and his children. Their society was graded and degraded. It was not manners, nor industry, nor education, nor qualities of the head and heart that established the grade. It was money and jewels, and silk and satin, and broadcloth and imperious pride that triumphed over honest poverty and trampled the poor man and his children under the iron heel. The children of the rich and poor were not permitted to mingle with and to love each other. Courtship was more the work of parents than of the sons and daughters. The golden calf was the key to matrimony. To perpetuate a self-constituted aristocracy, without power of brain, or the rich blood of royalty, purse was united to purse, and cousin with cousin, in bonds of matrimony, until the virus boiling in their blood was transmitted by the law of inheritance from one generation to another, and until nerves powerless and manhood dwarfed were on exhibition everywhere, and everywhere abhorred. For the sons and daughters of the poor man to remain there was to forever follow as our fathers had followed, and never to lead; to submit, but never to rule; to obey, but never to command. Without money, or prestige, or influential riends, the old pioneers drifted along one by one, from State to State, until in Iowa - the garden of the Union - they have found inviting homes for each, and room for all. To secure and adorn these homes more than ordinary ambition was required, greater than ordinary endurance demanded, and unflinching determination was, by the force of necessity, written over every brow. It was not pomp, or parade, or glittering show that the pioneers were after. They sought for homes which they could call their own, homes for themselves and homes for their children. How well they have succeeded after a struggle of many years against the adverse tides let the records, and tax-gatherers testify; let the broad cultivated fields and fruit-bearing orchards, the flocks and the herds, the palatial residences, the places of business, the spacious halls, the clattering car-wheels and ponderous engines all testify. There was a time when pioneers waded through deep snows, across bridgeless rivers, and througli bottomless sloughs, a score of miles to mill or market, and when more time was required to reach and return from market than is now required to cross the continent, or traverse the Atlantie. These were the times when our palaces were constructed of logs and covered with ''shakes" riven from the forest trees. These were the times when our children were stowed away for the night in the low, dark attics, among the horns of the elk and the deer, and where through the chinks in the "shakes" they could count the twinkling stars. These were the times when our chairs and our bedsteads were hewn from the forest trees, and tables and bureaus constructed from the boxes in which their goods were brought. These were the times when the workingman labored six and sometimes seven days in the week, and all the hours there were in the day from sunrise to sunset. Whether all succeeded in what they undertook is not a question to be asked now. The proof that as a body they did succeed is all  around us. Many individuals were perliaps disappointed. Fortunes and misfortunes belong to the human race. Not every man can have a school-house on the corner of his farm; not every man can have a bridge over the stream that flows by his dwelling; not every man can have a railroad depot on the border of his plantation, or a city in its center; and while these things are desirable in some respects, their advantages are oftentimes outweighed by the almost perpetual presence of the foreign beggar, the dreaded tramp, the fear of fire and conflagratlon, and the insecurity from the presence of the midnight burglar, and the bold, bad men and women who lurk in ambush and infest the villages. The good things of this earth are not all to be found in any one place; but if more is to be found in one than another, that place is in our rural retreats, our quiet homes outside of the clamor and turmoil of city life. In viewing the blessings which surround us, then, we should reverence those who have made them possible, and ever fondly cherish in memory the sturdy old pioneer and his log-cabin. Let us turn our eyes and thoughts back to the log-cabin days of a quarter of a century ago, and contrast those homes with comfortable dwellings of to-day. Before us stands the old log cabin. Let us enter. Instinctively the head is uncovered in token of reverence to this relic of ancestral beginnings, early struggles and final triumphs. To the left is the deep, wide fire-place, in whose commodious space a group of children may sit by the fire, and up through the chimney may count the stars, while ghostly stories of witches and giants, and still more thrilling stories of Indians and wild beasts, are whisperingly told and shudderingly heard. On the great crane hang the old tea-kettle and the great iron pot. The huge shovel and tongs stand sentinel in either corner, while the great andirons patiently wait for the huge back-log. Over the fire-place hangs the trusty rifle. To the right of the fire-place stands the spinning wheel, while in the further end of the room is seen the old-fashioned loom. Strings of drying apples and poles of drying pumpkins are overhead. Opposite the door in which yon enter stands a huge deal table; by its side the dresser, whose pewter plates and "shining delf " catch and reflect the fire-place flames as shields of armies do the sunshine. From the corner of its shelves coyly peep out the relics of former china. In a curtained corner and hid from casual sight we find the mother's bed, and under it the trnndle-bed, while near them a ladder indicates the loft where the older children sleep. To the left of the fire-place and in the corner opposite the spinning wheel is the mother's work-stand. Upon it lies the Bible, evidently much used, its family record telling of parents and friends a long way off, and telling, too, of children "Scattered like roses in bloom, Some at the bridal, some at the tomb." Her spectacles, as if but just used, are inserted between the leaves of her Bible, and tell of her purpose to return to its comforts when cares permit and duty is done. A stool, a bench, well notched and whittled and carved, and a few chairs complete the furniture of the room, and all stand on a coarse but well-scoured floor. Let us for a moment watch the city visitors to this humble cabin. The city bride, innocent but thoughtless, and ignorant of labor and care, asks her city-bred husband. " Pray, what savages set this up?" Honestly confessing his ignorance, he replies, "I do not know." But see the pair upon whom age sits "frosty, but kindly." First, as they enter, they give a rapid glance about the cabin home, and then a mutual glance of eye to eye. Why do tears start and fill their eyes? Why do lips quiver? There are many who know why; but who that has not learned in the school of experience the full meaning of all these symbols of trials and privations, of loneliness and danger, can comprehend the story that they tell to the pioneer? Within this chinked and mud-daubed cabin we read the first pages of our history, and as we retire through its low door-way, and note the heavy battened door, its wooden hinges and its welcoming latch-string, is it strange that the scenes without should seem to be but a dream? But the cabin and the palace  standino side bv side in a vivid contrast, tell their own story of this people's progress. They are a history and a prophecy in one. GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY Greene County is in the central portion of western Iowa, the fourth county east from the Missouri Kiver. It is crossed by the forty-second parallel of latitude—about that of Chicago and Boston, in the United States, and Rome, in Europe. It is a little more than ninety-ibur degrees west of Greenwich. It is bounded on the north by Calhoun and Webster Counties, on the east by Boone, on the South by Dallas and Guthrie, and on the west by Carroli. It is twenty-four miles square, and contains sixteen congressional townships, or 576 square miles. The North Raccoon River, commonly called the "Coon," which flows diagonally across the country from the northwest to the southcast, with it- affluents, waters and drains the greater portion of the surface, except in the extreme southwest, which is drained by the Mosquito and Willow Creeks, tributaries of the Middle Raccoon. The principal tributaries of the North Raccoon enter that stream from the north, and are Buttrick, Hardin and Cedar Creeks, while the Greenbrier Creek rises in the southern tier of townships and joins the main river just below the southern boundary of Dallas County. Good springs of pure cold water are of frequent occurrence, and are found issuing from the gravel deposits which overlie the drift clays in the steep slopes bordering the streams. There is no difficulty in obtaining wells at all points, particularly upon the uplands, where the impervious glacial clays lie at a much less depth from the surface than is the case on the margins of the uplands and in the benches, or second bottoms. The streams enumerated, with numerous small spring branches and brooks, most of which are supported by living springs, afford an abundant supply of water for stock and other purposes. The North Raccoon is the only stream that furnishes sufficient water to run machinery at all seasons of the year, and has some excellent mill powers, only a few of which have as yet been improved. One important enterprise developed in the year 1886 is that of artesian wells, of which there are now about forty in the county. These were especial blessings during the phenomenally dry season of 1886, when the people of Jefferson depended almost entirely on artesian water for culinary and drinking purposes, ordinary wells having run so low that the water was pronounced unwholesome. The only artesian well before this season was that of John McCarthy, in Hardin Township, bored in 1882. The surface configuration of this county is more level and plain-like than that of most portions of Central Iowa, the undulations being so slight as to scarcely relieve the monotonous sameness of the almost boundless prairie landscape. The waters of the Coon have cut a channel into the detrital material of the drift to a depth of from fifty to one hundred feet, so that it is bordered by abrupt acclivities, which give to the valley the peculiar canal-like appearance common to all the larger streams in the central portion of Northern Iowa. The valleys of the smaller water courses are, however, generally shallow, their beds being but little below the general level of the prairie. The soil is a dark gravelly loam, is uniformly distributed over the uplands, and is composed of vegetable deposit, from two to eight feet in depth, with clay sub-soil. Perhaps no county in the Union gives the farmer greater rewards for his labor than this. For ages the annual crops of grass, untouched by scythe, and but partially kept down by herbivorous animals, have accumulated organic matter on the surface of the soil to such an extent that a long succession even of exhausting crops will not materially impoverish the land. It produces wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley, buckwheat, sorghum, potatoes, flax, and in fact all the grains and vegetables common to the Northern States, in great abundance. There is some low, wet land that intersects the uplands in the form of swales or sloughs, which can easily be drained and converted into the finest meadow and arable lands. The forests are wholly confined to the valleys and their immediate vicinity, being largely along the line of the Coon and its branches. Although the supply of fuel from this source has been ample in the past, yet with a rapid settlement of the county these native forests will scarcely prove adequate for the increased consumption of timber for fuel and building purposes, and it is fortunate that coal is being mined near at hamd, and is furnished at reasonable rates. GEOLOGICAL. Coal has been mined to some extent, yet so far as it has been investigated it is not widely distributed over the county. The beds that have been discovered at the surface are thin and not of as good quality as most Iowa coal. Within the past two or three years several shafts have been sunk, and coal is now regularly mined at and near Rippey, in the southeast part of the county by the Keystone Coal Company No. 1, Keystone Coal Company No. 2, the Moingona Coal Company and the Standard Coal Company. Coal has also been mined successfully at Grand Junction. Peat is known to exist in some of the swales in the uplands, but the deposits are so shallow, and it is intermixed with so much sand, washed from the adjacent drift deposits, that it is valueless for fuel. Building stone is scarce, there being comparatively little good quarry rock in the county, the sandstone usually being too friable to answer even for the ordinary purposes of masonry. Clay for the manufacture of good common brick is abundant, and from this source the main supply of local building material must be drawn. In the bottom, upon the west side of the Coon, about seven miles above Jefferson, there are several symmetrical mounds which have every appearance of being of artiflcial construction. The largest one is some twelve feet high and seventy-five feet in diameter, and is composed of the gravelly soil found in the bottoms upon which it rests. Several of the smaller ones have been leveled by the plow, while on the bluff opposite other mounds are found, which are said to have contained human remains. CLIMATE. The climate of the county is not peculiar, but like that of the Northwest generally. While there are very cold days in winter, the dry, healthful air prevents any disagreeable consequences. The rainfall of the county, from its amount of timbered surface, streams, lakelets and coal basin, is equal to, if not in excess of, that of any adjacent county. This fine feature of an abundant rainfall gives this county a superiority during dry years that has made this portion of the Coon valley the granary of the region about while the new settlers were opening new farms.

Go to 1887 History Index

Go to 1877 Biographies Index

Transcribed by Lynn Diemer-Mathews and uploaded September 8, 2023.

Source: Biographical and Historical Record of Greene and Carroll Counties, Iowa, Lewis Publishing Company, 1887.


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