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Annals of Iowa
October, 1922
PIONEERING AT
BONAPARTE AND NEAR PELLA 1
BY MRS. SARAH WELCH
NOSSAMAN
As I
am well aware that time is not long for me even if I should live to be very old,
as I am now almost to my seventieth milestone, I will try to leave for my
children a record of some of my "ups and downs" in life that may be of
interest for them to look over after I have crossed over to the other shore.
I was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina,
February 26, 1825. When I was about six years old my father emigrated to
Richmond, Indiana. We lived there one year. My father bought property in
Richmond, but when the Black Hawk or Mackinaw purchase was thrown open for
settlement he sold it for half he gave for it for the sake of going to the new
purchase. We left Richmond in May, 1831. As it was before days of railroading we
moved by horse power, camping out at nights. When we got to the new purchase,
the land of milk and honey, we were disappointed and homesick, but we were there
and had to make the best of it. My father and mother went to work with a will to
put some corn and potatoes in the ground that we might have something to live on
the following winter, but it was so late in the season that our corn did not
mature and we could not have it ground. It was badly frostbitten, so we had to
live on frostbitten roasting ears for six weeks. I can't tell you just how good
they were, for you must taste to know. By this time my father and mother were
both down sick with billious fever. I was the oldest child and I was expected to
cook the corn and the best I could do was to wrap the husk close around the ear
and cover it in hot ashes, and heap coals of fire on it till it was done, and
when done I would take the tongs and take the corn out and let it cool and take
the husks off and it was ready for eating. I can't describe the smell of it, but
I will just say codfish is sweet by the side of a frostbitten roasting ear. But
they sustained life and that was about all. About the time our corn was gone,
and a few potatoes was all used up (I said a few potatoes, as best I could do in
digging I could find only a few bucketfuls) my father got well enough to work on
Johnny Hittles' mill, which was two miles from where we lived on the Mackinaw
River. There he got a sack of corn meal, but not bolted meal as we now use—bran
and all together—and we had bread made of it as it was ground, for we could
not afford to lose the bran, and after father got the second sack of meal he
went hunting and killed a wild pig and a deer, so we feasted for a while.
Perhaps you will wonder why our neighbors did not help us. I will just say our
neighbors were in the same fix we were, and they were few and far between.
On the following April the Black Hawk War
broke out, and some of our neighbors were killed near us, but we were
providentially spared. While the war was raging at its hottest my mother urged
my father to go to Jacksonville, the county seat of Morgan County, Illinois, and
get his brother, which is old Uncle Johnny Welch of this place, to come and take
us down to Jacksonville where he lived. We lived near Jacksonville one year, and
after that we moved to Alton, Illinois. In 1835 my father moved to what is now
Iowa, but at that time it was part of Wisconsin Territory. We settled one mile
below where Bonaparte now is, in Van Buren County. We had but few neighbors,
among them being old Uncle Sammy Reed and his brother Isaac, and an Indian
trader by the name of Jordan. I think Uncle Jimmy Jordan was known to most of
the old settlers of the eastern part of this state. He was my father's nearest
neighbor. It was here we had for neighbors Black Hawk, Keokuk, Wapello, Hard
Fish, Kishkakosh, Naseaskuk and a score of others of the Sac and Fox Indians.
Here we had hard times and often went hungry. We lived there five years, one
mile above where Bonaparte now is. The town of New Lexington 2
was laid out, so we had a post office, but if a letter had come for us we could
not have taken it out of the office. Letters were not prepaid with a two-cent
stamp as they are now, but the one that received the letter had to pay
twenty-five cents before he could take it out of the office. While we lived
there Black Hawk and his son were frequent visitors and often partook of my
father's hospitality.
In 1837 or 1838,3 I don't
remember which, Black Hawk died of malaria fever. One of our neighbors, Dr.
James Turner, thought if he could only steal Black Hawk's head he could make a
fortune out of it by taking it east and putting it on exhibition. After two
weeks' watching he succeeded in getting it. Black Hawk's burial place was near
old Iowaville, on the north side of the Des Moines River, under a big sugar
tree. It was there Dr. Turner severed the head from the body. At the time it was
done I was taking care of his sick sister-in-law, Mrs. William Turner. The
doctor made his home with his brother. We knew the evening he went to steal the
head and sat up to await his coming. He got in with it at four o'clock in the
morning and hid it till the afternoon of the same day, when he cooked the flesh
off the skull. So I can say that I am the only one now living that witnessed
that sight, for it was surely a sight for me. If the rest of Black Hawk's bones
were ever removed it was a good many years after his head was stolen. The second
morning after their ruler's head was stolen ten of the best Indian warriors came
to William Turner's and asked for his brother, the Doctor. They were painted war
style. He told them he did not know where his brother was. They told him they
would give him ten days to find his brother, and if he did not find him in that
time he would pay the penalty for his brother's crime. But he knew where his
brother was. He was at the home of a neighbor named Robb, Uncle Tommy Robb as he
was called by everyone, on the south side of the Des Moines River. But he did
not want to find his brother and sent a boy to tell him to fly for Missouri,
which he did. The Indians returned to Iowaville to hold council and conclude
what to do, and while they were holding council William Turner and his wife made
their escape in a canoe down the river. William Turner kept a little store in
New Lexington. He got his neighbors to pack and send his goods after him.
But the Indians demanded their ruler's head, and
for three weeks we expected an outbreak every day, but through the influence of
their agent and the citizens together they gave up hostilities for a time. The
whites told them they would bring Turner to justice if he could be found. The
sheriff chased Turner around for awhile, which only gave him the more time to
get out of the way. The Turner family finally all went to St. Louis where the
Doctor was found again, and to keep the Indians quiet the sheriff went to St.
Louis in search of him, but he did not find him. He did not want to find him.
But Turner got frightened and took Black Hawk's skull to Quincy, Illinois, and
put it in the care of a doctor there for safe-keeping (I forget the doctor's
name) till the Indians would get settled down, and then he intended to take it
east. But when he got ready to go east with it the doctor in Quincy refused to
give it up, and he did not dare to go to law about it, so after all his trouble
and excitement he lost Black Hawk's skull, and not only made Turners endless
trouble, but put the lives of all settlers in jeopardy for months. We lived
principally on excitement and that was a poor living. But they finally got over
it till all was peace and then we were happy. The doctor that had the head took
it to Burlington and sold it to a museum and the museum was burned down, so
Black Hawk's skull is not now in existence. The Turner family were warm friends
of my father's family. They stayed in St. Louis two or three years, I don't
remember just how long, and they all three died with the cholera. So I am left
alone to tell the story. 4
My father was a potter by trade. He built the
first pottery in the territory, I suppose, in the year 1836, but there were but
few to buy his ware, so we had it hard for most of the five years of our stay in
Van Buren County. But in 1837 Judge Meek of Michigan came to New Lexington to
locate a mill. After looking around for a few days he bought Robert Moffatt out.
His claim was on the land where Bonaparte now is. So then we had one neighbor
with money. Where Bonaparte now stands was at that time what was called a heavy
sugar orchard. Mr. Meek gave my father the privilege of making sugar on his
claim till it was all cleared off and put in town lots. I do not mean we made
sugar all the time, for there is but four or five weeks you can make sugar in
the year, and that is in early spring. But it was three years or more before all
of the sugar trees were cut off of the town site of Bonaparte. But when Meek
started work that made a little money in circulation. It gave both men and girls
a chance to get themselves what was called store clothes, for we all wore
homemade cloth then. I for one worked for Meek's family for the first year of
their building their mills. I worked for seventy-five cents a week, which was
the best wages that had ever been paid in the country at that time. Robert
Meek's wife and I cooked for forty-two men, so you may know we did not have much
spare time, and that was before days of cook stoves. We cooked by the
fireplaces.
You will say goods were surely cheap those days when
wages were so low. I will give you the price of some of them—calico, 25 to 50
cents a yard; sheeting, such as we have now for 7 or 8 cents, was 25 to 30 cents
a yard, and all other goods in proportion. In 1841 my father sold his claim and
pottery shop and moved two miles east of Fairfield, Jefferson County, this
state. There we took a claim and began anew. There we had it pretty hard again,
but not as hard as in Van Buren County. It was there I was married (to
Wellington Nossaman) March 17, 1842. I will now leave my father's house and tell
you of your father's and my own hardships. We rented a farm near Fairfield the
first year we were married. We raised a good crop and had plenty to live on. In
1843 the new purchase being opened for settlement, your Uncle Levi 5
and Aunt Caroline, your father and myself, with our babies then three months
old, started to the new purchase. On May 17, 1843, we got to this part of God's
footstool. We took a claim four miles south of where Pella now is. But when we
got to our stopping place our feelings can be better imagined than described,
for there was not a neighbor for fifty miles, no house, no nothing you might say
but wild beasts and Indians. But we thought it was the only way we could get a
home. We went to work and built a shanty made of poles and covered it with elm
bark, not slippery elm, but what we called white elm, but the sun curled it so
badly we had to have a new cover every few days, and then it was but little
better than no roof. After we had been at our new home a few days your Aunt
Caroline and I went strolling out in the woods, and when we had gone about a
mile from our shanty we heard the sound of an ax. We got back to the shanty as
soon as we could to tell the good news to your uncle and father that there was
surely white people not far away. We knew from the sound of the ax it was not an
Indian. To our great joy we soon found it to be a camp of white men, but no
women with them. We were not long getting acquainted and have remained warm
friends ever since. But there are but three of us left to tell the tale of our
hardships, and they are Robert Hamilton, Green Clark, and myself. The rest have
gone to their reward, except George Hamilton who is in Australia. They were Dr.
Warren, Robert Hamilton, J. B. Hamilton, George Hamilton, Elbert Warren, Henry
Miller, Henry McPherson, and his father. In the latter part of May and first
part of June others began to come in and settle from two to five miles from us,
and then we thought we had close neighbors. Among them was John Gillespie and
his brother George, who made his home at our house or shanty, for we did not
have a house built till in September, and David Durham and family, George
Harrison, Uncle Ben Lansberry and wife, John Majors and family, Wilson Stanley
and family, Caton and wife, Mowery and wife, Francis A. Barker and family, James
Tong and family, and Uncle Ikey Wise and family. That many had settled in from
two to ten miles around, and in the fall John B. Hamilton was married to Miss
Ann Wilson of Lee County, Iowa. The following year R. G. Hamilton was married to
Miss Rebecca Given of Lee County, also Green Clark was married to Miss Nancy
Zeilson of Lee County, so we began to have nearer
neighbors.
I will try to tell you of our first summer's stay
up in this part of the wilderness. As I have told you we built a shanty in the
thick timber four miles south of where Pella now stands, where we lived for five
years, but not in the shanty, as we built a log cabin in the fall. When living
in the shanty we had no door nor fireplace, so we could neither cook, nor shut
out the skunks nor snakes, and they were both plentiful. We treated skunks very
kindly until they were out of the shanty, but the snakes did not fare so well.
It was not an uncommon thing to get up in the morning and kill from one to three
snakes, but they were of garter snake variety, but we would rather they had
stayed out if it had suited them as well. At night it was hard to sleep for the
howling of the wolves and the screeching of the owls, and I can't tell you how
lonely it made us feel, but God was watching over us in our lonely shanty and
kept us from harm, and during the day the Indians were our companions, so you
see we were not entirely deprived of company. As I have told you we got to our
claim May 17. I also told you we raised a good crop close to Fairfield. When we
started up here we put in our wagon what we could bring in the way of household
goods and provisions, and that was not much for we had to make our roads most of
the way as we came, and on the evening of July 3 we found ourselves with only
half of a dodger of corn bread and that was baked with the bran in it. That and
red tea was our supper. So we started by team to Fairfield, Jefferson County,
next day for breakfast, but we did not get there the first day. About one
o'clock the day we started, which was July 4, 1843, we stopped to let our horses
take their dinners on grass. We stopped near where the new courthouse now stands
in Oskaloosa, Mahaska County. All there was of Oskaloosa at that time was three
men, a dog, a jug of whisky, an ax, maul, and a load of stakes for staking off
lots. Your father said to them, "What are you doing here?" They said
they were laying out a county seat. Your father said, "You had better wait
till the county is laid off." Canfield, for that was the name of one of the
men, made reply, "We are going to lay off the county seat and survey the
county around it." But we thought but little of what he said. After our
horses had eaten their dinners on grass, we started on to my father's at
Fairfield. We traveled till the sun went down and found ourselves at what was
known as Waugh's Point, which is now Batavia. There we stopped for the night,
clogged our horses and turned them out to eat grass, but we were hungry and
tired. We had some blankets with us. We laid them down under the wagon to keep
the dew off and laid down on them for the night, but we were too hungry to sleep
much. We thought we would get up about three o'clock and start on, but when we
got up to start on our horses were gone. Your father started in search and
tracked them by the dragging of the clogs through the grass. About ten o'clock
he found them several miles from the wagon, so it was after twelve o'clock when
he got back to the wagon. It was a long hungry day for me. We started on as soon
as we could get ready and at six o'clock in the evening we got to father
Welch's, as we thought almost starved to death, but we were not as nearly
starved as we thought, but we were hungry enough. You will say, "How was it
you were so long getting to Fairfield? We can easily drive it in one day
now." But we had to make our own roads. Winding around and hunting out
places to cross the streams took much time. We
stayed at my father's three or four days. We got several sacks of meal ground,
and we had some bacon we had left down there. We put in the wagon what we could
of our household goods we had left down there, and our bacon and meal, and
started for our home in the wilderness again. We were three days getting back.
On our return we stayed all night where Oskaloosa now is. During our stay at
Fairfield, Oskaloosa had made a big improvement. Canfield had built a log cabin
and had it covered with clapboards, but did not have the door sawed out. Your
father helped him saw out one log so we could creep in and be under a roof, and
that was my first night in Oskaloosa. We reached home the day after our first
stay in Oskaloosa and found our shanty about as we had left it, but Oh, the
mosquitoes, and no way to shut them out! The only way we got any sleep was to
cover up head and ears with a thick, heavy cover, and the weather hot enough to
almost cook eggs. So you see pioneer life is not all sunshine. It has a great
many black clouds.
In August and September we had several new
neighbors come in, so we had a post office. A man by the name of Wilson Stanley
was our postmaster. The post office was a mile west of our house, for we had a
cabin built in September, and then we began to feel more at home. We had a floor
to walk on and a fireplace to cook by and a clapboard door to shut. We did not
think of such a thing as plank for floors. Your father split puncheons and hewed
them and made a floor of them. When we lived in the shanty and it rained we did
not eat for I had to cook by a log fire, as it was before days of cook stoves.
It was days of johnycake boards, dutch ovens, skillets and lids. But you may ask
how can you bake break on a board. I will try to tell you. Take a board eighteen
inches long and eight inches wide, round the corners off and make the edges
thinner than the middle, spread it with well-made corn dough, set it on edge
before a hot fire in a fireplace, and it will bake nice and brown, then turn and
bake the other side the same way, then you have corn bread that no one will
refuse. Set your johnycake board in front of something that will keep it on the
edge.
I will stop giving receipts and talk of something
else. After we got our house built and new neighbors began to come in we began
to feel like we could entertain all Iowa. Oh, how contented we were! But the
fall of 1844 found us with wheat and corn raised on our new home place, ripe and
ready to grind, but our nearest mill was at Bonaparte, Van Buren County, one
hundred miles away, and we had to go to mill there. But after awhile we got
tired of that, so my father and your father put up what they called a stump
mill. I have forgotten just the plan of the mill, it has been so long ago, but
the whole thing went round by a six-ox power. It would grind three pecks of corn
an hour. They ran it day and night. They did not grind wheat. Often there would
be from fifteen to twenty men waiting their turn to get a bushel of meal to take
to their hungry families. But it was hard for me for I baked for all of them,
and most of the time some of the men that came to mill would go hunting and kill
some game, so that would make me more work to cook it. But I did not think it
hard. Your father used to say we could keep as many as there were puncheons in
the floor, and I sometimes thought there were two to a puncheon. But we had not
run our mill but a few months till Cempstalk built a mill north of Oskaloosa on
Skunk River that ground wheat as well as corn, and also Dunkin and Dr. Warren
started mills on the same river. But Oh, the flour they made! Most of it was a
dark gray, for they tramped their wheat out with horses on a dirt floor and had
no way of getting the dirt out only to fan it out with sheets or blankets. So
you see we ate our peck of dirt more than once. But we were much healthier then
than we are now.
To say pioneer life is without its troubles even
among neighbors is a mistake, for we had one neighbor that will never be
forgotten by the old settlers. His name was John Majors. He broke over all rules
and sent to Illinois and borrowed money and when the land came in market he
entered three or four of his best neighbors' homes from them, which caused what
is termed the Majors War, and for more than two years we had trouble. They
caught Jake Majors, the oldest son, and gave him a coat of tar and feathers and
made him deed his neighbors' homes back to them, but they sent off east and
borrowed money and paid him what he had paid out for their homes, but he lost
the interest for none of his neighbors wanted him to go to so much trouble for
them. So Majors all sold out and left here and went to Missouri, so quiet was
ours again. Here my mother's narrative ends, much to our regret, and I will try
to supply a few more reminiscences. I was quite a little girl at the time of the
Majors War, but remember distinctly one night my father lay in the
"loft," as we called it, with the scythe by his side saying he would
"mow" the heads off of any who dared try to capture him, but no one
came. Well do I remember the terror of my mother who sat up all night. We
remained on the farm until I was ten or thereabout, then in 1853 my father
traded his farm for what was then known as the Franklin House, a long low
structure standing at the southeast corner of the square in Pella. There we
resided a number of years keeping hotel and did quite well, as the immigration
was then at its height, but my father unfortunately conceived the idea of being
a merchant, went to Keokuk and bought goods, loaded them on the Badger State and
started home. She ran on a snag and sank, consequently the goods were much
damaged. As he had them insured he was advised to throw them on the Insurance
Company's hands and, unfortunately for him, did so. The company promptly
suspended payment, so my father was left with nothing. He came home and sold
forty acres of land to pay the debt, for he was strictly honest, often telling
us children to always pay an honest debt, "even though it takes the shirt
from your back." We still had a piece of land on the Des Moines River
whither we moved and began again. He built a lime kiln and did a thriving
business, as that was the only kiln in the country. People came from Des Moines
and Montezuma and all surrounding towns. I have known as many as six or eight
teams there at once when the men stayed all night waiting for lime. Of course we
had to board all of them, and as we received no pay it took considerable of the
profits and much work. In connection with the limekiln he ran a steam sawmill,
and as that was before the day of railroads, he found ready sale for all the
lumber he could manufacture. He also cleared up a farm and in a few years made
up all losses. He remained there until he accumulated considerable money when he
again moved to Pella, in 1855, and engaged in the mercantile business, keeping
store just south of the Square. In 1853 the college, in which he took a lively
interest, was founded, and he furnished timber, lime, and money to the amount of
$1,000. He remained in Pella until he spent most of his earnings of former
years, as he trusted all who came with a pitiful story, consequently he was soon
left without means, and most of the money is uncollected even at this writing.
While in Pella E. R. Cassatt and Jesse Hampson boarded with them and attended
college. About 1860 or 1861 he again removed to the bottom and commenced anew.
He lived down on the bottom lands and during the spring of 1862 or 1863 the
water came and deluged the land. We stayed in the house thinking it would soon
abate. We had a canoe tied in the door and, like Thompson's colt, had to
"swim the river to get a drink." We remained until it was almost knee
deep in the house, then put all we could up stairs. They had to bore holes
through the upper floor and swing the piano up to the joists, then the water was
half way up the legs. We went into a cabin on the hill, fourteen of us in one
little room, and had the floor covered with beds at night. There we lived until
the water went down and, my mother flatly refusing ever to return, neighbors
came in, took down the house and removed it to the hill, where we remained until
1868, then we moved about one and one-half miles north where father ran a brick
kiln and also burned lime. Here we made another home, set out trees and cleared
up another small farm. In 1871 he again moved to Pella, north of the Depot, and
kept boarders. In 1876 he built the Depot Hotel where he resided, except two or
three years while living in Colorado, until his death, October 23, 1893.
MARY NOSSAMAN TODD.
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1 This article was
written by the late Mrs. Sarah Welch Nossaman and was presented to this
department by her daughter. Mrs. Mary Nossaman Todd, of Pella. It gives a
realistic picture of genuine pioneering in two most interesting localities in
the state. -Editor.
2 New Lexington was
about two miles above where Bonaparte now stands. It disappeared when Bonaparte
began to flourish. Editor.
3 Black Hawk died at his
home near Iowaville, the site of his old town, on the Des Moines River, in Davis
County, October 3, 1838.—Editor.
4 The author of this
article was at this time a girl of fourteen years. Her testimony concerning this
transaction is most interesting, though it differs from statements that the
entire body of Black Hawk was taken as found in the Burlington
Hawkeye of December 10, 1840, in Dr.
William Salter's Autobiography, in an article by D. C. Beaman in Gregg's
Dollar Monthly and Old Settlers' Memorial of
February 18, 1873, and in other statements by historians of that region and
period.—Editor.
5 "History of
Marion County," Union Historical Company, Des Moines, p. 300, says
Wellington and Levi Nossaman settled in the edge of the timber, which juts out
from the Des Moines River, early in 1843, and were the first settlers there.—Editor.
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