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EDITED BY John C. Parish
Associate Editor of the State Historical Society of Iowa
| Volume II |
October 1921 |
No. 10 |
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Copyright 1921 by the State Historical Society of Iowa
(Transcribed by Gayle Harper)
FROM NEW YORK to IOWA
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The following account of a
progression of migratory steps from New York to Iowa was
related by Mrs. Lydia Arnold Titus in a series of letters to
her grandson, Bruce E. Mahan. It is a story that runs through
several generations, for the movement was a halting one and
the stops along the way were sometimes rather extended. But it
is typical, and today most of the men and women of the Middle
and Far West, looking back along the line of their ancestry,
see a succession of events which at the time and to the actors
themselves appeared spasmodic and unrelated but which to us
seem to fit into the inexorable working out of the westward
migration by which the American people possessed themselves of
the continent.
I was born
in the year 1840 about thirty miles from Buffalo and three
miles from a small village by the name of Machias Corners in
New York State. My home was a log cabin on a farm where father
by hard toil made a living for himself, my mother, and the six
children.
The
schoolhouse where I started to school at the age of five was a
small one-room log building about three-fourths of a mile from
our home. On my way to school lived a kind-hearted old lady
who would often come to the door of her cabin and call for me
to stop. Then she would fill my apron pocket with nuts and
give me a big red apple or some cookies. Although it has been
over seventy-five years since this happened, the kind words
and pleasant smile of this dear old lady are as real as though
the meeting occurred yesterday.
My first
book was a speller. We had to learn every letter before we
could read easy words. There were no maps nor blackboards, and
the seats were merely rough planks with holes bored in for the
legs to fit. They had no backs. For the older boys and girls
who studied arithmetic and who had copy books, desks had been
made along the wall. Every morning the teacher would take the
copy books and write a line at the top of the page for the
day's lesson. Then the scholars would take their goose quill
pens and write while the teacher helped the little ones with
their letters. Then we had counting lessons. After we had
learned to read, the teacher started us on the capitals of the
States. It was a proud day for me when I was able to name
every State and its capital.
At recess time and at noon we would
play a game called "Catch the Ball". The balls used were made
at home out of yarn unraveled from old stocking feet and
covered with soft leather or cloth. On pleasant days when
wintergreen berries were ripe, our teacher would allow us to
go and gather them.
How we did
enjoy the cool sweet flavor of the wintergreen! In the winter
time our outdoor sports consisted of skating or sliding down
hill on sleds made by our father or brothers. There were no
sleds for sale at the store in Machias Corners.
In those
days father always made his own maple sugar. It was fine fun
in the early spring to go with him to the sugar camp, to watch
him tap the trees, gather the sap in pails, and boil it down.
My sisters and I would get a pan of clean snow and when the
syrup was boiled down almost to sugar, pour some of it into
the pan of snow. As the syrup cooled it became hard and
brittle and we had the best sort of maple candy. We always had
plenty of pure sugar. On our farm, too, we had a good variety
of fruit: apples, cherries, currants and plums. Wild
blackberries were plentiful also.
In the year
1847, my mother's health began to fail, and father, thinking
that a change of climate might help her, decided to go West.
He sold our farm and stock during the next year and, packing a
few things into a wagon, hired a man to take them and us to
Buffalo. There we loaded our goods on a boat and sailed up
Lake Erie to Toledo, Ohio. After a short trip into Michigan to
visit my mother's relatives who had come West some years
before, father decided to settle down on a farm in Williams
County, Ohio. Mother failed to improve and so when spring came
again we moved to another farm near Adrian, Michigan. After
living here a short time, father decided to try the climate of
Illinois. He had heard glowing reports, too, of its crops from
a brother who had settled there.
Father
bought a yoke of oxen and a new wagon. On this he built a
frame work, fastened bows, and covered them with canvas. Then
we loaded our cooking utensils and bedding, an ax, a log
chain, and a few household goods and set out in the year 1850
for Knox County, Illinois. Before we came to the end of our
journey both oxen became sick, so we stopped for a time at a
small place called Aux Sable. After a week or so the oxen got
better and father sold them. There were no railroads in that
part of the country and so my brother, then a boy of sixteen,
walked from there to Rio, in Knox County, to get his uncle to
come after us with a team. Several days passed before they
returned to take us to our new home. On this journey we
stopped overnight at taverns along the way as mother was not
strong enough to stand camping out, but we cooked our meals by
a campfire. One day each week we stopped by a stream or near
some farmhouse to do our washing.
After we
arrived at the home of my uncle near Rio we visited with his
family for a few weeks, then father rented a farm. During the
first fall he helped pick corn for his neighbors, getting
every third load for picking it. The next year he raised a big
crop of corn, wheat, and oats; but it was hard to get ahead as
the price of all grain was so low. And in the absence of
railroads in that part of Illinois it was difficult to get the
grain to market. I have seen corn fenced up in rail pens and
allowed to stay there until it rotted. It could not be sold at
any price. All of our neighbors had come from the East, hoping
to get a new home at a low price. Some liked the new country,
but others sold out, packed up, and returned to their native
States.
My sisters and I started to school
again when we settled down in our Illinois home; and, after
taking all the work offered in the country school at that
time, three of us started to teach. My salary was eight
dollars per month and I had to board round at the homes of my
pupils, a week at each place; and since the nearest home was
one mile from the schoolhouse I think I earned my wages.
One event
that happened the same fall that I started to teach school
stands out in my memory. Far and wide the news spread that
Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln would hold a debate at
Galesburg on October 7, 1858. The girls near Rio decided that
we would attend the debate in a body. Accordingly, we
decorated a hay wagon and each girl made a banner to carry
with the name of a State on it. I chose New York as that was
my native State. We limited our party to thirty-two, the
number of States in the Union at that time. As most of us were
Republicans we made one large banner with the slogan "Rio,
Lincoln, and Liberty".
The day of
the debate dawned bright and clear and we made an early start
for it was sixteen miles to Galesburg. Each of us was dressed
entirely in white, and each carried the banner inscribed with
the name of the State which she represented. Two men drove our
six-horse team and a third carried our large banner. Our
drivers passed every team in sight for most of them were only
two or four horse outfits, and with all of us yelling and
shouting the miles rolled past rapidly. When we had gone about
seven miles on our way we overtook three girls walking, who
seemed glad to accept our invitation to hop aboard the
"Lincoln Express". However, they proved to be Democrats and
before we arrived in Galesburg, they said they wished they had
walked. We stopped just outside the city by a stream of clear
cold water to eat our lunch and to water our horses.
Our outfit
was among the first to arrive at the park where the debate was
to be held. A short time before it began, we marched in a body
down close to the small platform where Mr. Douglas and Mr.
Lincoln were seated. Lincoln sat in a splint-bottomed chair,
and it looked as if his knees were up to his chin, the chair
was so low and his legs were so long. When he saw us and our
banners he arose and stepped down from the platform to shake
hands with each girl and to say a word of welcome to all.
Soon the
debate began. The crowd had to stand as no benches had been
provided. Although the discussion lasted two hours and a half
or three hours none of us girls left our place down in front.
I think Mr. Douglas was the better orator, but of course I
felt that Mr. Lincoln was right. On our way home we laughed
and sang, and arrived at Rio tired but happy.
I taught
school in 1858, 1859, and in the fall of 1860. During the
summer of the latter year I met Mr. Francis Titus at the home
of his uncle, and in the fall we began to keep company, as it
was called in those days. He had moved West from Pennsylvania
to Ohio, living there for a time near Mt. Gilead, and from
there had come to Illinois about the same time that father was
making the trip from New York to Illinois. We lost little time
courting and were married March 21, 1860, just a little more
than a year before the Civil War broke out.
On a rented
farm a few miles from Rio we began housekeeping. My first
furniture consisted of a set of plain chairs, two wooden
bedsteads, a big dry goods box made into a cupboard with a
curtain hung in front of it, an old cook stove and a kitchen
table. My dishes, tub, and washboard cost six dollars. Of
course, I forgot to buy a rolling pin and in a few days we had
company for dinner. I wanted to make biscuits but for the life
of me, couldn't think of what to use for a rolling pin.
Finally I thought of an ear of corn, so out I went, found an
ear, washed it and rolled out my biscuits. They were not very
smooth but they tasted good just the same. I made all our
bedding and paid for it out of money I had earned teaching
school. Father made me a potato masher and a butter ladle out
of hard maple and I have them yet.
Our stock
consisted of two horses, a cow, and three pigs. About harvest
time one of our horses died and my husband had to buy another
one. As all his money was tied up in the crop he had to give a
note for the horse. It cost him $100 with interest at ten per
cent. When the year was up he had no extra money after paying
his debts, but he had three hundred bushels of corn which he
turned over to the man at ten cents per bushel. The next fall
he turned over four hundred more bushels of corn at ten cents
a bushel, and finished paying for the horse the following year
with corn at the same rate. In all, the horse cost over a
thousand bushels of corn.
We rented for six years and then
bought eighty acres nearby. On this we lived three years more.
Every fall while we lived in Illinois my husband went with a
threshing machine till snow fell. The first year he received
$1.50 per day for himself and team, and thereafter was paid at
the rate of $2.00 per day. The third fall after we were
married he purchased a machine and horse power of his own, and
ran this every fall, oftentimes up to December. With the money
he made threshing we later purchased our land in Iowa.
In the year
1869 we decided to sell out and move to Iowa where land was
cheaper. My youngest sister and her husband made up their
minds to go with us; and so we sold our farms and livestock,
keeping only a wagon apiece and four horses. My sister had a
baby girl six weeks old and I had three children, the youngest
a girl of ten months, a son three years old, and a daughter
eight.
Just as my father had done nineteen
years before in leaving for Illinois, we placed a covered
frame on each of the wagons, loaded our bedding and a few
cooking utensils, and started for Iowa. It was a great
adventure to the older children just as my trip from New York
had been to me, but the babies were too young to care much
about it. At night we camped out, cooking our meals by a camp
fire. We fried home-cured ham or bacon with eggs, and we
boiled potatoes or roasted them in the hot ashes. Our bread we
purchased from farmers along the way. At night we slept in the
two wagons which were roomy enough for all.
When we
reached the Mississippi River, we found that we had to go down
stream to a little town called Shokokon to take the ferry. It
took half a day before we landed on the Iowa side at
Burlington as the boat had to be towed up the river some
distance.
After a
fifteen days' trip overland we reached Bedford, Iowa, then a
small town with a few frame store buildings and a handful of
small houses. We rented a two-room house ;n town until we
could buy our land and build on it. We bought 200 acres of
fine prairie land four miles west of town, paying $6.25 an
acre for it. To get lumber for a house it was necessary to
haul it fifty miles from Afton where the Burlington railroad
then ended. Our first house on the farm consisted of two
rooms, one for a living room and a bedroom, the other for a
kitchen and dining room. Sometimes I had to make a bed in the
kitchen when company stayed overnight, but although we were
crowded, we were all well and happy so it didn't make much
difference.
Year by year
we worked hard to improve our farm, fencing it, planting fruit
trees, berry bushes and grape vines, and setting out a maple
grove for shade. In a few years we had an abundance of apples,
cherries, peaches, plums, blackberries, raspberries, and
grapes. Our twenty acres of timber land which we bought in
addition to the farm furnished us with the best of oak and
hickory wood for fuel, and posts for fencing.
We saw the
country change almost overnight, it seemed, from raw, unbroken
prairie to a settled community with schools and churches. We
saw the coming of the railroad, the building of roads and
bridges, and the growth of the nearby county seat from a
scraggly village to a thriving, up-to- date town with all the
improvements of a city. We passed through the period of high
prices following the Civil War when calico cost forty cents a
yard and flour $6.00 per hundredweight, then the period of low
prices and money scarcity of the nineties. Our land constantly
increased in value until today it is worth about $300 per
acre.
Whenever I go out to the old
homestead, I picture in my mind's eye the happy days when we
were young and strong, and the children were little tots
setting out across the fields to school. My husband passed
away not long ago at the age of eighty-two and I am past
eighty. I am waiting now as patiently as I can to hear the
call once more "to go West". |
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