Iowa
History Project
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Hardly had
the wigwams of the Indians disappeared(39) from the Black Hawk Purchase on the west bank of the Mississippi
River before the first Quaker appeared. In the summer of 1835 a heavy wagon
covered with white canvas and laden with all of the necessities for a long
journey, might have been seen wending its way out from the lonely pine-clad
hills of South Carolina. The ox-goad held in the hand of the driver, Isaac
Pidgeon, was pointed towards the distant home of his sister who had earlier
married and moved to Rushville, Schuyler County, Illinois. From her he had
received many letters telling of the great inrush of settlers into the land
across the Mississippi, and, like many others who had risked their fortunes
before him, he decided to try life in the western wilds. It was with this in
view, therefore, that he sold his small plantation for some four hundred
dollars, hitched his oxen to the wagon, and with his family of a wife and seven
children left forever the scenes of slavery and embarked for the West.(40)
Fifty-two long
days the faithful oxen trudged onward with their heavy load, arriving at their
first destination in the midsummer of 1835. Leaving his wife and children with
his sister at Rushville, Isaac Pidgeon crossed the Mississippi, pushed his way
about thirty miles into the “back country” of the new purchase, and there put
up sufficient prairie hay for the cattle which he intended to bring form the
Illinois side. This done he returned to Rushville, and late in the same fall
recrossed the Mississippi to Iowa with his family and all his possessions.
Proceeding inland to the place where he had put up his winter’s supply of hay,
he located a claim on what is now Little Cedar Creek, about a mile and a half
to the south of the present town of Salem in Henry County.
In 1841 the
following account appeared in John B. Newhall’s Sketches of Iowa:
About six
years ago, two plainly dressed travelers might have been seen on horseback,
slowly wending their way westward from the Fort Madison ferryboat towards the
wide and pathless prairies of the “Black Hawk purchase.” The country was then
new and uninhabited: they traveled onward from grove to grove, and from prairie
to prairie, until the shades of night were closing in upon the long summer’s
day…
When morn at
length arrived, while one of our travelers prepared the breakfast, the other
perambulated the surrounding country to spy out the beauties of the land…Having,
at last, arrived at a beautiful elevation of the prairie, and surveyed on every
hand nature clad in her most attractive attire, the bright sun chasing away the
vapory mist of the morning, causing the dew-drops to glisten like diamonds on
the grass,…Aaron Street returned to his companion and said, “Now have mine eyes
beheld a country teeming with every good thing…Hither will I come with my
flocks and my herds, with my children and my children’s children, and our city
shall be called Salem, for thus was the city of our fathers, even near unto the
seacoast.” (41)
In view of
the accepted history of the community, and the records in the possession of the
Pidgeon family, it would seem that Isaac Pidgeon was not the unnamed companion
of Aaron Street on the visit above described, but hat he had come alone and was
the first to appear. From evidence extant it appears that these two men first
met while Aaron Street and his daughter Polly Pugh were casting about in that
locality for a place of settlement—though it is possible that this was the expedition
an account of which was subsequently related to Mr. Newhall. Thus thrown
together in this far western country, both of them Friends from different
sections of the East, the two men conceived the idea of founding a Quaker
community in the Iowa country; and in order to carry their plan into execution,
it was decided that Polly Pugh and her four children were to remain with the
Pidgeon family while Aaron Street returned to Indiana to bring hither his
family and effects. During his friend’s absence, Isaac Pidgeon raised a log
cabin on the banks of the Little Cedar Creek and prepared for the approaching
winter; and this, so far as is now known, was the first Quaker home to be
founded on Iowa soil.(42)
Upon the return
of Aaron Street with his family, he and Isaac Pidgeon, together with Peter
Boyer, a Quaker who had recently arrived, proceeded to carry out their plan for
a Quaker settlement by the laying off of a town-site on land staked out as
claims by Aaron Street and Peter Boyer. Being poorly prepared for the duties of
a surveyor they used a long grape-vine for a measuring rod, it is said, cutting
notches in it for the desired widths of the streets and alleys. The streets
were laid off at right angles to each other, and in the center of the town
there was left a space of about two acres for a public square. The town was
named Salem, the fourth by that name founded by the family of Streets.(43)
The new-born
town of Salem was not long in attracting other settlers to its site and its
fertile and healthful environs. In the fall of 1836 there came a number of
Friends on horseback from Randolph County, Indiana. Upon hearing of the
founding of Salem they visited the locality, were much pleased with it, and
recrossed the prairies of Illinois with the glad news to those who anxiously
awaited their return.
As soon as the
springy prairie sod would bear the weight of their heavy wagons, on the 10th
day of May, 1837, a caravan of nine families—all but one members of the Cherry
Grove Monthly Meeting—moved out from the neighborhood of Williamsburg, in the
northern part of Wayne County, Indiana, bound for the Black Hawk Purchase. In a
little sketch written when his life’s toils were well-nigh ended, Henry W. Joy,
a member of the party, states that the caravan was made up of Reuben, Henry,
and Abram P. Joy, Dr. Gideon, Stephen and Thomas Frazier, Lydia Frazier, Thomas
Cook, Levi Commack, and their families. All that can be learned form the account
written by the unsteady hand of this aged pioneer is that they had “considerable
of stock” to drive, that it was “a long and tedious journey”, and that they “landed
in the neighborhood of Salem the “17th of 6th” month,
1837.(44)
It would be
interesting to know the rest of the story: how the wagons creaked beneath their
heavy loads, and how the oxen toiled across the plains; how the families
grouped themselves about the cheerful camp-fires in the evening; how the
children were lulled to sleep at night in their tired mothers’ arms, sheltered
only by the white canopy of the pioneers’ wagons; how the sharp bark of the
dogs made answer to the desolate howl of the wolves upon the lonely prairie,
while the stars kept their silent watch; how the golden-petaled helianthus
faced them all the way, how nature’s guide, the compass plant, stretched its
arms to the north and to the south; and how the fern-like rattlesnake-master
warned them of the dangers lurking in the greensward. These and a thousand
other details we would like to hear, but time has removed every member of that
caravan who might have told the tale.
Since this first
memorable arrival but four weeks had passed until a second caravan might have
been seen coming slowly over hill and dale and approaching Salem from the
eastward. Who were these strangers? The broad brimmed hats of the men and the
plain bonnets of the women were sufficient insignia to insure the travelers a
hearty welcome in the new community, where they were received with open arms.
It was soon known throughout the village that Stephen Hockett, and Harrison
Hoggatt, all with their families and all but one members of the Society of
Friends, had arrived. Eager questions no doubt were asked on every hand, and
good cheer ran free as these newcomers were cared for in the humble dwellings
at Salem. As soon as possible they selected desirable lands, and from the
native timber erected log cabins. When food ran short, it is said, some one or
more would go “75 or 80 miles to Ill. For Provisions” without a murmur.
During the
memorable fall of 1837 other Quakers arrived at Salem. The Fraziers and Joys,
the Hocketts and Hammers, together with the Beards, Hoskinses, Johnsons,
Osborns, Thomases, Teases, Canadas, Lewellings, Wilsons, Jessops, Hiatts,
Emerys, Hinshaws, Mendenhalls, Cooks, Pidgeons, Stantons, and Commons, all
found their way to the new settlement beyond the Mississippi.(45) By the middle of August, in the second year of its history, so
strong had grown the communal interest at Salem and so keen was the desire for
a place where the settlers might regularly come together for worship that the way
was made open, and in the hospitable home of Henry W. Joy, every week for over
a year these sturdy pioneers came together for worship.
On account of
the continued influx of settlers it soon became apparent that steps must be taken
not only for the establishment of a regularly recognized meeting but also for
the erection of a meeting-house of adequate capacity. A petition was accordingly
sent to the Vermillion Monthly Meeting in eastern Illinois for the setting up
of a Preparative Meeting at Salem; but before the request could be granted it
was amended with an appeal for the establishment of a Monthly Meeting. The
committeemen sent out to investigate the petitions of this remote settlement
were well satisfied with what they saw in the “Wisconsin Territory”, and
through their report, borne to the Western Quarterly Meeting at Bloomfield,
Indiana, the request was granted.
In the month of
October, 1838, Abraham Holaday, Thomas Ruebottom, Jeremiah H. Siler, Henry Pickard,
and Achsah Newlin appeared at Salem as members of the committee directed to set
up the new meeting, and by their authority and in their presence the meeting
was opened under the following minute: “Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, first
opened and held in Salem, Henry County, Iowa Territory, on the 8th day
of the 10th Month 1838”. Then the meeting proceeded to conduct the
first regular business of the Society of Friends west of the Mississippi.(46)
Interestingly
intermingled are matters of spiritual and temporal concern in the records of
this pioneer Quaker settlement beyond the Mississippi. At one moment the
Monthly Meeting would direct a committee to deal with a member “for getting in
a passion and useing unbecomeing
language”,(47) and then
proceed to hear the report of a member who had taken up a collection of $17.18 ¾(48) for the purchase of a stove “by direction of friends of this
neighborhood…before this meeting was established”.(49) Although religion and the business
of the church were the Quaker’s chief concern, it was found, at least on one
occasion, absolutely necessary to adjourn the Monthly Meeting owing to the
absence of “so many of its members who are in attendance of the land sales at Burling[ton]”,(50) where they
had gone to bid in at public auction the lands which they had staked out as
claims.
As has been
seen, one of the most pressing needs of the new community was for a proper
place for worship. On the very day that the Monthly Meeting was established a
committee composed of Henderson Lewelling, Aaron Street, John Hockett, and Enos
Mendenhall was entrusted with this matter, and on November 24th they
were able to report that “they have attended to the appointment and have rented
a house [valued at $350.00], at 7 per cent of cost of said house.”(51) The renting
of this property was, however, but a temporary arrangement, for in May, 1839, a
lot of five acres was purchased for $25.00, and arrangements were made for the
erection of a “hewed log meeting house with two rooms 22 feet square each, a
roof fixed with rafters and laths and covered with three feet boards. The house
to be finished off on as cheap a plan as can be, to be made tolerably comfortable”.(52) It was of
the congregation in this house, erected at a cost of “about $340.00”, that John
B. Newhall wrote in 1841:
Spending the Sabbath,
“first day,” there last summer, I attended meeting in company with my venerable
friend [Aaron Street]; there were more than 300 in attendance, and it was
estimated rather less than over the usual number. We had an excellent discourse,
an “old-fashioned Quaker sermon.” There, too, were the venerable and devout old
patriarchs, ranged along the “high seats,” some whose whitened locks told of
threescore years; and there, too, were the motherly-looking matrons, with plain
caps and drab bonnets, sitting in solemn silence, and devoutly waiting upon
Him, whom they profess to worship in spirit and in truth.(53)
When the
aged folk of this interesting community assembled for their first “Old Settlers
Meeting” in 1883, and lived over the events of almost fifty years—years full of
both joys and hardships—a few facts seemed to stand out conspicuously. William
K. Pidgeon had the distinction of being the oldest living settler, having come
to Salem with his father, Isaac, in the fall of 1835. Isaac M. Hoggatt was
greeted as the first child born in the village. Peter Boyer, it was remembered,
kept the first hotel. Aaron Street “was the first to handle Uncle Sam’s mail”.
R. Spurrier was praised as being Salem’s pioneer merchant: while Thomas Frazier
was reverenced as the first minister in their midst.(54) Thus
through the drowsy summer days and the long winter evening the easy-going
people of this quaint old Quaker town recount the events of the past, seeming
never to tire of the story of the early days; while the outer world all but
forgets that there is a Salem or that such were the beginnings not only of Iowa
Quakerism, but of the Commonwealth of Iowa as well.
End Notes:
39- Joliet and Marquette were the first white men to have touched Iowa.
They landed near the mouth of the Iowa River on June 25, 1673. See Weld’s Joliet
and Marquette in Iowa in the Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol.
I, p. 3.
40- For a brief but excellent sketch of the Black Hawk War, see
Pelzer’s Henry Dodge, Ch. V.
41- Newhall’s Sketches of Iowa, or the Emigrant’s Guide, pp.
141, 142.
42- During the four years while the writer has been engaged in this
work he has made numerous visits to Salem and has personally interviewed nearly
all of the early settlers who were still living in the vicinity. He also very
carefully examined what accounts of the founding of the town there were in the
hands of Isaac Pidgeon, JR., and others, and he feels satisfied as to the
conclusions drawn.
43- “It is somewhat remarkable that the father of the present Aaron
Street emigrated form Salem, New Jersey, to Salem, Ohio; form Ohio, father and son
came and built up Salem, Indiana; from Salem, Indiana, the subject of this
article came and built up Salem, Iowa.”—Newhall’s Sketches of Iowa, p.
142.
44- The sketch by Henry W. Joy here referred to bears no date, but
it is apparent from his introductory statement that it was written towards the
close of his life. He died at Salem on November 25, 1883, at the age of
seventy-five years.
45- At the Monthly Meeting held at Salem on February 23, 1839, that
meeting received in lieu of certificates of membership a list of 193 persons
from the Vermillion Monthly Meeting who had settled in the neighborhood of
Salem. See Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, 2 mo. 23rd,
1839, pp. 11-14.
46- Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, 10 mo., 24th,
1838, p. 5.
47- Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, 11mo., 24th, 1838,
p. 5.
48- Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, 12 mo., 29th,
1838, p. 6. The fact that there was three-fourths of a cent in the collections
made by Henderson Lewelling is explainable by the likelihood that there were
three picayunes in the offering taken. The picayune was a small silver coin
valued at six and one-fourth cents, which was in circulation before the
introduction of the decimal system into the United States coinage in 1857. This
coin was known in New England as a “fourpence”, in Pennsylvania and Virginia as
the “fip”, and in Louisiana as the “picayune”.
49- Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, 12 mo., 29th,
1838, p. 6.
50- Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, 11 mo., 24th,
1838, p. 4.
51- Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, 10 mo., 8th,
1838, p. 4.
52- Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends, 5 mo., 25th,
1838, pp. 19, 20; 5 mo., 30th, 1840, p. 44.
53- Newhall’s Sketches of Iowa, pp. 143, 144.
54- Salem Weekly News, February 24, 1898.