Iowa
Old Press
DesMoines Tribune
DesMoines, Polk co., Iowa
October 15, 1935
Mrs. C. A. Shepard, 92, Newton Pioneer. [Photo
of the 92 Yr old with her knitting in her lap, included with this
article. The photo caption read, CAME WEST.]
The pioneer romance of a roaming lieutenant and a Cass county
innkeeper’s daughter was recalled Tuesday by Mrs. Christy A.
Shepard, 92, last week, as she sat at her knitting at 1418
Nineteenth st.
Mrs. Shepard, then Christy Drake, whose father greeted each
stagecoach as it drew up to his Grove City hotel, was 19 at the
time, she said. Lieut. W. W. Shepard, injured in a fall from a
ledge in Virginia which prevented his joining in Sherman’s
march to the sea, had resigned from the army and was “going
west” to buy property.
WAGON RIDE.
In Des Moines, Shepard met an old doctor who spoke of his acres
in Cass county and was invited to be a guest. They stayed the
night at the Grove City inn and were driven by Captain Drake the
next day to the doctor’s home, eight miles west. But the
lieutenant did not stay. Instead he rode back to the inn—because
Christy was also riding in the old spring-seat wagon. In two
months they were married.
NO INDIANS.
Mrs. Shepard, who long since has quit knitting stockings and
mittens for her children but still knits wash cloths, was born in
1843. Her father moved the family by covered wagon to Newton,
Ia., when Christy was 10. “In all the early days, I never
did see an Indian. I don’t know where they could have been.
The main problem was keeping the wolves from the door—literally,”
she said. Mrs. Shepard’s father built a cabin at the edge of
Wild Cat grove on the Skunk river. It had no windows or doors—a
blanket was hung across the doorway.
VISIT BY WOLVES.
While her father drove to Muscatine for doors, the wolves came,
clawing at the blanket. Her mother built a fire in the center of
the little cabin near the doorway and kept it bright during the
night as her children huddled in the corners. Mrs. Shepard, now a
great grandmother, remembers clearly those early Iowa days. Seven
weeks were necessary for the covered wagon to travel from Ohio to
Newton, now a two-day journey by automobile, she said.
[transcribed by L.Z., November 2017]