Jefferson County Online A part of the IAGenWeb and USGenWeb Projects Hawkins Taylor

In the summer of 1836, Hawkins Taylor, Esq., an early settler in Lee County, but now a resident of Washington City, visited Round Prairie and its settlers, most of whom were his relatives. While the material for this volume was in course of preparation, the attention of Mr. Taylor was called to the undertaking through the columns of the newspapers of Fairfield, and under date of the 6th of November, 1878, he addressed a letter to the Ledger, giving an account of that visit, together with some other reminiscences of that period, from which the following paragraphs are selected:

"In the spring of 1836, Scott and Combs Walker, cousins of mine, James Gilmer, Burton Litton, Hardin Butler, ------ Hardin, and probably some other families that I have now forgotten, settled in the Round Prairie. They were all from Adair County, Ky., the same county that I came from. On the 4th of July of that year, was the first sale of town lots in Salem, Henry County. The sale had been extensively advertised. I attended it. There was no house nearer the town at that time than the timber on Little Cedar, some two miles off. There was a large attendance at the sale for that day, probably fifty people. I ate dinner with Father Street, the proprietor of the town, one of the most intelligent men I ever met. I intended to go to Round Prairie, to visit my friends. There was no road, but the old man Street gave me the course, and I succeeded in reaching Scott Walker's that evening. The Cedar Creek bottom was then one mass of pea-vine, and for some distance the lower part of Round Prairie was a thick mass of black-jack, plum, crab and hazel-bushes. It was accidental that I found my way. Round Prairie was then in foll bloom with prairie flowers, and was a beautiful sight, and a most desirable place for a settlement, as I thought. My friends had all built themselves cabins and had little patches of corn planted in the edge of the timber, and had some prairie broken. There was not a sawed board about their cabins. The floors were puncheons, the doors clapboards, and the roofboards laid on ribs and weighted down with other poles. They all had cows and plenty of milk, corn-bread and butter, and were as content as they could be.

"Hardin Butler was the grandson of John Butler, one of the most noted Indian scouts that ever was in Kentucky. That fall, Hardin, like the children of Israel of old, took his young wife and his household goods and went to his father's, in Illinois, to winter. His father had plenty, and he had raised no crop in Iowa.

"At that day, nearly the entire immigration to Iowa, south of Skunk, crossed the Mississippi River at Fort Madison, and the man who managed the ferry there was a rough, brutal bully. When Hardin drove on the ferry-boat, one of his cattle ran off. He went for the cow, but just as he got to the boat the ferryman cast-off. Butler's wife was not well, and was greatly alarmed at crossing the river, and doubly so when she found her husband was not with her. Butler waited until the boat returned, said not a word to the ferryman, went on to Illinois, spent the winter at his father's, and returned in the spring with his family and stock, and with him he brought two or three of his cousins. After he had all safely landed in Fort Madison, he said to the ferryman, 'You were on this boat last fall,' and gave him a terrific drubbing, his friends keeping all others off until the ferryman hollowed (sic) murder, when they took him off. When he saw how badly the fellow was punished, he said to his friends, 'Why didn't you take me off sooner?' 'Oh!' said they, 'it was an old debt, and we thought you had better pay the interest with the principal.' It was some time before the ferryman was on duty again, but it was the last time he was ever known to treat a passenger on the boat unkindly. It was to him a good lesson, and the people of Fort Madison were greatly delighted that the ruffian had been trounced into a good, accommodating ferryman."

The winter of 1836-37 was a terribly severe one, and the cabins of the settlers were poor protection against the wintry blasts. Snow commenced to fall early in November, and fell to a great depth and continued to cover the ground until the first spring month was well advanced, so that it was with difficulty the men could get around to attend to their domestic duties or prosecute the plans laid out for the "campaign" of the spring and summer. The trails leading toward the settlements in Henry County and the trading-places on the Mississippi River were so blockaded as to render travel by teams almost, if not quite, impossible. Provisions grew scarce, and suffering from hunger followed.

Among the settlers already mentioned, was the family of Amos Lemon (who settled on the farm now owned by Albert Howell), consisting of his wife and five children. Mr. Lemon was a preacher of the Baptist faith, and bore the name of an excellent man. Like many other preachers, however, he possessed but little of this world's goods, preferring rather to lay up his treasures in heaven, "where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." He came to found a home in the land of the Iowas for his wife and little ones, but came too late to raise a crop of any kind. He brought but a small supply of provisions, expecting, no doubt, to be able to visit the trading-places before mentioned to procure provisions as the needs of his family demanded. But the winter came and the snow fell as to render such trips beyond the power of human endurance. Their scanty stock of provisions disappeared day by day until the last crust of bread was gone, and the family compelled to resort to the bark of slippery-elm trees for the means of supporting life. It is said they actually subsisted in that way for several weeks before their condition became known, and relief rendered. The ordeal was so trying that, in pity and anxiety for her suffering, hungering children, the mother's reason partially gave way, and from which she did not fully recover for many a long, weary month.

The first to hear of the pitiable condition of the Lemon family, and to devise means for their relief was Mrs. Lambirth. They had laid in enough of breadstuff to last the two -- her husband and herself -- through the winter, but no more. With a nobleness of heart that was an honor to her sex, Mrs. Lambirth determined to succor the famishing children of her distant neighbor. She reasoned thus: "We have breadstuff sufficient to last Thomas (her husband) and myself until the winter is gone. Thomas is making rails and doing other hard work, and needs bread and meat to preserve his strength. I can live on potatoes. The bread I would eat would feed those little children until other means can be provided to stay their hunger." Having reached this conclusion, she communicated it to her husband the next morning as they sat at their comfortably-supplied table. "Thomas, Lemon's children are starving for bread, and I intent to divide our breadstuff in two parts. One part I will make in bread from time to time as you need it to preserve your strength that you may go on improving our claim. The other part I will carry to Lemon's, that the lives of their children may be saved. I can and will live on potatoes." The plan was carried out to the letter. Other relief soon came, and the children lived to bless the name of their benefactress. Meal after meal Mrs. L. sat at the table with her husband, but she kept her resolution, and never touched the bread she had set apart for her husband, and which she denied herself that the lives of the children of her neighbor might be saved.