Jefferson County Online A part of the IAGenWeb and USGenWeb Projects In the Wilderness Crossing Cedar Creek Mrs. Lambirth in Nettles

The teams and wagons that hauled the goods and effects of Tilford, Lambirth and Walker from Morgan County, Ill., were the first to penetrate this part of Iowa. There were but very few, if any, established roads in any part of Henry County, and certainly there was not a wagon trail this side of Cedar Creek. Hundreds of the first pioneers to the "Forty-Mile Strip" of Iowa had no definite point of settlement in view when they left their old homes to found new ones in the Far West beyond the Mississippi; but, bold, fearleas (sic), determined and resolute, they pushed on and on until they found a locality to suit their fancy, and then pitched their tents or lived in their wagons -- those great, schooner-like concerns of the Conestoga (Pennsylvania) kind, that would hold about as much as an ordinary canal-boat -- until cabins could be reared.

When the pioneer cavalcade, if such it may be called, reached the banks of Cedar Creek, it came to a sudden halt. The water was high. There was no ferry. The banks were steep. No wagon had ever essayed to cross before, and it became necessary to cut the banks down so the teams and vehicles could descend on the one side and ascend on the other. The work was soon accomplished on the one side, and then, mounting horses, two or three of the men, with spades in hand, crossed to the other side and cut away the bank. This completed, the men crossed back. Lambirth's wagon, drawn by three yoke of cattle, was in the advance, and was first driven down into the water. The rear end of the wagon-cover was loosened and turned back, and Mrs. Lambirth raised to a seat to be carried over. Joseph Tilford sat in the forward end of the wagon to guide the wheel-oxen, and Mr. Lambirth rode a horse by the side of the forward cattle to guide them to the crossing. When the opposite bank was reached, Mr. Lambirth lifted his wife down from the place to which he had lifted her but a few moments before, and carried her out on the bank and sat her down on a log in the midst of nettles as high as a man's head. And thus it came to be recorded that she was the first white woman to cross Cedar Creek. Her cousin, Mrs. Walker, the wife of Samuel Scott Walker, was in the next wagon, and was the second white woman to cross that stream. The frontier cabins were reached soon afterward, where the struggles, hardships and privations of pioneer life were commenced in earnest. As an instance of their isolated condition, Mrs. Lambirth relates that it was nine and a half months after their arrival in Round Prairie Township before she saw a white woman, except Mrs. Walker, who accompanied her from Illinois.

It may be explained here that Mr. Tilford did not bring his family with him when he came with Lambirth and Walker, but left them at their home in Illinois, where they remained until 1840, although he continued to occupy and improve his claim. He made frequent visits to his family, but raised a crop on his Iowa claim every year from 1836 to the time of his death, December 28, 1860.