LOUISA COUNTY, IOWA

Submitted by Lynn McCleary May 11, 2022
(transcribed as written)

Page 11

MY FATHER WAS A CLERK IN THE FIRST LEGISLATURE

    In Columbus City township in 1837 a man named Alfred Koonts settled east of Columbus City on Long Creek. Everyone was out of meal or flour and the nearest mill was forty to fifty miles by ox team, so it took a long time to go to mill. People were living on venison, quail, etc. Corn ripened and Koonts had a good crop (sod corn). He sold to the neighbors, measuring the corn in a blanket, at six cents a bushel. He had cultivated his corn with one ox, and a home made plow with a horse hoof for a plow point. There was no wheat and all were hungry for bread. Oher men joined in the trip and went across the Mississippi into Illinois to mill, a long trip. There were nearer mills but they were run by water power and in the winter could not be operated, making it necessary to travel to a mill operated by steam.

    The old town of Columbus city was built in 1846. A double log house occupied by Adam Reister was the tavern. Several homes were built of clapboards and some log cabins, three of which were still standing in 1862. The tavern kept by Reister was the only between Burlington and Iowa City. The first day he had ten boarders, men from the east who had heard of the new town and came to prospect for business and enter land. They came from Massachusetts, Vermont New York; also from Kentucky and Mississippi; all educated and refined men looking for new homes. Adding the Reister family of father, mother and seven children, it made a big houseful. The price charged for one night’s lodging, supper, breakfast and horse fee, was 37 ˝ cents.

    That Fall, rain destroyed the wheat and the winter was hard and cold. Bread gave out and they had to grate corn on a homemade grater – a piece of tin with holes punched in with a nail and fastened to a board. Each boarder was expected to grate enough meal to last him twenty-four hours. Hominy, pumpkins, potatoes and wild game was the bill of fare. It was forty miles to Burlington for groceries and other goods.

    To make the hominy, they set a block of wood on end, bored some slanting holes in it, put fire to it and burned it out, then scraped it clean making a round bowl. The pestle was an iron fastened to a stick, and with it the corn was pounded into meat. Salt was high priced and scarce.

    My father was a clerk in the first Iowa legislature and rode to Iowa City horseback. We children were interested in seeing him prepare for the trip. It was winter so he wore two good coats, a pair of wool leggings (a large square of flannel wrapped around his legs and tied at the ankles and shove the knees with tape), overshoes made of buffalo skin with the hair inside (not very pretty, but warm), a blanket over his horse under the saddle, then when he was in the saddle another blanket over his …

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… knees, leather mittens with the hair inside, and a cap with ear-tabs. So equipped he was off for a thirty mile ride over an Indian trail, an all day ride.

    This was the usual costume of the circuit-riders preachers, also the doctors, in 1846 – a novelty outfit now.