GEORGE T. LOY TALKS OF PIONEER DAYS IN CLARINDA VICINITY

Written for the Page County Historical Society by Mabel H. Kenea. •

George T. Loy, of Aurora, Nebr., who was in Clarinda last week visiting relatives, came to Page county in 1851, with his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. William Loy, and seven other children, all girls. George T. Loy and one of these sisters, Mrs. Robert Miller, of this city, are the only persons now living, Mr. Loy believes, who were in Page county at the time his family came here. The trip overland from Platte county, Mo., was made in about four days. That county had been the home of the Loy family for seven years. They had previously lived in East Tennessee, and emigrated to Missouri when George T. Loy was a child of four years. He was eleven years of age at the time of the removal to Page county, so has many recollections of the journey, the most vivid of which is in regard to a tribe of Indians — the Pottawattamies — several thousand in number which the Loy family passed on the way. The Indians were going from Pottawattamie county to lands allotted to them in Kansas by the government. They were dressed in the garb of their tribe, and had with them many ponies.

The Loy family arrived at their destination in Tarkio, now Lincoln township, on Easter Sunday, April 14, 1851. William Loy bought the claim which had been occupied by Judge S. F. Snyder on the southeast quarter of section 10, town 69, range 38, according to the survey afterward made, though at that time no land had been surveyed.  The claim ran to the banks of the East Tarkio stream. At this time Will Lavering lived on land adjoining.  Later in the year 1851 Hiram Litzenburg, who had known William Loy in Platte county, Mo, came from that county and bought Mr. Lavering's claim.   The same year, Joshua Akin, who   married  William Loy's daughter, Catherine, bought land adjoining Mr. Loy and settled there.   To the north on the Tarkio were two families by the names of Phillips and Ripley; to the south there was one family between "the grove," as the vicinity where Mr. Loy lived  was called, and the Missouri line.    This was the family of Alexander Montgomery. On the Nodaway river was Boleware's mill, afterwards owned by James Shambaugh and son, I. W. Shambaugh. This mill was situated about two and one-fourth miles from the site where Clarinda was afterwards located. Between William Loy's and the mill there were only two families, those of Hendrix Lee and Alex Tice, living at Lee's grove, near the present location of the McNutt school house. In the valley of the Nodaway, just south of the present side of Clarinda, was the place of Isaiah Hulbert, the northwest quarter of section 12, town 68, range 38, and north of the town as now laid out, was Henry Farrens, on land now owned by I. N. Millhone and T. M. Millhone.

At that time there were only two or three families living in Hawleyville, which a few years afterward became the largest settlement in the county.

In the spring of 1852 William Loy sowed a bushel and a half of wheat, possibly the first wheat grown in Page county, certainly the first wheat grown in Tarkio township, which township at that time included the present territory of Lincoln, Morton, Grant and Tarkio. The wheat was cut with a sickle at harvest time.

The bread of the early days was made from corn. The method of grinding it was primitive. A tree was cut down, leaving a stump which was ground out for a receptacle for the corn. A sweep and pestle were arranged which ground the corn in the stump. But corn was not always at hand, and Mr. Loy remembers many weeks during his boyhood days when there was no bread of any kind in the house. On one occasion the meat supply was exhausted, and William Loy made a journey of many miles on horseback, probably to Rock Port, Mo., and brought home a side of bacon.

George T. Loy tells of the early days when deer were as thick as grasshoppers, and the settlers enjoyed a great deal of venison. On Christmas day, three years after the Loy family came to this county, William Loy shot three deer in a distance of four miles —between his home and Snake creek— east of the present village of Yorktown. His son, George, and Wolf Miller Sen., took the deer to the Loy home on a horse sled, there being snow on the ground. George Loy thinks that he shot the last deer ever killed in this county about 1878 or 9. It was of course very rare for one of the animals to be running wild then. In the early days prairie chickens were eaten in great numbers. Mr. Loy remembers catching sixteen at one time in a trap made of rails with a swinging door.

Every fall for a number of years the Loy family would see the Indians who came to camp and hunt on the creek. They caught many muskrats. They never molested the white people, though some of the women in the settlers' families were afraid of them. In 1851 there was not a bridge in the county. The horses of the settlers had to swim the streams where they could not be forded, or else as Mr. Loy states "they would have to stay at home." The Nodaway river in the old days used to overflow its banks in the spring of the year, and cover a vast amount of territory, much more than in later years, because, Mr. Loy thinks, that in the days of the prairies grass the ground did not absorb the moisture as it did after it was plowed and cultivated. Mr. Loy remembers when it was possible to go in a canoe from the Isaiah Hulbert farm, previously mentioned, to the Boleware mill on the bluff of the Nodaway.

William Loy had the first blacksmith shop in Page county, located at his home. He went to Maryville, Mo., for a set of tools for the shop, and the settlers came for miles around to get their plows sharpened. William Loy was also one of the first justices of the peace in Page county. Claiborn McBee of Hawleyville had a suit and had to come to Mr. Loy to have it tried.

In the year 1851 William Loy's daughter, Aletha, married Elijah Miller. It was the first wedding on the Tarkio. This not being an organized county at the time, the contracting parties had to go to Sidney for the license. The minister had to come from Sidney also, and the day of the wedding it was feared that he would not get to the Loy home to perform the ceremony that day. He had to come on horseback, and the wedding guests were assembled when he finally arrived at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Mr. Miller had taken a claim and built a cabin near the Loy home. The place was known for many years as Hickory Point.

Mr. Loy's memory of events of sixty-five years ago is remarkable, and he gives in a clear concise way the impressions of his boyhood days—those days wherein was begun the making of Page county history.

[Clarinda Journal, Clarinda, Iowa, Nov 16, 1916]