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Early Days in Grinnell (1914)
Poweshiek County, Iowa

After six strenuous days of staging from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, with only fifteen miles of railroad (from Galena, Ill., to Dubuque), ferrying across the Mississippi at Dubuque and fording the Cedar at Cedar Rapids, (neither stream being as yet bridged) we arrived - my father, an intimate friend of mine from New Hampshire, and myself - at Lattimer's stage station at Sugar Grove, now Westfield, at nine o'clock on Saturday night.

After spending the night on the floor at Lattimer's log cabin, "with I'll not undertake to say how many more", and the prospect for breakfast not being very promising, we decided on a Sunday morning walk to the colony four miles away, since walking was the only way of getting there. There was no road and nothing to prevent our taking a straight line across the prairie. Our destination was soon in plain view,- a few widely scattered shanties which, though small and low, loomed large on the naked prairie. The buildings usually contained but one room, were about six or seven feet high, covered with upright oak boards with roofs of the same and not a shingle, clapboard or chimney on the prairie. The one exception to the prevailing style of architecture was a much larger, more commodious looking structure, toward which we directed our steps. We were met at the door by Mr. and Mrs. Phelps, who gave us a cordial welcome and soon prepared a most appetizing meal,- the best we had enjoyed for several days. The dining room was not only the living room for the house but the only assembly room for the settlement, so that our coming delayed church services for an hour. When breakfast was over, the bell, located on the ground a few rods away, called the people together to listen to one of Mr. Grinnell's practical talks, he just having returned from the East with Mrs. Grinnell and little Katie.

This September 24th, 1854, has always been a red letter day in my life. It was an ideal September day and though to some prairies looked bleak and bare, to me they were always beautiful. I had been away from home for over a year and had never seen any place where I cared to settle, but from the first hour of my arrival here I felt that this was home, and I have never felt any desire to change. Before leaving for home on Wednesday, my father bought, besides two quarter-sections of prairie near town and the Lattimer farm of 110 acres at the grove, the two lots three and four in block fifteen for $25.00,- or, he received one lot free for building and bought the other for $25.00, as two lots were considered none too much for each house. I soon after bought the two lots just south, including Edson lot, on the same terms. Land within one or two miles of the colony was selling for $2.50 an acre while land around the groves with a little timber was selling for $10, as every settler must have a little timber for fencing and for fuel,- coal being not even thought of at that time.

The lumber for the first buildings was cut early in the spring of '54, by a horse-power mill located in the north edge of Sugar Grove, three miles almost directly west from the colony, but that only remained for a few weeks. In November of that year I took an oak log twenty miles south to be sawed by the same mill. During the winter of '54 and '55 the Clarke steam saw mill was built at the edge of the grove on the county line, two miles west and a mile and a half south of the colony.

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The Bailey brothers also built a steam mill soon after, near the northwest corner of town. In the fall of '55 Child and Hibbard built a mill in Rock Creek grove which did a prosperous business for a couple of year but was afterward removed to Brooklyn. In 1856 Mr. T.B. Clark erected a steam flouring-mill where the U.P. church now stands on the corner of State Street and Fifth Avenue. This mill was operated for some years but owing to the difficulty of obtaining water, and the high cost of fuel, it was never a financial success and was finally abandoned.

In the fall of 1856 Beaton & Williams commenced the manufacture of furniture in the building which they had erected adjoining Clark's grist mill from which they obtained power to run their machinery. Among the first things manufactured were two chairs which went to the furnishing of our new house to replace the two borrowed when we commenced housekeeping. One of those chairs, a small rocker, is still doing good service as are a black walnut bedstead and a drop-leaf table made at about the same time. They also took the contract for making the settees for the church to be used in the upper room of the school house and later in the first church building erected in 1860.

J.M. Ladd at the same time fitted up the north half of the same building which they owned jointly as a carpenter shop where he made doors and sash for the most of the buildings put up about that time.

But to return to the place of my arrival, the building since known as the "Long Home". This building has been the object of much curiosity and its location the subject of considerable discussion,- usually by those who never saw it. I think I can speak with some authority, having made it my home for two months and afterwards living almost across the street from it until it was taken away. It was about 14 by 60 and seven feet high, boarded up and down with green oak boards, battened with the same, with doors in the center on the north and south sides and divided into three rooms by low partitions. The middle room was much the largest and was not only the living and dining room, but the general assembly room as well. The west end was subdivided by quilts and carpets into several rooms and occupied as sleeping quarters by the Phelps and Grinnell families, while the east end was fitted up with two tiers of berths for those who preferred those accommodations to a soft spot on the floor. I occupied one of those berths for a short time and then had lodgings in the loft of Mr. Scott's store with Henry Lawrence, Henry Hill and H.M. Hamilton until Mr. Phelps' house on the corner of Broad and Commercial streets was finished, when they kindly allowed me to take quarters there until my father's family came, in May, 1855.

The curved roof of the "Long Home" was formed by bending over green oak boards, and gave very little protection in a heavy shower. A little joke was played on Henry Lawrence one night when he, having secured a dry place under the dining table, was sleeping soundly and some one, coveting his place, quietly removed the table and used it for his own protection, leaving Lawrence to be drenched. The high winds would sometimes tear loose one of the boards on the roof, making a great clatter flapping up and down,- very annoying to nervous people.

The location was about on the south line of Mr. A.B. Cady's lot at 1019 Broad Street, and extended into the street perhaps nearly to the curb line. After it was no longer needed, or had become uninhabitable as a dwelling, it was used by Mr. John Hayes for a blacksmith shop.

Mr. Scott's store was some twenty feet southwest and the bell on the ground several rods south of that. The flag pole, a relic of the first Fourth of July, was not far from the bell to the east and both were sometimes called into service when some one was belated getting home at night, the bell being rung, while on the flagpole a lantern was run up, like a "light-house on the ocean", as there were no roads and the trails were hard to follow in the dark.

From the very first Sunday, morning and evening services, as well as Thursday evening prayer-meetings, were always held, and for sixty years the morning service has never been omitted but once, the exception being the day after the tornado of June 17, 1882. Prayer-meetings were sometimes held in Mr. Scott's store and in private houses, but the Sunday services were always held in the "Long Home" until cold weather, when Mr. G.W. Chambers' grout house on the southwest corner of Main St. and Fifth Ave., being finished, we rented the north chamber and meetings were held there during the winter.

On April 8, 1855, the First Congregational Church was organized in Mr. Phelps' parlor, with twenty members. Of these twenty charter members only two are now living: Mrs. Lucy Bixby Bliss, now of California, and the writer of this sketch, but nearly three thousand others have at different times been added, the present membership being something over nine hundred.

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[Scott's store on the left, and the Long House on the right.]

In the early spring of '55, there being no place for public gatherings, ten of us contributed fifteen dollars each for the erection of a building sixteen by twenty-four where the Stewart Library now stands, for the temporary use of church and school. Mr. Grinnell took the contract for its erection for $150.00, and, though the lumber was still standing in the grove Monday morning, the building was finished ready for meeting the next Sunday, but you will readily believe that by fall, sun and wind had shrunk the green lumber until most of the rain that fell on the roof found its way inside; but as the floor was as open as the roof, it soon found its way out again. The first school was held in this building, with Miss Lucy Bixby as teacher. During the summer of '55 the new school building, 40x40, was erected and the west half of the lower story finished so that we had a comfortable place for school and meeting that winter. This building was put up without any heavy tax on residents, as the district included at least two townships, so that speculators who were waiting for settlers to increase the value of their lands were obliged to pay something toward the improvements.

In June of '56, the State Association of Congregational churches was to meet here and we needed a larger room, so the second story of the school building was lathed and the rubbish swept out one hour before the first session. The next morning some of us went to the grove and gathered several loads of bushes and flowers for decorating the walls, the new lathing forming ideal ground work and making, as we then thought, a very attractive room, and even after fifty-eight years I have never seen any reason to change my opinion.

As the cars only came to Iowa City, we sent the best and only conveyance we had, "lumber wagons", to bring our guests here and return them after the meeting free of all expense. Our accommodations were such as we would be ashamed to offer to guests now, but everyone seemed to have a jolly good time. I have often heard the dignified reverend gentlemen tell how much they enjoyed the whole thing, and especially the seventy-mile ride across the prairie in a lumber wagon. I doubt if there has ever been a more enjoyable Association held in the state. I presume that nearly a half of the residents slept on the floor in those days but nobody complained, and, in fact, most of us had become so used to sleeping on the floor that a bedstead would have been a novelty.

Building progressed slowly for the first year or two, as all finishing lumber, including flooring, as well as all hardware, glass, etc., had to be hauled from Muscatine or Iowa City, which made everything expensive, so that there was some excuse for our first merchant when a customer suggested that five cents seemed rather high for a darning-needle, pleading that "the freights are very high". For the first year I think I averaged about one trip every six weeks, usually to Muscatine, and mostly for building material. The trip generally took about eight days exclusive of Sunday, when I never travelled, and including one day for buying my load and executing my various commissions for others. These included almost everything from lumber, hardware and furniture to dress-goods and millinery. I remember at one time I had made and brought home a white bonnet for a young lady about to be married, and I never knew but it was perfectly satisfactory. There were not many houses between here and Iowa City where I did not stop at one time or another, every house being a hotel from which we were never turned away - though sometimes we wished we had been. There were not many beds, but always room on the floor. We were sometimes caught in the mud and once I was obliged to leave part of my load six miles beyond Iowa City and still more near Marengo, and once a wagon wheel went down under a big load of lumber, detaining me two days.

Until the summer of '56 we were obliged to go to Westfield for all of our mail and there was great rejoicing when the first stage-coach came through here, after we had marked a trail by plowing a furrow on each side for five or six miles to the southeast. For a long time, however, the stage came only on alternate days.

It may not be generally known that about '55-'56 they had quite a flourishing town at Westfield, and from their shelter in the edge of the grove they had some reason for looking down on us poor mortals out here on the bleak prairie three miles from any where, dependent on them for all of our mail. It was their boast that their town would easily beat the Yankee colony.

Fortunately for us, poorly prepared as we were for severe weather, our first winter was very mild, with scarcely any snow and not a day when one could not work out quite comfortably; we flattered ourselves that it was a fair sample of an Iowa winter. But the next year undeceived us, when we had lots of severe weather and several storms. I remember we carried out ten bushels of snow one morning from the unfinished chamber where eight or ten of us had been sleeping. But the worst winter storm in all my experience, and not to be compared with any other, was the first day of January, 1864, when for at least two nights and a day it was not safe to be away from shelter. With the thermometer registering forty degrees below zero, and the wind blowing sixty miles an hour, and the air so full of snow that one could see but a few feet in front of him, you can imagine that it was not very balmy. Cattle in the stock fields were found standing up in the drifts frozen stiff. We had no train or other communication with the outside world from Friday night until the next Wednesday.

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[The apple tree belonging to E.S. Bartlett, which he believed to be the oldest in town.]

Deer were quite plentiful the first year and we often had venison at Mr. Phelps' that winter. I saw quite a herd one day about the corner of Main street and First Avenue. Even the second winter, as I was hauling wood from the grove, seven deer were around where I was loading for several days. We were often wakened in the night by wolves howling around the buildings, and one of them could make noise for half a dozen. I think I killed at least a dozen rattlesnakes that first year, two of them under bundles of grain I had lifted for binding. I never let one escape alive, although I once descended from a load of hay after dark and, guided by the snake's rattles, succeeded in dispatching it with my fork. Prairie chickens and quail were not quite as numerous as a little later, when there were more corn and wheat fields, at which time they became quite a nuisance. In the spring of '64, while on the farm, I caught in two days seventy-five chickens in traps just across the road from the house. There were no rats here for several years, and it was said that there were none in the state; we first heard of them at Oskaloosa and it was not long before they suddenly appeared here, apparently in droves.

Grinnell township was organized in March, 1855, and our first election was held April first in G.W. Chambers' house. There were twenty votes cast. Only two of the voters are now living,- Samuel Harris, now of Colorado, and myself, but by the Presidential election the following November 120 votes were cast, of which 115 were for Fremont and only five for Buchanan. My own vote of course was for the Pathfinder.

As people walk over our fine concrete sidewalks it is hard for them to realize what the first settlers endured in wading through the almost bottomless mud of our streets, especially in the spring, as the prairie grass made very little sod and that little was soon worn out. Sometimes we relieved the situation a bit by hauling in straw to scatter on the most frequented paths, but that soon disappeared. We felt quite citified when the town was able to lay down two parallel lines of plank with a one-foot space between, hoping some time to be able to fill the intervening space. This was a great improvement, especially if one had practiced rope-walking, but was difficult to follow in the night, and not an ideal lovers' walk.

I think that with Mr. Grinnell I can claim the honor of putting out the first trees on the prairie. Very early in the spring of '55, as I had a horse and spring wagon, he and I went to the grove and dug a load without much regard to variety if only they were of a size suitable for planting. Part of these he set on the lot where he was about to build his home, east of the park; the rest I put in front of where I now live. The prairie was not then a congenial home for timber-trees, and though they made a brave struggle for existence, the never-ceasing winds and the prairie sod were too much for them and none of them survived more than two summers. Then in the spring of '56 my brother and I went to Montezuma and got a hayrack load of locust trees from the Wilson grove which, distributed around town, promised fairly until the borers came and destroyed them. Then about '58 or '59 we went into the old fields around the groves and secured a few volunteer cottonwoods, which, with cuttings from the same, were the source of all the cottonwoods which helped tide us over until we had something better. The soft maples were started about the same time, mostly from seed procured from Skunk River. I raised a grove on my farm from seed gathered there and most of the maples in Hazelwood are from that grove. On my return from New Hampshire in the fall of '55, I brought a few apple seeds from my grandfather's orchard which my father planted the next spring, and one tree of that planting, now 58 years old, still stands in my yard. I think it is the oldest tree in town. It now measures four and a half feet in circumference two feet above the ground, and is at least thirty feet high. One year I gathered thirty-five bushels of fairly good apples from it, but of late years, owing to age and neglect, it has not done so well, yet it bids fair to outlive its owner by many years.

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Built in 1854	Built in 1855	Built in 1856
Long Home	S.N. Bartlett	T.B. Clark Grist Mill
Scott's Store	D. Sutherland	J.N. Ladd Carpenter Shop
L.C. Phelps	First Church and School 16x24	Williams-Beston [Beaton?] Furniture
G.W. Chambers	School 40x40	F.W. Morrison Dwelling
Miss Debby Hays	W.N. Ford	E.S. Bartlett Dwelling
Darius Thomas	Jas Hubbard	G.N. Gambell? Dwelling
L.H. Marsh	A. Whitcomb	A. Scott Store
Carlton [Cartton?]	Jas Harris	H. Bliss Store
Rev. Sam'l Loomis	Henry Hill
Rev. Homer Hamlin	J.B. Grinnell
Dr. Thomas Holyoke	Capt Clark
Amos Bixby	John Woodward
	Jas Bodurtha [Bodurtna?]
	T.B. Clark
	A.T. Gillette

Of the few houses built in '55 and standing through the years upon the same site without much change, the last has just been removed when the Clifton(?) house at 811 Fifth Avenue was taken away. This house was built and occupied for several years by Darius Thomas, a teacher from Maryland who later moved to Newton and thence to Carthage, Mo., where he died a few years ago. There is a little personal incident connected with the building of that house which I cannot refrain from mentioning here. When I came to Iowa, I did not know that I had a relative or even an acquaintance in the state, but it appears that a cousin in Illinois, one of my most intimate boyhood friends, had at about the same time settled in Story county, and, learning that I was here, had immediately hitched to his farm wagon and come the nearly two days' drive to call upon me. He surprised me shingling the north side of that house. It would seem now a sad waste of time to spend four days upon the road in a lumber wagon just to call upon a friend, but you must remember that automobiles and motorcycles were not even thought of, there was not a mile of railroad in the state, and there were probably not three buggies in Poweshiek county. I wonder if you realize how many things we count necessities now were unknown when I was young. The list of them would be almost endless but would include such common things as stoves and furnaces, hot and cold water in houses, bathrooms and sanitary closets, electric lights and telephones, postage stamps and envelopes, fountain pens and typewriters, matches and electric flat-irons, fly screens, refrigerators and artificial ice, sewing machines, photographs, phonographs, trolleys and automobiles, rubber-tired buggies and rubber overshoes, anaesthetics of all kinds, machinery for farm and household use, and oh! there is no end to the list, for the whole face of the industrial world is changed for the better since I was a boy. Is it possible that the next eighty years will see so great a change?

When you think you are having a hard, tiresome journey in a Pullman sleeper with dining-car attached, with through ticket and baggage checked to your destination, just remember how we travelled sixty years ago. I made the trip between here and New Hampshire three times before sleeping or dining cars were invented, and when if I could have a whole seat to myself I thought I was travelling in luxury and often had a good night's sleep. Tickets could be bought and baggage checked only from one important point to another, often causing great inconvenience when baggage did not arrive on the same train. No provision was made for meals and passengers were lucky if they secured one square meal a day.

I may perhaps venture to relate a little personal experience of my own. When I went back to New Hampshire in November, 1855, to escort a certain young lady here, I took the stage at Westfield on Monday evening (Monday not being our day for the stage). I went by way of Montezuma, Iowa City and Muscatine; then up the river to Rock Island, where we struck the first railroad Wednesday evening. This brought us into Chicago soon after midnight, where I was obliged to find my way through unlighted and unpaved streets for a mile between depots. I do not think I saw a person on the streets of Chicago that night except two men a short distance ahead of me. From here my ride was uneventful except for a stone which came through the window over my head just as I was falling asleep after leaving Detroit.

We arrived at White River, Vt., at about three o'clock Saturday afternoon and here the train came to a full stop, not to start again until Monday at the same hour. Just think of it! Within forty miles of my destination and no train for two full days, and that on the main line from Canada and northern Vermont to the south. That road certainly observed the Sabbath, and I am glad to be able to say that I attended church, though I did have to cross the river into New Hampshire to do it. Nearly all railroads laid up over Sunday then, but not all made so long a stop. This trip, which can now be made in a little more than two days, in comparative comfort and with scarcely an exchange of cars, took me just seven days,- with innumerable changes of cars and much re-checking of baggage. When I returned, about the middle of December, the railroad was completed from Davenport to Wilton Junction and a construction train of flat cars brought us to within six miles of Iowa City, where the stage met us for the remainder of our journey.

Our first breaking-plows would certainly be a curiosity to modern people. They were huge affairs, often turning a furrow two feet or more in width and drawn by three or four - or sometimes more - yoke of oxen and supported by a frame on wheels with a lever to regulate the depth, so that when it was started it required no more attention until the end of the furrow was reached. The prairie sod was full of roots and hard to cut, necessitating frequent visits to the blacksmith shop to have the share drawn out and much more frequent filings to keep it sharp.

The first death in our prairie settlement was that of a Mr. Hale, the aged father of Mrs. Deacon Bixby, who, with his wife, had just arrived from Maine. He was buried on the prairie east of where Professor Almy now lives, the grave being dug by Henry Hill and myself. His wife was very soon laid beside him, but both were later removed to Hazelwood.

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[This must be the bronze tablet, mentioned at the opening of this article.
If someone has better copies of these pictures, please send them to me.]

The first burial in our now beautiful Hazelwood cemetery, then a bleak hillside, was that of Mrs. Christiana Patterson, a Scotch woman living on the prairie three miles west and one mile north of town. She was a charter member of the church and, though living so far away, she seldom failed to walk in on Sunday morning. Her husband was working in the coal mines of West Virginia and had returned home after an absence of some months. She died very suddenly in the night and I have never forgotten the dreary scene the next morning when I took Mrs. Deacon Ford out to the assistance of the bereaved family. It was a bitter cold, windy day, and with the wife and mother lying dead at one side of the scantily furnished log cabin and the husband and children at the other side of the one room, shivering over the cook-stove with quilts hung around at their backs, trying in vain to keep warm, a more dreary spectacle could hardly be imagined.

I suppose there is nothing more nerve-racking than to know that some danger threatens without knowing what it is nor how to avert it. Is it any wonder that the people of Grinnell were frightened in the spring of '62 when an epidemic of spotted fever broke out here and for several days none of our physicians here or from neighboring towns, were able to diagnose the disease? I think there were real heroes and heroines among those who hastened to care for the dying and dead, not knowing how contagious it might be, nor if they themselves might be dead in a few hours. There is no doubt that one young man was scared to death, as he was apparently perfectly well just before noon when he looked in at the door where a man was dying. He went home, took to his bed and was buried at four o'clock the same day. The first cases were the severest, most of them resulting fatally; the later ones generally recovered after a long illness.

On the organization of the town in March, 1855, a determined effort was made by a few dissatisfied persons, headed by Messrs. Hamilton and Gillette., to have another name - which I do not now recall - substituted for Grinnell, but Mr. Grinnell's friends rallied to his support and gave him the honor which so evidently belonged to him. Then a strong effort was made by those owning land adjoining town on the south to have the business houses locate south of the projected railroad, and when, by persuasion ans a good bonus, the Reed Hotel and Scott and Bliss Bros. stores were located there in the best buildings in town, it looked as though they might succeed. But Mr. Grinnell and his friends were too strong, and gradually business drifted to the north side. When Iowa College was to be removed here in 1859 the same parties used all their influence to have the buildings located on the liat(?) east of the Iowa Central freight depot, but again Mr. Grinnell's influence and generosity in donating land gave us our beautiful campus and spacious college grounds. While Mr. Grinnell's warmest friends will not deny that he had some glaring faults, no one can justly accuse him of being a mercenary man and, while all honors should be given to his good and able coadjutors,- the reverend Hamlin, the good physician Holyoke and others, his was the dominant spirit and to him more than any other we are indebted for the best town in the best state in the best country in the world, and I am most thankful to have had even my humble share in the making of it.

E.S. BARTLETT.

~ Transcribed by William Haloupek,