In the meantime several Missouri families moved into the disputed strip, closer to what they thought was the northern boundary of Missouri. Charles H. SCHOOLER, the first settler in the county, who had come to Missouri from Ohio in 1840, moved his family in August 1845 to what was some day to be Lots Creek Township, Ringold County. though the boundary dispute settlement was still hanging fire, he was sure he had settled in Missouri. The SCHOOLERS were the only white family in the section until James M. TETHROW [or TETHEROW] took a claim nearby in 1848. He, too, believed he was moving into northern Missouri. The two families were not joined by other settlers until a year after the county was established in 1847 and named for Major Samuel RINGGOLD, one of the heroes of the Mexican War. The county was then attached to Pottawattamie County for its civil jurisdiction and was not futher organized for four years.

During this interval a few settlers came in. One of them, Charles K. GRIMES, later the founder of Eugene, arrived in May 1858 and settled in what was to become Tingley Township. The latchstring at the GRIMES' home was always out. Eleven families, at different times, were sheltered at their cabin until they could build homes of their own. Indians, too, felt free to call whenever they liked.

In 1849, the year after GRIMES' arrival, the United States Supreme Court handed down a boundary decision favoring the SULLIVAN line run in 1816. This added about a fourth to Ringgold County's area -- the southern portion that Missouri had claimed. During 1850 iron posts were set every ten miles along the State boundary line separating Iowa from Missouri. Three of them were placed in Ringgold County, one each in Lotts Creek, Riley, and Clinton Townships.

  During 1850 a small group of settlers got together in a sort of caucus, fixed a site of land owned by Jesse THOMPSON four miles south and a little east of Mount Ayr as a prosective county seat, and suggested that it be called Avon. They probably made no formal report, because no further action was taken and the civil orgainization of the county, with its 542 square miles of rolling prairie and woodland, was attached to the newly organized Decatur County in 1851. John ELLIS and Reason WILKINSON were appointed commissioners by the Iowa General Assembly to locate the seat of Ringgold County. They either had heard nothing about the prosepective Avon or else they ignored it, for on June 26 they reported to the Board of Commissioners of Decatur County that they had selected a site four miles south of the center of the county and named it Urbana. They marked the location with a stake, but could give no accurate description since the county had not been surveyed. Later, when an attempt was made to find the stake, it had disappeared. The county land was surveyed in 1854.

After Ringgold had been attached to Decatur [County] for a year, Judge John LOWE of Taylor County ordered that it be made an election precinct of Taylor County, or Schooler Township of Taylor County. Charlres SCHOOLER, Abner SMITH and Jesse HARPER were appointed election judges, and called an election at Lott HOBBS', on Lotts Creek in the southern part of the county. The voters who gathered elected Charles SCHOOLER as justice of the peace, Lott HOBBS as constable and supervisor of the roads, and Littleton ALLEN as a commissioner to locate a road from the State line north across the county.

ALLEN had come to the site of Middle Fork Township in the spring of 1852, and furnished the one authentic instance of slavery in RInggold County. He was a native of Buncombe County, North Carolina, and when he moved north he brought with him two Negro slaves -- a boy and a girl aged about 16 and 14, respectively. He kept the slaves for almost a year, until public disapproval drove him to sell them to a man from near St. Joseph, Missouri, for $1,000. One of Allen's neighbors, Squire Milton S. TRULLINGER, who lived about five miles away, assisted fugitive Negroes in their flight to Canada and freedom. His farm in Middle Fork Township, noted for its flock of pea fowls, was on eof the underground rail road stations in this section.

To the north in Tingley Township, Charles S. GRIMES was also assiting Negro fugitives. Stories told many years later reported that at one time he had six run-away slaves hidden in the corn shocks on his farm, waiting to be taken to the next station, probably Hopeville in Clark (sic, should be Clarke) County.

Immigration was slow until August 1854, when the county land was put on the market at the Government land office at Chariton, Iowa. Occasional settlers, however, did drive in with prairie schooners and spring wagons. In 1854 Luke SHAY, the first Irish settler, built a cabin for his family near the site of what was to become Jefferson. Ten years later he sold this farm and moved to land near the present Maloy. he had come from Ireland only a few years before his arrival in Ringgold County. His family and its branches later became one of the largest landowning clans in the county.

Several families who arrived in 1852, entering the county from the south, found few stopping places -- the chief one a settler's cabin with a store, at the future site of Ringgold City. This was the post office and trading point of the disputed nine-mile strip during the boundary troubles, and one of the oldest settlements in the county.

Dr. Alexander McCARTNEY took a claim three miles southwest of the site of Mount Ayr in 1853, and farmed to supplement the scanty pay of his profession, since the early settlers had little money to spend on doctors. In the autumn Robert RILEY came to Athens Township to settle.

During the spring of 1854 nine families, some of whom had just arrived, were living or camping temporarily in Schooler's Grove, until they could select the land they wanted and build their cabins. Almong there was James C. HAGANS, who brought his family from Illinois along the Dragoon Trace. Many years afterward his Mrs. Clara HARVEY, wrote: The last three days of our trip we never saw a house nor living thing. The only sign of anyone ever crossing the beautiful prairie with its luxurious growth of grass and beautiful wild flowers, was the Dragoon Trace and that was quite plain to be seen. A deep cut wagon road, a very plain path where the drivers walked to guide and guard their teams.

Schooler's Grove, later Ringgold cemetery, already had three graves in it when HAGANS and his family camped there with the WILSONS, the Henry T. MILLERS, the Littleton ALLENS, the BARBERS, the James TETHROWS, and James COFER. (Two of these graves were those of Mrs. SCHOOLER and one of the SCHOOLER children, not far from the cabin.) When the HAGANS family traveled on, they followed the Dragoon Trace to the Grand River, as far as they could. They then turned away from the only trail and cut a road through the timber to the prairie where they intended to live.

Their home soon became a social center, and young and old gathered there for parties -- woodchopping, quilting, house-raising, and candy-making parties. Life in this wilderness was lonely, and these get-togethers broke the monotony.

Shortly after the HAGANS' arrival, the Randolph SRY and the Thomas HUGHES families found farms nearby. At the end of 1854 about 42 families had settled in different parts of the county. Some of them -- James DADY, Saray CASE PATTERSON, and Leonard O. IMUS -- were to remain for the next 75 years.

Tragedy stalked the Horatio M. IMUS family which came to the county in June 1854. The father was drowned while he was driving his wagon across the flooded stream in Marion County. Mrs. IMUS brought her family of nine to the prairie land her husband had chosen as their new home, and with the help of her sons built a pole cabin 12 feet square. Later neighbors helped her to build a larger log house.

The IMUS home was always open to travelers, and Indians frequently visited the family. Although the Pottawattamie had been removed to Kansas about 1845, small groups of them wandered back to hunt and fish along the Grand and Platte Rivers in Ringgold County. Leonard O. IMUS said in later years that these Pottawattamie "Were the only associates of the family at first."

In the Mount Ayr Twice-A-Week News for July 1, 1904, IMUS wrote his reminiscences, recalling that he and his brothers played with the Indian boys -- wwrestling, racing, throwing stones, and playing marbles. He watched the Indian girls as they made little Indian images, riding on ponies with tomahawk and gun, out of glay and set the fantastic figures in the sun to dry. When they were ready, the girls staged battles and hunts with them.

At one time Mrs. IMUS had a team of horses that strayed away. She promised an Indian, who dined at their house as often as he dared, a dollar if he would find those horses, Two days later he brought them back, explaining that he had found them in Union County in the barn of a man who had taken them up as strays. The man had refused to release them, but the Indian hid in the woods until nightfall and then "stole" them back for Mrs. IMUS.

On another occasion Mrs. IMUS and her sons were returning from Union County where they had gone for supplies for themselves and their neighbors. Among the supplies was a jug of whiskey which many people then thought would cure snakebite. Before they reached home, an Indian stopped them and demanded a taste of it. He became so insistent that she gave in at last, when he promised not to take enough to make him "squiffy", his term for "drunk." A little father on a second red man, with a tomahawk and a rifle, appeared. He, too, demanded a drink. After he had taken his gulp, Mrs. IMUS became thoroughly alarmed and turned to her sons with the order, "Drive as fast as you can, boys! The Indians all know we have this whiskey." Her greatest fear was that the Indians would all get "squiffy" and attack the settlers They whipped the horses and went rattling across the prairie only to find a third Indian waiting at their cabin door. The news had spread rapidly among them and had followed the wagon all the way home.

Indians not only visted Thomas CANNY, the second Irish settler, who arrived in 1854, but they worked for him and took sorghum and meat for their pay. At first CANNY weighted the meat, but the Indians refused to recognize weights. His wife then cut it into chunks, and each Indian picked a chunk, saying, "So big meat for day." Luke SHAY'S cabin was visited by them, too. Sometimes when the red man annoyed they settlers too much, everyone hitched up his wagon and the red men were taken to the Iowa border, toward their Kansas reservation.

It was about this time that Chief Che-ma-use, or Johnny GREEN as he was known to settlers from Ringgold to Crawford County, decided to buy some Government land in the county. Johnny was aided in entering his land by a white settler. On April 29, 1854, the United States Government, not knowing he was an Indian, entered it. Johnny GREEN'S patent had been granted May 25, 1855, for 80 acres in section 32, township 70, range 30, near Knowlton. Johnny did not understand that there were any such things as taxes, and went on an extended hunting trip into Marshall County.

When he returned three years later he found that his land had been sold to Henry KELLER for the unpaid taxes: $3.52. Not knowing what to do about that, the Indian left and never came back. He went on to Marshall County where he formed a deep and lasting friendship with the pioneers of that region. Once, learning that a band of Sioux had smeared themselves with war paint and were moving toward Marshalltown from Fort Dodge, Johnny GREEN invited his white friends to accompany him to meet the Sioux. At the south fork of the Iowa River, the parties met. Johnny GREEN told the Sioux that he was leading the whites, who would, if necessary back him up with government muskets, powder, and balls. Impressed with this argument, the Sioux decided not to procced any farther. When Johnny died, in 1868, he was buried in Albion, a few miles northwest of Marshalltown. In 1918 the Historical Society of Marshall County erected a monument to him on a high bluff above the Iowa River, near the Iowa Soldier's Home.

Transcriber's Note: After leaving Ringgold County, Johnny GREEN (1795-1868) continued to live near the Iowa River with his wife and granddaughter until he died. According to legend, when given a blanket for a photograph the white settlers were going to take of him, Johnny insisted on wearing a top hat and a dressy waistcoat instead.

The year after Johnny GREEN bought his land in Ringgold County, some Indians who were roaming through the countryside were accused of murdering a local white man. During the latter part of August 1855 two brothers-in-law, remembered only as HALE and DRIGGS, who had settled with their families in Ringgold County near the Union County line, went out one morning to hunt deer and turkey in the woodlands along the Grand River. About noon, HALE, greatly excited, burst into a neighbor's cabin and announced that DRIGGS had been slain by the Indians and that he himself had barely escaped with his life.

The settlers, aided by a company of militia from Chariton, surrounded the Indians, who were camped on Twelve Mile Creek in Pleasant Township, Union County, and made them surrender and stack their guns. But the ball taken from DRIGGS' body did not fit any Indian gun, though it could have been shot from HALE'S.

At this point, an old Indian called Wanwoxen, called attention, in broken English, to the fact that the man had been shot at short range. His shirt was burned and blackened by the powder. "No Indian there! No Indian there!" declared Wanwoxen. "Indian never shoot when he can strike!" and he touched his tomahawk. Then he threw off his blanket and said, "Indian no shoot DRIGGS. Shoot India if you want to."

After Waxwoxen's pleas, the settlers again questioned HALE. He admittted that although he had heard the shot and had seen DRIGGS fall, he had not actually seen any Indians. No one suspected HALE, and though the settlers allowed the Indians to have their guns again, many still felt so uneasy that the red men were forced to go back to their Kansas Reservations.

After the excitement over the affair had died down, the settlers completely exonerated the Indians of any guilt in the affair. Many years later, in 1908, the improved Order of Red men was established, and the local tribe was named Wanwoxen Tribe, No. 133, in honor of the old Indian.

Back to Ringgold County History, 1942 Index

Ringgold County Iowa History The Iowa Writers' Program Of the Work Projects Administration. Pp. 2-7. 1942.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, January of 2011