|
Shelby County |
CHAPTER XI -- CITIES, TOWNS AND VILLAGES, PAST AND PRESENT (CONT'D)THE COUNTY SEAT AND PRESENT TOWNS AND VILLAGES. (CONT'D)PRIMITIVE DAYS.For instance, in the seventies, dogs were plentiful in the town. A local item in a town paper reads: "The night watch had to shoot into a pack of dogs last Thursday night to keep them off of him." George D. Ross, editor of the Harlan Herald, on May 8, 1879, speaking of dogs in town, said: "There are just eighteen thousand dogs that need killing in this town and we won't come down on the count." A Harlan paper of December 11, 1879, says: "Large droves of dogs, long in the habit of running wild in the tangled and impenetrable jungles of the public square, occasionally come forth from their secret hiding places and carry off the unprotected animals and eatables." In February, 1874, the town cows frequently mistook the court house for a barn and surprised the county officers by walking in uninvited. Late in December, 1876, a live deer came galloping into Harlan from the north. In 1876 heavy rains had washed a number of gutters in the streets on the public square, making travel very inconvenient. The Shelby County Record calls the attention of the road supervisor to this situation. In 1877 residents of Harlan would occasionally turn furrows in the streets to scour their plows. So late as November 15, 1877, Harlan was yet very much of a local range for the town cow, since a paper of November 15, 1877, says: "The time has arrived when the town cow stands on her hind legs and helps herself to whatever may be in a farmer's wagon of an eatable nature. The farmer justly considers her a first-class nuisance and thinks she ought to be abated. We cannot blame the cows much, for that is the only way that some of them have to get a living during the winter, still their owners ought to be obliged to keep them up and care for them. If that was done it would save a heap of backhand praying." In 1877 there seems to have been some trouble about the hitching chains in the court house fence, for one of the editors remarks in his paper as follows: "We suggest to the board of supervisors that they cause the lower chain in the court yard fence to be removed and the upper one tightened. That lower chain is of no earthly benefit where it is, as it don't prevent any sort of an animal from going into the enclosure, and it is certainly a great nuisance to those who hitch their teams there. Scarcely a day passes that you can't see a dozen horses with their front feet over it and quite often one becomes entangled and in his efforts to get loose throws himself, which generally results in a broken harness if nothing more." In 1879 the editor of one of the Harlan papers urged the appointment of a night watch, at least through the winter months, to provide better protection against fire. A Harlan paper, under date of March 3, 1881, says: "One year ago the field south of J. M. Long's residence was occupied by corn stubble. Now seventeen good residences and the best church building in the city loom up thereon." Transcribed by John Schulte, March, 2024 from the Past and Present of Shelby County, Iowa, by Edward S. White, P.A., LL. B.,Volume 1, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1915, pp. 233-234. |
 Site Terms, Conditions & Disclaimer |