Early Settlers from 1837
Last updated 06 Oct 2021
Below are excerpts from Burrell's History of Washington County, Iowa (1909) pages 77-78 on some early settlers in Washington County. This was transcribed by Norma Jennings.
1837. Few came this year, on account of the grouchy Indians. But Silas Washburn and Morgan Hart reached Brighton. Washburns claim included the mill site, and he made a cabin on the national bank lot. They slept in their clothes, on prairie hay, in a shanty, that winter, and did not have carpet, lace curtains, piano, silverware, napkins and finger bowls, but they had health plus. Hart became a prominent man, serving with superb common sense on the board of commissioner.Josiah Smart kept a trading post on the north side of Crooked Creek and traded with the Indians, and left when they did. For several years a large section of tree bark, bearing Indian picture writing on its inner surface, lay on his store roof, and finally rotted. If only some one of archaeological tastes had preserved it, given it to the county historical society, it would now be worth its weight in bank notes, if not in gold. It is said that Smart's wife was a full-blooded squaw. She did not organize the first W.C. T. U., in this county, and rarely wore a blue or white ribbon. She advertised in her own proper, or improper, person her husband's goods. The choicest he kept locked in a valise, but she is charged with purglarizing that, and then proceeded to publish the glad tidings of greater joy to the bucks and squaws and they raised more hades than maize. If all is true they say about her, she was the first "horrid example" in our history. When she was jagged with this sort of locomotor ataxia she could walk seven Indian trails at once, whether they ran parallel or at right angles, and give the war-whoop in solo or chorus. I shall always regret that editor Heacock never met this ornament of her sex.
J. W. Neal came to Crawford township and built a cabin south of the bridge across the branch south of Crawfordsville. there was a block house or fort that he shared the first night, and seven families had gathered there, but six of them moved out. Neal kept guard all night, but the Indians swarming all around made no attack. Other comers were Isaac Pence and family and his son Samuel and family, with the Gobles, and settled in Crawford on a claim sold by John Drake for two hundred dollar, improvements thrown in; and Thomas and John Caldwell, Henry Osborne, Wm. Huston, James McElroy, Wm. Wooley, Wm. Kinnear, Wm. Kinsley, David Sykes, Nathan Griffith. Mr. Kinsley started a nursery in '37 or '37 and many an orchard was its offspring.
Wm. I. Harvey located on what was later better known as the Stewart farm on the Brighton road a mile from Washington.
The scene shifts to English river, where there was more brush. Joseph Edelstein, a Swiss, made a cabin, but it burned before the family came from Ohio, and they holed up in a cave awhile. He was a farmer and wagon maker, and being a Catholic, he attracted settlers of that faith.
In the fall James, Thomas, and Samuel Watters and Joseph, Hiram, Benjamin and Robert Wasson went hunting on English river in Lime creek township, and in camp noted a promising mill site, made a claim and cabin and left Hiram Wasson to hold the fort. A few weeks later, N. W. and Daniel McFarland came, staked claims, including the mill site and land to the east, built a cabin and took squatter sovereignty. But the first set of men won out, and built a mill the next year on the north side of the river. It burned in '48, was rebuilt and used as a saw mill till '56. The present mill was erected in '50 and does a good business.