With Our Pioneers

HARLAN, FIELDS, BRISTO, SHEAR, HOWE, LANSON, DELONG

Posted By: Karen Brewer (email)
Date: 4/6/2019 at 00:54:58

The Osceola Sentinel, Osceola, Iowa
June 12, 1919, Page 8

With Our Pioneers.

To the Editor of Osceola Sentinel -

I saw in your paper an account of “An Old Timer” J. R. Harlan, who came here in 1853. My father, J. F. Fields and family came to Clarke county in 1851. I was born February 1, 1839, in Putnam county, Indiana near Wabash river. We later moved to Navoo, Hancock county, Illinois, and from there we migrated to Clarke county, moving our wordly possessions in four wagons, one of which was drawn by four yoke of oxen. We arrived at our future home a low place on South River, where, perhaps no white man had ever been before. With no roof for shelter, our bed clothes and other things were drenched with rain. We managed to live in a tent and the wagons until father built a shack from the surrounding timber. There were plenty of Indians, wolves and deer but not a white man within ten miles of us. At one time there were 100 Indians camp near us. We were accompanied by a man and his wife by the name of Bristo who expected to strike the Mormon trail to Salt Lake, but they failed to meet the Mormons at the time and settled on a little stream south of South River. The woman's name was Hannah and for her Hannah's Creek was named. She later went to her people at Salt Lake. At that time Osceola was raw prairie land. John Shear kept a hotel there. He had a little shack to cook in, some covered wagon boxes for bed rooms and a triangle for a dining hall. George Howe had a little shack for a store room and Mose Lanson was also a pioneer of Osceola. These were the only inhabitants of Osceola at the time. Rhonda R. Fields, April 10, 1856, was married to Wm. Delong.
MRS. R. R. DeLong