Clinton IAGenWeb

WHEATLAND: Fifty Years Ago 

Random Notes

The following narrative is told by a present resident of Wheatland and shows that the good times enjoyed in those early days are still fresh in the minds of the surviving pioneers.

 “I did not take up my home in Wheatland until the fall of 1865, but it was many years before that when I first saw the ground on which the town now stands.  That occasion was as I well remember, Washington’s birthday in 1844.  The Toronto mill had just been completed by Geo. W. Thorn and was dedicated, so to speak, on the day in question by a ball which was a memorable event for many years after by reason of the large crowd present the distant points from which its members assembled.  People were there from Tipton, Davenport and DeWitt and all the intervening country.  I was a very young girl at the time and went to the ball in company with my older brother and his wife.  We set out from Posten’s Grove on Rock Creek late in the forenoon in a wagon and early in the afternoon forded Yankee Run at a point about a mile above the present wagon bridge.  From the point where we forded there wasn’t a house nor sign of habitation visible in any direction.  To the eastward where Wheatland now lies, was then merely open, rolling prairie dotted with patches os snow.  Here and there clumps of prairie grass of the season before, sere and dead, still stood erect.  There had been a thaw and the roads were heavy and bad (they were always bad in those days as I recall them) and as we paused a few minutes on this side of the creel, the wide expanse of unoccupied country around impressed me as being peculiarly lonesome and desolate.  I had no thought that the country would be settled within my observation.  The first house we passed on our northward progress stood on the Dickermann place a few rods south of where Edw. Hart now resides.  We arrived at the mill in due season, and about four o’clock in the afternoon the dance begun.  It continued with pioneer vigor, amid many scenes of early-day hospitality, gaity and high spirits, until well along in the forenoon of the following day.” May 27, 1908   

 “It was probably in the neighborhood of ten years after the dedicator ball that I obtained my first view of the site of Wheatland from another and nearer quarter. In company with Geo. Goddard and his wife I started from the Goddard homestead west of Big Rock early one bright and beautiful autumn morning destined for the Big Bend, as the scope of bottom grass and timber land lying in the wide eastward circle of the river a half mile north of the Calamus road was the, and I believe, is still called.  I may say in passing that the Big Bend was a favorite ground for the hunters of those days as it is for those of the present time.  More than one deer has my brothers shot in the wooded openings bordered by the curving river, and more than once, after he had swung the hind quarter of the animal across his shoulders and borne then home afoot, he found, when he returned for the fore quarter, that the wolves had preceeded him and made off with his game.  The object of our journey though, was to gather wild grapes.  We were in a wagon drawn this time by a yoke of oxen.  We crossed Yankee Run at the same place as before , for the creek bottoms to the eastward were an impassable marsh.  We proceeded eastward keeping at the foot of the high ground and following close to the margin of the creek bottoms.  The gradual upward slope to the north of us where our little town afterward rose into being was then, as when I had first beheld it as un-broken prairie with no sign of house, fence nor road.  Tall, waving prairie grass covered all the ground as it had apparently since primeval times.  But a little farther eastward we discovered the evidence of approaching change.  At a point some thirty or forty rods northwest of where the railway crossing is now situated a log cabin was being erected as we afterwards learned by the late Franz Homrighausen.  The walls were almost completed and the owner was then engaged in hauling the last logs from the timber near the river.  The settler had chosen what was then a beautiful and picturesque spot for his cabin in a sheltering, green verdured depression with a lakelet of clear water in front of it.  The ground where it stood has long since been under the plow, but evidences of the homestead and adjacent orchard were still present in the late seventies.

I had almost forgotten about the grapes, but I may say that we got a cart load of them and enjoyed wild grapes until well into the winter.

WHEATLAND: Fifty Years Ago.

Random Notes

May 20, 1908 

When the railway opened its station here the point was called “Yankee Run” for a few months.  The late Arthur Lillie possessed among his large collection of curiosities a railway ticket reading from “DeWitt to Yankee Run.

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Wheatland was platted by John L. Bennett shortly after the C. & N. W. Ry. Was laid to this point in 1858,  It was named in honor of the residence of President James Buchanan, of whom Mr. Bennett was an ardent admirer.

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