Chapter Four

The settlement and organization of the counties in Iowa Territory was begun by the legislature by first organizing counties along the west bank of the Mississippi river. As each county was organized and the settlements moved westward it was made to include'all settlers beyond its western border. This was done for legal and judicial purposes. It gave settlers located beyond the geographical borders on the west, election privileges and equal protection under the law. In this way Mahaska county commissioners exercised jurisdiction over the region as far west as the territory now included in the city of Des Moines. Among the county records is an order granting a license for one year to John Scott allowing him the liberty of "keeping a ferry across the Des Moines river at the mouth of the Raccoon river near Fort Des Moines on the payment of the sum of ten dollars into the county treasury." The license limited the ferryman to specific charges, ranging from five cents for sheep and hogs to fifty cents for four horses and wagon.

The first cabin erected within the boundary of what is now Mahaska county was built on the flat north of Eddyville in the fall of 1842 by a Mr. William McIlvain, who was a hunter and trader of that period.Mr. McIlvain obtained permission from the Indians, as no settlements were allowed by the government until the following spring. The winter of 1842-43 was an unusually severe winter. The snow which fell in the fall remained on the ground until late in the spring. This cabin was occupied by the family of John B. Gray, who had arrived from Texas, November 1st, of that year. The cabin has only been destroyed in recent years.

Mrs. F. A. French, of Keokuk, who is the youngest daughter of the Gray family, states to the author, who was well acquainted with the family, that she distinctly remembers about her mother relating the incidents and the experiences of that trying winter, located as they were so far from civilization.

It has been stated by several historians of the county and state that a man by the name of McBeth had built the first cabin and that Mr. Gray secured it from him. This, however, must stand corrected, as we have this information from those who were on the scene. Mrs. Gray and Mrs. McIlvain were sisters.

Mr. McIlvain came from Indianapolis, Indiana, and afterward entered land out near SixMile, where he remained until the year 1850 when he joined one of the many caravans which crossed the plains to California in search of gold. A letter from his son, J. H. McIlvain, of Harlan, Kansas, corroborates the above facts.

Mr. Gray was born in Caledonia county, Vermont: April 9, 1809. His grandfather was a member of a New Hampshire regiment and lost his life while serving as a soldier in the Revolutionary war. In February, 1834, he emigrated to what was then known as the Black Hawk purchase, Michigan Territory, stopping near the little village of Flint Hills, now Burlington. The town had been laid out the previous fall. Had a small general store and a ferry boat. At a meeting of its citizens to give the town a better name, Mr. Gray suggested Burlington, the name of his home town in Vermont. It was well received, and the company agreed that if Mr. Gray would put in a general store he should have the honor of naming the place. He consented to this proposition and remained in business in Burlington until 1838, when he removed to the republic of Texas. Finding things very unsettled in that country, he turned his property into horses and drove them north overland, selling them as he came through the states. The fall of 1842 found him as above stated. When the Sac and Fox reservation was opened for settlement on May 1, 1843, he entered three hundred and sixty acres of land two and one-half miles west of Eddyville, where he remained until his death in 1876.

Mrs. Gray was the daughter of a pioneer flatboat captain on the Mississippi and was inured to frontier life. She drove a team through on the return trip from Texas. On this long journey she was often separated from her husband for several days, camping where night overtook her with her three little ones.

Eddyville was then known as Hard Fish's Village, this being the name of the chief who presided over the inhabitants. At this time J. P. Eddy had a trading post near the Indian village and supplied the Indians and hardy woodsmen for twenty-five miles distant, or more, with blankets, saddles, guns, ammunition and other frontier necessities. His books were kept by Richard Butcher. These books are still in existence and show the names representing 2,004 Indians, who had open accounts at the post. The accounts are kept in the name of the head of the family and give the number of persons which he represented. Kish-ke-kosh, our Mahaska county chief, ran up a bill amounting to almost two hundred dollars. Other prominent chiefs whose names appear on these books are Wapello, Pashe-pa-ho and the wife of Keokuk. Mr. Eddy had a grant from the government of 640 acres of land lying on the east bank of the Des Moines river, and when the Indians moved toward the west in 1843 he laid off 160 acres into a town plat and called it Eddyville. At this time about one hundred of its population is in Mahaska county.

By the first of May, 1843, the date when the reservation was opened to settlement, many of the anxious settlers had quietly worked their way across the borders in spite of the vigilance of the patrolling dragoons, who kept constant watch on the eastern and southern border of the Indian reservation to keep off intruders. Wagons were not allowed to cross the line but a small company of men on foot without axes were permitted to pass into the. "Promised Land" and make such observations as suited their fancy. Hatchets and axes were almost invariably smuggled in without handles in bundles or under the clothing, and handles were improvised when needed. These hardy children of nature when worn by the day's tramping, would lie down wherever night overtook them, and with some slight protection from the wild beasts would rest until the welcome dawn of another day.

Richard Parker, who was an early arrival in the New Purchase, told the author that he had often found himself alone when night came on when on these frontier exploits and would crawl into the thickest hazel brush, so as to make it quite impossible for wolves, which he dreaded most, or any other animal, to approach his hiding place without making sufficient noise to awaken him. Here, with his trusty gun well loaded and lying by his side, he would sleep soundly and sweetly until morning. These adventures, which seem thrilling to us, were a part of the hardy life of those who followed close upon the heels of the retreating Indians. They simply made the best of their surroundings and thought but little about it.

There was considerable relaxation in the rules governing the settlers as the time approached when all restriction should be removed. Perhaps hundreds of the newcomers had their claims selected before that date, ancl on the night of April 30, 1843, camped on the ground and had sharpened stakes and primitive torches already manufactured, so that when the moon and stars indicated the midnight hour they left their campfires with exultation and rejoicing to measure off as accurately as possible the three hundred and twenty acres which should be the home of the family, which awaited their return, near the border of the reservation. It was a night of too much joy and gladness to sleep and we are told that the woods rang with many a hurrah and cheer as they went with torch in hand over hill and valley, here driving a stake or there blazing a tree, or in some definite way marking the comers and lines of the land which should be the much-coveted abiding place of themselves and their children in the peaceful passing of the years. This was the delightful dream of the early settler. The first settlers avoided the prairies. Their ideal was a comfortable cabin in the edge of the timber, near a spring or a running stream, where game would be plentiful and fuel close at hand.

Dr. E. A. Boyer, who was one of the early pioneers in Scott township, was born in Maryland, March 13, 1816. His father was a slave holder at the time of his birth but liberated them and removed to Ohio, where the Doctor grew to manhood, receiving a medical education. Dr. Boyer was married in 1840 to Miss Mary Wiley, who survives her husband and still presides over the old home, which was built near where the first cabin stood on the banks of the Des Moines river, in Scott township. Although far advanced in years she has a distinct memory of most of the events that have transpired in the west in the sixty-five years of her residence in Iowa. Mr. and Mrs. Boyer came to Iowa the same year of their marriage and made their home in Van Buren county until the opening of the New Purchase. He was one of those who staked off his land at midnight April 30, 1843. A cabin was built at once and his family removed to the new home. Mrs. Boyer says the temporary floor of that first cabin was made of bark, and that those years brought them the fullest measure of happiness and contentment. The Doctor practiced his profession actively for fifteen years. In the days when the river traffic counted for much he had a general store at Rochester and Bellefountaine. He was enterprising and became wealthy, but made no one poorer. The Boyer estate still has over a thousand acres of land in Mahaska county.

Van B. Delashmutt came at the same time and was a neighbor of Dr. Boyer and they were lifelong friends. Born in Virginia, he served two terms in the legislature of that state. Coming west to better his condition, he became widely known in Iowa and the west. He was a typical pioneer. His son, W. A. Delashmutt. states to the writer that when he crossed the plains in 1849 he was laid up for fourteen days in Salt Lake City with mountain fever. While in that condition, lying in his tent, he was visited by Brigham Young, who placed him under the care of a skillful physician, gave him comfortable quarters and visited him every day of his illness. The great leader told young Delashmutt that when his people were going through Iowa a few years before a large party of them had camped for the winter near his father's house and that his kindness to them had made his father's name a household word in many a western home. The young man had been absent from home that winter. The Mormon chieftain also stated that the Iowa people had been universally kind to his people and they should be well treated in passing through his dominion, but that the people of Illinois and Missouri should not be allowed to camp nearer to Salt Lake City than four miles, because of
their cruel and inhuman treatment of those who had embraced the Mormon faith. Mr. Delashmutt says that to his certain knowledge this rule was adhered to during his stay.

Poultney Loughridge came from Ohio to Iowa in 1842, wintering in a cabin four miles north of Richland. The following spring in March, himself and three others, John McAllister and Edwin and Robert Mitchell quietly slipped across the border of the New Purchase in search for choice claims. They made their selection in Spring Creek township, but decided not to return home but to remain on the ground until the land should be open for settlement. Fearful of being discovered by the Indians or the dragoons, they selected the' most dense thicket that could be found in which to build a small cabin which would afford them temporary shelter and seclusion. On the night of April 30th they did not sleep. Stakes, torches and landmarks had all been selected. They had brought with them a pocket compass, ,which. proved of much value in the wilderness. Mr. Loughridge's father was a surveyor and his son was versed in that science. As soon as the hour of midnight had passed they struck out, torch in hand, and before daylight their clai.ns were all staked. Cabins were built as soon as possible for the families who were in waiting, and the conquest of the new farms began. For the first year letters were mailed at Fairfield or Brighton. Letter postage was twenty-five cents, but later reduced to ten cents. Produce was sometimes hauled to Fort Des Moines and exchanged for calico at twenty-five cents per yard, and other useful household supplies. Hogs were driven to Keokuk and sold for one dollar and twenty-five and one fifty per hundred pounds. Ague and fever were much dreaded. James Loughridge, the youngest son of the family, still owns the farm which his father entered.

Mrs. H. P. Martin, now in her eighty-third year, came to Spring Creek township, where she still lives, in 1843. Her husband staked off his claim by torchlight in the early morning hours of May 1st of that year. He was accompanied by his brother, Silas. Mrs. Martin says the first years were very trying in many ways. They usually went to Bonaparte to mill. When Miss Hobbs was teaching the first school taught in the county she often stayed at the Martin home, especially during these long milling trips. Ague was the scourge of the country in the summer and early fall. Those who were compelled to be early and late in the fields were the worst sufferers. Mr. Martin was a great sufferer at a time when he felt that he must be at work. He would go down on the prairie near Wright to cut grass for the stock. Late in the afternoon the hot fever would follow the chills, at which time he would hardly be able to account for himself, being so completely deranged. He always took the precaution, however, to prepare for himself a bed of hay on which to lie until his consciousness returned. Mrs. Martin says that when her husband failed to return at a reasonable time in the evening her anxiety for his safety would become so intense that she would take her baby in her arms and go until she would find him still at his work or on his way home, the wolves all the while howling about her pathway. It was a pleasure to sit in the presence of the good old mother and hear her talk in her entirely unaffected way about those primitive days in what is now Spring Creek township. She said she could not understand why a loving Providence had kept her through so many hardships and dangers to see the quiet days of these later years. She has been a widow twelve years and is now living quietly on a small farm with her son Byron not far from the old home selected in the wilderness.

There is a charm in a quiet, peaceful life, whether it be in the strength of matured years or in the halo of a well preserved old age. Like the waters that flow to the sea, life is at first a fretful rivulet, then a stately river, and lastly a quiet and broad sweeping tide until it is swallowed up in the unknown. In all of these stages when unaffected and natural, it is most interesting and beautiful.