History of Cherokee County |
History of Cherokee County |
| PIONEER DAYS - by W. N. McCoun June 24, 1943 I deem it a great privilege to be able to write and tell about our trip from Black Hawk County to Cherokee County seventy-five years ago, and some of the events that have transpired since my birth January 6, 1863. I am the only one left of that crowd of fifteen to tell the story. Father (Joseph McCoun), Mother, and ten children, including Charity, my oldest sister and her husband, John Good, William parish and his wife Tilly, made up the crowd, all sturdy pioneers. Our sale was held three days before we started, and was well attended, it being spring, most everything was in demand. We gave a farewell dance the next night and a large crowd was present. I remember the fiddler, Mr. Mootry and the old tunes they played. They even danced the minuet, the old French Four, now entirely forgotten, and the Heel and Toe Polka, almost a thing of the past. Three days were spent in preparation for our trip – somewhere to the West. Now two sturdy pioneers who had come from Indiana some seventeen or eighteen years before, decided to take the advice of Horace Greeley and go farther west. It was a beautiful morning in early May. Our mode of locomotion was three-yoke of oxen, a team of horses and three wagons. A yoke of oxen was hitched to each of two wagons and the third was drawn by two oxen and a team of horses. Two cows which were “broke” to the yoke also constituted a part of our caravan. With a crack of the whip, we were off for the West – across a watery desert, as it was a very wet spring. Few people today realize what it is to start out on a journey in a “prairie schooner”. That trip of two hundred and forty miles was equal to a trip around the world today. One thing can be said for oxen, they are slow but sure. It is a joke for an ox team to undertake to run away, as anyone can catch them. We camped the second night out near Iowa Falls by the railroad track and I saw my first train. The most re markable thing about it was the noise it made. Camped near us that evening was an old timer, Sam Newell, who settled near Correctionville. Some of the old timers will remember the Newell boys, Jim, John and Sam. I remember crossing the Iowa River, broad, shallow and sandy, not over ankle deep – not shoe top deep, for we were all barefoot those days. We thought we were going right along but ten miles a day is not very fast. We had one happenstance that caused a little delay and some anxiety. Two of my sisters, Margaret and Alice, were picking flowers one evening and carelessly strayed too far from the road and got lost. They wandered around, followed a path ‘til they came to a house. The people were kind to them but it was late and too dark to try to find our camp. That night they cried themselves to sleep and there was great anxiety at the camp. Everyone as up early but very little eaten. The kind hearted man, where the girls stayed, hitched a horse to a spring board buggy and soon found our camp. There was great rejoicing when they arrived. Many times, there were three yoke of oxen hitched to a single wagon to pull it through the mud. On one occasion, three ox teams, a team of horses and a yoke of cows were hitched to the heaviest wagon to pull it through the mud. A chain was fastened to the hind axle to prevent pulling the wagon apart. We finally got across the one hundred and fifty mile stretch of bogs which later became one of the richest corn belts in the United States. We stayed two days at Storm Lake to rest and the men caught enough fish to last us a week. We started again, intending to go to Nebraska but when we came to the bluffs overlooking the little Sioux Valley, changed our minds. The timber along the river and the broad lays of bottom land in the valley looked too good to pass. We pulled up to a place which later was known as the Miles Whisman farm near the sight of present day Washta – we forded the river at the Pearson place and took up our abode at the southern point of Ranney’s knob, the principal landmark in the Washta vicinity. Tired and worn after a month’s travel over the long stretch of mud we found a log cabin awaiting us – the former home of the George Ranney family. (In company with Mr. and Mrs. Frank McCoun I recently visited the spot where the old cabin stood. Not a trace or a relic could be found.) We were fortunate to have near neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. John Dewey a half mile south, (the Chapman farm) the Alex Church family two miles south and the John Pindells. The Jack Whisman family who settled here in 1867 and had started the Post Office, were our neighbors to the north and the George Ganos north of them, on Willow Creek. A school was established in 1866 at the Moses Pearson home east of the river and one-half mile south of the present river bridge. A log school house was built near the Pearson home in 1867 and in 1868 a frame building was built. Elias Stratton and family arrived in 1869 and located on the site where the north half of the town now stands. The Whismans, Ganos, Strattons, McCouns and Pearsons made up that first school of twenty-four pupils and Mrs. Dewey was our teacher. She was well liked and taught many terms. A frame school house was built farther east (just east of the last row of houses in present Washta) in 1873 where it remained until an independent district was established in 1887/ The old school building was edged in between on main street and was burned during the fire of 1918. One fine morning in May or early June of 1873, a prairie schooner was observed coming over the hill by the McCoun place. It stopped on the flat for a short while near the school place. There was some anxiety in school but the wagon soon pulled into the Elias Stratton place. It proved to be the Charles Smith family coming to make their home here. (Just east of the cemetery). (Source: Washta Cetennial Phamphlet held in Cindy Booth Maher's personal family files. |
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