John R. Pitts Family
The Pitts Family
front
row, from left: William Gilbert Pitts, Mrs. John Reynold (Liza) Pitts,
John R. Pitts, and John F. Pitts; rear: Mary Ann (Zembsch), Rachel
(Deur) and Tom Pitts. |
A Rough Existence For County’s Pioneers
By Mildred Smith
Early
day settlers who preceded the railroad into northwest Iowa were the
true pioneers of their generation. Coming by covered wagon across the
trackless prairie or walking with only most meager supplies, they “made
do” in a land where no trading centers as yet existed.
In 1869,
when John Reynolds Pitts came west to this county, Cherokee was in the
throes of becoming a town and was as yet undecided whether it would
actually be permanently located at its present site.
A Civil War
veteran, Pitts joined the William Peck family on its journey to
Iowa from Wisconsin in a covered wagon drawn by a horse and a yoke of
oxen. The first winter he lived with the Pecks in a sod shanty on their
claim.
These two families claiming homesteads in Sheriden
Township were among the very first settlers in this township. After
selecting his farm site in Section 32, Pitts erected a sod shanty on
his claim just pack of the present home.
When it was time to
build a frame house to meet homestead requirements, it was necessary to
go to Denison for lumber. The trip by oxen took a week each way.
According to Pitt’s homestead papers, that first home was a one floor
frame house, 14 by 20 feet, with two doors and four windows. In
addition, he built a stable, dug a well, set out 50 forest trees and
built a granary.
It was here he brought his bride, Ellen Fine,
in 1873 from Linden, Wis. And again, Pitts, this time with a bride at
his side, crossed the prairie by covered wagon.
Pitts broke the
grasslands on his homestead, it is thought by oxen. In reminiscing,
grandfather was often heard to say the oxen would lie down in the tall
grasses at night and be so hidden it was difficult to find them the
next morning to begin sod breaking again.
First prairie breaking
was done in the month of June, the ground generally planted by dropping
corn in the furrow after the plow. This crop was called sod corn and
produced about 25 bushels per acre.
This may have been the start
of minimum tillage as nothing more was done to the sod corn until it
was ready for husking in the fall.
The Pitts family experienced
all the early day trials, grasshoppers, prairie fires, crop failures.
In the early days, even in the 1890s, the road to Cherokee was but a
trail over the prairie. It was not uncommon to be mired down with an
empty wagon in one of the numerous sloughs or streams that crisscrossed
the countryside. Money was scarce, and land went begging at $12 to $15
an acre. Corn sold for 14 cents and oats for nine cents a bushel.
Seven children were born to the Pitts couple. Two of these died in infancy and were buried in a grove near the present home.
Pitts
operated a threshing machine for more than half a century, beginning
when these machines were powered by horses hitched to a merry-go-round
contraption. His son, William, continued this occupation for many years
also.
Ellen Fine Pitts had the reputation, according to her
grandson, Melvin, of being a good cook – “the best pie baker around,
noted for her saffron bread and pasty” (meat and vegetable concoction).
Homemaking
including cooking was far from simple in Ellen Pitts’ day. Feeding a
family meant baking loaves of bread by the dozens, with home grown and
ground flour. Butter for the bread meant churning one’s own from
cream skimmed from the milk you had milked from your own herd. Pies
meant picking your own fruit or berries and making crusts from
home-rendered lard.
Lard meant butchering and rendering your
own. It also meant curing or “frying down meat” to keep in warm weather
and using the cracklings or other grease to make soap for the laundry
you did on the wash board – after, of course, you had carried water
from the well and heated it on the cookstove, an all-day job. Wash day
also meant boiling the whites for clothes were never clean unless
boiled, even if it meant heating the kitchen almost beyond endurance.
Ironing meant heating heavy irons on a fired-up range for another day
of intolerable heat.
Eggs for the baking were gathered from your own henhouse from chickens you had raised with setting hens.
Work for the women in the pioneer era was never done.
When
John Pitts retired and moved to Le Mars in 1911, his oldest son,
William, and wife, Gertrude, were the second generation to live on the
farm. Gertrude is described as “a mother first and nurse to all who
were ill.” She acted as a midwife on many occasions. William died in
1937. Gertrude remained on the homestead with Melvin until 1963.
Third and fourth generation of Pitts on the farm are Melvin and Joyce and their family of four.
William,
like his father, operated a threshing rig for many years. This fact
seems especially significant in view of one fact uncovered by Mrs.
Melvin Pitts as she traced the family history back to Chresten Ferries,
England, where John Pitts was born in 1842. She found there was a
William Pitts who was a silversmith and sculptor who had executed
bas-reliefs for the Bow Room and drawing rooms of Buckingham Palace.
His son attained distinction as a sculptor, and two others, John A and
Hiram, now in the United States, had in 1834 developed a successful
combination of thresher and fanner that not only separated the grain
from the straw but also chaff from the grain. This was patented in 1837.
In
1974, the Melvin Pitts family, marked the 10th anniversary of the
completion of the five-year homestead of John and Ellen Pitts by
holding an anniversary party attended by neighbors and friends from
throughout the area.
(Source: Former Cherokee County Historical Society scrapbook)
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