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Most of Iowa settled

     By 1840, the white man's settlements extended as far west as Ottumwa and Iowa City. During the next ten years settlers had staked off claims as far west as the middle of the State; and in the southern part, across to the Missouri. In another ten years white settlers had penetrated into most parts of Iowa except the extreme western counties.

Crude and better log cabins

     We have seen how most of the settlers "rolled into Iowa" in covered wagons or traveled by steamboat, carrying with them a few household goods and agricultural implements. The pioneers preferred to locate along the streams, near "wood and water." Most of the early Iowa homes were log cabins. These consisted frequently of just one room. The walls were made of logs flattened on the inner and outer sides and notched at the end to fit into one another in the corners. Moss, clay or mud was used to fill the cracks. The roof was made of bark or a kind of rough boards called clapboards. The better cabins might have roofs of handmade shingles. Instead of glass, oiled paper would sometime be used for window panes. The wooden chimneys and fireplaces were plastered with clay to prevent them from catching fire. Sometimes even door hinges and locks were made of wood, and wooden pins took place of nails. A plan log cabin could be built without hammer or saw; only an axe, an auger and a log chain was needed.

    The floor of a log cabin might consist of earth or clay. A better floor was made of split longs or puncheons. The space between the roof and the ceiling was called the loft. To reach it, one had to crawl up a rough ladder, sometimes made by driving pegs into an upright pole. The children often slept on the loft.

    The door was opened with a latchstring, which was pulled in when one had entered the cabin, and pulled out when one left it.

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With the latchstring out, the door could easily be opened from the outside. This gave rise to the saying: my latchstring is out to you, which means that you are welcome.

    The pioneers considered a cabin tolerably well furnished if it had some stools, a table, one or two bedsteads, all home-made. The stock of common household utensils in the humbler homes consisted of a coffee pot, a kettle, a long handled frying pan, and a Dutch oven, which was a kind of iron box with a lid.

    Food might at times be scarce, but there never was a famine. Game supplied the early settler's table with meat; and wild berries, crabapples and plums varied his otherwise monotonous diet of corn bread and corn mush. Corn, one of the first crops, was easily raised and yielded well; and the pioneer housewife was ingenious in the ways she used it. Of corn or cornmeal she made corn dodger, Johnny cakes, pones, corn bread, corn mush and hominy. Corn could be cracked, ground or shaved off thin - if it was soft or had been softened - with a plane. Out of corn shavings a kind of "woolly' cake was made. The "wool" consisted of bits of cob and husk sticking in the crust.

Pioneer wheat bread and sweets

     In a few years wheat bread was on the pioneer's table. It was made of good wheat, but it turned black when ground to meal in the poorly equipped mills of those days. Naturally, the bread made from it was also black, but the pioneers thought it tasted better than it looked. Only a little butter and cheese could be made for some years, and when there was a demand for such delicacies, they had to be imported from the East. Sugar maples and bees supplied the pioneers with sweets, so relishing for buckwheat pancakes, which soon came to be a common article on the pioneer's breakfast table.

No store clothes except for "swells"

     Much of the clothing used by pioneers before the Civil War was made in their homes. They raised flax for linen summer clothing and wool for winter garments. The flax was pulled and made into linen by several processes of working it up and cleaning it. The wool was carded and spun and the yarn made into stockings and cloth. The pioneer mother also sewed the clothes. "Store clothes" in the early days were only for "swells." But in a few years the settlers began to buy cloth and even some read-to-wear clothing.

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The girls were then proud of their calico dresses, and the boy thought their blue woolen suits with double rows of brass buttons on the coat looked very fine, as indeed they did.

"Shaking and working"

     There were doctors, but no dentists for some years in the early towns. Being out of easy reach of the towns, many an isolated squatter's family had to make the best of it and nurse and cure their own sick. For less serious ailments, this could be done by using various home remedies. When there were epidemics, the settlers were in a sorry plight. In the late thirties many had the ague so badly that they said they divided their time between "shaking and working." In the forties and fifties a great many fell victims to the dread diseases, cholera and smallpox.

Substantial Iowa home near Farmington in the eighteen thirties

Those good old times

     From this account you may have concluded that the pioneers led a sad and hard life. And true, at times they did. But they also had happy moments and genuinely good times. Many of them went to ....

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....church and Sunday school regularly. The boys and men did their stunts while waiting at the mills to have their grist ground. The women had their quilting bees and embroidered beautiful samplers. Young and old attended the spelling schools and singing schools, and public debates. Boys and men fished and hunted. Wolf hunts were especially exciting. Even from their work, the pioneers derived much enjoyment. Few would miss a house raising. Then there were flax pulling and husking bees, rail splitting, and log rollings, and frequently the work in the day time was followed by a party in the evening. Sitting on the logs at log rolling, jokes would be told. An especially good joke made everybody "roll off the logs."

     Bible might be found in the humblest cabins, and they were read diligently by young and old. Then as now, fairy tales, Aesop's Fables and Pilgrim's Progress were read with avidity by book loving boys and girls. The local papers and publications from the East furnished the different members of the family with a constant supply of reading matter.

    Before the Civil War there were only a few short railroads in Iowa; Saddle horses, stages, and steamboats were slow means of travel; and this, together with the general poverty, made the pioneers home-staying folks. Those who did travel would go to the East to visit friends and relatives "back home," or go out West in search of cheaper lands and greater opportunities. Only in rare instances did any Iowan at this time visit Europe- the older home of all white Iowans.

Better homes built

     As the early settlers raised better and bigger crops, they were enabled to build more comfortable homes and furnish them with more conveniences. All the homes of pioneers were not log cabins or sod houses. Good houses built of natural rock, bricks or sawed and finished lumber, might have been seen in the towns already in the thirties and forties; and such houses were also occasionally seen in the county.

Questions and Exercises: How was a log cabin built? What was the loft? What kitchen utensils had even the humblest pioneer homes? What kinds of bread did the pioneer housewife bake? What sweets did the pioneers have? How is linen cloth made? There are no small pox epidemics now. Why were there in pioneer times? What is ague? How is it cured? What materials were used in building better homes?