Back in the days of yore, E. A. Raymond was born at Niskeyuna, Schenectady County, New York, December 7, 1835. He started for the West April 10, 1855, with a small leather grip and $50.00 in money. He walked down on the ice on the Mohwak River to the Village of Niskeyuna, the railway station on the Troy & Schenectady Railroad line, taking the course for the wild, woolly west.
At that time it was quite a different undertaking for one at the age of nineteen to launch out from under the parental roof that it is today. "That morning," said Mr. Raymond, "when bidding me goodby, my father said, ‘My son, I never expect to see you again, the Lord go with you.’ My mother was full of hope and cheer; it was from her that I got the inspiration to go West. My parents had a large family, ten children, six boys and four girls, I being the oldest.
"That noted morning, April 10, 1855, brings many thoughts to mind of my early life. My first step was at Rochester, New York. I was to meet a companion there and we were going West together, he having friends in Ohio, the destination we had talked of. My friend did not make his appearance. I stopped a day at Rochester after the time set for our meeting and was painfully disappointed, for I was rather intending to shift the responsibility on him from Rochester. Finding I was alone in a strange city, I began to make new plans. It came to my mind of a family I knew had gone to Beloit, Wisconsin, the year before, so I decided to take the first train out of Rochester for Chicago and from there to Beloit. When reaching Beloit I learned my friends had moved to Rockton, Illinois. As there were no railroads farther west, with my grip in hand, I walked the rest of the way. Thinking I had gone west far enough, my money about gone, I looked around for work and finally hired out to Mr. C. C. Wright, a farmer, at $20.00 a month. I will here make a statement as an eye-opener to the young men that work for farmers nowadays. Mr. Wright had planted seventy-five acres of corn that spring. He was the assessor that season so started on his work about corn tending time and set me to work cultivating corn with a one-horse, five-shovel cultivator, one row at a time. All the cultivating that was done on that seventy-five acres was done by myself. I made the day’s work to average ten acres, doing all the chores morning, noon and night, and it was pronounced the best tended cornfield in that locality.
"In October, 1855, I left Rockton for Waterloo with Christopher Hollister and Mr. Case, the father of Fred and Lafayette Case, the former now in Los Angeles, California, and the latter engaged in the dairy business here in Waterloo. We made the trip in covered wagons and I was the driver of one of their teams.
"Our journey was made in good time and safety. Everything was new and interesting to me; the way of traveling with covered wagons, camping out and sleeping under the wagons or alongside of them, was all new experience but I enjoyed it. When getting into Iowa, crossing the Mississippi River at Dubuque, I was really disappointed in the looks of the country- rough and bluffy. After climbing the bluff to get out of Dubuque and about twenty miles out, it began to look better and continued to. I became in love and charmed with the new West as we neared Waterloo. We forded the Cedar River just a little below the cement bridge, coming out on the west side back of where the American Express office now stands.
"We landed in Waterloo November 15, 1855, and spent my first night in a log cabin owned by Christopher Hollister, located in a grove near the Melrose land, now Galloway’s Addition on the south road to Cedar Falls. That was our headquarters for several weeks. The next day we went to the Case land which now adjoins Byrnes Park on the west. Mr. Case had previously erected a small house but that fall put up an addition to it, I helping them a few days.
"The fall of 1855 was fine, warm and all sunshine. I was delighted with the new West. Never had I seen such fine weather and it lasted until January.
"The fall of 1855, the City of Waterloo was not much of a town, about one hundred and fifty inhabitants, though some people claimed more. The houses were scattered, being small frame houses and log cabins, there being only two or three brick buildings. The J.C. Hubbard store on Commercial Street between Fifth and Sixth streets was the first brick store building put up, the brick being made by Mr. Sweitzer, from clay dug out near a frog pond back of the Duke and Ben Eaton lots, the latter lots now owned by Mr. Sarvey and Dr. Brinkman, 202 and 206 Randolph Street.
"The first church established was the Methodist, which held services in the basement of a brick building on the corner of Bluff and Eighth or Ninth streets, which is now used as a dwelling house. S. W. Ingham was the minister.
"The first log cabin was Charles Mullan’s on Mullan Hill. On Commercial Street fronting Fourth next to the William Snowden drug store was a log cabin boarding house, kept by a man named Jewel. Below the Hubbard store on the opposite side was a cabin and one at 426 South Street where Mr. Emmons Johnson now lives, and one on Second Street between South and Randolph. On lower Jefferson Street stood another log cabin. The store buildings could be counted on five fingers.
"That fall I went to work for Judge Hubbard. He was postmaster and kept a general stock of goods. There were two small buildings on the east side.
"The next year, 1856, and part of 1857, a wave of prosperity fanned the city, a regular boom. Much building was done, business of all kinds developed out towards the latter part of 1857 and in 1858 a tightening up came.
"Everything had to be hauled by teams and wagons during the early days and Dubuque, Iowa City and Davenport were the principal places to get supplies. It was not all sport to make these hauling trips. A good deal of exposure and hard knocks had to be endured.
"In the spring of 1856, Judge Hubbard set me to hauling goods. That spring the sloughs were bad, teamsters would travel in gangs. I remember one time there were fifteen teams all in a line, that came up to a big slough and we had to hitch two, three, and four teams on one wagon and then got stuck and had to carry out the goods, what we could, by hand, then pry up the wagons and pull out. Some days we did not make a mile, going without our dinners, wet and muddy up to our necks, tired and hungry when the setting sun closed our day’s work. Only part of the wagons over, we took our teams and returned to the same stopping place that we had left in the morning.
"In the winter of 1856 and 1857 there were heavy snow storms, the roadways being ridged up two and three feet above the surface of the ground. There were regular places for passing. The frequent winds and the shifting snow would fill up the beaten roadway. It would be impossible to keep on the beaten track. By getting over a little to one side down would go the loads, sometimes horses and all, and many times we must unload and scoop out in order to get straightened up on solid footing.
"The spring of 1857 I brought my brother, Henry, West, he going to work for Mr. Hubbard. I brought on time a team and began teaming. The times were beginning to get hard. Financial troubles in the East paralyzed the business of the new West. I started out to make a trip to Dubuque or Iowa City every week for the merchants. The weekly trips soon dropped off for the merchants wanted but few goods. I began taking what orders I could from them and filling out my load with barrels of salt, taking my chances of selling the same. I finally began to buy other goods and made trips up to Waverly, New Hartford and other towns as far up as Algona. I became tired of peddling goods and in the cold seasons could do but very little at it, as everything was sold from the wagon. In order to keep down expenses during these dull times, I would work for just what I could get, fifty or seventy-five cents a day. During these times it caused many of us young men to take up batching. The times were hard and only those who were here during shin-plaster times, years of 1857 and 1858, know what it means.
"The summer of 1859, I concluded to open up a store at Marble Rock, securing a storeroom and hauling up a load of salt. That summer Waterloo merited the name of being the head of navigation. The news spread to all the towns near and far and Waterloo became the renowned city of this section of the West.
"My first order of goods for the Marble Rock Store came from Chicago, via the way of Cedar Rapids and to Waterloo on the first trip the steamboat, Black Hawk, made. Not being quite ready to go to Marble Rock I stored them in the storeroom that John Ercanbrack, a tailor, had vacated at the head of Bridge Street. Merchants from Grundy Center, Eldora and other surrounding towns came to Waterloo for supplies. My first shipment of goods included a hogshead of sugar, two sacks of coffee, canned goods and many other things in the grocery line. The demands for goods from other towns were numerous. It was known that Raymond had received quite a shipment of groceries. I concluded to sell out what I could and order again for the Marble Rock Store. In the meantime I counseled with John H. Leavitt about opening up in Waterloo instead of Marble Rock. It then was decided that Waterloo was the place. I at once cancelled and closed up the Marble Rock deal and secured the Redenback storeroom, white-washed the sugar hogshead that had been emptied and engaged W. G. Burbee, the master of all trades, to letter a sign encircling the top of the hogshead. I raised it up on a post ten or twelve feet high at the outer edge of the walk and that was our sign. It was known far and near ‘Raymond Brothers, Sign of the Sugar Hogshead.’
At this stage of action I made my brother, Henry, my partner. Taking a dry goods box for our writing desk, we opened doors for business. Later in the fall of 1859 we moved from this room to the brick storeroom then owned by John Elwell and later by George Snowden, on Commercial, opposite the Henderson drug store. During these years, although the times were hard, Waterloo kept moving to the front.
"Where the Irving hotel and the Waterloo Savings Bank now stand was a ravine. During seasons of high water it would be five to six feet deep, water would be everywhere. Boating was the only way one could go about. Many a time have I taken the boat where the First Baptist Church now stands and rowed across to the north side of Washington Park and around to Judge Hubbard’s store on Commercial Street and beyond up to the corner of Commercial and Fifth streets. I have seen the Mill Square nearly all under water.
"In 1863 we bought the Elwell corner and store building, 20 by 50, two stories, where the Black Hawk National Bank now stands, paying $2,200 for it. On the rear end of the lot was a log cabin, which we used for a storage room. In front of this cabin was a well, said to be the first well dug in Waterloo. Everybody got water from it. It had a home-made windlass, rope and bucket. That well was being used up until the time the building was sold recently, being in the basement.
"During these early years of trade there was a great deal of bartering being done. The people were most all young and came West to start into just what seemed to open up. There hands and head were relied upon more than money.
"Our newspaper played an active part in the development of our city and county, the same then as now in the twentieth century. William Haddock was the first one who started the printing press in Waterloo. Hartman & Ingersoll, in 1858, came down from Cedar Falls and bought the Haddock printing plant. Later William H. Hartman bought out the Ingersoll interest. Those early years were hard on newspaper proprietors as well as all business pursuits. Hartman was one of the boys, with many others, who tried his hand at ‘batching’ during those early days. As far as I can remember the cooperative batching hotels came out financially all right; batching proved to be the successful wedge to tide over.
"W. H. Hartman was a careful financier, the Raymond Brothers and Mr. Hartman used to run accounts a year before settling. We drew on him for printing matter and advertising and he drew orders on us to pay his help and other things. January was the month for settling and Mr. Harman invariably knew just how the accounts would square up. I remember in one of our settlements, illustrative of his honesty, after squaring our accounts, everything being satisfactory, the next day he came in and said, ‘Raymond, I have you credited with an order I gave on you and you paid it. I did not find it charged to me in your bill rendered.’ We looked the matter up and found the order, but it had not been charged up on our books to his account. I am satisfied in my own mind, from my own experience and what Mr. Hartman has told me in passing through the early financial pressure of the New West, that the careful way in which Mr. Hartman conducted his business, keeping it well in hand and knowing just how matters would square up, being an inveterate worker early and late, coupled with principles of honesty and integrity, laid the foundation that has carried the Waterloo Courier up to its present high standing in the city and county.
"In these days of yore it might be interesting to know the price of goods and produce. By digging out my old books I find in the years 1857 to 1860 prices ran quite steady. Salt, per barrel, $5.35; prairie hay, $2.50 to $3.00; Judge Bagg, two barrels apples, $12.00; oysters, 75 cents a can; Rio coffee, 15 and 25 cents; Java, 25 cents; eggs, 5 and 6 cents a dozen; paid for eggs, 3 and 4 cents a dozen; potatoes, 15 and 17 cents a bushel; butter retailed at 9 and 10 cents a pound, paid 6 and 9 cents for it; dressed pork, $1.75 a hundred; dressed turkeys, 7 cents; chickens, dressed, 5 cents; corn, basket, 75 cents; 2-bushel grain bags, 30 cents; A sugar 7 pounds for $1.00, C sugar 8 pounds, B sugar nine pounds; tea, 50 cents to $1.00 a pound; home-made cheese, 8 and 10 cents a pound; onions, 25 and 30 cents a bushel. Winter of 1860, wheat was bought for 43 to 65 cents a bushel. Cedar Rapids was the outlet, hauling it down with teams and wagons. My board was $2.00 a week at the Sherman Hotel and Morris Case Boarding House and other places.
"At the breaking out of the Civil war all goods began to advance. The pinnacle was reached in the years 1864-65. My books show quite a different line of prices. Young Hyson and Gunpowder teas sold at $1.25 to $2.40 a pound. The light C sugar, 3 pounds for $1.00; light brown 3½ pounds, a darker brown 4½ pounds, for $1.00; kerosene oil, $1.00 per gallon; apples, $6.75 and $7.50 per barrel, retailed half bushel $1.50, per peek 80 cents. Green coffee, 45 and 55 cents a pound; Old Government Java coffee, 75 cents per pound; lard, 25 cents a pound; 2-bushel cotton grain sacks, Stark Mills, $1.50 each; hemp sacks, $1.25 each; cheese, 30 to 35 cents a pound; salt by the barrel, $4.50; fresh oysters in cans, 80 cents to $1.25; no bulk oysters in those days came west. Syrups, $1.00, $1.25, $1.80 a gallon; cotton clothes lines, $1.20 a pound; water lime cement, $4.75 and $5.00 per barrel; potash, 35 cents a can; Procter & Gamble’s German soap, 22 cents a bar, or 5 bars for $1.00.
"In 1862 my brothers, I. M. and A.S., now living at Lincoln, Nebraska, were brought West and interested with the Raymond Brothers. From this union came the branch stores at Waverly, Charles City and in later years Albert Lea, known far and wide as the Raymond Brothers Stores.
"In the fall of 1865 we engaged George Crittenden to go East to buy our winter stock of green and dried apples. The cost of the apples, freight and expenses, was $6,510.50. Our principal competitor in the grocery business in 1860-61 was Capt. Henry D. Williams. He made it warm for us, but he loved his country more than his grocery business, so enlisted, serving his country well and returning with honors well won.
"There was a ferry boat line established above the dam on Second Street where the ice houses now stand. Seth Lake and Nathan Bullock were the owners of it. It was run on a rope cable. One time when I was getting ready for a trip to Dubuque and started right out after the noon-hour the water was high and a strong, deep current. Everything went nicely until reaching about half-way across, when the cable broke and we began to go down stream. There was one woman and a man besides myself and team. Mr. Bullock was the pilot. All was commotion on deck. Seeing the situation I began unhitching my team from the wagon, to free them so that they could swim. The woman was crying and yelling for help. Bullock was tending to the boat and all was ready for the lunge over the dam, which it was approaching on an angle, but as it neared the dam it straightened around end first. I stepped up to the horses’ heads to drop the tongue and was there when the boat plunged over. It went with hardly a quiver, all was safe. The woman jumped up and clasped her hands and sang out, ‘Praise the lord we are safe.’ There was plenty of help, and skiffs and ropes, to pull us up to a landing place between Fifth and Sixth Streets. I made no trip to Dubuque, but next day started for Iowa City.
"It may be of interest to recall some of the names of the men that were active in the days of yore, laying the foundations for the developing on lines that have made the beautiful City of Waterloo a city famous through the Great West for its thriftiness, clean streets, cement walks, and energetic citizens, full of push and perseverance and the largest manufacturing city in the great State of Iowa. Charles Mullan, G. W. Hanna, Anthony Baker and Hallock were owners of the city plat in part. Dr. J. M. Harper; Nelson Ayres, merchant; H. B. Allen, attorney; A. C. Couch, merchant; S. Bagg, attorney; J. H Leavitt, banker; William Snowden, druggist; W. W. Forry, druggist; E. S. Phelps, merchant; W. H. Curtiss, attorney; O. Ellsworth, furniture dealer; T. Elwell, merchant; John Elwell, Morris Case, meat market; I. B. and F. Goss, merchants; William Haddock, first editor; J. P. Hosford, Edmund Miller, real estate; J. C. Hubbard, merchant and postmaster; Hartman and Ingersoll, proprietors of Courier; R. T. Hitt, manufacturer of wagons and buggies; P. J. Siberling and Maverick, hardware; G. W. Miller, surveyor and real estate; Doctor Peabody, Parmenter and Davis, drugs and pork packers; R. Russell, banker; G. M. Tinker, contractor and builder of courthouse on Eleventh Street, east side, and the builder of the house that J. E. Sedgwick lives in at the corner of South and West Third Streets; H. Sherman, proprietor Sherman House, first hotel in the city; J. B. Severance, Nathan Bullock, contractors; Fred Washburn had a sawmill on Washburn’s Pond; Judge Randall, H. D. Williams, Bee Hive Grocery; George Ordway, attorney, and others.
"In those days of yore the pioneers passed through many trying and struggling times. The cold, frigid winter weather and deep snows chills one to think of them now. The thermometer occasionally registered 35° to 40° below zero. Most of the houses were poorly built, open and cold. It was not uncommon to hear people say, ‘I crawled out from under a snow bank,’ or ‘I dug through a bank of snow to get from the bed to the stove to start the morning fire.’
"The winter of 1859 was death to stock. Many head frozen to death could be seen in most every barnyard.
"One of the cold winters I was pallbearer at a funeral. The cold weather had been severe; the snow was deep and no particular roads. It was impossible to get to the cemetery, so the coffin was placed in a snow bank, remaining until spring.
"In the years of the ‘60s, sometimes the ice harvest would be all up by January 1st, fourteen and fifteen inches thick. One year after starting work was suspended on account of the cold storms. When beginning again it was thirty and thirty-two inches thick. Our winters surely have changed.
"Many of the home productions fell far behind towards paying for what had to be had that was shipped and teamed into this country. Much hardship under trying conditions and discouragements had to be endured. Many ran for a season, became discouraged, wrote home for money and returned East. Most all were young people coming West, chancing it to work up. Those who had the courage and were tenacious enough to stand firm and endure the roughening process of the woolly West, came through all right. In looking through my first ledger, 1857-9. I find that nearly every account had exchanged dealing orders on other people. Little money was used in the early stages of Waterloo.
"When one stops to think of the condition of things in 1855 and the state of the present times, the mind can hardly grasp the great progress, developments, inventions, etc., which have taken place in the intervening years."
