TIMBER RELAY STATION FOR HORSE THIEVES

    Andrew Sutherland, one of the pioneer residents of Spring Creek Township, a man of literary taste and well informed on all subjects of current interest, is the author of the following:

    "’Go West, young man, and better your condition.’

    "These words moved the multitudes to stake their claims in Iowa.

    "Others had spied out the land, but the great wave moved in the ‘50s.

    "One coming through the miry streets of Chicago in that decade had need of a highly cultivated imagination to see results achieved since that time. Events of social, political and economical importance crowded each other so rapidly in this decade that we now wonder where the men and means came from that enabled us to so fully grasp the situation and mold it in a few years so as to dot the trackless prairies with modern cities, that put the then Chicago far in the shade.

    "Winter in the early ‘50s gave little warning of the blizzards that swept over the state, particularly in 1856 and 1857, which took lives in a few days that required three figures to enumerate. Within twenty miles of Howard Center twenty-four persons were frozen to death, one of them a Myers boy, residing in Black Hawk County.

    "Herds of elk, rendered helpless by the deep snow and sharp crust, were wantonly clubbed to death in the northern counties and later on the snow became so deep and the crust so heavy that heavily laden teams traveled at will over the country, the few fences being under the white, the protruding stakes being occupied to the limit by prairie chickens, and it was no unusual sight in the early ‘60s to see a half mile of rail fence literally covered with these birds. Immense numbers were caught, their breasts dried and smoked and the remainder thrown away, and later on their shipment to the eastern states was a prolific source of revenue to the country people.

    "Among the earliest of whites to stake a claim was a character known as Jim Chambers. He roamed over the entire state, gathering the best of wild game, wild fish, and honey, which he sold or bartered to the newcomers. His frequent trips to the Indian hunting grounds were resented by the red men and some of his getaways had only a narrow margin of safety.

    "Chambers also had much to do with stripping the cedar timber from our river banks and rafting it to Cedar Rapids.

    "It was in the ‘50s also that the greatest gang of horse thieves that ever existed in the state was broken up by ‘regulators,’ well organized, reaching through three or more states. They defied conviction, laughed at law officers and threatened witnesses appearing against them.

    "Noble County, Indiana, seemed to be their headquarters, our Cedar River, one of their principal highways, and Spring Creek timber, one of their noted relay stations.

    "The number and value of horses stolen in this vicinity was so great that owners were nervous night and day until as a last resort a committee visited several prominent citizens, among whom was a man named Bates, living on what is now known as the old John Clark farm, and told them to quit under penalty.

    "Good, yet strange, horses were seen hereabouts almost every day, until the vigilantes organized all along the lines and held about twenty neck-tie parties, sending scores of the gentry to the penitentiary.

    "Several, Bates among the number, left here in a hurry and the rest were good for awhile.

    "In those good old days the real estate man was in the blossoming stage. One, Chambaud, called on us from Europe. A little cask, mixed with brains and cheek, enabled him to plot and lithograph Gilbertville. Fleets of steamers churned the waters at the wharves on the Cedar, while innumerable trains crowded the railroad tracks.

    "Genial and guileless Chambaud! With his stock of liquors and cigars from Paree, he benevolently shared his good things with friends yonder toward the rising sun and left for France. If living he is there yet, while his friends from the East have but recently ceased their inquiry about the hole that Chambaud dug for their money.

    "In the land craze of 1854 and 1858 the United States land agent at Osage turned a trick that would put ye modern realty kid to sleep. He then took a long vacation and upon his return found it convenient to donate many thousands of dollars to the public.

    "Compared with the old timer our present land man is a model.

    "In 1858 the steamboat Black Hawk arrived at Waterloo with freight and cut the price of heavy goods which had been previously teamed from Iowa City, Cedar Rapids or the Mississippi.

    "I saw her in 1862 near Memphis, Tennessee, where she was engaged in contraband cotton trade, in which she was lost. Thus ingloriously ended what at first appeared to be a most promising career.

    "Rail service by the Illinois Central was opened to Waterloo about the close of this decade, but the winter of 1860-61 held up trains almost continually for over sixty days; violent storms and deep snows kept them busy shoveling, only to be drifted full ere they had been pulled through.

    "But the most conspicuous event in that decade, however, was the death of the ‘wild cat banks.’ Gold and silver circulated freely and plentifully until 1856, when paper money took its place to a great extent. The land bubble burst about this time and with it most of the banks died or became very sick. Our Legislature enacted many special and important laws for the relief of the debtor class, and specie was a minus quantity.

    "In 1861 I was building a residence for an aged man named Billings in Poyner township, who, by the way, had deposited paper money with John Leavitt in 1860, the bills being sealed in an envelope and returned to Billings in early ’61, only to disclose a depreciation in value of 70 per cent. Forty acres of land were sold to partially complete the house and Billings died under the load.

    "On one of our trips to Waterloo Billings took a barrel of eggs packed in oats and, failing to get an offer for them at the stores for any price or in such goods as he could use, emptied the barrel in West Fourth Street, mixing eggs and oats by driving over them. Looking from the store a few moments later I saw a sow and her pigs feeding on them.

    "In the early ‘60s it was no cause for comment to see the husky landowner come to town barefooted, with home braided straw hat or muskrat cap, for corn, coffee and pork were so cheap that he traveled on his uppers. Sorghum was evaporated in big iron kettles, often burned to vary the flavor, and listed among the luxuries, to be used in pastry and crab apple sauce.

    "Frenchtown, as Gilbertville was called, enlivened the situation by rye distilleries and a brewery, but when Uncle Sam’s minions were approaching on a still hunt in 1866, Oppel met them half way to Waterloo, carrying his copper still on his back. After a few preliminaries, including a number of fines, the industry was wiped out.

    "Fond memory recalls an especially pleasant link between Waterloo and the outlying territory in the stalwart, warm-hearted Doctor Barber. Generous and sympathetic to a fault, he was richly endowed with the faculty of inspiring his patients with hope, faith and charity, and the peaceful last days of the grand old man and his good wife are cherished by the old settlers as one of their happiest recollections.

    "A hundred or more Musquakies on their annual trapping or visiting tours were familiar and interesting events at that time, and their unselfish willingness to permit their female relatives to monopolize the labor market gave us pointers, and one had no need to draw on imagination to see a half dozen white men sitting about the cook stove, decorating it with tobacco saliva, while the housewife was chopping wood with which to cook dinner.

    "In the person of Dr. Jesse Wasson of La Porte City we may see a fine specimen of pioneer days. Versatility, with which he was richly endowed, was a prime necessity, and, measured as legislator, mayor, postmaster, physician, editor, manufacturer in various important lines, general merchandising, mechanics, wood or metal, he scored well. As a general booster he had few equals, while the cares of life and his three hundred odd avoirdupois were lightly borne.

    "He loved to take the conceit out of the fast ones in the fifty-yard sprint, and rarely missed an opportunity to shake the ‘light fantastic.’ He seldom danced in a house with but one room, but on one occasion consented to join in a one-room house with porch addition near Frenchtown, and when he cut loose in a German the crowd on the porch cheered him to the echo, and claimed him as one of their own in disguise.

    "Among those who have neared or passed the century mark are Elder Josiah Jackson, county supervisor at one time, now in Arkansas, living at one hundred and one years of age; Mrs. Howrey, ninety-seven years old, living in Spring Creek Township; our own ‘Mickey’ O’Reardon, who helped to dig the Erie Canal in the long ago, and served his three years in Company D, of La Porte, when over sixty years of age, dying in 1905, in his second century. The Nestor of them all, perhaps, Mr. Washburn, who settled in Spring Creek township early and built a grist mill on Spring Creek in 1866, when over eighty years old.

    "A Maquoketa paper announced his death at that place a few years ago, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Jerome Tryon, also well known here, and gave his age at something like one hundred and three or one hundred and four.

    "Elder Jackson wielded the real birch here in the early days, and some think it was twenty feet long and two inches in diameter.

    "Opportunities were open for all for a common schooling at an early date, but in a recent short visit to Normal Hill, the contrast between the monumental group of massive, yet beautiful, structures and the one lone building on State Street, Albany, New York, in 1850, requiring a large sign to find it, furnished food for a comparative reverie. Queer, indeed, must be the Iowan who, in the presence of these huge piles of stone and brick, does not tingle with pride even to his finger tips, while giving thanks for the wisdom which inspired the powers to concentrate and conquer rather than divide and fail as other states have done. Fortunate in its executive head, its national repute does Iowa proud."