Life
Among the Settlers
The Portland pioneers of the 40's had the same experience that all the
early settlers of the surrounding country met with in those days of making homes
in wild territory. The country being
new had to be broken up and made ready for cultivation. The means at hand were
crude and mostly homemade as the era of inventions in farm machinery had not
arrived.
Means of communication had to be made, roads built and markets
established. It was largely an
individual life as distinguished from community life. Each settler was in a way
jack of all trades and division of labor was in its infancy.
A pioneer in need of a sled made one with his ax and draw knife neither
using a nail or an iron pin; he now buys it from a factory whose purpose is to
make sleighs. Mothers then spun and
knit stockings and mittens for the family; the family now buys them, the mother
not even being consulted. Not only
necessity, but distance from market centers created these conditions.
The pioneer as a class had no money to buy such things had they been
within his reach to secure. He was
thus compelled to use long hours and much muscle to accomplish so little.
His farm as a rule was small (forty and eight acre tracts).
Had he taken a quarter section, he could not farm it with the means he
possessed, and besides it took many years to improve it.
It will also appear that many of Portland's early settlers, after
entering their 40-acre tract, had to earn the money they used in paying for it
and in addition earn sufficient to buy cattle, etc., with which to make a start
in life.
Others, who probably constituted a majority, brought with them a yoke of
oxen, a cow or two, a plow, some chickens, a wife and two or three babies.
These were comparatively rich and for a time made more rapid strides than
their less fortunate neighbors. But
as a class, they did not hold out so long. Our
information warrants the conclusion, that as a rule the settlers who had the
hardest task to create homes, outlived those in the town who enjoyed luxuries in
comparison with them. It must be
understood that there was no such thing as wealth among these settlers when
tested by present day standards. They
all had to work and undergo privations which only the present survivors of them
now appreciate.
The conditions under which they toiled are best expressed in statements
made by a few of their children who have written them for publication in this
connection. The reader will be left
to them for specific mention of the elements that made up not only the trails
but the pleasures of the Portland pioneer. Notwithstanding,
they claim a great share of pleasure. Still
from the standpoint of ease and luxury, we can but congratulate the generation
of today that a period of 60 years separate them from the days of the ox team
and the breaking plow, and that science and invention were unusually active
during this period.
That the pioneers experienced hardships is certain, and amidst them all
we are inclined to ask the questions: Had
the early settlers had happy days? Did
they enjoy life? The conditions of
life have undergone a complete revolution since their day.
We now ride over the Portland grade in our rubber-tired carriage or our
cushioned automobile and give expression to our dissatisfaction if we but see
upon the road a fugitive boulder of two inches in diameter, which really offers
no obstruction to our progress and which may be avoided by a slight effort at
careful driving. A few minutes and
the marsh is crossed. The settler
had the marsh to contend with and his first road was over logs and brush thrown
upon the surface to avoid miring in the soft earth.
It took hours for the clumsy ox team to make a mile or two, particularly
when the wagon would stick in the mud requiring unloading and reloading.
This is but an illustration of their troubles.
Their houses were of their own construction as was nearly everything used
on the farm. Their food was largely
produced by themselves. Luxuries as
we know them were seldom indulged; they were not among the characteristics of
frontier life. Even the printing
press furnished the pioneer with but little to read and still we have an
abundance of testimony from the settlers themselves that they enjoyed life in
the early days of Portland.
The late James Joice mentioned the "Bluff" as a center where
the boys had a splendid time hunting, fishing and swimming.
He states: "Those were
days of joy for all the young boys." He
relates that Willit Sheldon was his tutor in swimming.
Joice put a bundle of hay under his breast and Sheldon was kind enough to
assist him in his struggle by throwing him back into the water everytime he
attempted to get out so he learned to swim as a matter of necessity.
But Thomas R. Tagg, now a prominent citizen of Waco, Nebraska, who
settled with his father's family at an early day near the Elba line, writes:
"Father bought a land warrant on land in Portland and nearly all the
children were born on that stony, old farm.
We were very poor. I have
very little recollection of the old place but a hard struggle for bread, and I
grew up to lift my mother and family out of poverty to some degree of comfort,
my father having died at Chattanooga. I
went to school about six months in an old school house near the farm and one
winter I attended a select school in Waterloo.
I taught the Whipple district school three winters.
The sixteen years I spent in Portland were the hardest of my life and, in
a great measure, I wanted to forget them. It
was wading marshes after stray cows, breaking up rough brush land, digging
stone, working late and early in the woods in winter.
We had the same hard grind year after year.
They were years of hard knocks."
Henry Stokes of Waterloo, whose father and grandfather were pioneers in
the woods near the Van Deldan Bridge writes:
"My father, Hugh B. Stokes, says they had no pleasures in pioneer
days but many hardships. They were
for weeks without meat, butter, or flour. Often
boiled wheat and corn were all they had three times a day.
Once the wheat stood in the stack for three years and then they threshed
only 300 bushels. A spring supplied
them with drinking water; they had neither tea nor coffee for years.
The first ride father ever had after locating in Portland was on a sleigh
to Columbus in the summer time. They
had no wagon. Along the way, they
lunched on mandrakes which they picked, and while they were attempting to secure
a fresh supply, the ox team ran away sled and all.
The first wagon they made at home; the wheels were made from sections
sawed from the end of a big log." The
privations mentioned in the foregoing statements were quite generally
experienced by the first settlers. Still,
in most localities, there were events and gatherings that gave the settler
occasion to make merry, causing him to forget the severity of his everyday
trials in establishing a home in a new land.
Mr. Whipple touches upon those occasions and gives expression to the
verdict often repeated by our parents during our younger days.
Nothing was more often said than that the good times of the early pioneer
days had passed and that the neighborhood had grown smaller with the advance of
years for the pioneers were neighbors and acted towards each other as such
although they resided many miles distant.
As time went on, Portland farmers gradually accumulated enough money to
replace the log house with one of brick or pine, and the straw shed with a
spacious barn. These offered
opportunities to the young people for gatherings of one kind or another.
There was more room for amusements. In
the early '70's, most of the children of the early settlers who remained in the
town, had reached their majority. Along
the west part of the town, surprise parties, barn dances, etc., were frequently
indulged. The surprise party meant
that all the young people invited by the promoters of the event arrived
simultaneously at the house where the party was stated to take place, surprised
the family and took possession of the house bringing with them their own music
and lunch baskets. The dance went on
until the intruders decided to quit. These
were by a repetition of the earlier entertainments of which P. F. Wickhem says:
"The good old times that our parents used to have congregating
together and dancing to the music furnished by Uncle Eli Griswold, Flan Ghastin,
and Dannie Sullivan will long be remembered by their children, of whom I am one,
who sat in the corner or were sleeping in the only bed that was in the old log
house. It was not uncommon to see
from six to ten babies in one bed sleeping while their mothers were dancing.
I still imagine I hear the tune of the Irish Washerwoman just as Uncle
Eli played it."
Uncle Eli was in demand at the surprise dances; also an innocent fellow
named Mike Dean who would sit and play all night and neither complain or ask for
a rest. The boys contributed a
quarter each for the music. It will
be remembered that a cast iron rule was supported among the young men which
excluded the round dance. The fact
was the Portland boy of Irish extraction experienced great trouble in inducing
his feet to adopt the movements of the German waltz.
This was not true of the girls and, when an intruder from the "The
Island" or elsewhere would induce Uncle Eli to strike up a waltz, there was
sure to be a lively minute on the floor.
The courteous floor master would suddenly begin calling numbers for the
same old quadrille and, when brushed aside by a whirling couple, he would make
for Uncle Eli thundering a demand to stop the "dutch" dance.
But Uncle Eli enjoyed the discomfiture his music occasioned and often
continued to play until the waltz was stopped by the quadrille friends crowding
upon the floor in response to the call of their respective numbers.
The same form of recreation prevailed on the east side of the Crawfish.
But this side of the town had a brewery which was located on the farm now
owned by John Goebel. A Mr. Jacket
made the beer which the people of the neighborhood drank, some at times to
excess, others moderately. Sunday
afternoons saw many hot times in the sample room of the brewery.
Among the residents of the northeastern quarter of the town were the
Fishers and the Plumbs whose sons never ran from a fight.
They were in the habit of fighting the young Germans and were dreaded as
terrors. Al Wooden and Roy
Plumb preferred fighting to drinking beer.
But it is said that these young men and their associates, the Fishers,
all of whom lived in the neighborhood called Fisherville, were perfect gentlemen
except when intoxicated when they became foemen of their steel.
The young men of the Larabee family on several occasions tried
conclusions with them. Jack
Sullivan, John Torpey and others used to go there for blackeyes at the hands of
John Cnare, the Kohns, and others. The
presence of this element at an election in the village was quite sure to
occasion a fight or two before the polls closed.
But this brewery is gone and the rough element that often made night
hideous in its vicinity has disappeared with it.
Hubbleton
furnished attractions for those in the Gingle-Corcoran neighborhood where the
genial Gran Griggs made them all happy. The
recreation indulged in this old center of mud and water, and whiskey was too
often dominated by an ambitious pugnacity whose sole delight was to raise a row
and either give or receive bruised noses. A
man by the name of Isaac Doddimede built a tavern during the days of the Plank
Road on the Harry Bleecker farm which was a gathering place for the young
element for a time. It was known as
the "Franklin House". Many
a weary farmer on returning from
Milwaukee left the proprietor a few shillings in exchange for his lodgings and a
decanter or two of whiskey.
There were some field sports indulged at least a half a century before
the Archies of Portland demonstrated their superiority in baseball over the
sports of Waterloo. Chauncey
Sheldon, who played with the little Indians of Portland in 1846, described the
first Portland ball game as follows: "On
the east side of the road north of the corners where Alex Campbell resided (Dahlman's
Corners) and near where Anthony Harmon was an early settler, a ball game took
place. I remember it well.
It was the first I had seen. Among
the boys who played were Oscar and Cord King, Cyrus Perry, L. P. Knowlton,
Harrison Cole, and James Sheldon. It
was an old style game. The neighbors
turned out to help raise a barn for a man who lived there and the game was
played in connection with the raising. D.
V. Knowlton was the tally-man cutting nitches in a stick.
The rule then was to throw the ball at a man who was off the base and if
it touched him he was out. I recall
the many false moves to draw their man from the goal as the base was called.
James Sheldon and Levi Knowlton were considered the most lively and were
on opposite sides."
Some of the people who resided in the southeast quarter of the town were
admirers of horse races and frequently indulged in trading horses.
In the early '70's, the Gingles', Donahues, Reynolds', McGoverns,
McSulleys, and others united in an effort to race their horses on Saturday
afternoons. They selected for a
course a level stretch of the highway south from the Van Deldan Bridge near the
cross roads. The writer was among
the onlookers at one of the races and occupied a prominent place on top of the
rail fence where the races occurred. The
horses in the races were but a few minutes previously in the plow.
If his memory is not a fault, there is not now residing in Portland a
single person who owned a horse that was run on that occasion.
Horse racing was not consistent with the development of Portland farms;
the farms remained but passed into hands less given to amusement.
The town furnished opportunity for many forms of recreation that invited
sports from far and near. The
Crawfish teemed with fish and, besides the marshes which it traversed, gave the
wild duck and goose a home for raising their young and a ground for feeding on
wild rice in the fall. The
"Bluff" had no rival as a fishing point and "Stoney Island"
and "Mud Lake" were paradises for the hunter.
The "Bluff" was visited by pleasure seekers from Watertown and
Milwaukee and was a favorite place where the residents of Waterloo often
entertained their guests for a day. In
early days when Portland had church services in the village school house,
Governor W. D. Hoard was a resident of Lake Mills.
One fine Sabbath morning during the fishing season, he invited a neighbor
to attend the Portland Church with him pulling up at Putt's Landing, a point
nearly opposite Stony Island on the river road.
Mr. Hoard had all the outfit necessary for catching fish with him except
a boat which his keen eye discovered tied to an overhanging branch a short
distance down the stream. It
belonged to one of the Geises whose permission to use it for an hour or two was
taken for granted, and in a few minutes, Mr. Hoard and his companion were
admiring fine pickeral and bass in the bottom of this boat.
Presently, the owner of the boat appeared upon the shore and by various
and violent gestures indicated a desire to have the boat returned.
After it had served the purpose of these visitors, it was brought back to
him and a mess of fish given with it.
The owner smilingly said he thought it was Star Cone who had the boat and
expressed a regret that he had disturbed them.
Boats were often borrowed in those days and the borrower forgot to return
them. This was but one of thousand
holiday excursions for a day of sport on the Crawfish.
Such sports as D. C. Stam; Charley and Frank Conklin, Stub Cone, and
their associates made their regular visits to the Bluff to hunt and fish.
Of course, these were days before the German Carp took possession of the
river.
Of all the men who cast a line into the waters of the Crawfish or drove a
canoe over its surface, "Young Johnny McGovern" is the most widely
known. In early boyhood days, he
lost a hand but this in no way impaired his skill as a hunter and fisher.
For years, he was known to bring down more ducks and put on the market
more fish than all the remaining residents of the town.
He made this his business and succeeded in making a commercial success
out of the fish and fowl of the Crawfish. He
still resides on the site of the "Indian Gardens".