CHAPTER XXIII.

Very few people lived their lives out on the claims they made on the first of May, 1843. But now and then an aged man or woman may be found living on the iden-
tical spot where their first cabin was built in that long ago time. There was Harry Brewer, who came with several others (all of whose names I have forgotten except Ephriam Munsel.) Mr. Brewer, Mr. Munsel and two or three others, located claims close together, on the grounds and in the neighborhood where the little town of
Givin now stands.

Little did they know or think or care anything about the rich veins of coal underlying the whole of that beautiful farming land. All they thought of was getting their land in condition to raise something to eat, and a cabin to shelter them. They knew that coal was all about there, they could see it cropping out of the banks along the Muchakinock and its little tributaries, but what did they want with coal? They had no use for the black, foul smelling stuff. Who ever dreamed then that a time would come when that beautiful scenery would be disfigured with great, ugly coal shafts and immense piles and ridges of unsightly, black, smoking slack. A blacksmith shop was a necessity wherever a little settlement was made. Somebody would dig into a hillside and get enough to supply them. That was about all the use people here had for coal in '43 and '44. There was plenty of wood along the rivers to supply the wants of the early settlers. We knew very little about coal at first. Where I came from blacksmith shops used charcoal. The only coal I ever saw before coming to Iowa was a piece about the size of a hen's egg, brought by a young man who had been to Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, attending school. Said piece of coal was placed as a curio on his father's mantel shell and shown to the neighbors when, they came in, and its use explained. Blacksmiths had to use coal and blacksmiths were a necessity-people had to get their horses shod and their big prairie plows sharpened and their iron wedges sharpened, and if they broke the shovel or tongs in putting on a big backlog or forestick, it took a blacksmith to mend them.

Besides the Brewers and Munsells, there were the Harper brothers, John, William, Jacob and Archer, Mr. James Bowen, Mr. Andrew Baughman, the Olneys and many others, all in that region and all owning tracts of land, rich and productive. Corn, wheat, oats, clover and timothy grew luxuriantly on all these lands. But before many years they began to discover that there was a mine of wealth deep down under their fields and orchards and under everything else around there. There soon began to be a demand for coal, in a small way. When that big prairie toward Fremont began to be settled up, the people used coal. They found it cheaper than wood and easier to obtain. Those people out there used to haul from Bowen's bank, which was said to turn out the best coal in that region.

In course of time a railroad was built from Keokuk to Des Moines, then the Iowa Central, both roads running through that neighborhood I have mentioned. A railroad company bought nearly all the farms around there, paying what seemed then to be. fabulous prices for the same. Those mines of coal were opened up on a large scale, managed by two brothers, W. A., and H. W. McNeill- big-souled, brainy business men. The mining town of Muchakinock sprang up. Hundreds of men were soon working under the ground. Their houses soon lined the creek and dotted the hills. Instead of a wagon load being hauled away from there occasionally, thous-
ands of tons were shipped out daily. 

The McNeill's were the kind of men to make business go. They have not only done much toward developing the vast coal flelde of Mahaska County, but have built handsome residences and substantial business houses in Oskaloosa. Our people are indebted to the McNeills for much of our town and county's prosperity. Colonel MeNeill, a brother, came later. He, too, is a fine business man. He owns and occupies one of the handsome homes in Oskaloosa. H. W. McNeill built one of the most elegant and expensive suburban homes anywhere in this part of Iowa. Oskaloosa people are proud of "Park Place" and take pleasure in driving their visitors through its winding ways, where are to be seen neatly shorn hedges, velvety grass plats, pond, fountain, rose garden, vines, ferns and flowers, besides trees great and small. Park Place is an ideal and a charming home.

The McNeill brothers have made much money in an honorable business way, are very liberal, and make magnificent presents to their relatives, no matter how remote. They are not only generous with their own kin; but give bountifully to hundreds and thousands of needy poor. Besides many other gifts, they used to donate a turkey to each miner's family in their employ for their Christmas dinner.

When the coal companies offered the people about Givin and Muchakinock a hundred dollars an acre for their land they nearly all sold out. I can't think of any who kept their farms and old homesteads except Wm. Harper and Harry Brewer. Harry Brewer died several years ago, but Mrs. Brewer, the wife of his youth, is living on the spot where their claim cabin stood in 1843. Mrs. Brewer is well preserved, retains her mental faculties perfectly, has a very clear recollection of the early times and can relate scenes and events of that long ago time in a clear and interesting manner. She tells about the cabin in which they lived the first winter having no window; when she sewed on cold winter days she had to sit almost in the fireplace, where she could thread her needle by the light which came down the chimney. Some of Mrs. Brewer's sons are successful business men in Oskaloosa and have good substantial homes. Their sister Emily, who married a Mr. Grew, was a lovely girl and is a noble and lovely woman.

Farmers who did not sell out and out to the coal companies have found a market for their products in the mining towns which are to be seen in every direction from Oskaloosa. Great fields of waving grain, orchards and meadows flourish on the ground beneath which are thousands of men digging and hauling out that valuable coal. Long trains of cars loaded with that useful commodity are sent east, west, north and south. Railways are run by it, and the dwellers on the vast woodless plains of Northwestern Iowa and the Dakotas are warmed by fires made of coal from Mahaska County. When we come to think of it, Mahaska County has many things which are considered essential in making up the necessaries and comforts of a home. Her natural resources are numerous, her soil deep and rich, producing immense crops' of grains, grasses, vegetables and fruits.

Great veins or strata of coal underlie all this fine farming land. Both the Des Moines and Skunk rivers run diagonally through the county. They, with their numerous tributaries and many fine springs, make it a well watered county, and besides that, one can have a well almost anywhere by digging. In the bluffs along our rivers and creeks limestone and sandstone abound, suitable for building purposes. There is an abundance of clay suitable for making ordinary brick, tiling and pottery, and an unlimited amount of the kind of which paving brick is made. If anybody wants to see paving brick that will stand almost anything on earth; let them come to Oskaloosa. I can speak for the paving in front of my house, which is on South Market Street, a street used as much for heavy hauling and fast driving as any street in the city. I have seen sparks fly from the hoofs of horses as they have gone tearing along on this pavement, but have never seen a brick misplaced nor even a corner chipped off, though it has been down over four years. I seem to be doing a little unintentional advertising for the people who make the brick and those who do the paving. But let it go. If I knew who they were, I might mention their names. Come to think of it, I do know one man who is engaged in making paving brick just at the edge of town. That man is Mr. Will Hawkins, a highly respected citizen of Oskaloosa, whose excellent wife is a daughter of Isaac Kalbach and sister of the Kalbach men who are counted among the honorable business men - the bone and sinew of Oskaloosa's citizens.

Will Hawkins is a descendant of Quaker ancestors of whom no one need be ashamed. His parents, Isaac and Ruth Hawkins, came to Oskaloosa from Ohio many years ago when Will was a little boy. His brother, Seth Hawkins, is, and has been from young manhood up, a much respected member of society. These Hawkins men have five sisters, Mrs. George Terrell, Mrs. Joseph Arnold, Mrs. Charles Johnson, Mrs. Anna Barton and Miss Lou Hawkins, everyone superior and cultured women. Isaac Hawkins, their father, died soon after coming to Oskaloosa, but Ruth, his gentle, sweet-spirited wife, survived him many years. But now she too is sleeping in the silent city of the dead. Abram and Jane Hawkins, near relatives of the other Hawkins family, came and settled in Oskaloosa more than thirty years ago. A more serene and charming old couple it was never my pleasure to meet. Their genial bow and pleasant smile "haunts me still" as I, on summer evening's, drive by their once charming home. I miss the bow of friendly recognition and kindly smile which used to greet me as I was wont to see that beloved and saintly couple sitting on their veranda embowered in vines and flowers. A holy peace seemed to rest on those placid faces, though they had known sorrow. They had seen their manly sons and
sparkling daughters, while in the bloom of young manhood and young womanhood, fall asleep, to wake no more. Uncle Abram and Aunt Jane, as everybody called them, endured their bereavement with Christian resignation. A peace the world knew not of was theirs. Now they lie side by side in Forest Cemetery. A gray granite stone marks the spot where among their sons and daughters they are sleeping their long, last sleep. Two sons survive them, William and Eli Hawkins, who are prominent business men in Oskaloosa.

If I had led anyone to suppose that I was going to tell a connected story or relate events in the order in which they occurred, I would feel like apologizing for flying from one subject to another having so little bearing on each other. But I find if I tell the things I want to tell, I must tell them just when I happen to think of them .

I must go back to Harrison township where we lived on the Rhinehart farm from the 11th of November, 1856, to November 9th, 1868. Many things happened during those twelve years. The great financial crash of 1857, which made times so hard, and money so hard to obtain that some families came near suffering for the bare neeessaries of life; some could scarcely get corn bread. There came nearer being a famine than anything that ever happened to Iowa. Corn a dollar a bushel and no money. In the summer of 1858 there was so much rain the crops were ruined. The roads were almost impassable. The rivers and creeks overflowed their bottomlands. The town of Eddyville was innundated, or a good portion of it was. The Des Moines river bridge; the pride of the town, was partially carried off by the flood. If there was another bridge spanning the Des Moines river at that time, I don't know where it was. When the river was too high to ford, it was crossed in ferry boats.

Mr. William Fredrick and family lived about three miles south of us. They had come from Ohio in 1844. Mr. Fredrick was called a rich man. He bought a large tract of land; I think he was said to own nine hundred acres all in one body. He kept a large flock of sheep. The first dandelions I ever saw in Mahaska County grew on the common where Mr. Fredrick pastured his sheep. It was said that the seed was brought from Ohio in the wool on the backs of those sheep. I remember how delighted I was to see those yellow blossoms, reminding me of my childhood days. Mr. Fredrick raised immense crops of the biggest and yellowest corn I ever saw. He brought the seed from Ohio. In a year or two every farmer around had that kind of corn. It was known as the Fredrick corn all over the country. Mr. Fredrick was a very peculiar man. If he didn't like people he was not slow in letting them know it. At the same time he was generous to those he liked, especially to the worthy poor. He happened to have a large amount of corn on hand when corn was selling at a dollar a bushel, but when the poor went to him to buy for bread or seed he
would only take twenty-five cents. Mrs. Fredrick was a lady of refined tastes; was a lover of flowers. When rare shrubs, roses and other flowers were almost unknown in this new country, she bad a garden full, brought from her old home in Ohio. The first time I went to see her, which was in the Spring of '57, she had my buggy filled with slips from those choice plants. Mrs. Fredrick died in the Fall of '57.

When the Fredrick's came to Iowa they had two sons, young men, George and William, and three daughters, Mrs. Dr. C. G. Owen, Miss Clementina Fredrick, who afterward married Mr. Sidney Smith, and Miss Cassie Fredrick. George and William both died in early manhood: Mrs. Electa Owen died a few years later in Oskaloosa. Mrs. Sidney Smith and Miss Cassie are all that are left of that family. A few years after Mrs. Fredrick died, Mr. Fredrick married Mrs. Reigart, a superior lady. Mrs. Reigart had two charming daughters, Miss Kate and Miss Vena Reigart. I remember well what a sensation the advent of these handsome and accomplished girls created among the young men of our neighborhood. But none of them succeeded in winning either of them. Kate married somebody and went to Chicago to live. Vinnie is the wife of Colonel Hammond, a prominent banker and an esteemed citizen of Oskaloosa, and has bright and accomplished daughters of her own. The second Mrs. Fredrick preceded her husband to the other shore. Mr. Fredrick lived to a great age, away up in the nineties. He died while on a visit to his daughter, Mrs. Smith, in Kansas. That terrible conflict, the war of the rebellion, began and ended while we were citizens of Harrison township. We were still feeling the pressure of the crash of '57 when that awful war broke out. Money was still scarce, dry goods and groceries were .high, and when the war was really upon us, things were higher.

People who had been thought well to do wore shabby, patched and threadbare clothes. Coffee, tea and sugar sold at enormous prices. Nearly everybody resorted to some kind of substitute for coffee. We got along pretty well on coffee made of parched rye. But for sugar and molasses there was no substitute until the Lord sent us the sorghum. Sorghum was never known in this country until about the time the war began. At first, no one here knew how to make a very good article of sorghum molasses, but they soon learned to make what we thought a very fair syrup. Esquire Sam Vance became an expert on that necessary commodity. I remember how proud I was when two barrels of that saccharine product were brought and unloaded at my door. When a thing which is essential to the living of His children fails, the Lord sends something to supply that need.

When the Nantucket and New Bedford whale fishers could no longer supply lighting and lubricating oil to answer the demands of this country with its steadily increasing population and inventions, the God and Father of us all permitted his children to discover deep down in the earth great reservoirs of petroleum and stores of gas. When that terrible conflict between the north and the south came, and almost shut off the supply of sugar and molasses which we were wont to receive from our southern neighbors, so cheap and so plentifully, the same kind Providence sent us the sorghum. It was surprising how soon the people learned to make a fine quality of molasses, and how pleased and satisfied we were with our jars of crab-apple sauce, plum butter and blackberry jam made with sorghum molasses. Esquire Vance was supposed to be the champion sorghum-maker in that region, but there were others who were not slow in the business. "Uncle Jake" Noe, for instance, a neighbor of ours, carried on the business to a considerable extent; Uncle Jake had a sorghum-mill of the regulation sort, propelled by a horse of uncertain age which they called "Colonel." Colonel in early life had been afflicted with a disease known as "big head." Though he had recovered from that malady, his head was still out of proportion to the rest of his body. Colonel would not have been called fleet, nor symmetrical, nor spirited, yet if a boy kept at his heels with a cane stalk and gave him a lick occasionally he would keep that sorghum mill going pretty steadily from morning till night.

Uncle Jake was kind-hearted and liberal and patient. He permitted all the boys around to congregate at his sorghum factory of evenings, and with his own boys have all the fun they chose to have, which is saying a good deal. There were my own boys, the Bean boys, and the Barber boys, everyone of them bubbling over with fun. Uncle Jake supervised the boiling himself, and when he would have an installment of molasses to dip out he would say:

"Now, boys, git your paddles ready, and as soon as I git the batch dipped out you kin jist pitch in and scrape the pan," whereas a general licking of paddles and smart remarks would begin. The Noe boys were noted for a dry wit peculiarly their own. That sorghum making gave to our children a pleasure something like their parents experienced when children, as they congregated at the sugar camps in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. The Noes came from Indiana, the region where Edward
Eggleston found the material for his story of "The Hoosier School-master." I didn't live far from there myself, and can testify that Edward Eggleston and James Whitcomb Riley know what they are talking about.

More than three score years have come and gone since I, with other happy children, played 'neath the shade of big beech and sugar trees not far from the little town of Greenfield. "Long afore we knowed who Santa Claus wuz" we waded in gravelly-bedded creeks, peeled great flakes' of moss from logs which had been lying for generations undisturbed, until we stripped them of their mossy coats to make carpets for our play-houses and beds for our dolls. Little girls of Mahaska have many beautiful things never dreamed of when I was a child, but they have no such moss as we had.