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From northeastern Iowa to Des Moines, the state capital, the rivers are about twenty miles apart. Along these rivers there was usually a belt of solid timber about two miles wide mostly hilly, then a belt of solid prairie with no trees or brush, and then a belt of low hills, mostly clay. In the sixties there were on the tops of these hills some large oak trees about equally divided among white, black, or red oaks, as the people called them. The black oak was so named from its black bark. The red oak was named from its red center, or the heart of the wood. There was also the burr oak which has an acorn in clusters with a husk resembling a bur. These acorns fell early and we children used to eat them raw. They were also good when roasted. The others were very bitter.

These trees must have gotten started and survived because the grass on the tops of the hills was shortest or tramped out by the wild animals and did not make such a hot fire when the prairies burned. As soon as the top-most limbs got above the fire hazard and the cropping of the animals the trees were safe and some of them grew to be big trees, with trunks from ten to thirty inches in diameter. They were short bodied. The limbs branched out from eight to fifteen feet above the ground, like those of a well pruned apple tree, and they often shaded a spot ninety feet in circumference.

Sometimes the trees grew in pairs, perhaps a white oak and a black oak about the same size, but mostly they stood singly. There would be from two to ten oak trees on a forty and about two or three shellbark hickory trees. These usually bore a very good nut of small size with a thin shell. I knew every tree in six sections and I never found two trees bearing the same shaped nut. I got my share and sometimes more. These shellbarks were very rough. The shells or scales of bark would be about eighteen inches long, ending in saber points sticking out from the tree, and many a time the writer has had to stop and pull these shells away by breaking the points off before he could climb to the limbs. I have often wondered why nature made them so; there is some reason, but I have never found out why nor been told.

In the summer the cattle and horses enjoyed the shade of the trees and the travelers on the old trails would stop under them to rest and eat. The settlers being mostly from the timber states saved the trees for they still loved them. The hickory trees were left for the nuts as the children claimed the trees and for years those were all the nuts they had to eat. The farmers plowed around them and, the modern machines not being in use, the trees were not much bother.

The farm on which the Felton family was raised remained the home until 1896 and was held by deed until 1925. It had several fine trees and was known as Oak Park Farm. It was the last to surrender these monarchs and the writer now knows of only one farm where any of the trees of the sixties remain. That is the old Eliphalet Nichols home where his youngest daughter, Rachel Nichols Smith, still lives. For four generations—since 1852—the people on this farm have enjoyed the shady oaks. Then the farms began to be sold and rented in the eighties, the German tenants cut the trees and turned the orchards into asylums for ailing beasts, calf pastures, and the like, which soon destroyed both shade and fruit trees.

As soon as the majority of the land was tilled and the fires were controlled the heads of ravines soon grew timber. Stumps of oaks which had been burned to the ground sent up vigorous shoots that in twenty years made good posts and much firewood. These sprouted trees occasioned much hard labor to grub. The writer when in his teens had many hard days work getting them out. The tool was a mattock with a narrow axe on the one side and a stout hoe on the other, on a straight handle. After the fire hazard was past the soft wood got started and soon the cottonwood, elm, and balm of Gilead, locally known as quaking asp, shot up in fence lines and road sides.

As soon as the frost went out in the spring, flowers began with the grass. The first to come were the cowslips. These grew in the sloughs. The cowslip plant had a large flat leaf, a juicy stem, and yellow flowers. The leaves were gathered for greens by the early settlers, for there were no dandelions in the country at that time.

Then there were the johnny-jump-ups or wild pansies in three or four colors. Also the Indian tobacco, with its pallid flowers. We chewed the leaves, hence its name. The sheep-sorrel with pink flowers grew in clusters. The Indian head or bloody-butcher grew on a single stem. In June came the pinks. This was a wonderful flower of rare beauty, growing in the meadows. It had yellow flowers in a cluster on a stalk about a foot high.

In July came the ladyslippers. The yellow ones were quite common and grew on a single stem about a foot high with one flower shaped like a slipper. White ones with purple markings grew on some of the knolls. The writer had not seen one of these white ladyslippers for more than fifty years, until he found some in the spring of 1930 near Hopkinton. I think it was the prettiest wild flower of them all.

The dry land lily grew on a stalk with bright red flowers in irregular formation. The slough lily had several flowers on a stem. Its petals were curved with black dots. One kind of prairie thistle grew about a foot high with three flowers about the size of a round house paint brush. It was a beautiful flower and very rare. These flowers are now found only on the railroad right of ways that have never been plowed.

About 1875 a spasm of lecturing spread over the whole country similar to the Chautauqua. The older children were attending the small denominational colleges and bringing home reports of the school lectures by the professors and preachers. The idea spread. At Center Junction, for example, a club was formed to establish a lecture course. It was headed by Z. G. Isabell, the local Nasby, a man past middle life, who was also a Methodist preacher, a registered M. D., and a druggist. Dr. Carlisle A. Cary, Amos Pangburn, S. McGinty, M. O. Felton, Jess Houser, the local merchant, and a few more of equal note made up the membership. The field was well supplied from Henry Ward Beecher, Robert G. Ingersoll, Henry Watterson, and Schuyler Colfax down to the ground, covering all subjects, in title at least.

This club decided on three lectures. For the first they took a humorist named Ely Perkins. The Methodist Church was selected as the hall for it was the largest meeting place, seating about two hundred and fifty. The crowd gathered, made up mostly of the most devout Methodists and Presbyterians of the county and their families, except the baby which they had been ordered to leave at home. They gathered in solemn order as if at a memorial gathering, expecting to hear an orthodox sermon on the sin of a smile. Dr. Isabell in his ministerial clothes rose from behind the pulpit and proceeded to introduce the speaker. He said, in part, that the good people of the town and vicinity had decreed that they would not have any one-horse lecturer, so they sent to New York City for one.

Then Perkins, after a few words of praise for the group, launched out with funny stories and some bantering of the crowd. He had brought some drawings by way of illustrations. Among other things he said that his Uncle William was a very temperate man and had never drunk anything but whiskey and water but got to feeling bad so he quit the water altogether. At this some of them reached for their Bibles, other cleared their throats, and the atmosphere cooled perceptibly. A little later he got to the Englishman. He said it took a Yank two seconds to get anything through his head but it took an Englishman two weeks. The Methodist preacher who was sitting in front of him was English. This again iced the Methodists. At last the speaker looked at his watch and announced that he had been talking for an hour and a half and came to a close. I was much interested in the talk, especially the stories, and drank in all of it and remember it to this day. But the audience—there was never a more disgusted gathering left the church. They got the kind of lecture they paid for but not the kind they wanted. This ended the lecture course and goes to show that the mind of man is directed by prejudice more than by thought.

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Last updated on Friday, 16-Apr-2021 16:54:39 MST