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The committee all went to Monticello, the nearest town where any assortment of Christmas goods was to be found, in the superintendent’s two-seated buggy, as we called it then, there being no covered rigs in use. The money was prorated as to age. The infant class, of which I was a member, received the value of twenty cents, the amount per capita increasing up to one dollar for the oldest or those about sixteen. I received a one-blade knife and a toy watch in the division.

Maggie Ransom had been with her foster parent to Kansas for a part of the year and was docked for time out so she got only fifty cents worth. The committee, unfortunately, forgot to rub out the cost mark, and the discrimination was taken as an insult by both her and her parents. The committee forgot one or two so had to go to Center Junction to fill in. Elmer Overley was sent to Uncle John Krouse, the superintendent, to get the money for these purchases and Aunt Jane Krouse, one of the defeated candidates for the committee, sent back work that if she had gone there would have been no forgotten ones, a comment not well received by Aunt Mary Overley.

Finally the presents were assembled. Next came the tree. It must be an evergreen but none was to be had short of the pinery hundreds of miles away and the little cedars on the rocks along the Maquoketa River ten miles away. Jacob Vanslike, who lived near the church, knew the location of some trees, for he liked good things to eat and had scoured the whole country for years in search of blackberries. Now Jacob had a fair-sized family and lived by the church but he did not attend much nor send his children, so he had to be paid one dollar to get the tree.

On this occasion he hied himself to the river in his wagon. As this particular winter had no snow the ice on the river was thin and on going over he left his rig behind. Even walking across he broke through and got well immersed without benefit of clergy. Indeed he was one of those unlucky mortals who get in all the trouble at hand, careful or careless. However, he got a tree about ten feet high and some smaller ones and delivered them to the church. Isaac Overley came with his axe, draw knife, and brace and bit, redistributed some of the limbs, put in some, and made a tree as fine as the ones he was used to seeing in old Kentucky around Flemingsburg where cedar trees grew as large as forest trees in this country and were used for rails to build fences. The writer has seen the people in Tennessee taking these cedar rails out of worm fences, which the natives said the pioneers had laid there, and selling them to the pencil factories.

The tree being duly placed, the next problem was its decoration. The neighbors popped corn and strung it on thread and wound it through the limbs. For lighting they got twelve little candle sticks to hold wax candles, similar to the big ones but about the size of a lead pencil half used up. This together with the glare of the six oil lamps on the side with tin reflectors was the illumination. When all was ready, the presents were duly displayed amid the candles lighted. After a song and a prayer, Lew Ellis, an ex-soldier picked the tree, while Maggie Felton and Carry Pangburn did the announcing to a tickled bunch of children. I am certain this was the first Christmas tree in the township

This was the last public function held in the country church, for the little towns had railroads and soon had churches or church services. Before long the older children in the little community began to scatter and go to school and college leaving only a remnant behind. Finally in 1876 the conference, against the will of a great majority of the good people who built the church and had worshipped in it., moved the building two miles east to Onslow. Many of the members never united with any other denomination or church. A few on the east went with the church. The writer’s family moved to Center Junction and the whole family of eight attended the Methodist college at Mt. Vernon, most of them graduating and becoming professional men or women. They attended the Center Junction Methodist Church but no church could ever take the place of the old one. It flourished in Onslow for years and then because of the death and removal of its members, finally died of starvation. Recently it has been torn down and made into a barn.

The only people left in the neighborhood of the original church building site are a cousin of the writer, her husband, and family, and Mrs. J. N. Smith, nee Rachel Nichols, who lives on the ground and owns the farm entered by her father Eliphalet A. Nichols, in 1852. This has been her home for more than sixty years. The home consists of one hundred and ten acres with buildings, orchard grove, and many improvements. I think there has never been a judgment tax, sale, or lien of any description against it or a crop failure.

The township of Madison was very patriotic during the Civil war. It was almost unanimously Republican and very intolerant of any who differed from them. One of our neighbors, William S. Slocum, a Connecticut Yankee school teacher, was a Democrat. He hated the negro and sided with the Copperheads. His hired man reported in Wyoming that Slocum had advised him not to enlist and had said that if he were drafted he would desert and go with the South.

One morning Thomas Green, with several more men, came to our house with a rope and got father and went to Slocum’s house for an explanation. Slocum denied the charge and being a man of good character outside of politics, with a wife and small girl, and well liked in the community, my father advised leniency. Slocum recanted, his hired man enlisted, and the matter was dropped. Madison Township always furnished her full quota and never had a draft. Father said at one time there were only two single men in the township of military age not in service.

From the following story you can see why one of these men remained at home. He once took his sweetheart to Anamosa to a county fair. They had cube sugar for coffee and he liked sweets, so he filled his coat pocket with the sugar lumps. Some of the waiters noticed it and a marshal collared him and marched back to the table and made him disgorge in public. He was known as “Sugar________ “ for the rest of his time in the neighborhood.

Because our quota was full, the few Cooperheads in our township were never called on to go as soldiers but Jackson Township west of us had in it a settlement of Jackson Democrats and Southern sympathizers, who were all related through marriage and previous training. Otherwise they were good citizens and prosperous. So few of them enlisted that a draft was required to raise their quota.

During the Civil War my father belonged to a company of home guards that met for drill at Johnsontown. On one of their drill days Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood inspected the company and made a speech. he told them, among other things, that there were a lot of Copperheads in one locality who might need to be shown a thing or two and if so he might send the company over there. If he did, they were not to shoot any one unless it was necessary but if they did shoot to remember that he had the pardoning power.

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