CHAPTER XIII ___________ THREE PROMINENT PIONEERS Alfred Hebard, Justus Clark and R. M. G. Patterson were three citizens of Montgomery County who deserve more than passing notice from the historian. All of them were members of territorial and early state legislatures and were factors in laying the broad and enduring foundation upon which was erected the magnificent structure of our state. They were men of strong mental and moral fibre, and in accord with the spirit of intelligence and progress of the Iowa pioneers.
Mr. Hebard served as a member of the 3d, 4th and 6th territorial legislatures, in the years of 1840, 1841 and 1843, participating in the proceedings of those memorable sessions. While not conspicious as a debater, he was among the most influential members, and was regarded by his assoicates as a man of sound judgment. His residence of twenty-eight years in Montgomery County impressed his strong and commanding personality upon all. He was a magnificent specimen of the dignified and perfectly bred man—a true gentleman of the old school. He was a prominent figure in society and in the state legislative halls, whre he served as Senator from the Mills-Montgomery District for eight consecutive years. He also represented the state as a United States Commissioner to the World's Fair at Paris in 1889 and also at the International Congress held at Stockholm, Sweden. He was true to the laws of his physical and intellectual nature. No bad habits he had, to undermine his strength or to shatter his nerves. His conduct was as ideal and as true as the Page 109 lines traced by his unerring compass over the prairie. Thus was his vital machinery enabled to run smoothly and evenly for eighty-six years—a long, noble and complete life. His morals were inflexible. Of marked value was his contribution to the social, material and intellectual interests of Red Oak and Montgomery County. For years, as chairman of the School Board, he took an especial interest in everything pertaining to the efficiency of our schools. His last public appearance was an able and interesting address at the celebration of the quarterly centennial of our graded schools. He dwelt with special pleasure and delight upon the educational progress of the city. We owe him a debt of gratitude for the part taken by him in a wise and practical way, to promote this all important interest. No greater honor can be enjoyed by anyone than to be one of the founders of a great state; to assist in bringing the rude and primitive fragments—the raw material of a state—into symmetrical form. Mr. Hebard's nameis intimately associated with those of our pioneer governors, Chambers, Lucas, Briggs and Grimes, and he knew such men as Hall, Mason, Darwin and Parvin. He was on the staff of one of the territorial governors; hence his title with which we are familiary—"Col." Hebard. What an influx of young men came into Iowa in the '50's, some of whom became leaders in state, national and international affairs. They were not of the feeble order of mind or body, but were of granite strength and texture. Mr. Hebard was the peer of such contemporaries as Dodge, Curtis, Grinnell, Kirkwood and Allison. He was content to live in comparative obscuity after acquiring by just and honorable methods the competence that relieved him from anxiety and care in his declining years. Many with whom he had business dealings recall acts of kindness and forbearance in times of financial embarassment and perplexity. The young readers of this not Page 110 undeserved eulogy can scarcely realize the obstacles to be met and overcome by the young civil engineer, entrusted with the work of finding a path for the iron horse. The state was then a trackless prairie and the early civil engineer, running lilnes, taking levels, crossing streams, under scorching suns and in frequent storms, was sheltered at night, if at all, under the canvas covered wagon. When the party of railroad surveyors, of whom Mr. Hebard was chief, reached the valley of the east Nishna, where they camped for the night, they beheld a landscape of unusual beauty, with a stream flowing through it. "Here will be a depot," said Col. Hebard, and his faith was so great that with David Remick and others in 1857, they purchsed the land and surveyed and platted the town of Red Oak Junction, with the thought that the railroad [w]yould be located where Railroad Street (now Washington Avenue) ran through the town. The headquarters of the surveying part were at a station kept by Joe Zuber near the present Catholic Cemetery north of Red Oak. During that year, Mr. Hebard crossed the state four times with his own conveyance. He marked the route that now binds together the two great rivers bordering the state. So painstaking and accurate was his work that of the the three surveys made, his was the one selected, and few deviations were made from it. Many were the trials which this young man had to bear. Scraping a sustenance from the bare rocks of New England; teaching school in New Jersey; gathering together a few boys in the town of New London, Conn., and insturcting them in the rudiments of education; preparing for college and finally graduating with honor from the oldest and most noted American college—Yale. In the class room, he was associated with Cassius M. Clay, Senator Copperton of West Virginia and others who later gained national reputation. Exuberant with hope, he sought a fortune in Iowa—the then far west. He obtained land, erected a log cabin, and with his young wife established a cultured and Page 111 happy home; where they dwelt for fifteen years, enduring the privations of pioneer life, rounding up a period of twenty years from the date of his graduation from college. After many years of quiet retirement in his Red Oak home, Mr. Hebard died, Sept. 26, 1896, while absent on a visit to his old home near New London, Conn. There his remains lie buried. A public memorial service was held in the Red Oak Congregational Church, at which tributes to his character were paid by Judge Deemer and others. In every station, in life, private or public, whether as husband, father, student, teacher, farmer, engineer or legislator, he exhibited qualities that dignify and adorn human nature. "His life was gentle and the elements
Justus Clark was a man of somewhat similar history who came to Montgomery County eight years subsequent to the time of Col. Hebard's arrival. Both men had been residents of Burlington, Vt., and vicinity, and at different times followed the same occupations as farmers, railroad men and legislators. They combined the characteristics of pioneer and Yankee. Mr. Clark's boyhood days were spent in Windom and Crittenden counties, Vermont. When a lad of sixteen years of age, he left the home of his father, an old historic place, once occupied by Gov. Crittenden before the Revolution, and found employment as a dry goods clerk in Burlington, where he was entrusted with responsible duties. The spirit of adventure took possession of him and the great west had attractions which could not be resisted. The ulndiscovered possibilities of that region appealed to the young men of fifty or sixty years ago with irresitible force. They became path-finders in the wilderness but recently penetrated by white men. By a slow, cir- cuitous route, young Clark transferred his home from Burlington, Vt., to Burlington, Iowa, where he arrived in the spring of 1839. In his mature manhood, when he had gained a copetency in this world's goods, and had arisen to positions of honor and usefulness in that city and in the state, he dwelt with pleasure and pride upon his achievements. On one occasion, in company with the writer, he pointed out a little old brick building in Burlington, saying, "I worked for the man who owned that house for the first meal of victuals partaken by me in Iowa." He soon found employment and remained there for four or five years. Then he opened up a farm in Pleasant Grove Township, Des Moines County, whre he lived twenty-five years. He was an enterprising, public spirited citizen, and promoted the growth and development of his country. He was called upon to serve his community in minor offices; was a member of the board of county supervisors and for six consecutive years in the first years of the state's existence, he was one of its legislators. He was a member when the sessions of 1861 and 1852 were held in the old Capitol building in Iowa City, of those held in Des Moines in 1858 and 1860, and of the special session in 1861. He was in the employ of the B. & M. R. R. Co., securing the right of way and contnuing similar service three yerars for the Burlington and Southwestern Railway. In subsequent years, he devoted much of his attentin to stock-raising and shipping. He owned an extensive ranch in New Mexico and was familiar by travel with the stock-raising industry in the great ranges of the west. He was also an extensive dealer in lumber, and was the first president of the Red Oak National Bank. In 1850 he made a trip from his home in eastern Iowa, with an ox-team, to California. He returned the next year by the way of the Isthmus of Panama, and travelled on foot the route now selected for the great water-way, the Panama Canal. He was a close observer of men and events and visited Page 113 Europe to study the industrial conditions in England and on the Continent. He died in Los Angeles in 1895, and his body now rests in the Red Oak Cemetery. Another man who contributed toward creating the political division known as the State of Iowa, was R. M. G. Patterson. He was one of the early settlers, locating in the valley of the Nodaway in 1853. Mr. Hebard and Mr. Clark wre not pioneers in the strictest sense; they came upon the scene later. At another time and place they had been of the true guild and had borne all the hardships of the struggle to subdue the prairie and the wilderness, and to make them subservient to the use of man. When they appeared in the county, they found many things made ready for them, crude and unattractive, but of real value in the inventory of things. They were better clothed, and better fed and had adopted the manners of polite society. They brought with them carriages, books, furniture, paintings, silverware and table linen for their dwellings. These things were in marked contrast to the earlier time when there was not a carriage nor a fashionable suit of clothes in the county and when gourds were used for drinking cups, goods-boxes for tables, stools for chairs, and jack-knives to carve the food. They were the vanguard of the immigration which soon followed. Mr. Patterson lived several years at Keokuk, Iowa, coming there soon after he emigrated from Ohio in 1839, where he arrived, porr and destitute, having lost all of his goods when that ill-fated steamer, the "William Glasgow," was burned below Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He built a log cabin and lived at peace with the Indians who frequently came to his residence and greeted him with the usual friendly "How." Of his family, one daughter becamethe wife of the late Alvin Fulton of Keokuk, who was deputy United States Marshall Page 114 under D. B. Miller of Red Oak. Another duaghter is the widow of the late James Dunn of this county. He was the father of John W., and Jonathan T. Patterson, once prominent citizens of Montgomery County. The elder Patterson is an interesting reminiscence, as he was one fo the few left who formed the lilnk between a generation long past and the present, having served in the war of 1812 under Genearl Cass. His recollections of the early days at Keokuk were of historical value. He was one of the proprietors of Arlington, in which he put much faith that it would be a station on the line of the railroad, but of which nothing now remains. He now sleeps in the cemetery near that obsolete town, having died in April, 1854.
|
|||||||||||||
