I first saw daylight early on Monday morning, the 15th day
of August, 1842, in a log house of one room, on the northeast corner of block
14, in the town of Bloomfield, Green county, Indiana. My father at that time had
a small tanyard on said block of land, but had to give up the tanning business
finally, on account of quicksand in the well from which he drew the water to
fill his tanning vats. My father and his twin brother came from West Virginia1
in their boyhood days and located at Salem, Indiana. While living there they
learned the tanner's trade. Their father, my grandfather, came from Ireland
when a young lad and later served his adopted country in the Revolutionary War.
After the war he settled in Virginia. My mother was from North Carolina and was
of English ancestry. She died when I was almost two years old, and my only
sister died six months later. In 1846 my father married again and moved upon an
eighty-acre farm two miles east of Bloomfield, which became the first family
homestead. There my five half-brothers were born. Our combined ages are, on
this 14th day of June, 1914, 396 years, while our combined time in Iowa is
three hundred and sixty years.
I attended school two summers, during the last two years we
lived in Indiana. It was in a log schoolhouse, located in heavy timber. It had
no floor, nor even a window, though there was a small hole in one side of the
building to give light when the door was shut. The door was made of split
staves, and hung by wooden hinges; the accustomed latch-string was on the
outside. There was not a nail in the entire building. I attended my first
Sunday School at this schoolhouse, my cousin being the superintendent. He gave
me a Sunday School book, the reading of which at that time of my boyhood days
has guided me to this day in living the better life.
In May, 1854, father pulled up stakes and left for Iowa. We
had one team of horses and three yoke of oxen, with two wagons loaded with the
family bedding, clothes and utensils, besides enough dried fruit to last two
years. We also took along a small herd of young cows and heifers.
It was my lot to drive those cattle. I was in my twelfth
year and with the one hired man walked the whole way, driving the herd. I had
just received from my uncle a new pair of boots for the journey; but those
boots almost proved my undoing. My uncle had bought our eighty-acre farm, upon
which was a ten-acre field of fall wheat, having been sown in the standing
corn. He told me that if I would cut the stalks he would buy me a new pair of
boots for our journey. That spring I went at the job with father's old iron
hoe, which had a dogwood handle, and whacked down that ten acres of cornstalks,
earning my boots. On our way to Iowa we encountered so much rain and water that
the boots became so shrunken and stiff I could scarcely get them on and off; I
had to leave them on for days at a time. The result was that my feet became
very sore and calloused, and to this day I have a callous place on the bottom
of one foot caused by the pegs in those boots.
We crossed the Mississippi river at Davenport, Iowa, on
Sunday morning, June 11, 1854. It was a hot, foggy morning, but soon clouded
over and by the next day we had to travel in a cold, all day, northeastern
rainstorm. In all we were on the road twenty-two days, and we had rain at some
time during the day for eighteen of those days.
Father had come to Iowa in the fall of 1852 and had entered
two hundred and forty acres of land eight miles east of Tipton, the county seat
of Cedar county. After he had the land surveyed he bought forty acres more, of
timber land, four miles distant. Here he cut forks and poles for the frame and
then went to Davenport for the lumber with which to build our shanty to live in
during the summer. Davenport was thirty miles distant, and it took him three
days with an ox team to make the trip.
In the latter part of the summer I had to drive the three
yoke of oxen hitched to a breaking plow while the hired man held the plow
handles, to break twenty acres of prairie. The grass and blue stem were so high
and always so wet that I never thought of being dry until in the afternoon.
There were so many rattlesnakes that I had to wear those “store” boots all that
summer, to protect my feet. While the hired man and I were breaking prairie,
father was building our house, a one and one-fourth story building, into which
we moved some time in November. He also built a sod stable, covering it with
slough grass. Besides this, he with the help of two hired men cut and stacked
about sixty tons of the blue stem for hay. We built a rail fence around the
stacks and then during the winter, we threw the hay over the fence to feed the
cattle.
The two hired men we had were both from Indiana and late in
the fall they went back, as they were afraid of freezing to death in Iowa. Our
first winter, though, was not bad; in fact, it was one of the finest winters I
have ever seen in Iowa, and I have now (1914) seen sixty of them in the State.
The nearest schoolhouse was four miles away and overcrowded at that, so I
received no schooling that winter. Father would go to the timber every day with
Ben and Head, a faithful yoke of oxen, to make rails and posts, bringing home a
load at night. He would reach the timber usually by daylight and very often
would not get home till long after dark. I thus, with some help from my younger
brothers, had to do the chores, cut the stove wood, and carry it into the
house. The fine, dry winter was a great blessing to father, as he had to work
every day in getting out the material with which to fence the farm the next
spring.
That spring, 1855, we put in a crop on the twenty acres
which we broke the summer before, sowing twelve acres to wheat and planting
eight acres to corn. It was my task to harrow and smooth down that tough sod. Father
had made a forty-tooth, “A-harrow,” and with Ben and Head hitched to it, I
harrowed that twenty-acre field over and over. It seemed as if I walked several
thousand miles in getting the twelve acres of wheat covered. Father had told me
to lap the harrow about one-half each time, and in my anxiety to do so I kept
calling whoa-haw to the oxen almost continuously. One day father said to me,
“Bud” (for that was my nickname then), “if I had a dollar for every time you
said whoa-haw, I could retire for life a rich man.”
After putting in the wheat I helped father fence in sixty
acres of land with a two-rail fence, building in all one mile and sixty rods of
fence. I dug the post holes and father set the posts, and then nailed on the
rails while I held them in place.
The old stage road from Davenport to Cedar Rapids ran across
our farm right where we had fenced it in, but the stage route had not yet been
changed. One day the stage from Davenport, heavily loaded with passengers, came
through and the driver, following the old road, drove right up to the new fence
to find his way blocked; and in place of following the new road about twenty
rods up around the corner, he with the help of some of his passengers was going
to tear down the fence. Father was at work a short distance away and seeing the
move they were making, simply called out to them to be careful what they were
doing. That settled the matter; the driver uttered a few “damns” and then went
up the new road around the corner. The first railroad engine had just entered
Iowa, having been brought across the Mississippi river on the ice by the piece
and then put together at Davenport. Soon thereafter the old stage route was
abandoned altogether.
At that time there were few houses to be seen on all that
vast prairie. From our home we could count but four or five small homes, and we
could see for miles in all directions without anything to break the view. It
was a mile to our nearest neighbor.
That summer father cut our first crop of wheat in Iowa with
a cradle. I raked the swathes into bundles with a hand rake, while the hired
man bound them into sheaves. In the fall before father had broken up a large
hazel patch for a garden, and I planted a part of it in watermelons. They did well,
and late in the season I sold in all $6.00 worth of melons to the “movers”
going west on the old territorial road which was now turned to run close by our
house. I counted that $6.00 over a great many times, and each dollar then
looked as big as a base drum head does today. But alas! The six silver dollars
went to a local shoemaker for making six pairs of cowhide shoes for us six
boys, and that was the last I saw of the $6.00.
Our second winter in Iowa was spent in the same way as the
first. There was no schoolhouse near, and for the second time I got no winter's
schooling. Instead, I remained at home to do chores and “smash up” the stove
wood. Father again went to the timber every day with the same yoke of oxen to
make a load of rails, or posts, or to cut a load of firewood, as occasion
required.
During the summer of 1856 we farmed on a larger scale than
the year before, and we bought a reaper to cut our grain. Then came the cold
winter of '56 and '57, with six to eight feet of snow on the level. This “winter
of the deep snow” was followed by the “wet summer of '57.” Our wheat crop was
so badly blighted that we took none of it to mill. We had to use old wheat for
food as well as for seed the following spring. The years of 1858 and 1859 were
uneventful years. The times were hard, money was very scarce, and what little
there was to be had was wild-cat money in the bargain.
The year of 1860 was another rather dull year, though in the
late summer the political excitement ran high, the main topic being the South
and slavery. I united with the church in November, 1860, becoming a member of
the Disciples' Church.
In 1861 there was no improvement over the past three years,
and the finest wheat ever grown would not bring over thirty cents a bushel,
while corn was only ten cents a bushel. That spring the Civil War broke out,
and after I helped father through with the harvest, I enlisted in the army and
was away from home in the war for four long years. While in the army I
participated in thirty-eight battles and skirmishes, and was mustered out in
July, 1865.
When I came home from the war, I helped finish the harvest
and then in the fall worked with a threshing outfit. I went through the winter
without any occupation and then in the spring of 1866 I decided to put in a
crop. I farmed eighty acres and cleared above all expenses $600.00 in six
months.
In the fall of 1866 I thought that my occupation for life
should be that of a merchant and decided to go into business. I went to London,
Iowa, and bought an interest in a general store. After six months of experience
I found out that merchandising was not my calling and sold out, losing in the
whole transaction $1,200.00, or $200.00 per month. I decided then to make
farming my calling and in the spring of 1867 broke up one hundred and twenty
acres of prairie. I bought the best team of horses I could find, paying $400.00
cash for them, and went to breaking prairie.
On the 9th of May, 1867, I was married to Miss Mary E.
Stanton, daughter of J. W. Stanton, a prosperous farmer of my home
neighborhood. In 1868 we built a house on York Prairie, two miles north of
Bennett, Iowa. Here for a period of seventeen years, I was engaged in general
farming and stock raising. My father died in 1877 and I settled up his estate,
which was worth about $50,000.00. He owned over five hundred acres of land, all
well improved, besides a large amount of personal property. In 1881 I built one
of the largest barns in Cedar county at that time, requiring over one hundred
thousand feet of lumber. It would stable one hundred head of cattle, had bins
to hold five thousand bushels of grain, and the hayloft would hold one hundred
tons of hay. In the fall of 1885 I sold my farm of two hundred acres and bought
a badly run down farm of one hundred and sixty acres. My old farm was all in
grass, and at my sale in September of that year I sold over one hundred head of
cattle, high-grade Durhams. I rented out the new farm I had bought for a term
of ten years and quit farming for good.
Being somewhat broken in health, we moved to Colfax, Iowa,
that same year for the benefit of my health. We remained there until the 1st of
March, 1887, when we moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where we have made our home
ever since. Having no living children we decided to endow a medical chair in
Drake University and gave for that purpose $25,000.00. Later we gave $5,000.00
to the Medical Library of the University, and since have given $2,000.00 to
establish the Downing Prizes in Drake University.
Signed this 11th day of June, 1914, by Alexander G. Downing,
in his seventy-second year and his sixtieth year in the State of Iowa.
_______________
1 Then western Virginia.—Ed.
Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B.,
Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 292-7
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