When I last left off with Laura\u2019s tale, she was having a more extended visit with her Townsend relatives and her husband, J.W., was off to Iowa to find a place for them.\u00a0 Once her husband had found land that he wanted to settle on, he returned to Illinois and he and Laura set out on their trip further West.<\/p>\n
As she described it: J.W. and a former neighbor from Columbus, Ohio, had traveled widely in Iowa looking for the ideal spot and had ended up \u201cwith the next best thing\u201d, locating places to homestead \u201con land where the soil was good, timber plentiful and a beautiful, clear stream of water meandered its way thru the entire breadth of the purchase.\u201d\u00a0 This was very new country, sparsely settled by families scattered across the prairie, and the county seat had not yet been placed.\u00a0 The nearest town of any size was Cedar Falls, about 40 miles from their new homestead in Franklin County.\u00a0 The railroad was only extended as far as Dubuque, Iowa, which was about one hundred-twenty-five miles east of their land.<\/p>\n
So Laura and J.W. rode the train to Dubuque and then began what Laura called \u201cour real pioneering\u201d.\u00a0 From Dubuque they took a stage coach pulled by two teams and very crowded, over the very primitive roads that existed at that time.\u00a0 Laura described it as \u201cso closely packed that a desire of anyone to move trunk or limb must be followed by a movement of each passenger in the same direction.\u201d\u00a0 It was a bright November day.<\/p>\n
The first night was spent in Waterloo Iowa, a little town in its infancy without a hotel for travelers.\u00a0 Thus the coach passengers were shown to a small room filled with baggage, and left for the night.\u00a0 As Laura described it, after making a brief meal from food brought with them (\u201cfor such emergencies\u201d), J.W. surveyed the possibilities and decided on a pile of baggage softer than the rest and lifted Laura up, taking a position on a box at her feet for the night.<\/p>\n
The next day their trip was lengthened by running into what Laura called a \u201cslough in the road\u201d, which by its description was a large swampy area that the horses couldn\u2019t pull the coach through with all the passengers and baggage.\u00a0 The group was able,\u00a0 finally, by using fence rails as levers and the horses pulling, to get the coach onto dry road again.\u00a0 They finally made their nightfall into Cedar Falls late but happy to arrive.\u00a0 Cedar Falls was described as larger and having more amenities in terms of accommodations and food than the night before.<\/p>\n
Cedar Falls was the end of the stage coach line and from there the passengers parted ways to make their way onward individually.\u00a0 J.W. and Laura had forty more miles to travel to reach their new environs and traveled on alone.\u00a0 They spent their time talking about plans for their new home.\u00a0 They concluded, because of the lateness of the season, that they would start with a temporary two-room log house.<\/p>\n
That night and the next were spent in a \u201cpioneer\u2019s cabin\u201d turned hotel for land-seekers.\u00a0 They were about 3 miles from their new land.\u00a0 The cabin was described in some detail by Laura, as a two room structure with kitchen\/dining in one room and sleeping\/sitting in the other.\u00a0 J.W. and Laura made themselves a \u201croom\u201d by stringing her double shawl up surrounding the bed built into the corner of the room that was to be theirs for these nights.<\/p>\n
In four short paragraphs Laura described the building of their own 2-room cabin that late fall with logs cut on their own property.\u00a0 A snow storm in early December slowed the outdoor progress and required a quick decision about how to roof the building for the winter.\u00a0 Poles and earth were a reasonable solution for the winter, since they had reason to think that it wouldn\u2019t rain again until April or so.\u00a0 So, on December 15th Laura reported moving themselves into their abode, unpacking boxes and setting up beds, etc.\u00a0 For the winter they huddled by the stove when the weather was bitterest and when it moderated a little J.W. was able to make the walnut shingles for a more permanent roof.\u00a0 Come April the new roof was accomplished, despite starting out with a rain storm that soaked parts of the house and their belongings as they had moved belongings around to take the poles-and-earth root down and install a real shingled roof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I last left off with Laura\u2019s tale, she was having a more extended visit with her Townsend relatives and her husband, J.W., was off to Iowa to find a place for them.\u00a0 Once her husband had found land that …<\/p>\n