Philo E. Bartlett
Copy of Letter from Philo E. Bartlett to Mr. and Mrs. L. T.
Quirk
(Source: “As Time Goes By”, Odebolt, Iowa 1877-1977,
printed by The Odebolt Chronicle May, 1977, pp. 20-21)
January 3, 1941
Dear Friends,
We are greatly pleased to have you write to us, and esteem it great favor to us to have you do so. It has revived memories of long ago. As I keep thinking of the early times I am writing them down to get them out of my mind. And as they may be of interest to you I am sending them to you who still live on the “old farm”.
In September 1874, Oscar Draper, my brother James Bartlett and I arrived in Clinton Township, Sac County, Iowa, from Clinton County, Iowa. We had driven a bunch of cows through from there, belonging to my Uncle Truman Bartlett, Oscar Draper and my folks. John Draper had come out to Sac Co. the spring before and had built on his farm. Joshua Mummey and wife were keeping house for him so we, of course, drove directly to John Draper’s farm. At that time there were only three houses in that neighborhood, others being M. D. Fox and the Charles Sherwood homes. There was a wagon trail from the Draper farm to the Fox farm and also another like trail to the Sherwood home. I think you know the location of the Sherwood farm. East of the Sherwood farm there was a ford across the Boyer River and a trail across to now Black Hawk Lake and from there to Sac City. As soon as we arrived, all our force, the Drapers, Foxes, Bartletts and Mummeys, were enlisted in making hay for our stock for the winter.
Early one morning we saw a great smoke to the northwest and saw that the Fox dwelling was on fire. The men jumped on horses and rode to the fire. The others of us hitched a team to Draper’s hack and followed as fast as the trail would allow. We found that the house had caught fire when Mr. Fox had built the fire in the cook stove and the rest of the family had just escaped from the house in their night clothes. The house and contents were a total loss. I was delighted to drive the family to the Draper home and the men remained to see that the fire did no further damage.
My brother Jim Bartlett had rented what was known as the Cannon farm just west of what I think is now known as the Gosch farm, then known as the Taylor farm. We rented the Cannon farm for two seasons and when our lease expired on March 1, 1877 we moved to our farm where you now live. The neighborhood had settled up greatly in two seasons. The Fox home had been rebuilt, of course. The father of Mrs. Fox had build on his half section afterwards known as the Wells farm. Oscar Draper and Enfield Smith had built on their farms. Vit Needham on his farm, Bill Quirk on theirs and Harold Simpson on what is now the Forbes farm. Silvester Needham who had been living in a shack, had just moved into his new home and Marsh Bartlett bought the shack from Needham and moved it to his farm for a dwelling. He built a lean-to onto this shack and lived in it for a number of years. This was in the spring of 1877. Times were hard and to make things worse the grasshoppers had come in the fall of 1876 and laid the ground full of eggs. Credit of any kind was impossible to obtain. As my sister, younger than I, had married on Christmas 1876 and left home, there were only my father, my mother and myself in our family. As I had been of age February 14, 1877, Father signed over to me all the property we owned, both real and personal and I made a bond to provide a home for Father and Mother as long as they lived. I am happy to say that I was, by the favor of a kind Providence, able to fulfill this pledge.
We managed to get material enough to build a shack 12x26x7ft. high and by the expiration of our lease on March 1 we took up our residence in the shack on our farm. It was such a light affair that for fear the wind would blow it away we dug through the frost and set some short posts in the ground and spiked the sills of the shack to the posts. In building it we made places for two windows, but as we could only provide for one, we boarded the other window up hoping to get a sash for it later. A sash such as we used cost $1.20 and we were finally able to get one. We made a hole in the roof and drove nails around it so as to keep the stove pipe from contacting the wood and shoved the stove pipe out through the roof so we could build a fire. With the cookstove in one end of the shack and with father’s and mother’s bed in the other end, we were settled in our new home. Since the lumber with which I had enclosed the shack had been used before there were numerous nail holes in the boards so we stopped them up by driving plugs in them. As the weather is usually not balmy in March you’ll see the need for doing this. As far as a place for myself to sleep, there were a few odds and ends of lumber left from building the shack and with these laid across the two-by-fours overhead I made a nest up under the roof and had a comfortable place to sleep. Using the window sill for one step and the window sash for the other I would climb up to my nest. I slept up there until fall when we raised the roof twenty inches and laid a floor overhead and provided a ladder. There was now room for a bedstead and Mother could get up and make my bed for me. After raising the roof we covered the outside of the shack with tar paper and boarded it around with shiplap, then lathed and plastered both upstairs and down. A year later we built a lean-to on this house that was eight by sixteen providing a bedroom for Mother and Father, and we even built a brick chimney and did away with the stove pipe through the roof. I recall, with satisfaction, I used to look at our house from out in the field at work, for now I felt we had a real house. It was in this house I brought Charlotte Southwell as my bride sixty years ago this coming November 16, 1941. In January 1882 we began to build the main part of the house that was on the farm when you bought the farm in 1906. We had our new house ready by spring and as the weather was warm enough it was plastered and we moved into our new home. Later we built a kitchen part. This was the house on the farm when you bought it. After we moved away from the farm where Father and Mother lived so many years the old house was torn down. Edwin said the driveway from the highway is still in use. The old house stood just at the angle where the driveway turned to the north. Should you be digging around there you may find where I bored a well just in the southwest corner of the old house and was within the lean-to part which was used as a porch. The well was used for some time, finally went dry and was filled up.
As I joined farms with Bill Quirk (we all called him “Bill”) we often met at the line between farms while at work in the field. He tried to get rid of the horseflies in his stable one day, by using a torch to scorch them and the stable went up in smoke. I think he got revenge on the flies for he destroyed their roost if not the flies.
In those days, we all had cows, hired them herded or staked them out with picket stakes. Barbed wire was just coming out for use in fencing against cattle. It was quite expensive, fifteen cents a pound and weighed about one pound per rod. Bill owned one cow so decided to build a pasture but he overestimated the effectiveness of barbed wire, for he fenced a pasture for his cow with posts four rods apart and a single barbed wire. The cow did not recognize this as a lawful fence and in the contention she was out. Bill was unmarried when he first located on his farm and when I first got acquainted with him. He decided to get himself a wife and if I remember right, went back to the Isle of Man with that in view. As a result of this we had another home established in our neighborhood. After some years Mrs. Quirk passed away leaving four children. After her death Bill could find no record of the dates of birth of the children except what Bill could recall, which was the year and the time of the year only. In the effort to establish birth dates of the children he inquired of Lottie as to what she could recall. To help out, for instance, one of the children was born when he was planting corn. After I had finished planting my corn, I went over to help Bill plant his. These were the days when the corn ground was marked out one way with a chain marker and then the corn planter was driven crosswise at these marks and a man or boy dropped the corn by means of a lever as the planter crossed the marks. I had become quite skilled at dropping corn which was the reason I was helping out. I had made a record of when I started to plant my corn and it took me about so many days to finish my planting and then I went over to help Bill. One of the children was born while I was helping him. It was recalled that the child was born on Sunday while I was helping him plant his corn. The cocooning [counting?] went this way; I started planting corn on a certain date and was so many days planting my corn, then I went over to help him and by reference to the calendar the Sunday fixed the exact date, or at least within one week. Bill had educational advantages I had not had. In fact, he had the reputation of being the best informed man in the community. I recall that while we were planting corn he gave me a real lesson in Roman history. He was a great reader and there were no public libraries in those days near at hand. Few magazines were taken. By putting in $1.50 each we secured a subscription to the North American review. My close association with Bill was deplored by some of my friends for Bill was a free thinker of the infidel. Those were the days when Bob Ingersol was lecturing against the Bible, and there was much discussion along those lines. These associations had a decided effect upon my way of thinking and was a real asset to me in later life in the ministry. Dan Smothers later became a minister in the Christian Church and I in the Methodist Church. I owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Quirk for he taught me to think out religious problems for myself.
The great revival that was the real beginning of Bethel [Methodist} Church was in the winter of 1877-78 at the Fox schoohouse. I think the Draper schoolhouse was built in 1878. The Asa Smith and Alex Wells families came in 1878.
The Wells family came to Idaho and located at Payette about 160 miles down the Snake River from Buhl.
In 1908 I was passing through Payette and stopped over for a day to visit with them, etc. etc. (unrelated, personal)
P. E. Bartlett
(Transcribed by B. Ekse)