CHAPTER III.
pg. 20

MADISON'S ADVANCE GUARD OF CIVILIZATION

     The Indian title to the land, of which Madison County is a part, was extinguished in the year 1845.  By treaty, the Government had secured a large area of country, suitable for cultivation and the bounteous production of grain, grasses and other of the various food stuffs indigenous to this latitude.  Strange to say, however, almost a year was permitted to elapse before the white man came and claimed "his own."  It is not known that any person, white, red or black, stepped foot into Madison County before the year 1846, for other purposes than of exploration, hunting or trapping.  Here were thousands of acres of rich prairie lands and other thousands covered by luxuriant growths of valuable timber.  Three beautiful rivers traversed and watered the fertile soil, aided by many tributaries, and fruits and honey were to be found in vast quantities.  Nature had provided lavishly and beckoned, with eager and welcoming hand to the countless thousands of men and women of the Eastern states, to come and settle upon this land, whose every feature and attribute was a glowing and substantial promise of bounteous harvests and consequent prosperity.
     To Hiram Hurst is given the distinction of being the first person to settled within the confines of this splendid domain, designated as Madison County.  This advance guard of the splendid host of men who peopled the county and made it fructify so amazingly, migrated from Buchanan County, Missouri, early in the year 1846 and, as near as any one can compute the time, found his way into that part of Madison County now known as Crawford Township, on Apr. 1, 1846.  The country looked good to him.  The three requisites of the home builder were here in all their fullness an dgraciousness:  Salubrious climate, abundance of pure, limpid water and a supply of timber, which seemed at the time almost inexhaustible.  He had his ax and a super aboundance of energy, strength and ambition, all salient attributes of the frontiersman.  Nor was he lacking in ambition to carve out a home and habitation for himself and a large family dependent upon him.  Here he was, an Ishmael in the wilderness; an involuntary absentee from his former haunts.  For it is part of the tradition surrounding this historically interesting character that he was compelled to leave Missouri; or, in other words, he was a fugitive from justice.  As reputations go, when handled hither and yon by the evil minded or credulouis, Hurst was credited with having killed his man.  Another one had it that he burned a neighbor's property in a spirit of vengeance, and again, the story was rife in the early days that the pioneer settler of Madison County was a petty thief, in that he had stolen a bunch of Missouri hogs.  These were the idle and harmful tales extant among those who followed Hurst into the wilderness, but the real char-

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acter of the man and the place he attained in the confidence of his new neighbors are not consistent and moral turpitude and wrong doing.
     Hurst built a little "shack" in the timber, and cultivated a small patch of corn in the spring and summer of 1846.  In the fall of that year he returned to his old home in Buchanan County, Missouri, where his friends settled the difficulties facing him.  He then packed up his household belongings and other chattels and with wife and children came back to his Iowa home, where he installed his family and goods in the humble habitation provided for them.  Hiram Hurst remained on this place, situate on section 36, in Crawford Township, until July, 1847, when he sold his claim to Thomas Cason, who settled in Crawford about that time.   Hurst then took a claim in section 29 in South Township, living there until the fall of 1851, when he sold to N. S. Allcock and moved to Scott Township.  In 1854 Hurst secured a tract of land on section 26, Scott Township, of E. M. Greenway, an eastern speculator, for which he paid $68, and in the fall of the same year sold land in section 20, South Township, to John Creger.  Before the end of the year he was with his family in Otoe County, Nebraska, and was one of that community's first settlers.
     No stain remains upon the name of Madison County's first settler.  As will be seen, in the reminiscent article preared by Samuel Fife, who worked for Hurst in 1851, an honest and unbiased tribute is paid the first settler's character.  Mr. Fife portrays him as "a very quiet man, of good judgment, and had a fine family.  His family here was composed of a wife and four little boys.  I have worked for him several times and always found him a gentleman and his wife a perfect lady."
     The final chapter in the life of Hiram Hurst is furnished by his son, John, in a letter of date Mar. 5, 1906, to Herman Mueller, in answer to a written inquiry relative to certain data concerning Hiram Hurst.  The letter speaks for itself and it is to be trusted the memory of the writer, John Hurst, is of a reliable character:

"Wymore, Nebraska, March 5, 1906.       

"Mr. H. A. Mueller, St. Charles, Iowa.
     "Dear Sir:  Your letter of February 12th received.  Have been waiting for some time to get the ages of my father and mother, Hiram and Elizabeth Hurst, which were recorded in the old family Bible, now in the hands of one of my brothers.
     "I assure you I am more than pleased to have the name of my father associated with the first settlers of Madison County, Iowa, and will state right here that my brother William was the first white child born in the county - was born in camp on the third day after arriving in same on the Middle River Bottom which was afterward sold to Mr. Cason.*
     "Hiram Hurst was born in Washington County, Virginia, Mar. 1, 1821, was married Elizabeth Todd Dec. 20, 1840.  Moved from Virginia to Tennessee and then to Kentucky and from there to Missouri.  Then to Madison County, Iowa, Apr. 1, 1846.  Moved from there to Nebraska in the fall of

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     *In this statement Mr. Hurst is mistaken as his father returned to Missouri for his family and did not reappear here until early in the following year.  William Hurst told me he was born in 1845. - Editor.

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1854 and settled on the Missouri River at the mouth of the Weeping Water now in Otoe County, being one of the first white settlers in the county.  He followed farming but was the first justice of the peace in the county, which office he held continuously for twenty years; was a Baptist minister for a number of years before his death, which occurred on the 18th day of September, 1889.
     "My mother was born in Kentucky in the year of 1824, October 25th, died Aug. 24, 1874.  To them was born by my mother eleven children.  Seven are still living.  Their names are John M. Hurst, Wymore, Neb.; James H., Almena, Kansas; William H., Zincite, Mo.; Thomas J., Wymore, Neb.; Isaac N., Wymore, Neb.; Isabelle Hughes, Omaha, Neb.; Martha M. Bales, Talmage, Neb.  Hiram Hurst was married three times; his second wife died before one year after marriage.  His third wife was a Mrs. Wood of Lorton, Neb.  To them were born four children; three are still living, Mollie, Edward and Fred, all living in Otoe County, Neb."

THEN CAME OTHERS

     Hiram Hurst was not fated to long remain by himself in this new country, for on the evening of Apr. 24, 1846, two colonies, also from Buchanan County, Missouri, arrived in Madison County and became permanent settlers.  The new
comers were the Clanton, Clark and Guye families.  The former was made up  of the following named persons: Rachel (Moore) Clanton. widow of Charles Clanton, Sr., her children, with their wives and children, namely: Charles William, wife and children, John, Rachel, Margaret, Lucinda and Elizabeth; Isaac, his wife, Loraine, and children, Joel, Nancy, William, Wesley, George and Moses; Joel M., his wife, Sarah, and children, William, Frank and Polly; Ruth Clanton, her husband, Caleb Clark, and their children, Louisa Jane, Rachel Charlotte, Sarah Ellen, Nancy Elizabeth and Cynthia Ann and Rufus.  With this colony were Charles McCray and Gifford Lee, both unmarried, who remained in the settlement but a few months and then returned to their Missouri homes.
     The Guye family consisted of Samuel Guye, a widower; his sons, James, George, Frank, and Houston; daughters, Mary, Elizabeth, Angeline and Maria.  On the evening of April 24th, both colonies went into camp on the banks of Middle River.  The Guyes, reaching the river about an hour in advance of the Clantons, crossed over and camped on the north bank, and the Clantons, on that account, and also because night was coming on, camped on the sough bank.  As each had considerable life stock, this arrangements was a good one, in  that it kept the cattle apart.  The elder Guye and the Clantons were somewhat acquainted with each other in Missouri.
     That night a heavy rain fell, which filled the river too high for fording and it continued to rain during the following afternoon, so that both colonies remained in camp until afternoon, when the Guyes continued their journey into Linn Grove, in Warren County.  The men of the Clanton contingent crossed the river in an Indian canoe and visited Guyes and William Hurst, a brother of Hiram, whom they had met at Spring Hill, in Warren County, and was informed by him that his brother Hiram had gone westward up Middle River and staked out a claim.  From here the men of the Clanton party went out
    

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prospecting for claims.  They struck a southwesterly course and crossing the Warren County line into Madison, arrived in Crawford Township.  Here Middle River was crossed near the Hurst claim and seeing a cabin, the prospectors went to it and found Hurst asleep in a hut constructed out of material abandoned by the Indians the year before.  At first Hurst appeared to be frightened but upon learning the object of his visitors, he gave them much assistance in locating their claims in what was afterwards known as Clanton's Grove.  This family staked out the boundaries of their new home immediately west of and adjoining the future town of St. Charles, on the 3d day of May, 1846.  On that same day the Guye family staked a claim on section 7, on the south bank of North River, in that part of the county now known as Union Township.

     Caleb Clark, the husband of Ruth Clanton, located on the hill west of Clanton Creek and north of Steel Branch, but soon sold out and located on a tract of land north of and adjoining Joel M. Clanton's, in section 14, now owned by W. S. Lindsley.  Thus these two colonies were simultaneously and collectively considered one colony, whose members were the second settlers of Madison County.

     It is said that Henry McKinzie settled in this county in the fall of 1846, but this has been disputed, the date of his arrival being made as in the spring of 1847.  However that may be, he was among the first comers and settled with his sons, Abner, Daniel, Thomas, Aaron and Gabriel, in Scott Township, where he remained until 1855 and then left for Texas.  From Texas he went to Douglass County, Kansas, where he died.

     Ephraim Bilderback married Malinda McKinzie, daughter of Henry McKinzie, and came to the county with his father-in-law.  He settled on section 9, Scott Township, and later sold to Abner Bell.  Bilderback then went up on the South Coon, where his father lived, the latter having built a mill.  Ephraim family went West and died there.

     Lemuel Thornbrugh came to Madison County in May, 1846, and settled in the Guye neighborhood, where he built a cabin on the land later owned by William Gentry, and still later by George Hornback.  Thornbrugh returned to Missouri in August after his family, and coming back, was accompanied by his brother James and family, all of whom lived on Lemuel Thornbrugh's claim on the Cedar, until Lemuel sold out and moved away in 1849.  James Thornbrugh left the claim on the Cedar in the spring of 1847 and went south on Middle River, where he took up another claim on the south side of the river in the timber.  Here he grubbed a patch of land and with one yoke of oxen put out a small crop.  He was the first settler on Middle River bottom.  He built a cabin on the land, which was burned down on May 4, 1861.

     About the 1st of September, 1846, James Fidler, with his wife and unmarried children, and James Thornbrugh, his son-in-law, and wife, migrated from Weston, Buchanan County, Missouri, to Madison County.  He lived with his son-in-law and was the first person to died in Madison County.  He had taken a claim and got a cabin built in the edge of the timber on section 29, in Union Township, but died early in October, a little over a month after his arrival.
     It is said that Felt Johnson, a son-in-law of Henry McKinzie, came with him in 1846 and settled on section 8, in Scott Township.  He soon afterwards

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sold to Samuel Casebier and went over on “the Clanton," where he lived a few years, disposing of his possessions to Wheatley Harper, and returned to Missouri, where he died.

     James Brown and family, with his brother Hezekiah, a single man, and Vincent and family, also Lebben Shelton, wife and three children, all came together from Buchanan County, Missouri, in 1847.  James Brown first settled and long lived on section 36, in Jefferson Township.  Vincent Brown settled on section 12, in Union Township.  Hezekiah Brown the unmarried brother, made his home alternately with his brothers James and Vincent and went to Kansas a short time before the Civil war.

     John Wilhoit was one of Madison Country's pioneers of 1847.  He first settled on the south half of section 35, in Jefferson Township.  This he sold to William Schoen in 1852.

     Two Mendenhall brothers, one of them named Charles, both unmarried, with two Hinshaws, relatives, migrated from Missouri in the fall of 1847 and settled on section 32, in Jefferson Township.  The Mendenhalls stopped only two or three years and then went to Kansas.

     Silas and William Hinshaw had with them their widowed mother.  William Hinshaw married a sister of William Ludington.  A few years after his arrival here he went to Kansas and while hunting buffaloes on Smoky Hill River, he was killed and scalped by Indians.  Some time in the '50s Silas Hinshaw went from here to Sioux City, Iowa, with the avowed intention of killing every Indian he met.  While near Sioux City two Indians came to his cabin, when he picked up an ax and killed one of them.   The other escaped.  The third day after this occurrence Silas was found dead at his home, with all his fingers and toes cut off.  No other wounds were discovered and it was presumed he bled to death in the presence of his murderers.

     James Brewer was also a settler in 1847, coming from Missouri.  He first settled where Jacob Bennett afterward lived, having entered a part of section 22.  About 1854 he returned to Missouri and from thence to Kansas.  These were the only settlers in Madison Township that year.  John Evans and John Butler settled in the Guye neighborhood either in the latter part of 1846, or early in 1847.  In looking for claims, it is said, they were amazed to find other persons in the township ahead of them.

BOUNTIFUL CROPS IN 1846.

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FIRST MARRIAGE IN COUNTY.

     The first marriage that occurred in Madison County was about June 1, 1846.  The father of the bride was John Butler, who first settled about one mile north west of the schoolhouse east of Winterset some two miles, on what was afterward known as the Anon James farm.  It required some time for him to get up a cabin; but why should not two more people make a home on their own account?  The colony brought along a preacher, but the license was only to be obtained somewhere on Des Moines River.  That was not so far away, however, so Daniel Chenoweth and Betsey Butler were married before her father got his cabin up, out in the timber, by the first preacher in the county, Elder John Evans, the famous “Hard Shell" Baptist, who distinguished himself in church work in the early days.  Chenoweth entered land of the Government on section 6, in Scott Township, and on section 1, Lincoln Township, in the year 1850.  He remained here at least several years.

EARLY ELECTIONS.

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this on will be treated in the townships in the chapter assigned to the township in which they are located.  However, this chapter can be fittingly brought to a close by a partial list of names of the men and women who settled in Madison County during the first ten years after the arrival of Hiram Hurst, as appeared in the semicentennial edition of the Madisonian, published Nov. 1, 1906:

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