Early Days in Lyman #3

EARLY DAYS IN THE TOWN OF LYMAN by Bela Foster

Continuing . . .

I am sorry that I can not tell more of the early settlers of the south half of Lyman. I remember of only once that I crossed the section line north of Roberts before the Gilman, Clinton & Springfield Railway was built. I had head of the Tobys, the Pfaats, the Burshams, the Russells, and the Hursts, but to my knowledge had never seen them.
John T. Forbes came from England with a large family of boys and girls, J. F. Smith and family came from Canada in 1859, John McDonald and family came from Canada in 1862. The Forbes farm joined the Marston farm on the west.

 

--1884 Lyman Township Plat
 

My Notes:  So the Marstons were in Section 2.  Possibly on the G. Schuler site.  The school is located in this section.  They were the first school teachers, in their home and at the first school.

 

The Smith farm was lots 1 and 2 NE Sec. 4. The McDonald farm north of the Smith farm.

 

--1884 Lyman Township Plat
 

J. F. Smith and J. T. Forbes made sorghum molasses. This was a good business. Everybody used molasses. It was the dressing regardless of what was eaten. Alexander Forbes, eldest son of J. T. Forbes, was handy with tools. He made a windmill for grinding grain. It did not ? the meal but was better than a coffee pot. He also made a self drop corn planter. It did not use wire but corn was dropped by wheel traction.
The reapers used were the combined reaper and mower. The Kirby was the prevailing one. It needed two men to operate one. One man drove and one sat on a low seat behind with a hand rake to take the grain off the platform. It took a good man to be a good deliverer.

 

The only hay rake I remember seeing was a wooden one of the revolving sort. A boy rode the horse and a man held the rake and dumped it at the window. Bumble bees were plentiful. When the rake turned them up the boy was lucky to get off with fewer than half a dozen punctures. The early settlers had plenty of prairie hay as every other section was unbroken prairie.

In 1865-6-7 the influx to Lyman township was great. The new settlers took mostly government land. This took the hay land and the pastures from the older settlers.
A. M. and A. A. Haling bought all of section three. This is one of the large sections, 1240 acres. They made a new survey of it and dividing it into farms sold it to later arrivals.

 

--1884 Lyman Township Plat

 

A. M. Haling was a man with much "push." He put up good buildings. His stables were not roofed with slough grass hay. He burned a strip to protect his buildings and hay. One day when his men were busy on other parts of the farm a prairie fire came and with the aid of tickle grass jumped the barrage. It burned his barn and all within except one horse which his daughter, Kate succeeded in getting out. The other horses would not go out of the barn.
During the civil war prices rose. Corn sold for $1.00 per bushel, flour $16.00 per barrel, hogs $10.00 per cwt. The new settlers who came with no stock and little money were in a quandary. Corn meal proved to be the staff of life. Could you have looked into the larder of almost any family you would have found it stocked with corn meal. Several families came from southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois about the time we (the Foster family) did, 1865. Some of them settled in Iroquois County. One man made a trip back and when he returned brought some flour in his trunk. The agent mentioned the flour sifting out and the man replied, "Say nothing about it, that is some flour I am taking to a needy widow." In this community we were all in need. Had any one brought a barrel of flour to our home we would have celebrated the day as an epoch in the family history.

Could you see a picture of men planting corn in those early days you would wonder what they were doing. They would have an ax, a spade, a shovel, a sharpened stick, anything to make a cavity for the seed. Then came the hand corn planters, then the two row hand drop horse drawn planters.
Weeds soon became plentiful and it became necessary to check-row the corn. They used markers, 4-row size. The ground was marked off and the planters went at right angles across the marks. By check-rowing they could cross the corn with their single shovel, double shovel or five shovel one horse cultivators.
As a closing paragraph for this installment we shall return to that Fourth of July Celebration of 1859. This was a gathering of the people of a widely scattered community, not of Lyman township. The Town of Lyman was yet ten years in the future. Even Ford County was just being organized that year. The people came from north, south, east, and west. The meeting was held at Beset instead of the School Section Grove. That day, July 4th, 1859, is remembered in this local history for two important facts. First, this well remembered celebration and second, the frost. This was a cold morning. What corn had escaped the ground squirrels and other pests was killed by that Fourth of July frost. The settlers had no crops that year. That day they came to the picnic wearing overcoats.

--Roberts Herald. 27 March 1935. Bela Foster.