Mrs. Hial Mitchell, was the first teacher in the county, having taught in the Phelps house after Judge Reeve had moved out of it. In the early summer of 1854 there was also a Miss Scott who was a teacher. She stayed at Henry Smith's, but I have no recollection whether she taught any place in the winter of 1855 or not. In the summer of 1856 we built a log schoolhouse near the burying ground at Main's Grove, and Octava Smith taught there through the summer and a Mr. Boyle taught in the winter. Mr. Carbaugh brought in a horse gristmill, with which he ground corn and buckwheat.

The winter of 1855-6 was terribly severe and the gristmill standing on the prairie would be packed full of snow every morning, and his customers would dig the snow out of the mill and also the horse-power before it could start, which usually took until noon. Then after dinner Mr. Carbaugh would harness up his twelve horses and grind out the grist. The next morning the same operation would have to be repeated, as the snow packed in through the night, but we were glad to get our grinding even under these difficulties.

CHAPTER XI

WHAT THE YEARS HAVE SHOWN-WILD LAND CHANGED INTO VALUABLE FARMS GOOD ROADS, SPLENDID COUNTRY HOMES, ABUNDANT CROPS BEAUTIFUL STREAMS AND GROVES.

Many changes have presented themselves to the people of Franklin county since the first white man staked his tent in this fair land and began the erection of a crude log cabin to secure a habitation for himself and family, while he felled timber, split rails, cleared the ground of underbrush and plowed the rich soil between the stumps, making ready for the seed, that sprung up in good season and gave him gratifying returns for his labors. Other hardy men and courageous women became the pioneer's neighbors; all of them, however, could not secure land for cultivation along the streams, where the timber abounded, much as they desired this consummation, for it was then the common opinion that the open prairie was hardly fit for cultivation. But "needs must when the devil drives" was an aphorism that confronted the homeseekers at this period and with hope and courage in their hearts the newcomers put oxen and plow to the tough but fertile furrow of the virgin open soil and were happily surprised and amply rewarded for their temerity and the intense toil expended.

With but little to do with, coming from comfortable homes in thickly settled regions of the Eastern states; confronting new conditions, hardship and dangers, the men and women of the local primitive days knew no fear and scoffed at fatigue. Their purpose was to make for themselves and their posterity homes, schools, churches; highly cultivated and improved farms, towns and cities; in short to bring order out of chaos and emulate the performances and successes of the builders of prosperous communities in their home states. They met and surpassed all anticipations. They have contributed toward the bringing of Iowa into the front rank of producing states of the Union. The reader of a careful and analytical mind should keep ever before him the remarkable growth and advance

ment of Franklin county's people. The farms upon which a majority of them live have been metamorphosed from wild timbered and virgin prairie lands into broad acres so fruitful in production as to send their marketable value up in the scale, until today many Franklin county farms are held at $200 per acre and more. One farm was sold in the fall of 1913 at $208 an acre and is worth the money.

The improvements in this county have been going along steadily from the beginning to the present; and judging from the past, the future has much of all that is good in store for this thrifty people. Towns splendid little trading points—are dotted here and there in the county and Hampton has grown steadily, substantially and beautifully the while.

But the meanderings over the county in 1904 by a keen observer and lucidly descriptive writer, in the person of R. G. Miller, was the means of bringing before the public a concrete view, in a general way, of Franklin's fine farms, beautiful rural homes, substantial, commodious barns and other outbuildings, good fences, well-kept roads, telephone conveniences; daily free rural mail deliveries; laborsaving machinery, fine graded stock and the automobile, now a common conveyance of the farmer. Mr. Miller made it an object to see these things and tell of them. See what he had to say:

If one wishes a day of real enjoyment, an opportunity to see the face of the country at its best, and some of the things which make the name of Iowa famous throughout the length and breadth of this land, he should take a drive as I did last Monday and just drink in the beauties that are always and everywhere spread out before him. It was an ideal summer day and the August sun was doing its great office work, bringing the crops further on to maturity, and bringing pasturage out of the moist earth as fresh and bountiful as it was in June.

If anyone has any doubt as to whether this county will have good harvests this year, he may have it dispelled, so far as the east part of the county is concerned, by a little half-day's drive out that way. The high wind of a couple of weeks ago did bad work for the oats in some places. I noticed a field on J. C. Peck's farm ten days ago where the grain lay perfectly flat, but Monday it was in the shock and appeared to be in fine condition.

This same is true of most of the Iowa grain. By the way, the quarter upon which Mr. Peck has his home, is, I think, as good a quarter section as can be picked out in Franklin county. There does

not appear to be a single foot of it either too high or too low for good crops in any sort of season. And what a splendid home he has there, good buildings, groves and orchards! I thought it would be a good idea to give farm homes of that rank a special name. Fairfield farm, or Plainfield place would suit it well, and in time it might go by the name throughout the county.

On William Seeger's farm I saw the first stacking and the oats seemed good for forty bushels at least.

If one wants a forcible example of what a little plant will do, he should see John Blum's farm buildings four miles southeast of Hampton. He has a fine farm home. The lawns were well kept, fences neat, trees trimmed, and everything as neat and orderly as the average town home. And doesn't it pay? To say nothing of the satisfaction it must be to his family to have such pleasant surroundings, it compels those who see it to place a higher estimate upon the value of the place.

All the foregoing might be said of the J. E. Marty place, just east of Blum's. And as for location, I do not think a nicer one could be found for a building site in the county. He has a splendid view of the country clear down around Geneva, five or six miles, and north beyond Hansell; and to say the country is beautiful, with its splendid fields and groves and farm homes, does not express it.

William Savidge has a very fine farm out that way. His new barn of late design, stockyards and windbreaks, and the house lately remodeled, make a fine place. Why doesn't he give it a name?

A. M. Mott's farm makes a pretty picture, viewed from the west. He has a large field of oats that seem to be the heaviest I saw, and beyond were herds of cattle feeding over a level pasture. That bottom land over east has crops of hay, oats and corn that would be very hard to beat any year. The best corn I saw was there. One 8o-acre field is earing out and if I said how high it is some folks wouldn't believe me.

And there's a schoolhouse over there, not half a mile from native groves, with not a tree—not even a switch that promises to make a tree—growing on the grounds. They say they have excellent schools there, so perhaps it has been found necessary to keep the limbs trimmed off so close that the trunks perished. But there's one good feature to it. When consolidated schools are the order, the ground can be plowed.

Two of the nicest improved farms in this section are those of Will Arthur and W. C. Tucker. That second bottom land will pro