Leonard Family Legends and Legacies » letter

Go east young man

Rick@Leonard Family Legends & Legacies — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:05:06 +0000

Fair warning, this is the third of four parts of a letter mailed from Leonard, Iowa, in March of 1901. In this section, Daniel Leonard describes what he saw and learned while visiting three of his eight siblings in Delaware, Marion, and Lorain Counties, Ohio.

We spent three or four days in Marion and Delaware counties looking for Shropshire sheep but to my disappointment I found none, but I saw one of the finest herds of Red Polls perhaps in Ohio, at least the finest I ever saw. Professor Curtis had passed them on and he knows. They were owned by Mr. Hill of Delaware. (Ed. Note – Prof. Curtis was Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture, who worked with Daniel to find the finest sheep in the United States and Canada and bring them to Iowa.)

On the way to Mr. Hill’s farm, he showed me farms that had recently changed hands at prices from $30 to $40 (per acre) and I thought the buildings were well nigh worth the money. That section has had its day. They can’t raise grass as forty years ago and now they are moving west. I only wish our Iowa boys could realize the need of caring for our farm and not impoverish them.

Next we found ourselves in Lorraine (sic) adjoining Lake Erie. There we saw the great steel plant that turns out thousands of tons of railroad every year. It would be useless to attempt to describe how those mountains of ore are in a few hours made into railroad rails sixty feet in length and straight as an arrow. For one to see with what ease this transformation takes place is immensely wonderful.

There in Lorraine we saw that which makes one tremble, there we saw men crowding around the office of employment begging for employment, yes begging, and to see them harshly turned away makes me feel that men are justified in stealing. Then again when I saw laborers used in my own school district in Pennsylvania as they were I shall ever despise their millions when gotten by oppression of labor. (Ed. Note – Daniel was referring to the railroad employment office and the way railroad laborers were treated in the mid to late 1800s.)

Next: Pennsylvania and environs at the turn of the century.

Dispatch from Leonard, Iowa

Rick@Leonard Family Legends & Legacies — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:34:23 +0000

Early on in my family history research, I had the impression that my great-great-grandfather was either estranged from his birth family or completely cut off from the civilized world. That impression was based on the lack of evidence that they had communicated or visited one another.

Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong, as demonstrated by the following letter mailed from Leonard, Iowa (the post office named in Uncle Dan’s honor) to the editor of the Adams County (Iowa) Free Press:

Leonard, Iowa
March 3rd, 1901
Mr. Editor: This will be my report of our late visit in Pennsylvania and Ohio. (Home to five of his eight siblings.)

Our first notable observation was to find it snowing in Marion County, Ohio, (home of brother James Herron Leonard) with good sleighing, and hauling logs to the sawmills was the principal occupation of all we saw at work. Timber seems at this season of the year to be the only product moving. We saw the watereim (?) logs hauled to the hoop factory, as well as the monster oaks fifty feet in length used in ship building. Our Iowa boys have no conception of their greatness. I was surprised to see how scarce timber is becoming.

It was noticeable to miss the herds of cattle as all were in barns if they had any. No straw or hay stacks; corn all cut up and in neat shocks, scarcely a corn crib to be seen, maybe they put it under the bed(?) as as they do in Pennsylvania.

Our first meal in Ohio was eaten in Bell Fountain in company with Mr. Devore’s(?) relations and consisted of buckwheat cakes, dairy butter, sugar maple ‘lasses, and the regular stuffed sausages. Ge whiz wasn’t they good. It was the first square meal we had had in forty years.

…to be continued…

Road trip – pioneer style

Rick@Leonard Family Legends & Legacies — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:54:43 +0000

Those of us of a certain age fondly recall the days of vacation or holiday “road trips.” In the days before the price of gasoline reached triple digits, i.e. when it cost less than a dollar a gallon, it wasn’t unheard of to drive for days on end to reach a particular destination.

Family road trips usually concluded at a relative’s house. Collegiate road trips often had no destination at all other than, uh, the open road.

Road trips came back to me as I read an open letter my great-great-grandfather had written to the local newspaper in 1901. He and his lovely wife had just returned to Iowa after visiting relatives in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Reflecting on my elementary school history lessons, I realized that 1901 was the very year Henry Ford built his first car. Knowing my g-g-grandfather most certainly wasn’t Ford’s first customer and local roads were barely fit for horses, I deduced that my g-g-granparents must’ve traveled by rail.

And so it was that I went off on another tangent and set out to see if I could determine which railroads they might’ve patronized. It turned out to be far easier than I would’ve thought. I found my answers in the handy-dandy Railroad Maps Collection at the Library of Congress. Go ahead. Click it. I’ll wait.

Back already? Very well, then, I can conclude by telling you my g-g-grandparents more than likely took the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy line from Corning, Iowa to Chicago. From there, they could’ve caught the CCC&StL (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis) train to Marion, Ohio and from there taken the Wheeling & Pittsburgh branch of the famous B&O (Baltimore & Ohio) Railroad to Washington County, Pennsylvania. Fascinating, no?

No more fascinating than the letter my g-g-grandfather wrote when he got back, but I’ve spent too much time explaining how my train of thought left its tracks to actually share the letter. Tune in again next week for the nitty-gritty of turn-of-the-century travel.

Cheers y’all!
Rick

Letters, pt. deux

Leonard Legends & Legacies — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:06:40 +0000

Time flies, and all that crap. And yes, I should’ve thought of a more creative title for “Letters, pt. deux.” Get over it.

When we last spoke, I promised to share a bit of what my g-g-grandfather had to say about his cabin, and the traffic that passed by the front of it. The cabin, as you might’ve guessed, is the very one pictured here, taken from the original painting (done from memory) in 1899.

I know these things, because the creation of this and the previously-mentioned painting were noted in the local newspaper:

“Uncle Dan Leonard has recently had a fine large picture (previous entry -ed.) of his Taylor county home painted which was on exhibition in the Shion drug store last Saturday and attracted much attention. Anyone who has ever partaken of Uncle Dan’s hospitality would at once recognize the beautiful home which he has builded (sic) for himself. Another smaller picture stood beside the large one. This was his first cabin erected in 1850. (actually 1856) The contrast is great.” (Duh)

-Adams County (Iowa) Free Press 14 Sept 1899

The artist’s name, BTW, was L. Berg. I’ve never seen another reference to him, but itinerant artists were commonplace in those days. If you ever run across him, please let me know. Now where was I?

Uncle Dan described his cabin, in his 1889 letter to his aunt (written ten years before the painting was done) as, “in its day the the finest residence for 12 years on a strip of land 16 miles long and 8 wide.”

Speaking of a photo he apparently enclosed, Uncle Dan drew attention to a horse on the road in front of his house… “a woe-begon moving family. Poor folks, they like hundreds of others had tryed (sic) Kansas and found it wanting and are pulling for their northern farms. Home.”

“Oh, I sometimes pity the poor slaves,” he continued, “the poor oppressed slaves that have left their eastern homes, came west to hunt a home and have been wandering those years and it seems as though they could not find any place to lay their head.” Uncle Dan wrote that note twenty-five years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

As a final, completely unrelated note of HUGE historical interest, at least to me, was one about recent events back “home” in Pennsylvania. The footnote was dated June 24th, 1889:

“Oh, what a calamity befell Johnstown and there is not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your father’s notice. Are you not of more value than many sparrows?”

Note for the non-native Pennsylvanian… On May 31, 1889, a neglect and a phenomenal storm led to a catastrophic dam failure outside of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. 2,209 people died in the ensuing flood.

Caveat emptor.

Letters from home

Leonard Legends & Legacies — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:07:08 +0000

When was the last time you sent or received a hand-written letter from a friend or relative? “Hand-written” rules out the annual word-processed Christmas “here’s my life in pastel colors” letter. “Letter” rules out the thank you note or get well card, although I can see either of those becoming an heirloom down the line.

No, I mean an honest-to-goodness, pass it around the coffee clatch letter from home? I’m ashamed to admit it’s been years. But a recently discovered letter, mailed in 1889, just might inspire me to write a few of my own. To wit…

My g-g-grandfather Uncle Dan Leonard, wrote an eight page letter to his aunt in 1889. Eight pages! To an aunt! That letter turned up in his brother’s Bible, so we know it was passed around the family long after it was sent. His brother Isaac saw fit to immortalize it in a book he knew would be kept. Perhaps best of all, it was mailed from Leonard, Iowa, a post office named for Uncle Dan and housed in a neighbor’s home just two miles to the south.

The salutation reads simply, “Dear Aunt.” Uncle Dan had three aunts, but the presumption is that he was writing to his Aunt Luzanna, who stayed in Pennsylvania with her aging mother when most of the family moved west to Ohio. He regrets that enough time has passed that it’s unlikely his aunt will ever get to visit him in his new Iowa home. So he sent pictures and rather verbose description of the property. (The pictures, apparently, have been misplaced.)

None of that would have been particularly remarkable, if not for the fact that the house he described in 1889 is still standing and occupied 120 years later. Uncle Dan commissioned a painting of the place ten years after he sent the letter. Side-by-side comparisons show how little it has actually changed.

As an extra-special treat to my family, Uncle Dan described the HUGE stone slab at the base of the front porch.

“If you look closely, you will see Mrs. Dan Leonard standing on a rock (sitting to the front and right of it in the painting) 9 inches thick, 8′ long and about 4′ wide, the largest stone in South Western Iowa and on said rock is inscribed as follows: Daniel and Jane Leonard 1856 (the year Dan and Jane settled in that very spot).”

That rock appears to be granite, and it’s still in place. It’s been a source of great curiosity in my family. My parents and I often wondered if there might be a time capsule of some sort underneath. We’ve offered, more than once, to pay the current owner for the stone and whatever may lie underneath, but to date, no deal. Below is a little closer look.

The letter goes on to describe a picture of the original log cabin that “was the finest residence for twelve years on a stretch of land 16 miles long and eight miles wide.” That picture was also a commissioned painting, drawn from the pioneer couple’s own memories.

This post is getting a tad long, so I’ll save more on that painting for next week. That, and Uncle Dan’s description of the poor souls passing along the trail in front of his house, dragging their meager possessions back from failed settlement attempts to the south and west in Kansas.

Your assignment, between now and next week… Go write a letter!