Leonard Family Legends and Legacies » railroads

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