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Updated: June 28, 2025
Although in the spring of 1849 there was no other settler within a radius of four miles of our Fountain Lake farm, in three or four years almost every quarter-section of government land was taken up, mostly by enthusiastic homeseekers from Great Britain, with only here and there Yankee families from adjacent states, who had come drifting indefinitely westward in covered wagons, seeking their fortunes like winged seeds; all alike striking root and gripping the glacial drift soil as naturally as oak and hickory trees; happy and hopeful, establishing homes and making wider and wider fields in the hospitable wilderness.
I told him I would take him in as a passenger; and there our life-long friendship began. His conversation was not unprofitable. He had the vision of the future of Iowa which I had until then lacked. He could see on every quarter-section a prosperous farm, and he knew what the building of the railways must mean.
Since railroads have penetrated the great prairies and made them habitable, the demand for pine lumber has greatly increased both for building and fencing; and it has been estimated, that, if every quarter-section of land in Iowa and Illinois were surrounded with a "three-board" fence, it would consume every foot of pine-timber in Michigan.
Every quarter-section within reach of water for domestic uses had its tent or its dugout in the hillside or its hastily built cabin of planks. Where miles of unpeopled desert had stretched lonely and gray a week before, the smoke of three thousand fires rose up each morning now, proclaiming a new domain in the kingdom of husbandry.
In some instances the race was made in the wagons, but in many cases a solitary horseman acted as pioneer and galloped ahead, in order to secure prior claim to a coveted, well-watered quarter-section. Shortly before the hour of noon, a number of boomers on the northern frontier made an effort to advance in spite of the protests of the soldiers on guard.
Presently he rose, and excusing himself, went out to join Buford at the corral. "Come," said the latter, "and I'll show you around over our improvements while we are waitin' for a bite to eat. We are goin' to have a great place here some day. Besides our own land, Miss Beauchamp and our servant have a quarter-section each adjoinin' us on the west.
In furtherance of his advice he wrote the following self-explanatory letter to Henry Miller, afterwards murdered in a most barbarous manner by the very men whom he had befriended: Yreka, Sept. 19, 1872. Mr. Henry F. Miller Dear Sir: You will have to give me a description of the lands the Indians want. If it has been surveyed, give me the township, range, section and quarter-section.
Remember, Bill, the man who buys your timber will have to log it through my land and I'm not going to log that quarter-section in the valley. Hence there will be no outlet for your timber in back." "Not going to log it? Why, what are you going to do with it?" "I'm just going to let it stay there until I die. When my will is filed for probate, your curiosity will be satisfied but not until then."
On the other hand, if he wished to buy only one forty, he described its position in the quarter-section. Thus SW NW 49 17 8, meant the southwest forty of the northwest quarter of section 8 in the township already described. The clerk marked across each square of his map as Thorpe read them, the date and the purchaser's name.
Now there was a shack on every quarter-section, which appeared black in relief against the white. The atmosphere did curious things to them. Sometimes they looked like small dry-goods boxes in the distance, sometimes they seemed to have moved up to the very door. A coyote off a mile or two, or a bunch of antelope running along a ridge in the distance, appeared to be just across the trail.
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