Jackson-Clinton-Cedar County IA Archives Biographies.....Brown, Rev. C. E. 1813 - 1893
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Ken Wright wright@prestontel.com December 26, 2010, 4:21 pm

Source: Personal Recollections of Rev. C. E. Brown
Author: Rev. C. E. Brown

C. E. Brown, Excerpts from the Personal Recollections of Rev. C. E. Brown (1813-
1893) 
Printed by Ottumwa Stamp Works Press, Ottumwa, Iowa, 1907. 

New York 

At Warren, New York, October 30th, 1840, our second child was born, a son, who 
was named Charles Perry. 

During this month our wish for missionary work in the West was laid before the 
New York State Missionary Convention at its annual meeting then in session at 
Whitesboro. 

The application said nothing about salary or any special location, except a 
preference expressed for Iowa. The request was favorably endorsed by the 
convention and an appointment by the American Baptist Home Missionary Society 
recommended. 

This appointment came in due time, designating the forks of the Maquoketa River 
in Jackson County, Iowa, as the field of labor, with an allowance of one 
hundred dollars a year from the board and seventy-five dollars for traveling 
expenses to the field. 

Our family then consisted of myself, wife, and the two little boys, Benjamin 
and Charles. As household good could not be economically shipped so far we sold 
everything excepts clothing, bedding, a common table and stand which could be 
conveniently packed, and a rocking chair, taken for the comfort and convenience 
of the mother in caring for the little ones on the journey… 

…That evening we were ferried across to Charleston, now Sabula, and put up for 
the night at the town tavern. In the morning engaged a man and team to take us 
the remaining twenty-five to thirty miles to the end of our long journey. 

Owing to rain we were late in starting. About noon stopped for dinner at a 
cabin on the west bank of Deep Creek, where we found nothing to eat but eggs. 
Of these they had eleven, which were boiled for us. 

The children would not eat them. We did not see any other human habitation 
until night had fallen, when the little ones, tired and hungry, had long since 
cried themselves to sleep. 

In the darkness of midnight we reached a cabin occupied by Mr. C. W. Doolittle, 
when at that spectral hour, in silence and solitude that could be felt, we were 
at the end of our long journey, nearly a thousand miles from home and friends 
in the distant east. The Indian had recently left, and his pale faced 
successors were few and far between. 

We had been twenty-four days on the road and had lost but little time, having 
diligently pursued our way from the start. It is one of the wonders of a 
marvelous age to realize that the distance can now be made in less than twenty-
four hours in luxurious ease and comfort and that this is actually done every 
day. 

With cordial frontier hospitality which we gratefully appreciated, Mr. and Mrs. 
Doolittle turned out and welcomed us, prepared supper and then gave us their 
bed, while they found lodging for themselves and family in the cabin loft. 
Tired and worn by the long and tedious last day’s drive we slept sweetly and 
soundly, four in the bed, myself, wife and two children. 

Arriving in the night we could see nothing of the near by country, and owing to 
a dense fog nothing was visible next morning. 

After breakfast, accompanied by Brother Doolittle, I called on some neighboring 
families two miles to the southwest. 

Upon inquiry I found to my surprise that there was no church or organized 
Baptist society. The settlement was very new, with a few Baptist families 
widely scattered. This and the fog, and the fact that aside from the $100 per 
year from the home missionary board, our living was to come from our field of 
labor was rather discouraging and made me feel a little blue. 

But during our walk a breeze came up and carried away the fog. The clouds 
lifted and the sun came out, revealing a most beautiful prairie country to the 
south, with a grand body of Maquoketa timber to the north for a background. My 
blues went with the fog; hope, courage and cheer came with the sunshine and 
clear sky. But how would my deer wife feel, for I knew, and she knew, that the 
privation and hardship of a new country would fall most heavily on the wife and 
mother in the little log cabin home. 

Doubt was soon removed, for on my return she met me near the house with a 
bright and cheerful face saying, “Charles, we came to Iowa to do good and we 
will stay and trust in the Lord.” 

Oh, how welcome was that greeting. We had faith in God’s promise: “Trust in the 
Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be 
fed.” 

We arrived at the cabin of Brother Doolittle at midnight on Thursday, May 26, 
1842. The Baptist families and settlers generally gave us a very cordial 
welcome… 

…Our next important temporal affair was to select a location and build a log 
house. Timber being plenty and mills scarce, houses were generally of logs. 

Becoming acquainted with the people at Wright’s Corner, two and one-half miles 
south of the present site of Maquoketa, we decided to locate there. Our 
neighbors were, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Wright, Alfred Wright, Levi Decker, John 
Riggs, David Bentley and others, and better people we need not ask for. They 
very generously turned out with teams and axes and cut and hauled logs from a 
grove a few miles west for a cabin 12 X 18 feet. The logs were hewn on two 
sides, and in a fortnight the body of the house was up. Some sawed lumber was 
necessary, and Mr. John Riggs joining me, we went to a saw mill at Canton, 
eighteen miles above, on the Maquoketa River. Going on foot to Canton we bought 
the lumber, made a raft of it and started down the river through a dense 
wilderness. 

The undergrowth was thick in the heavy timber; with but few clearings, the 
river low, and snags and sand bars gave us much trouble making our progress 
slow. At sundown of the first day we came to the hut of an old hermit named 
Lodge. The next clearing and cabin were miles below. We were hungry and wet. It 
was unseasonably cold, and night with Egyptian darkness was coming on in the 
narrow stream, with its heavy timber and undergrowth. But Lodge’s cabin was a 
wretched placed, shared by a chicken pen and afforded no accommodations. There 
was nothing to do but go on and that we did… 

With our neighbors we at once began work on a log schoolhouse, a few rods south 
of our cabin, where without floor, doors, or windows, we opened a Sunday 
school. A Mr. Thomas Flathers was made superintendent. This was the first 
school house in Clinton County and there was none in Jackson County, and it was 
used by me as a meeting house for preaching and other religious services. 

Six miles west, at the house of Brother Earl was another place where meetings 
were regularly held. There was in Brother Earl’s house no stove or fire-place. 
Fire for warming and cooking was built on the ground in the middle of one room. 
An opening was left in the roof to let out the smoke, but it did not all, or 
always, go out of this opening, and my congregation was often in tears over the 
omission. 

Another appointment was at a cabin on a ridge twelve miles in the timber. Here 
a day or two before one of my visits the owner killed a monster panther which 
was after one of his hogs. 

My first sermon in Iowa was in the unfinished log cabin of John Shaw where 
Maquoketa now stands; the second at Iowa City; the third at Tipton; the fourth 
at Bergoon’s Ford on the Wapsy, and the fifth at a Methodist Quarterly meeting 
held in their log church in the timber. This church had then no floor or window 
openings, light coming in through the open door, and the spaces in the log 
sides. Meetings held where the village of Maquoketa now stands were in a sod-
covered log cabin built for a blacksmith shop. 

During the first summer in Iowa, I preached once in Rock Island, four times in 
Davenport, three times in Marion, Linn County, and once at Andrew, the county 
seat of Jackson County. 

A man named Jackson was hung to the limb of an oak tree near the log court 
house in Andrew that summer for the murder of a man named Perkins. Perkins had 
a claim on the Maquoketa River, and Jackson jumped it and killed him. This 
claim was between Canton and Maquoketa, and my neighbor Riggs and I, with our 
raft of lumber, went past the Perkins’ clearing and the scene of the murder on 
our trip down the river. 

The one hundred dollars a year from the Missionary Board was the only money 
received, and postage, which was twenty-five cents a letter, made a heavy 
inroad on this amount, and if some kind Easterner friend enclosed a one dollar 
bill then the postage became fifty cents. But soon after moving into our home, 
Bloomfield post office was established, with our cabin for the office and 
myself the postmaster; and I was allowed to receive letters free from postage 
as one of the emoluments of the office, a privilege thoroughly appreciated. How 
good it was to get letters from the old home and not have to pay out the last 
quarter for postage. We had one in-coming and one out-going mail a week, on 
horse back. 

On August 31, 1842, a meeting was held at the home of Brother Earl for the 
purpose of organizing a Baptist Church. An organization was effected with the 
following members: 

Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Doolittle, Mr. and Mrs. Jason Pangborn, Mr. and Mrs. W. Y. 
Earl, Mr. and Mrs. Levi Decker, Mr. and Mrs. Esq. Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. C. E. 
Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Eliza Ballard, Mrs. Mitchelle. 

Other Baptist People in that region were: Mr. and Mrs. Ebenezer Wilcox, on Bear 
Creek; Mr. Woodsworth, twelve miles in the timber; Mrs. Jno. Wilcox, at South 
Grove; Mrs. David Bentley, at Wright’s Corners; Mr. and Mrs. Clark, three miles 
northeast, and Mrs. Palmer at Andrew. 

Bro. Jason Pangborn and family came from Northeastern New York. Sister Pangborn 
was a devoted Christian, educated and refined. Like most early settlers, their 
means were very limited. Before leaving their eastern home she became blind. 
When we called on them they were living in a small log cabin at the northeast 
corner of the quarter section on which the Midland Northwestern Railway station 
is located, at Maquoketa. 

In that little cabin with scarcely anything contributing to comfort or 
convenience, and with her husband and four small children, cheerfully, without 
complaint, she was, with extended hands, feeling her toilsome way in total 
darkness, caring for her family. 

Some years later we attended the funeral of one of her children, a little boy. 
She had never seen him. At the close of the services she was led to the open 
coffin. Standing there tenderly and lovingly for a few moments with tears fast 
falling from her sightless eyes, she passed her hands over the cold face 
saying, “I have never seen the dear child’s face. I must get an impression of 
how he looks.” The dear mother has gone where the blind can see and where 
loving eyes are never dimmed by tears. 

…Mr. John E. Goodenow, one of the first settlers and proprietor of the town 
site, presented me with a lot, on the corner of Platt and Eliza Streets, on 
which to build a new home. The little town had at that time two small general 
stores; a blacksmith shop; a small brick school house and a hotel; and probably 
about two hundred people. Between the north and south forks of the Maquoketa 
River, north and west of town, was the finest body of timber then known in the 
Territory, owning to the fact that the rivers and conformation of the adjacent 
country protected it from the ravages of prairie fires. 

There was no finer farming country, the soil or surroundings to be found in the 
west. We built a comfortable little home on the lot Mr. Goodenow gave us and 
occupied it until May, 1851. 

We at once resumed pastoral work at Maquoketa and in February following 
reorganization the church with sixteen members. During this winter the Baptists 
and Methodists joined in holding revival meetings, resulting in great good 
work. The re-organized Baptist church consisted of nine male and seven female 
members. The first new members received by baptism were two young ladies, 
Frances Mears and Mary Pangborn, most excellent and exemplary Christians. My 
outlying stations for missionary work in the Maquoketa field were LaMotte, 
twenty miles to the north; Pence’s School House, nine miles west on Bear Creek; 
Burleson’s, six miles west , and the Wright’s Corners, two miles south, where 
we held very interesting meetings in the chamber of Mr. Wright’s new house. 

…In 1845 the Maquoketa people began to plan for an Academy, and Mr. Goodenow, 
always public spirited, generous and enterprising, donated a handsome site for 
the building. In 1849 the work was taken up and vigorously prosecuted… 

At Maquoketa on the 20th day of June 1848, our oldest son, Benjamin Perry 
Brown, then in his ninth year, was drowned in the Maquoketa River. 

In the afternoon of that day permission was given him and his younger brother, 
Charles, to go bathing with the understanding that they were to go below the 
Sear’s Mill, where the water was shallow and safe. 

They very soon fell in with some town boys, playmates, who were on their way to 
the river for a swim and were going to Brown’s Ford, above the mill and dam, in 
deep water. Some of these boys at once began urging our children to accompany 
them, and after a long parley, at the place where the road to the ford out off 
from the one leading down below the mill, Bennie and Charles went with them. 
The boys were all young, none more than ten or twelve years of age. Benny was 
the first one in the water, and was at once beyond his depth. Oscea, son of 
John E. Goodenow, was the only one with presence of mind to go for help. It 
came very soon but too late. Within an hour from the time the boys left home 
Benny’s lifeless body was brought back. He was of an uncommonly amiable, 
winning disposition; loving and obedient, considerate and conscientious beyond 
his years. His sudden death was a terrible affliction and the blow fell with 
crushing weight upon his mother, who idolized him. 

At our little home in Maquoketa another sad occurrence was the death of Nelson 
Walker, Mrs. Brown’s nephew. He was a young man of the highest character and 
promise, very capable and energetic, just going into business with every 
prospect of success. 

He made friends of all he met and his untimely death was deeply mourned by 
relatives and friends. 

We left Maquoketa for New York on May 26, 1851, just nine years to a day from 
the time we came there… 

Transcribed by Kelli Wilslef




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