Part 104 (2/2)

It was her custom (a custom that the ”Blasting at the Rock of Ages”

ought not to minimize) to read a chapter from some book of the bible every morning to the scholars before commencing the further duties of the day, and that chapter which speaks about bearing false witness was the one chosen for this morning, a very fitting prelude too, to the further developments of the day. We were more prompt than usual in taking our seats after school was called this morning with an evident desire to impress the teacher as being very attentive to our studies, but at the same time keeping one eye in the teacher's direction, so as not to miss any of the movements of the teacher in case the antic.i.p.ated fun was thrust upon us. Lowell Taylor, the boy who couldn't keep still if he had to, was bubbling over with mirth (every school has them) and was severely reproved for not keeping quiet and for disturbing the whole school by his antics. After delivering to Lowell this short lecture on disobedience she went to her desk to get her bible and as she lifted the lid out jumped the prisoner and such a screech as she let out seemed to almost freeze the marrow in your bones and sent the cold chills chasing up and down your spinal column as with one bound she made the first row of seats and in a jiffy was clean to the farther end of the room, perched upon the rear desk with her skirts tucked snugly around her shaking limbs and terror pictured in every line of her face.

In this position she remained impervious to all efforts to induce her to come off her high perch, until a second chase had been made and the intruder ejected from the room.

By recess time she had again settled back in the old well beaten path and a.s.sumed her usual calm and dignified way, her reason, which had been so suddenly dethroned by the advent of the harmless mouse, was again gaining mastery of the situation. With the return of reason came the tangled threads of suspicion, that perhaps she had been the victim of a designing bunch of scholars and that a huge joke had been perpetrated on her. With this object in view she began a systematic search for evidence and among the girls she struck a responsive chord.

They were ready to convict any one in order to exculpate themselves.

They gave the whole plot away and every last one of them persisted in their innocence so eloquently that the teacher was fully convinced of my guilt. She therefore proceeded to relieve her pent up feelings by putting into action several of her ”suffragette” ideas about personal liberty. She restrained me of mine for the next two weeks during the noon hour.

EARLY DOCTORS IN THE COUNTY

The following extracts from a paper read in December, 1910, before the Iowa Union Medical Society at its meeting in Cedar Rapids, by Dr. H. W.

Sigworth, of Anamosa, himself a pioneer physician in Linn county, is of interest:

I left northeastern Linn county thirty-four years ago.

In 1856 I commenced the study of medicine in Pennsylvania. After that I was a tramp schoolmaster, farmer, student at Wisconsin university, and U. S. soldier. I graduated from Rush in '63. After looking for a location in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, I located at Waubeek--think of it--in Waubeek, in Maine towns.h.i.+p, in 1863.

I had tried it a month at Fairview, in Jones county, before going to Waubeek. By the way, old Dr. Ristine made his first start in Iowa in the same historic town of Fairview before locating in Marion.

Northeastern Linn county at that time was very much on the frontier.

There were no bridges on the Wapsie from Quasqueton to Anamosa, but at Central City; now there are five. At Waubeek we had a postoffice but no regular mail carrier. Any one going to Marion took the mail sack and brought back the mail.

Our first mail route was on Friday morning. It left Quasqueton horseback, making Paris, Central City (which was formerly called Clark's Ford), Waubeek, Necot (Perkins), Anamosa. Sat.u.r.day it would return over the same route.

The earliest doctor of whom I can get any word of locating in this territory was Doctor Ashby at Paris. When I came in 1863, Doctor Patterson was at Central City. Dr. Lanning was at Paris. He sat next to me at Rush in 1861 and 1862. Dr. Stacy lived out the Anamosa and Quasqueton road at Valley farm. I never met him. He sent me my first case of fractured thigh in June of 1863; a boy, eight years old, who lived in a sod house with a board roof, two miles north of McQueen's (now Hill's Mill), now owned by Coquillette. The splints were made with an axe and pocket knife out of an old cradle found on the roof of the house. Extension on the ankle was by the top of an old shoe with strings through the foot-piece of the Liston splint. Results all right.

At Paris, after Lanning came Drs. Byam, Mrs. Dr. Byam, and my brother, M. P. Sigworth, Fullerton, McTavish, and Ellis, all of whom I knew, and not one of them alive now.

Where the thriving village of Prairieburg now is was a cross road, the northeast corner lying out to commons for years.

The first doctor to locate there was Dr. Young. He drove a little sorrel horse in a light rig with one wheel dished, which made a crooked track, and his disposition was something like the track of his buggy.

Following him at this place was Dr. Ellis, who went to that place from Paris.

At Central City after Dr. Patterson came Mitch.e.l.l, a state of Maine Yankee. At an early date a majority of the people here abouts were from the state of Maine, henceforth the name of Maine towns.h.i.+p. The Jordans, Friesons, Clarks, Waterhouses, were early settlers from the state of Maine.

Dr. Mitch.e.l.l was a good doctor and a fine man. Poor fellow, he lost his life by having administered to him by a mistake a teaspoonful of poison when he was to have a tonic.

After his death at Central City the place was filled by Drs. Ristine, Fisher, McTavish, my son, Dwight Sigworth, and Percy, a scientific fellow. This field is now filled by Drs. Fisher and Woodbridge.

Waubeek was in the field of Dr. Love, he going northwest to Nugent's Grove at times. Dear old Dr. Love was a splendid man, a first-cla.s.s diagnostician and a good physician and surgeon. If he lacked anything it was aggressiveness in surgery.

While at Waubeek I had for co-laborers Drs. Phipps, Scott, Bowers, and Grimm. Bowers tried to commit suicide by taking a teaspoonful of poison which made him very sick, but he ultimately recovered. Dr. Grimm was known as the Dutch doctor.

<script>