REVISITING LAWRENCE COUNTY.
FROM H. IMES
Ironton Register, Feb. 5, 1891
Imes, Kan., Jan. 26, ’91
Editor Register:
After leaving Burlington last August, I followed the public highway up the river to Symmes Creek’s mouth. At the mouth of Charley creek, where James Crawford used to live, I failed to see any sign of the flat boat building that was so common in that place in the forties.
It seems as though the flatboat traffic has been greatly reduced in the past forty years. We seem to be living in a fast age, where nothing short of steam and electricity satisfy the rush and push of the people. Passing along to what used to be the Judge Scovill farm, I learned that it was owned and occupied by Stephen Dillon, and I was told that he had accumulated quite a fortune.
We lived next to the Dillon family from 1840 to 1844, and I well remember hearing the sound of their axes as early as four o’clock in the morning. Also, their wagons grinding over the rocks and stumps at this early hour.
I should judge that $500 would cover their property’s entire cash value. But such push and energy were soon rewarded by increased wealth, honor, and influence. I did not have the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with these broad acres’ honored citizen and proprietor.
Uncle Asa Kimball, at the mouth of Symmes, has long since passed away. There again could be heard daily the sound of hammer and chisel, building flatboats, in the long ago. Just across the river, Huntington’s city has grown like magic. Railroads, as I understand, have been the principal cause of this sudden growth.
I passed up Buffalo Creek, where we last lived. Uncle Jack Francis’s place looked somewhat familiar, the same old hewed log house is still there, and Mrs. Henry’s place looked natural. I learned my old schoolmate, Wm, owned this place. Henry’s widow.
Thence up to Uncle Jimmy Lynd’s, where I took dinner and talked over old times through the kind hospitality of the aged couple. How strange everything seemed after living on the level prairies of the West for more than forty years.
At some future time, I may tell your readers something of the great West as I see it. I have lived in Kansas for 25 years and have seen drought, chinch bugs, and grasshoppers, but, taking it all in all, I could not be induced to make my abode in those hills again.
H. Imes.
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