Bawden4 on Family Tree Circles

These exerpts come from the appendix of the following vinyl-bound gene study. See blog page for Kate ELDRIDGE and Samuel LYTER GLASPELL.

The Eldridge-Bawden Families: The Ancestry and Descendants of Duncan Campbell Eldridge and Stephen Bawden, Scott County, Iowa; author-compiler Alice Richardson Sloan, C.G. (dec 2011), commissioned by John Duvall Bawden (dec 1992), Bettendorf, Iowa; Anundsen Pub Co., Decorah, Iowa , 1986, p. 261-263, 290 pps, no copyright, no ISBN, in the personal library of this writer. Kate is the older sister of Jennie ELDRIDGE who married George Washington BAWDEN, this writer's legacy.

Incidents in the Life...Chapter XVII, p. 50
A VISIT TO WASHINGTON
One day when Mr. GLASPELL had business in the East, we took our children to Davenport and left them there with his mother [Melissa Elizabeth "Elizabeth" LYTER GLASPELL] and then went to Washington, the most interesting city in the world to good Americans, especially when Congress is in session.

One day, Senator CASEY, an old Jamestown friend, invited me to go out on a sight-seeing tour with him. We reached the President's early thinking he would not be there. But he heard us and invited us to enter. Senator CASEY said I was the wife of one of his constituents in North Dakota, and had come with my husband who was trying some cases in the Supreme Court. The President, General HARRISON, turned to me and said he was a lawyer and would like to know all about the case in question. I walked across the room and sat down beside him, although I don't remember that he invited me to do so. And I gave him a complete synopsis of three cases. I happened to turn my head and was surprised to see Senator CASEY still standing eside the door and with a most agonized expression on his face. It just occurred to me that probably the time of the Prsident of the United States might be valuable, so I arose to go.

I quickly began to thank him for his kindness, but he also arose, extended his hand and said, as any common gentleman would have done, "I am glad to have met you."

My naivete and ignorance of social customs probably afforded him abundant material for an amusing anecdote. Had we known that we were both descendants of that illustrious woman, POCAHONTAS (The Lady Rebecca), I should probably have stayed another hour or two and perhaps my husband and I would have been invited to dine at the White House.

Incidents in the Life of...Chapter V, p. 22
Soon my sister, Minnie ELDRIDGE, came up from Davenport to visit us. She was a young girl with a beautiful voice. I had no piano and there were few in the country. But our foreman had an accordian, so he brought it in and showed her how to use it. She became so expert she could play her own accompaniments at home or when we were invited some place in the country. She sang with the Presbyterian choir in Jamestown and sang a solo at the dedication of that church on July 31st, 1881.

The following day the Jamestown Alert said "and the choir was assisted in the music for the service by Miss Minnie ELDRIDGE of Davenport, Iowa whose sweet boice in the words of the hymn, 'Nearer My God to Thee" sung by her solo, held her listeners silent in reverent worship and made a fitting close for the service.

One evening we were all invited to a large party at the home of Captain McGINNIS in Jamestown, and they kept her singing most of the evening. It was a lovely party, and we stayed longer than we should have, for a storm was threatening. Friends insisted upon our staying in town, but I had left my child and felt I must get home. There were no roads, simply tracks in the grass, difficult to see at night. We had a light spring wagon and two frisky horses, which my husband drove. My sister and I sat on the back seat and leaned over the side to watch for the tracks. When we failed to see them, we were obliged to get out and hunt for them in the next flash of lightning. If you have never seen a storm here, you do not know how terrific they are. The thunder roars, while at the same time lightning flashes and makes everything as bright as day. This keeps on for some time until the rain starts coming. It was a hard trip, but we just reached home as the storm broke, and it was Hades let Loose."

Ed. note - The marriage of Martha BOLLING who was 2g-granddaughter of Pocahontas and Thomas ELDRIDGE has been traced and is NOT in my ELDRIDGE lineage.

The following stories/notes are from the appendix of:
The Eldridge-Bawden Families: The Ancestry and Descendants of Duncan Campbell Eldridge and Stephen Bawden, Scott County, Iowa; author-compiler Alice Richardson Sloan, C.G. (dec 2011), commissioned by John Duvall Bawden (dec 1992), Bettendorf, Iowa; Anundsen Pub Co., Decorah, Iowa , 1986, pps 260-263, 290 pps, no copyright, no ISBN, in the personal library of this writer.

Kate ELDRIDGE GLASPELL was a member of the Daughters of American Revolution through her mother, Mary HIGH WILLIAMS ELDRIDGE's maternal ancestor Ensign Charles CLARK, who was in Captain CRAIG's Company of New Jersey Troops during the Revolution.

From Harry BAWDEN's family history:
Kate ELDRIDGE. - ...All 3 children of Kate's [Eula, Donald and Bernard] visited in Davenport [from North Dakota]. Ulie showed us, in our parlor, a new dance, 'the Cake Walk'. Don wrote a letter to Sears and Roebuck for me and they sent me 24 big catalogs to give away which I did and they sent me a check for $2.50 for my work. Brother that was big money for an 8-year-old kid.

Bernard on his visit showed us BAWDEN Boys how to climb all over the roof of our two-story house at 511 Kirkwood Blvd.

Aunt Kate was a real gal. She traveled all over Europe and Egypt - visited the Pope and wrote a book about her trips. Also a book about early life in North Dakota.

Kate, for many years would travel into St. Paul to do her Christmas shopping. She would buy presents for the SCHLEGEL girls and the BAWDEN Boys;. Each present would be wrapped with a name on each. Then she would order it to be home where our families were celebrating. That was a thrill when the horse-drawn express wagon stopped with the big box at noon.

Ed. note - family history said the ELDRIDGES were related to POCAHONTAS. Thomas ELDRIDGE of Sussex County, Virginia, did marry ca 1740, Martha Bolling, a 2g-granddaughter of POCAHONTAS. This Thos ELDRIDGE is NOT in our family line.

In 1838, an election was held in order to decide the Scott County seat, which was a political entity before the City of Davenport was actually incorporated in 1839. Both Davenport and Rockingham vied for the honor. Duncan ELDRIDGE, Antoine LeCLAIRE, George DAVENPORT, and other prominent citizens waged a fierce campaign on behalf of Davenport. Both cities imported "legal residents" from surrounding territories.

Duncan and his cronies brought in 6 wagon loads of Dubuque coal miners - Cornish, Welsh, Irish, and German, with the promise of food, whiskey, and a dollar a day.. These were undesirables in character, dress and language. This deal with money and food was more than they were getting.

Each group had it's prejudices against each other and English was not the common language.

On the west side of Rockingham Township were several successful coal mines. The miners often loaded coal in their wagons to sell to Davenporters. [The mines are now filled with successive land owner's garbage]. That part of Scott County was called Jamestown or "Jimtown" and there is still a road with the current county designation and the original Jamestown Road.

Money was still territorial. Blackhawk was anti-white and hated the idea of settlement in his Saukenuk, a well-established village with longhouses, this territory stretching as far north as Wisconsin - this was all part of Wisconsin Territory. Blackhawk was over 6 ft and 240 lbs. Chief Keokuk was pro-white and a highly intelligent individual.

Governor Dodge annulled the elections twice due to "stupendous frauds". The third time . Davenport won.- Rockingham Township was becoming down-in-the-heels. Many people were leaving to make their homes in Davenport because it had become much more enterprising.

By 1860, Davenport's population had grown to 20,000.
.

Duncan ELDRIDGE and Rachel BROWN were married 8 January 1823 in Haddonfield, New Jersey. They moved to Rochester, New York, where 2 more children were born, both dying in infancy. Jacob was 3 years old when Rachel died in 1827. After Rachel's death, Duncan returned to Haddonfield where he left 4-year-old Jacob in the care of Duncan's mother, a widow, and moved to Cincinnati to work at his bricklaying, plastering, and cooper (barrel maker) trade.

Rachel was illiterate. I don't have any history on her family.

In 1828, President John QUINCY ADAMS formally declared that all lands east of the Mississippi were to be sold to settlers gradually moving their way westward. Native American tribes were forced westward. Black Hawk and 2,000 of his followers refused to move and the "Black Hawk War" resulted. (Source: State of Iowa)

In November 1829 in Cincinnati, Duncan married his childhood friend from Haddonfield, Rebecca Lippincott, who was born in 1807.

On September 21, 1832, the Blackhawk War ended after 15 weeks in the Battle of Bad Axe, Wisconsin.

The Blackhawk War Treaty of 1836 gave title to 6 million acres of Native American land - not just Sac and Fox - to the US Government that lay west of the Mississippi River. Davenport was included in this land and was still called the Michigan Territory. Present at the signing, KEOKUK who was chief of the Sac Indians, English immigrant Colonel George DAVENPORT, Pottowattomie-blooded Antoine LeCLAIRE, who was also a French-Canadian fur trader working for the Hudson Bay Co. who was the interpreter for the US Government.

The treaty was signed near what is now College Avenue (Stubb's Eddy] in East Davenport. The treaty stated Native Americans relinquish a large part of what is now Iowa. Black Hawk, who no longer had power after his capture, camped with his remaining warriors at the top of present-day Lindsay Park. During the gathering for the treaty signing, famed Western artist, George CATLIN not only painted and sketched the Indians?including Black Hawk?before they left their native lands, but also signed his name as a witness to the treaty

KEOKUK donated to Marguerite LeCLAIRE, Antoine's wife, a section of land where the treaty was actually signed in what is now the Village of East Davenport. Marguerite was the granddaughter of a Sac Chief and this gift was made with the understanding that the LeClaires would build their home on this site. Black Hawk was not present at the signing for his capture and imprisonment with 1000 of his followers for not allowing settlement west of the Mississippi.

In 1835, LeCLAIRE, DAVENPORT and 6 other men surveyed and laid out the town of Davenport on this land.

Duncan met LeCLAIRE and DAVENPORT in Cincinnati and heard them describe the town and it's beautiful land. He was persuaded to move to what was then called the Michigan Territory. Btw, ?Colonel" was an honorary title.

If you read the uninteresting book account, these page 19 paragraphs should be doused with White-Out.

Duncan built a substantial log raft with a shanty large enough to hold a 4-poster bed, dresser, chair, mirror, clothes, food and a stove.

The ELDRIDGEs (wife Rebecca, and 5-year-old son Charles) packed their belongings and drifted down the Cincinnati River. He thought land travel would be too slow and dangerous, mostly for the Native Americans. After negotiating the Ohio/Mississippi River route, Duncan encountered the captain of a steamship, possibly the Dubuque (book), and asked if he could tie the raft to the back of the boat. This arrangement worked for some distance until it started to get cold and the current slowed. The captain decided the ELDRIDGE raft was slowing him down, so he cut the ropes between the 2 boats and left the ELDRIDGEs to their own.

The Mississippi before the lock and dam system was very shallow, rocky and. therefore, lots of rapids. It could be crossed on foot or horse and buggy in many areas.

They came into the area in October, 1835. The river had frozen over and the ELDRIDGEs became iced-in. They tried calling for help. It was a period of a day or so before anyone heard them. At this point, they were closer to the Stephenson (Rock Island) side. Rescue efforts were hampered because of the ice and the size of the raft. Eventually, several people were able to pull the raft to the Illinois side. Duncan and Rebecca came over to Davenport in early snowy 1836. At the foot of Brady Street near the only other existing house owned by LeClaire, they erected a shanty from the raft logs.

The winds were pretty hefty and the snow had come early. The log cabin was packed with mud between the logs. As an insulator, they glued or shellacked pages of Cincinnati newspaper on the walls to keep the wind out. When the locals found out, they started to come by to read the news. Several people at a time would be standing at the walls, some even on footstools.

Duncan and Rebecca's first child here, Sarah, born May 3, 1837, was the first white girl born in Davenport May 3, 1837. Sons Lewis and Micajah followed.

That's what our tree had to be!! Nothing shorter would do.

Some years we had to tie the top of the tree to the curtain rods to balance it. We used clear fishing line.

These trees were so majestic as to tickle the 12-ft. ceilings in our 1875 house. The living room was painted a warm squash yellow, the curtains were gold. We usually had a fire in the living room fireplace and Christmas songs on the stereo. As we got older, the songs were replaced by stacks of vinyl with the Messiah, performed by the organist, choir, and musicians, from the cathedral in Salt Lake City or maybe from England.

Mom started taking us to local performances of the Messiah by the city symphony and the Augustana College Handel Oratorio Choir, so we learned many of the words and could sing along. Now the next generation goes faithfully...Jean would be proud!!

The strings of lights go first. My 2 brothers would have the lights strung out between the living room and dining room on the floor, tightening each bulb and finding a replacement, as quick as possible so as not to burn the carpet. We had to clip each light. It was tedious so we got good at making them look like they were clipped.

Dad was a traditionalist and learned to trim a tree from his Prussian mom and English dad. You start at the top with the small ornaments and by the time you get to the bottom limbs, you should have the biggest ornaments hanging from the bowers. This gives the tree the illusion that it's tall. Often the problem was that the tip of the tree had to go. Not enough room from the tree to the ceiling to put on the tree topper...a long silver etched ornament made as a tree-topper.

Dad loved silver garland because he was the major architect with the silver tinsel - preferring the heavier stuff to the light, easily-tangled cheap tinsel. It had to be hung with no tangles, no wads, like the feathers of an Irish Setter. The 4 of us kids would usually give up and start decorating each other's hair, too impatient to do it right. Dad would do the whole tree with beautiful silver...absolutely gleaming. THEN, he would get the kitchen shears and "trim the bangs" as he would say. Each branch's silver was carefully trimmed to hang evenly.

When the job was all done, we turned the lights down, poured glasses of egg nog with optional nutmeg, sat down and enjoyed our work. When we were younger, dad would sometimes have Tom & Jerry mix from the local bar.

One of my last family trees must have been in the late 1970s. This tree must have been picked last because it was a Charlie Brown ceiling tickler that looked just awesome with all it's decorations. I was moved to write a poem:

Shimmering glimmering long green arms in silver gossamer angel's sleeves
A spindly evergreen transformed from the proverbial ugly duckling
Ruling over all those who are overwhelmed by its spirit,
And adorned with its princely jewels reigns forever
As the true spirit of Christmas.

Davenport Democrat, 17 October 1881, Front Page
?DEATH OF STEPHEN BAWDEN?
Davenport, Iowa Monday
One of the good, solid farmers and excellent citizens of this county, passed away at 4:00 this morning - Stephen Bawden, of Rockingham township. His death was not unexpected, yet it came with a startling suddenness. He suffered from a sun-stroke last summer and has been feeble since though able to attend to his duties. Last Friday he was affected by a slight paralytic stroke, but was better on Saturday, on Sunday he suffered from another, but from this he did not recover, and death relieved him at the hour named this morning.
Mr. Bawden was born in England, in March 1812, and so was 69 years and 7 months old. He came to America in 1849, and settled in Norristown, Pa., where he lived until 1860, when he came to Davenport and soon purchased the farm on the river road, in Rockingham township, just on the Davenport line, on which he has lived ever since. He was quiet in his ways and talk, but of the firmest convictions. And he was a strong man in quiet argument based on intelligence. His neighbors had thorough respect for him- they elected him a member of the Board of Supervisors for two or three terms under the old organization when every township had its member, and he was called to fill the office of township trustee or school trustee many times. He was a successful farmer and one of the best of husbands and fathers. He leaves five children to mourn, with their mother, the sore bereavement - Stephen D., bookkeeper at the Davenport National Bank, Dr. H. L. Bawden, Mrs. John Iles, George W., a law student, and Thomas J., whose home is on the old farm.
The funeral will take place from the residence of S. D. Bawden, No. 1315 Fourth Avenue, tomorrow afternoon at 2 o?clock.