Our second guest during Sunday's 19th annual Chariton Cemetery Heritage Tour was Susanna Millan Custer whose autographical writings contain several fascinating stories of early Lucas County.
Many thanks to Ruth Hendricks for her portrayal. Here's the script that she used:
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My name is Susanna (Millan) Custer, ladies and gentlemen, and it is my pleasure to welcome you for a second time to the highest point in Chariton’s city of the dead. Some of you may have been here in 2008 when I was summoned to introduce myself the first time --- during the 5th Annual Cemetery Heritage Tour.
At that time, I shared information about my childhood in Virginia and Missouri and my marriage in September of 1847, when I was 20, to James Brafford Custer. This afternoon, I aim to tell you a few stories of Lucas County’s very early days. The past, they say, is a foreign country --- and I can attest to that.
SOON AFTER our marriage at Lancaster, Missouri, James developed "western fever" and set out with my brothers-in-law, Edward K. Gibbon (married to sister Amanda) and John S. Sheller (married to sister Margaret) as government surveyors in the territory of southern Iowa west of the Red Rock Line opened to settlers in 1846.
They found what they were looking for along White Breast Creek in what now is Liberty Township, several miles northwest of what would become Chariton.
Lucas County land was not yet on the market, although it was open to settlement by pre-emption claim. Rather than staking new claims, the boys bought rights to claims that already had been improved. Ours was on high ground, overlooking the creek valley.
We visited our new home for the first time in October 1848, when our first child, Billy, was not yet two months old, but it was nearly winter and so we packed our baby and knapsacks after a couple of weeks and went back down the trail to Appanoose County to spend the cold months with relatives near the Missouri state line.
WE STARTED OUT again for Lucas County again one fine morning in the spring of 1849 in a two-horse wagon with two fine teams, one hitched before and one tied behind. We had trails, the Mormon Trace and sometimes the Bee Trace, but when we turned off the trail we had to pull through high grass and depend on our compass.
On the third day I became discouraged and was crying when John Sheller, who was traveling with us, jumped up in the front of our wagon and said, "Susanna, do you see that pole away ahead north or a little east of north?"
I strained my eyes and said, "Yes, it is the north pole." He said, "No, that is old Xury West's well pole." Xury West and his family were the first settlers at Greenville, some distance north of the Mormon Trace in far southeast Lucas County and his 30-foot well pole was a landmark for travelers.
We reached Mr. West's that evening and got a cool drink with that "north pole" and a dandy good supper and bed. All the way from home we had been drinking water dipped up out of sloughs. I strained the wiggletails all out through muslin and set it in a shady place in the wagon to cool, but it was awful anyway.
WELL, NEXT MORNING we started out much refreshed and traveled north, heading for the Willis settlement near where Newbern is now. But we got lost; traveled all day, such a long way. Rained all day, nearly. At night, we came to a small stream, English Creek, and a cabin.
An old man came out. James asked if we could stay all night. He said, "I guess so," but we would have to come over the stream on a log. The stream was raging high, so we left our wagon on the other side. The man said to his wife, "We can keep these folks, can't we?"
She said, "Yes, only we hain't no meat." He said, “Oh, you forgot the possum."
"Yes, I did, but that is all we have," she said. But we did not want any meat that night.
This man's name was John Ballard, Lucas County's first permanent settler. He wasn’t very old either, but every man that was married in those days was "old man."
WE HAD 600 ACRES --- only 16 ready for cultivation --- a 12-foot-square log cabin and no neighbors.
But there were lots of Indians --- Potawatomi --- camped a mile or two below our house on the creek, of which I was very much afraid although they were friendly. Their permanent homes at the time were in far southwest Iowa, but they ranged in hunting parties during the summer all across the south side of the state.
As I said, our Indians were friendly but entirely too sociable. They would walk in and sit right down on the floor without being asked, close to the fire. Just as they would have fed us had we visited them, they expected to be fed when they visited us.
One day James was out breaking prairie and left me all alone with my baby boy, and 5 or 6 big Indians come. I put the ladder against the house and took my baby and climbed up on the roof, laid him against a weightpole and pulled the ladder up after me. James had seen them approaching and rode up about that time and they all just stood around looking at me up on the roof, laughing.
AS I SAID, our claim consisted of 600 acres of land and a twelve-foot square log cabin with one door, no window and a weight-pole roof, but only 16 acres were in cultivation. James could not do without lots of fields so he hired two men and six yoke of oxen to break 65 acres between us and Jimmy Mumford's on the hill west of us.
We lived mostly outdoors during the daytime in warm weather, but all slept inside that tiny cabin --- four bedrolls and bedding for the five of us; more when the occasional traveler or peddler stopped by (and they always were invited to share a meal and spend the night).
It was pitch dark out there on the prairie, and no windows anyhow. So as you can imagine we stepped on each other quite often that summer, coming and going as nature called during the night.
MY JAMES, at age 23, was the first justice of the peace in Liberty Township, a job he had undertaken without thinking through all of its consequences. At the time, there were no resident preachers and several young couples anxious to wed, including our neighbors, William Manley and Sarah Roberts, and Phillip Cumpston and Cynthia Ann Malone. His obligation to tie these marital knots had not occurred to him.
James agreed to unite them in the holy bonds but we had no form for the wedding ceremony and only our memories of our own to guide us. I cobbled the text together as best I could and wrote it out and James memorized it so as to look like he knew what he was doing. He tried it out first on Mr. Manley and Miss Roberts.
But James was painfully shy and midway through got red-faced and forgetful and demanded that the bridegroom agree to obey his bride and not visa versa. Their marriage lasted nearly 50 years anyhow.
WE HAD BEEN here several months when one day James had to go out to hunt some mules that got away, and he was gone a good while. He found me crying when he came home. "Oh, don't cry. You don't know what good news I have. I found some men up on the prairie and they said they were going to lay out a town. Now you can go to church when it is done."
Chariton had been located and named during September of 1849, and the little town --- nothing more than shoulder-high prairie hay when we arrived --- soon began to develop.
The preaching was in the new log courthouse and the preacher, an itinerant Methodist. He was in the market for converts and allowed that there would be an immersion down at the river when the preaching was done.
But after the sermon, Mr. Beverly Searcy got up and said, "Oh yes, oh yes," held up his hand and said, "There will be a dance here now. I want you all to come."
James and I were Presbyterian and satisfied to have been sprinkled, so we passed on baptism and went to the dance instead!
I COULD TELL you many more stories, but time is short today, so I’ll summarize. My parents and more of my siblings moved from Missouri to Chariton in 1862 and lived out the remainder of their lives here.
James and I left the farm in 1853 and went into the hotel business in Chariton, then James was elected county treasurer. I gave birth to 10 children total.
James, among the noblest of men, died on March 8, 1893, age 69; and I lived on for 25 more years, until March 9, 1918, when I was in my 91st year.
You’re always welcome to visit me over there under that tree and if you do, and if you listen carefully, perhaps I’ll share more of how it was here when Lucas County began.
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