own home. They had a most lovely home and the love and harmony of the two families, while I was an inmate of the house, was a delight to behold.

The Colonel's only brother and his six sisters had moved to Illinois, and in 1833 the Colonel sold out in Missouri and joined his brother and sisters in Irish Grove, Sangamon County, Illinois, and bought him a farm, and there they built a Presbyterian church. But the years 1834-35 proved to be years of great sickness. There were many deaths, and among the number the Colonel's loved step-mother and a brother-in-law. In 1835-6 it was determined among the relatives that a healthier home should be found and early in April, 1836, Col. Patterson, Greene Casey, Alexander H. Walker and myself started for the New Purchase west of the Mississippi, and bought the town quarter section where West Point had just been located, and we all located claims near together. Col. Patterson, having more means than any of us, built and kept a hotel for some time, but there was no liquor sold in that hotel while Col. Patterson kept it. In all Col. Patterson's long life I never heard of his having an angry dispute with any man; nor did I ever hear of his being charged with a discreditable act in business. As a rule it is hardly policy for any man, when old, to give up his property to his children for a life's support, but in the case of Capt. Patterson it was wise. He lived nearly or quite thirty years on his son's bounty, doing no work; but as long as his wife lived they had a separate home to themselves, with all comforts, without work or care, and after the death of his wife he had a room of his own. As an evidence of his freedom and independence, being a Whig, he illuminated his window the night the news was received of the election of Gen. Taylor, although his son was a Democrat.

I am satisfied that there never was one moment of time that the father or mother felt that they were not lovingly treated by the son; and the half-sister was cared for in the same generous noble manner that the Colonel cared for his

own daughters. Col. Patterson was a man of wonderfully even temper. I never, with one exception, saw him in a high state of excitement.

He had been appointed Colonel of the County militia, and during the Missouri and Iowa boundary contest Gov. Lucas had ordered out every available man to at once march to Farmington to defend Iowa's rights. The Governor was for fight, and the Colonel came home from the Legislature Sunday evening, and he sent for me near bed time. I found him walking the room in great agony. He said: "I am ordered to march and take every able-bodied man to the frontier. The snow is now a foot deep and what little corn the people raised is in the field; no wood prepared for winter, and the cabins are poorly prepared to keep out the cold, and no provisions laid in. What will become of the women and children when the men are all gone?"

The County Court of Clark County, Mo., had sent a peace delegation to Burlington, but Gov. Lucas would not meet them and the Legislature cowardly refused to act, but called a mass meeting for the next day (Saturday). The town filled up and patriotism and whiskey ruled the meeting. The peace men had no show.

I urged the Colonel to return to Burlington and try to save his people, but he insisted that it would be useless, and besides he said the Governor would put him under arrest. But, on my urging and his own desire to save the people, he agreed to go if I would go with him. We reached Burlington the next morning just as the Legislature met, and we went to Shep. Leffler's seat and told him what was wanted. He at once drew up a resolution that both houses passed unanimously before 3 P. M., and the Colonel returned home and next day took the resolution to Missouri. The County Court was convened the next morning. They accepted the resolution as satisfactory and peace was restored. The troops of both sides returned home and no man was happier at the result than Col. Patterson.

I have reason to know that no other act of his life gave him more soulfelt pride than his part in saving blood and suffering in the foolish boundary war.

THE NAME OF HAMILTON COUNTY.

HE impression quite generally and very naturally arises that Hamilton County was so named in honor of the great associate in the field and in

the cabinet of George Washington; and this belief has occasionally found expression in newspaper articles. This is an error, the correction of which I desire to place upon permanent record in these pages. The simple facts of the case are as follows:

Before the adoption of the present State Constitution, we had no such office as that of Lieutenant-Governor. The Senate elected their own presiding officer, and he was simply known as "the President of the Senate." The gentleman who held this position at the last session of the State Legislature in Iowa City was Hon. W. W. Hamilton, who had been elected to the Senate from Dubuque County. The line of "Presidents of the Senate" ended with him, for the new Constitution provided for the election of a Lieutenant-Governor. During that last session a large district up in the northwest corner of the State was represented in the lower house by Hon. W. C. Willson, who still resides at Webster City, as hale and hearty almost as in those old days "befo' de wah." Webster City was then in old Webster County, and Homer was the capital town. Willson went to work to get two counties made by act of the Legislature out of the large one, which was shaped on the old maps something like a boot. He proposed to cut off the toe for the new county. In this work he was greatly aided by Judge Hamilton, who presided over the other branch of the Legislature. The bill passed both houses and was

approved by Gov. J. W. Grimes. In compliment to Judge Hamilton the county was named after him through the effort of Mr. Willson. That is the whole (and the true) story of the naming of that county.

Old Webster County had been established by some previous legislature, by the union of Yell and Riley counties, as they appear on the maps of that period. Some gentlemen opposed the erection of the new county of Hamilton, upon the ground that these frequent changes were hardly necessary; but Willson energetically carried it through, and so the lines remain unto this day.

Judge W. W. Hamilton was an Englishman, but he had been long in this country. I knew him well from 1857 until his death, many years after the war. I often talked with him about "his county," as he sometimes spoke of it, and he was ore of the first subscribers to the Hamilton Freeman, the paper I founded at Webster City in 1857. He was a gentleman of thorough culture, possessed of wide and varied information — eminently genial and social — and one of the finest presiding officers we have ever had in our State. He was a leading Iowa railroad builder for several years—mainly in constructing the line from Dubuque to Sioux City — in which he was associated with the late Platt Smith.

This, I believe, was the last time that it was attempted to tamper with county lines, or change county seats in the Legislature. The new Constitution provided ways and means for doing this at home.

Judge Hamilton was so excellent a man, he labored so earnestly, so intelligently, so efficiently, in developing the resources of our incipient State, that his memory should not be allowed to perish; nor should it ever be contended that Hamilton County received its name in honor of the great soldier and statesman of our revolutionary days-for the facts were precisely as I have set them forth.

CHARLES ALDRICH.

State Library, December 5, 1890.

BUSHWHACKING IN MISSOURI.

BY CAPT. N. LEVERING, LOS ANGELES, CAL.

[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 557]

N my return to Independence I concluded to locate there. Many years previously the prophet Joe Smith declared it the Zion of the latter day saints

the haven of rest and Paradise of the faithful.

He planted a pole on a slight elevation on the temple ground and declared it the center of the world. I felt that if that were true I would have a central location and that in Zion, the home of the blessed, a place that I had never hoped before to reach by land, and then to own a corner lot in Zion,-what an acquisition! And what fool would not want to locate there? But, alas! it has all proved, like its author, a wonderful bug whose surname is hum. Those who had hovered around the prophet in his prophetic days and "were at ease in Zion,” had gone glimmering down the stream of time, leaving a bitter recollection in the minds of the old inhabitants of Jackson county. From what I could gather of their history from the old citizens, many of them were a class similar to the bushwhacking element that were then disturbing the country, and writing their own history in blood and crime. The closing of the war checked in some measure the operations of the bushwhackers, for the time being, which led many to the opinion that bushwhackers had abandoned their occupation for something more honorable, but this was a hope not to be realized; they were only maturing a different plan of operations, which the declaration of peace made necessary and compelled them to act on their own credit and not upon that of either of the armies. They watched carefully the civil authorities to see what action would be taken in their case. Warrants were issued for the arrest of quite a number of them, but the sheriff found it impossible to capture any of them. Occasional depredations were committed by them as if to menace the authorities.