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ered-wagon pioneers from Tennessee. When the Civil war flamed allegiance was divided.Guerilla warfare raged. Both northern and southern bushwhackers,H bands of irregulars, who hid out by day were in constant clashes. These groups would pillage by night, Prof. Bates recalls, and he relates that his parents hid sacks of grain out in the hills to save them.Soldiers Helped Themselves.Northern soldiers would rifle chicken yards and corn cribs during the day, according to Prof. Bates. One instance he recalls, when Unionists entered his parents’ home at Cane Hill, dumped sacks of wheat to use the bags as containers for corn appropriated from the com crib, and then permitted the contents of a sorghum barrel to run out on the wheat as a prank.The land was terrorized. The irregular gangs and incensed partisans were constantly hunting out sympathizers of either side and hanging them. Prof, Bates’ paternal grandfather was a Union sympathizer, and was once in Imminent danger of hanging in his grandson's presence for his loyalty.Dr. Bates remembers with a laugh the sight of a blue-uniformed Federal soldier chasing a vigorous rooster around the Bates’ house with eventual success. Famine stalked the wasted countryside. In an old-fashioned hand coffee-grinder Dr. Bates’ mother ground wheat for a type of coarse bread.How They Got Salt.Salt was precious. Hear this account by Capt. C. Barney in a history of the Twentieth Iowa. “In Arkansas many of the farmers had resorted to the expedient of digging up the surface of the ground in their old smokehouses, which was put into water, and after standing a day or two, this water was boiled, from which a small quantity of salt was procured.” The Bates family resorted to that expedient. Two barrels of salt brought by a speculator from Hollo, Mo„ sold for forty cents a half-pint at Elkhorn Tavern, Ark. Settlers came for miles to buy it.Two of Dr. Bates* maternal uncles as well as two paternal uncles wore the grey of the Southern regulars. His father svas a northern sympathizer, having gone to Arkansas from Kansas, where in his surveyor’s vocation he had helped in running many section lines.Dr. Bates relates that as a joke Federal soldiers riding past a group of playing children would Are guns well over their heads and laugh loudly to see them scurry for cover. Dr. Bates recalls such incidents among his own childhood experiences, and remembers that a common childish retort when a Federal soldier would ask, “Where’s yourdad?” would be “Out killin’ Feds.” Many of Dr. Bates’ playmates were southern partisans.Applied Torch To House.Federal troops ordered the Bates family early in the fall of 1863 to remove their furniture from the house to a point under nearby trees, as they were returning that night to burn the house Return they did and applied the torch, but stealthily In their wake another Union soldier quenched the flames, according to Dr. Bates.Dr. Bates* old home town, Cane Hill, has a significance in early American history It was discovered by De Soto, the explorer, who thought that there nature had reversed itself by permitting cane to grow on a hill top instead of in its usual habitat, the rich bottom lands. De Soto had a similar thought about the hot springs of Arkansas, and always held a superstitious aversion to the region.Major Thompson.was wounded in the battle of Prairie Grove and his wounds were attended at the home of Steven K. Stone, wealthy Fayetteville merchant, a southern patriot. A gentleman of the old school. Stone struck up a hearty friendship with Major Thompson. In later years Dr. Bates on summer visits to his old home would act as a mutual greetings bearer between the two men, and Dr. Bates recalls that Stone would characterize the major as “a real man, a fine gentleman, .even if he was a northern Yankee.”Friend Of Senator Owen,Dr. Bates attended the University of Arkansas after Ids childhood schooling, and then taught some time in the Tahiequah Cherokee Indian school in the Indian territory across the Arkansas border. During that period he became a friend of the United States senator-to-be, Robert L. Owen, then an instructor.Dr. Bates took graduate work at the University of Michigan and was principal of a. Michigan high school several years before coming to Coe in 1889. He retired from the Coe faculty in 1924 and has since served the city in turn as city water works chemist and city chemist. He is 75 years old.The commencement at the University of Arkansas next week will mark the fiftieth anniversary of Dr, Bates’ graduation, and a paper written by him will be read at hi$ class reunion.icxccMcctlinlrti11:wsiS]wptl11llctrvic1;1IcI1RELEASE NORWAY BANK.DES MOINES (AP—Release of the Benton County Savings bank at Norway from the restrictions of senate file 111 was announced Saturdayby the state banking department. The release was granted after the banking department had approved the form of depositors’ agreement under which the bank is now operating.tdALBURNETTThe Alburnctt
Newspaper Details
Cedar Rapids Gazette
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, US
Sun, May 28, 1933
Page 28
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 23 Jul 2022
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