THE HOMES OF AMBROSE A. CALL, PART I

Many of you will recall the beautiful mansions that Ambrose and Asa Call and their families once called home.  I don’t remember much about Asa’s house which once stood where the Call City Park is located, but I do recollect the Ambrose Call home during its last years of service as the Good Samaritan Home.  As a young girl I accompanied my mother there to see various patients during the late 1960s.  Unfortunately I have no memories about the inside of the house.

This past summer the story of Ambrose Call and his wife, Nancy, was featured in “Voices From the Past” cemetery walk at Riverview Cemetery during Founders’ Day weekend.  I gathered a lot of research about the three homes of the Calls to be used for the preparation of the guides’ scripts.  Having gathered so much more information than we could use for the scripts, it seems only fair to share the research in a post or two.

THE LOG CABIN IN THE WOODS

The very first cabin in Kossuth County was built by Ambrose and his friend, William T. Smith.  During their initial trip to Kossuth County when they staked their first claims, the Call brothers did some strategic planning.  They decided that Ambrose would work on building a cabin in which they could live during the upcoming winter while Asa traveled back to Iowa City to register their claims and to bring back his new bride, Sarah, before bad weather struck.

With the plan in place, the brothers traveled together to Boone, where Ambrose was to procure the equipment and supplies needed for the cabin.  While there, Ambrose met William T. Smith who was fascinated by the stories of Kossuth County told by the Calls.  Ambrose knew that he could not construct a log cabin alone, so he encouraged Mr. Smith to accompany him to his new home and perhaps strike a claim for himself.  Smith agreed.  With Ambrose leading the way, the two traveled to the tract that Ambrose had claimed for his own on July 10, 1854.  Together the two built the cabin. 

The memorial near the cabin site

According to the speech given by Ambrose Call at the 1904 semi-centennial, the cabin was 14x16 feet in size and the logs, which were notched at the corners, “were as large as two men could raise.”  He goes on, “My cabin had a door made of puncheons hewn from basswood logs, a one sash window 10x12, a chimney made of sticks, and mortar made of yellow clay; the fireplace of boulders and the hearth of dirt.  In those very early days we had no sod houses.  Our cabins were all built of logs, just as our great grandfathers in the green mountain state built them, a little improvement on the cabin in which Abraham Lincoln learned to read his bible.”    

ALL ALONE

Once the cabin was completed, Mr. Smith quickly grew tired of the isolation and loneliness.  He left the country and never returned.  That left Ambrose the only white man in the whole county.  He was aware that due to the killing of Si-do-min-a-do-tah (Old Two Fingers), the brother of Ink-pa-du-tah, the whole area was unsafe and he also knew that his new cabin was only a short distance from the location where the Sioux had robbed a band of surveyors earlier that same year and driven them out of the county.  Given those facts, it must have taken a special kind of courage to stay there all alone.

Thankfully his solitude was short lived as Asa came back for a week or two in late August to mark claims before returning to Iowa City and the first band of settlers to the area arrived on August 27, 1854.  On November 4^th, Asa arrived with Sarah, and she made the rough cabin a real home.  Florence Call Cowles described her as “young, enthusiastic, adaptable, and resourceful.”

LIFE IN THE CABIN

Sarah Heckart Call herself shared the following memory about the cabin:  “It was made of poles, a stick chimney and a little clap board door about four feet high. When we first came it had no windows nor door, but we soon fixed it comfortably.  I often think of that little cabin with its great fire place and if I should travel the world over I could find no place where I could enjoy myself better than I did there.  While we lived in Iowa City we had always boarded at the hotel, so in that little cabin I took my first lessons in housekeeping.  The room was so small that when strangers came in the country and stopped with us, as they usually did, we were obliged to set our table and chairs out of doors and make beds on the floor.  Our bags of flour, coffee, beans, etc., were pitched under the beds, and our meat which was mostly elk and venison lay on the roof of the house well frozen.”

Although Asa and Sarah had been married for a few months, they had been apart the majority of that time while the Call brothers traveled in search of the location for their new city and again when Asa journeyed back to Kossuth County at the end of August.  I am sure that by November Sarah was looking forward to permanently being with her new husband and truly beginning their life together.  Although she had to be aware that the couple would be sharing the small cabin with her brother in law, I can imagine that it must have been difficult at times spending the long winter in the 14x16 foot room with both your new husband and a brother-in-law that you barely knew. On one hand you would like to have more private time with your new husband but on the other it was nice to have another male presence for protection in this untamed territory.

Alexander Brown's log cabin which sits in
Ambrose A. Call State Park

It is hard to really imagine what life must have been like in the very early days of settlement.  A description that has always fascinated me is contained in the story of the arrival of W.H. Ingham and D. E. Stine outside the Call cabin on the 24^th of November, 1854.  These two gentlemen were the first outsiders they had seen since Sarah’s arrival.  An account set out in the “History of Kossuth County” written by B. F. Reed in 1912, states:  “They were met in front of the cabin by the husband, who was wearing a silk blouse coat, white shirt and collar, and polished shoes.  The puzzling question that arose in their minds for solution was:  “What can be the object of a man of such commanding presence and evident ability living out here in the woods on the borders of civilization, dressed in such fashionable style?”  They accepted the courteous invitation to “alight and remain over night.”  Inside the cabin they were met by another surprise:  They were greeted by Mrs. Call who was tastily gowned in silk.  She stood before them, a young woman yet in her teens, and was the very picture of health and happiness.  Nature had done much in giving her both beauty and grace, but not more so than in giving her a disposition to be content with her lot and to make the most of what she found at hand.  The supper was a fine one that the two visitors in after years frequently referred to it when telling about their experience in first meeting Judge and Mrs. Asa C. Call.”

Although I have read this story many times, it was not until I was writing this story that it dawned on me that although Ingham describes staying overnight at the cabin, no mention is made of the presence of Ambrose Call, the owner of the abode.   Now there could be many explanations for this, but the romantic in me wants to believe that Ambrose wanted to give the newlyweds as much privacy as possible.  I have a feeling that quite likely there were many hunting trips that kept Ambrose away from home that winter until his older brother was able to build a log cabin in town the next spring.

Please join me for my next post which will tell the story of the house  Ambrose built for his own bride.

Until next time,

Kossuth County History Buff

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