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From the Green Mountains of Vermont to the prairies of northwestern Nebraska is a far cry, especially when the journey was made in 1872 and it took much patience and fortitude to leave good old New England and cast one's lot in the new and untried western country.
This is what A. J. Hovendon did however and with his father came to Iowa when he was eleven years old. In 1879 he became a resident of Sac county and at that time houses were scarce and the country thinly settled. For three years he and his parent lived on what was called the W. A. Stanzel farm in Clinton township, later moving to a farm near what is now Schaller. After living here for seven years Mr. Hovendon moved to the Dillenbeck farm, in Richland township west of Odebolt where he remained three years, then taking up his residence in Wheeler township, south of Odebolt. After a period of three years his father sold the farm and moved back to Clinton township. After living a year in Guthrie country [county] Mr. Hovendon moved to Odebolt in 1900 where he has lived continuously ever since. He came in the month of February and on the following April he met, wooed and won Miss Jennie Rhea and on April 19, twenty-seven years ago they were married and took up their residence just across the street from their present home on north Main street, where they have lived for the past twenty years. His first labors after coming to Odebolt was devoted to teaming, later becoming identified with the elevator interests.
Much of his younger life has been spent with threshing and corn shelling crews about Sac county and he was known far and wide as one of the most capable workers to be had. In those days wages were low and Mr. Hovendon states that many a day he has threshed from sunup until sundown for seventy-five cents a day which was considered a good wage in those days.
His first impressions of Iowa were not as congenial as they might have been for, although back near Burlington, Vermont, on the farm at the foot of the Green Mountains where he was born, the winters were severe but nothing like they were here. The howling winds, the snowy blizzards and intense cold weather marked his entrance into Iowa to such an extent that he will ever remember them. Like the other pioneers however Mr. Hovendon weathered the stormy winters of those days and feels that he can well afford to be generous to the milder winters of later on.
Mrs. Hovendon is a native Iowan, having been born in Clinton county in 1864 and when a mere child came with her parents to Sac county. At that time there were no railroads in Iowa [Sac County], the nearest point by rail being West Side in Crawford county from which point it was necessary to team to this region. There were but few roads in those days and trails over the prairie were used mostly for travel.
Mrs. Hovendon recalls a tremendous prairie fire in 1874, which raged all day and night east of Odebolt which swept northeast beyond the boundary of Sac City. It jumped the river and swept all before it despite the efforts of many men who fought it, leaving in its wake a scene of desolation.
In the early days it was the custom for those who wanted a patch of grass to cut a wide swath around it, leaving the standing grass until some future time for cutting. It was an unwritten law that wherever the grass was surrounded by a circle of cut grass, that grass was claimed by some one, and left undisturbed. Seldom if ever was it disturbed by others than those who had laid claim to it.
Mr. and Mrs. Hovendon have an adopted son, who is in Seattle, Wash., being connected with the mail contracting business at that point.
transcribed by B. Ekse from microfilm