This 14,000 acre "farm" had Its beginnings nearly 114 years ago, in August, 1855, when the first settler arrived in the West-fork Township of Monona County, Iowa. He was Charles Edwin Whiting, a former resident of Iowa County; the California gold fields; New Market, Ala.; Lake County, Ohio, and, Otsego County, New York.

For himself and four brothers, who joined him in 1856, Whiting pre-empted about 13,000 acres (some reports say only 7,000 acres) of land, paying $1.25 an acre. Sixty years later, his heirs wouldn’t sell the same land for $300 an acre. Today it is worth considerably more.

By preempting the land (filing on a piece of land in advance of its sale), Whiting obtained the privilege of retaining it by paying the minimum price ($1.25) at the sale. As a 1919 magazine stated, "When a piece of land was put up on which a squatter had made improvements, the (auctioneer) captain spoke the word ‘Settled’, which was notice to speculators that the settler must be permitted to bid it in at the minimum twice, without competition. If a higher bid was made there was trouble." This was the procedure until the Homestead Act was passed in 1862.

Whiting came to Monona County about two months after he had sold his farm in Iowa County to the Amana Society. The farm is now the site of Homestead, Iowa.

On his way west through Iowa he met the president of the Northwestern Railroad, John I. Blair, who told him about the Missouri River Valley land. Whiting was told to look for land with bluestem grass, an indication that the land was well drained and suitable for cultivation. Slough grass would indicate the land needed draining.

Whiting found the bluestem grass In what is now northwestern Monona County, where the Missouri River Valley is about 20 miles wide. He decided to preempt or buy as much of the bluestem land as possible and headed for Council Bluffs, where the filing was done.

On the way he met some men traveling in a light rig, and discovered they had the same mission. So Whiting drove on through the night in his heavy rig and arrived in Council Bluffs a few hours before the other party. The ride was well worth it, because, by 1919, the land had never once failed to raise a crop because of dry or wet weather.

Several years after Whiting settled on this land, Blair visited the family, and stayed at their home. He reportedly was so impressed with the family’s hospitality that he named a near by station on his Missouri Valley-to-Sioux City railroad for the Whiting family. Thus Whiting, Iowa was named. After Whiting had built the first house on his land (it was later known as Pike’s boarding house and stood until about 10 years ago), he sent for his wife and two small daughters. They were then living on the Southern plantation home of Nancy Criner Whiting’s father in the Huntsville, Ala., area.

Whiting met Nancy Criner after he came to that area and started a drygoods store and cotton purchasing business with his brother, Newell Artemis. C. E. married Nancy in 1848, and Newell and Nancy’s sister, Eliza, were married in 1851.

While Newell took care of the business and Nancy and daughter, Julia, C. E. took off for the California gold fields, with the agreement that the brothers would split the profits from the business and what gold C. E. found.

C. E. made the trip by way of New Orleans and the Isthmus of Panama and worked a claim in California from 1850 to 1853. He never had any problems with claim jumpers, but the man who bought the claim from him lost it before C. E. had left California. Such prowess with law breakers was later recognized when C. E. became the first judge of Monona County.

C. E. met his wife and daughters (Julia, who was then 6, and Ida, 2, who was born when the family lived in eastern Iowa) at Council Bluffs and brought them to Monona County in a covered wagon.

When Newell joined his brother, he was dismayed to find that the land was on the open prairie, far from the trees along the Missouri. But C. E. changed this situation when he began to plant trees along the boundaries of the land. Black walnuts, cottonwoods and maples also were set out around the quarter sections. They were planted 20 rows wide on the north and west sides and 10 rows wide on the south and east sides.

The miles and miles of trees became famous in the area. One description of the farm in the early 1900s said that, although not one tree was on the original tract, the place looked like the natural forests of Indiana or Ohio.

Three million feet of lumber had been sawed by 1920 and many of the homes and huge barns on the land were built from the home-grown and home-sawed lumber. The walnut trees alone were said to be worth more than $200,000.

The trees were obtained for planting from the river banks and the walnuts were bought, 50 bushels at a time. They were buried in the ground in the fall and planted in the spring. A maple grove at Woodlawn, the C. E. Whiting home place, was grown from seed. C. E. planted the seeds in rows and cultivated the saplings just like corn. Many of the samplings were sold, and some of them were planted just east of Peter’s Park in Sioux City’s Morningside.

Charles I.’s father, Newell, built a red brick home in Onawa that still stands and is a landmark in the town. It is topped by a tower and has intricate carvings around the windows and doors.

Many of the homes on the Whiting farm feature colonial style, probably the result of influence from the two southern girls C. E. and Newell married.

Another Southern custom practiced by the Whitings was the naming homes. Names, beside Woodlawn, were Wayside, The Maples, The Whiting Place, Ambleside and Walnut Ridge Stock Farm, Crow’s Nest was another.

Nancy Criner Whiting greatly influenced the eating habits of the family. According to her grandson, Gail C. Pullen the men of the family could never come to a meal in the large family dinning room at Woodlawn without their suit coats on. The women were never permitted to sit at the table while wearing a kitchen apron.

Pullen, son of Julia Whiting and Malden Pullen, also recalled that he was never permitted to put an elbow grandmother’s table or get a snack in the kitchen. Such Southern manners and the Whitings’ Southern hospitality were widely known.

Because the Whiting family living in the Settlement numbered about 90 at that time, there were plenty of women to serve the meal. They also served an evening banquet to the guests in the Whiting church, which then had a bowling alley, gymnasium, kitchen, and extensive library.

There were more than 75 hired hands employed by the by the Whitings in the early 1900s. Pullen recalled that his grandfather, C. E., had a hired man who took care of only the garden and another who looked after the orchard. Another hired man and his wife were employed to do the cooking for all the hired help.

C. E. was well known for his horticultural work. He introduced the bluegrass to the area, and in 1896 had 1,200 acres in bluegrass and 400-500 acres in prairie grass. He also discovered that grapes would grow well on the prairie, if they were planted at more than ordinary depth. And he also grew Russian apples and other fruits.

As recognition for his horticultural achievements, C. E. was named superintendent of that exhibit at Sioux City’s Corn Palace when President Grover Cleveland visited the show.

Will C., C. E.’s son, was one of the members of the Iowa State Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis and had charge of the state’s agriculture exhibit, the first-prize winner at the exposition.

For the Whitings, as with other pioneers, farming began with oxen teams. Four oxen were driven abreast, hitched to a breaking plow. Then, after 1880, horses were used and in 1888, the first tractor steam engine was introduced into Monona County. A small gasoline engine, appearing about 1895, was mostly used on feed grinders.

But in 1875, C. E. cultivated 800 acres of corn, and, excepting the corn planters, only walking tools were used. The stalk cutting, the plowing, the harrowing and the cultivating all was done by that method.

By 1896, C. E. was raising about 800 head of cattle a year and more than 47,000 bushels of corn. By never selling an acre of land or bushel of corn, but always buying, C. E. increased his ‘personal land holdings until he was able, at his death, to leave a section of land to each of his six children.

By 1920, the heirs of the five Whiting brothers owned between 20,000 and 30,000 acres of land in the Whiting vicinity. and when the plowing began in the spring, work was done at the, rate of 150 acres a day. Three thousand acres of corn were raised annually and the average yield was about 50 bushels to the acre.

One C. E. Whiting son-in-law E. M Cassady owned a herd of 500 cattle. Two hundred of them were pure bred Herefords. In one day he sold 132 baby beef cattle for $18,000. That day he also sold 32 grade calves at an average of $100 each. His average income that day? $21,200.

In the Whiting Settlement of 1920, there were frequently a total of 3,000 head of cattle at one time. There also were about 6,000 head of hogs and 300 horses and mules.

But life for the Whitings was not all farm work, either. Education played an important part in the girls’ lives as well as that of the men. C. E. attended college in Ohio and his sons and many of his nephews attended the state agricultural college at Ames, (now Iowa State University). Several of the Whiting daughters attended Knox College at Galesburg, Ill., where a sister of C. E. was an Instructor. Many of the Whiting women taught school in Monona County before their marriage.

Foremen on the Whiting farms were agricultural college graduates and they received a bonus in addition to their regular salary.

Vacations also were important to the family. They owned a 400-acre farm near Spicer, Minn., and built a large cabin on the shore of a lake the land adjoined. The cabin could not accommodate a good many of the Whitings at one time. It still stands, but the farmland has been sold. The land adjoining the lake is still owned by Whiting family members and there are now eight cabins along the lake.

The Whiting Settlement Itself is no longer in tact, most of the old homes, Including Woodlawn, are no longer owned by Whiting descendants. Much of the land was lost during the depression years. But the area is still called the Whiting Settlement by residents and Whitings still farm some of the land. The groves of walnuts, cottonwoods and maples are no longer forest like, as they once were, but a drive down the roads of the area will take the traveler past long, single rows of trees and occasionally a road will be arched overhead by the branches of trees.

The Whiting settlement was the site of many "firsts" in Westfork Township and Monona County. Will C. Whiting, son of C. E. and Nancy was the first white child born in Westfork Township (1857). Frank, son of Myrick Ephriam Whiting, (a brother of C. E.) was the first white person to die in the township (1861).

The first schoolhouse in the township was built in 1864 on Whiting land and Whiting children were the first to attend it.

As mentioned previously C. E. was elected the first judge of Monona County in 1857. He was instrumental, during his term in office, in having the county seat changed from Ashton to Onawa, where his family was then living.

At the time, C. E. was the first president of the Monona Land Company, which laid out the town of Onawa and worked for the changing of the county seat.

Newell established the first wagon shop, in 1860, in Onawa and Monona County. He was one of the first directors of the Onawa State Bank, organized in 1888. He was treasurer of the first board of education for the Onawa school district, organized in 1868.

Baxter was the oldest of the Whiting brothers (There were six. William Bemis also settled in Monona County, and Samuel Morse, the youngest, remained in Ohio with the parents) and established, in 1877, the first hardware store in Mapleton. His partner was a nephew Charles I. son of Newell.

The Mapleton Trust and Savings Bank, the first in that town, was organized in 1878 with Baxter as its first president and Charles I. as cashier. The bank was begun in a corner of their hardware store and gave credit to the customers of the store. A son of Charles I., Charles Giddings Whiting, and a grandson, James Giddings Whiting, are still active in the Mapleton Bank.

Banking also was the business of another son of the Whiting brothers. Williard B., son of William, owned the Whiting Bank.

Besides farming, banking and the hardware business, the members of the Whiting family were involved in general merchandizing stores, sawmills and gristmills, and lumber and implement businesses.

Politics and public service also were important to the Whitings. After C. E. had served two terms as Monona County judge, he became a member of the board of supervisors (1864-1870) and was its chairman. He was a nominee in 1873 for lieutenant governor of Iowa, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the state senate. In 1884, however, he defeated his old opponent, Judge Addison Oliver of Onawa, and became a senator in the 20th General Assembly of Iowa.

The next year, in 1885, he was the democratic nominee for governor, opposing the Republican William Larrabee. In the previous election the Democrats had been defeated by 79,000 votes, but this time, C. H. cut the losing margin to less than 6,000.

Afterward C. E. served on the state Board of Regents and was on the board of trustees of the new state agricultural school at Ames.

C. E.’s son Will C. served two terms as a state representative and also served as state senator. A son-in law, E. M. Cassady, was also a representative. His son Raymond Cassady, was the first secretary of agriculture in Iowa.

C. E.’s son-in-law Malden Pullen was mayor of Onawa, as was Newell previously. Many of the Whitings served in various other capacities, such as members of local boards of education, city councilmen, park commissioners, or fire department officials.