Timberhill is located in Woodland Township in the southern part of Decatur County.  According to a history of Decatur County it was so named for it’s heavy growth of timber.  An 1878 map of the county shows timber covering fully two-thirds of the township.   The early settlers cleared the timber ten acres at a time converting for agricultural use.  By the end of the nineteenth century the township was a patchwork of small farms with pasture and woodland.

By 1890 the Woodland Township population was 837; in 2010 it was 110. Woodland, the pioneer village in the center of the township was once a thriving community.  A post office, bank, telephone central office, blacksmith shop, 2 hotels, 2 churches, several stores, and a cafe lined the streets. To serve the surrounding countryside there were even medical and insurance, loan and real estate offices.  Now Woodland is a virtual ghost town.  All that is left of the thriving community at the junction of Woodland Road and J46, formerly known as Main Street, are 2 houses and the Woodland Community Church.  The church was built by early settlers in1872.  They “cleared a tract of timber land donated by one of their number and a little church was erected using much of the native timber.” This was the first building erected in Woodland.  Now it is the last nineteenth century building still standing.  The former Woodland schoolhouse across the street had been converted to a community center.  But now that is being razed.

Woodland Village

And the patchwork of small farms and homesteads is being consolidated into large ranches and hunting camps.  Yesterday Bill and I drove to Woodland to photograph the village site.  After Woodland we drove east to the county border and then south to the Iowa-Missouri state line before heading home.  In the hour and one-half that we meandered on the country roads we encountered only one other vehicle.  Whenever we saw a new building it was heavily gated and posted “Electronic Surveillance in Use”.   Decatur County is known for its abundance of white tail deer and wild turkeys.  The new buildings and signs mark hunting camps owned by out-of-state residents some of them comprising over 3000 acres.  Now the deer hunters are the ones impacting the landscape by encouraging the growth of red cedar for deer habitat and plowing up the native grass pastures to plant food plots. Their only concern is shooting a big buck.

After Bill and I purchased the land we named Timberhill in Decatur County, Iowa we often explored the area. On one of our explorations of our township (Woodland) we turned off Woodland Road onto a road that dead ended in a heavy timber.  Just north of the dead end we discovered a well maintained acre of land with the sign “Lentz Cemetery.”   In the center of the cemetery was a tombstone with a brass plaque that stated “Drummer Boy Battle of Waterloo 1815.”  Buried here was Erhard Lentz who died March 5, 1873.

Erhard Lentz Headstone

I was certain there was an interesting backstory to this tombstone so I did some research.    I learned that at age 17 Erhard Lentz was Napoleon Bonaparte’s drummer boy.  He rode on Napoleon’s carriage when Napoleon surrendered to Wellington after losing the Battle of Waterloo.  After the war Lentz returned to his native Germany where he became a weaver.  He immigrated to the United States in the 1820’s settling first in Virginia then in Harrisburg, Ohio. In 1853 Erhard’s son, Jacob Lentz, purchased 3500 acres of land in Woodland Township for $1.25/ acre.  After settling in Decatur County Jacob sold portions of his land to new settlers keeping 300 acres for himself.  In 1854 Erhard Lentz sold his farm in Ohio and asked his son, “To see for a piece of land say 80 acres of timbered land near about you. If you can try to preserve it for us till we can send you the money for it you must let us know how much it is the first payment.”   The purchase was made and Erhard Lentz  moved to Woodland Township later that year.

The cemetery is located on land that Jacob Lentz had owned.  He donated the cemetery land after his infant son Lewis Kossuth Lentz died in April 1854.   And how wonderfully ironic that Napoleon’s drummer boy’s grave is located in Louisiana Purchase territory, land that Napoleon sold to finance his wars!

After we purchased the Timberhill property from Doyle Butcher I wanted to learn as much as possible about the history of our land.  Born in 1925 Doyle lives in the house his grandparents built.  Fortunately, he has an excellent memory and was able to recall the stories passed down from his grandparents.  Most interesting are stories he told us about the Indians who used to camp in the field across from his house.  That field is above Brush Creek at the north edge of Timberhill property.  It was the location of a Potawatomie sugar camp.  Each year in late winter an Indian band arrived riding across the prairie on horseback.   Everything they owned was piled on the horses that carried them along the trail:  rolled up reed wigwams hung across the horses’s backs-on top were piled pots, kettles, and animal skins.

After setting up camp they tapped the sugar maple trees along the creek and boiled down the juice to make maple sugar.  They drew their water from a spring under a large white swamp oak at the edge of the bottom woodland. (That tree fell last year.) Nearby was  a plentiful supply of dry elm to heat their wigwams. (Elm was preferred because it produces little smoke.)

I was curious whether we could find any evidence of these early Timberhill settlers.  The spring was easy to locate-it’s where we always get stuck when driving through that field.   Walking the field above the spring one day after rainfall Bill and I searched for Indian artifacts.  The field had been burned the previous winter and scrapers, arrowheads, and an axe were easy to find in the dirt.

Scrapers, arrowheads and an axhead found at the site of an Indian sugar camp above Brush Creek

I found more information about Potawatamie sugar camps in a history of Decatur County.  The largest camp, 300 strong, was along the Grand River near Terre Haute.  They traded maple sugar for bread, cornmeal, and meat from the white settlers.   I also learned that  a huge oak tree the Indians considered sacred was located near the camp .  They put their sick in its branches because it was believed that death could not reach them there.  They also believed that a spring under the tree contained healing waters.