History of Linn County Iowa

nd Her

s good Iowa af

e one of our state's most

he men and women of our fair land, so that today the expres

ith magnificent houses and barns; her landscape made more picturesque by the presence of fattening herds; her school houses and higher centers of learning on almost every hill; the smoke from the busy industries of her thriving cities and villages; her soil the most fertile o

vigorous, the ambitious, a home and a field worthy of their noblest efforts."[D] She throws open to

a half century ago, drew this gl

des, ascends the precipitious sides of prosperity's mountain range, bearing her sons and daughters to loftier, and still loftier peaks, and revealing to their gaze still wider and richer vistas. And the summit of this range she will never reach; for her onward progress cannot be stayed, until her

ents, they go forward, doing well to-day the tasks that are theirs, and st

ast to the future of Iowa given some years ago

ld, resting in the mighty arms of the Missouri and the Father of Waters, laughing beneath the warm kisses and the love te

h open pockets the hiding of the golden grain. Living, glowing mines of gold stud the prairies' endless velvet folds. The countless castles of the farm ar

tock. Each year the unfailing field fills the b

iny was misread by even the wisest of our grandfathers. Even thirty years ago no prop

ed New England off the stage, and bold Ohio sits quietly at her feet. In literature and in arts sh

south wind was heavy with fragrance brushed from the blooming bushes. All nature conspired to steal the old man's senses and soon reverie gave way to sleep and dreams, and this, they say, was the dream: He dreamed that it was the year nineteen hundred and forty-one, and he was celebrating his hundredth birthday. He had seen comfort and culture become as common as the summer sun. Literature and art had countless country devotees. People had ceased to hurry, and worry was unknown: and then he dreamed that he died, and sought admission at the golden

hall not wish to come back, you shall at least wish

nformation, the former asserting that he would in no way object to giving each rascal who crossed the Mississippi to the westward one thousand dollars if by that means he might get rid of him. And these distinguished statesmen were not alone in

hardihood to explore this terra incognita. They could not comprehend how persons living in settled communities, and surrounded with many of the comforts of life, coul

s in the "Ioway District"; he had made a tour of observation across the state; he had most excellent opportunities for observing and studying the character of our first settlers. His testimony cannot be impeached, for he was a man

on west of the Alleghenies, than is this of the Iowa District. Those who have been accustomed to associate the name of Squatter with the idea of idleness and recklessness, would be quite surprised to

s usual in that sort of life.... This regularity and propriety is to be attributed to the preponderance of well

edators, devoid of the sense of moral honesty, or that they are not in every sense as estimable citizens, with as much intelligence, regard for law and social order, for public j

ls, cleared the forests, broke the prairies, erected houses and barns, and defended the settled country against hostile Indians. They were distinguished especially for their general intelligence, their hospitality, their independence and bold enterprise. They had schools and school houses, erected churches, and observed the Sabbath.... The pioneers were religious, but not ecclesiastical. They lived in the open and looked upon the relat

native of the state, Hon. Robert G. Cousins, on Iowa Day at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omah

ne of those original, rugged characters whose wit and wisdom have lightened the settlers' hearts and homes for many a toilsome year-one of those interesting characters who never bores you and whom one always likes to meet-a man whose head is silvered and whose coun

well settled-not by dyspeptic tourists nor by invalids who had come west out of curiosity and New Jersey, nor by climate seeking dilettanti with two servants and one lung-but by the best bone and sinew of the middle states, New England and the old world. I do not know that there were any dukes or lords or marquises or duchesses, but there were Dutch and Irish and Scotch and Scotch-Irish and English and Americans, and they had home rule right from the start-at least they had it in the first school which I attended. The men and women who settled the Hawkeye state were not those wh

hat produces splendid people.' Our pioneers got into a good place. They had left doubt sitting on a boulder in the east and packed their things and started for the west. Rivers had to be forded, trees to be felled, cabins had to be built-the rifle must be kept loaded-so much the better, there was self-reliance. Corn and coffee had to be ground, and on the same mill-so much the better, there was ingenuity. Teeth had to be filled, and there was no

ERD'S

The First House in Cedar Rapi

CARROLL

nual ague! Complain of markets in these modern times and then think of your grandmother when she was a blooming bride, listening through the toilsome days and anxious nights for the wagon bringing home the husband from a distant market with calico and jeans purchased with dressed pork sold at a doll

for and by the people, let him study the records of pioneer life, the institutional beginnings, and the evolution of their laws. It would be worth our while on some suitable occasion when time permitted to talk over the interesting incidents attending the administration of justice in the early days of Iowa, the incidents of its territorial legislatures, the birth and growth of its statehood and the character of its officials. But the greatness of our state is not contained in any name. Its official history is the exponent of its industrial life and

one-half of the voters of the state. Who made the history of Iowa during that great struggle of our nation's life? John Jones, the average citizen, whether he carried a musket helping to put the scattered stars of state back

of Iowa produces the greatest quantity of cereals of any state in the Union. As long ago as the last federal census, taken in 1890, it produced more corn, more oats, more beef, more pork than any state in the Union. Not long since I was introduced to a gentleman from New York city. He said, 'Oh, from Iowa-ah-let me see, that's out-ah-you see, I'm not very well posted on the geography of the west.' 'Yes,' I said, 'i

earth of the value of $32,000,000. The Hawkeye butter ladle has achieved a cunning that challenges all Columbia. The Iowa cow has slowly and painfully yet gradually and grandly worked her way upward to a shining eminence in the eyes of the world.

cape from protoplasm and prejudice she is practically out of danger. Marked out in the beginning by the hand of God, bounded on the east and west by the two great rivers of the continent, purified and stimulated by the snows of winter, blessed with copious rainfall in the growing season, with generous soil and stately forests interspersed, no wonder that the dusky aborigines exclaimed when they crossed the Father of Waters, 'Iowa, this is the place!' Not only did the red men give our state its beautiful and poetic name, but Indian nomenclature runs like a romance throughout the counties and communities. What infinite meaning, what tokens of joy

em craving into nature's secrets and her songs-somewhere along the settler's pathway or by the Indian trail where now the country churchyards grown with uncut grasses hide the forms of sturdy ancestors sleeping all in peaceful ignorance of wayward sons or wondrous progeny-somewhere where rising sun beholds the peasantry at early toil and leaves them in the mystic twilight ere their tasks