OLD SETTLERS DAY 1894 PART TWO

BENNETT

Posted By: Stacey McDowell Dietiker (email)
Date: 2/12/2004 at 18:06:30

Garden Grove Express
August 30, 1894
Garden Grove, Iowa

Address of Rev. Geo. H. BENNETT:

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

The heads that are gray, the eyes that are dim, and the forms bowed with age
are foremost in our hearts today. For all about them cluster memories of
other days and years that are dear to each of us. Their days go back to the
heroic age in the history of the common-wealth. The pioneers are literal heroes.

They have encountered and overcome forces and obstacles more powerful and
persistent than contending armies. The struggle was long, the labors arduous,
and the privations hard to bear; but as the sun descends upon their declining
years, they may look out upon the broad land, and behold its splendid farms, its
peaceful villages, and thriving cities, the fruits of their industry.

The pioneer period was characterized by hardship and self-sacrifice, by
sturdy manhood and resolute womanhood.

>From those days have come down to u the noblest character of our history.
The highest type of moral and intellectual power was developed under those
trying conditions. Our greatest philanthropists, statesmen, and financiers have
been self-made men. They belong to that host of heros whose sterling qualities
were developed in the furnace of pioneer affliction. The pioneer period in
every state and nation produces those self-made men and women who are the real
bulwark of the country's greatness, and who by their honesty, frugality, and
wisdom tend to hold in check the improvidence and frivolity of the succeeding
generation which reaps the benefits of their fathers' toil and economy.

We sit in our easy chairs in comfortable homes with their carpeted floors,
picture hung walls, with their pianos, and libraries, and many luxuries, and we
scarcely appreciate the toil and anxieties in the cabins of fifty years ago.
I have hard my father relate that one winter in the 'forties in a country that
was sparsely settled and in a time when it was wet weather they often had to
go a half mile to a neighbors to borrow a fire to get breakfast, it happened
that food was very scarce.

They were visited by a terrific storm which lasted several days. The wind
howled through the forest, the snow sifted in everywhere, and the house was
almost buried. They had nothing to eat but a little corn meal. They had a few
potatoes, but they were buried and could not be disturbed. At last from sheer
necessity he took his rifle and went out into the driving storm and drifting
snows and brought in a deer. Their larder was thus replenished and their
table fit for a king.

We know but little of the privations of the early days. We get into our
elegant carriages, and with our fine horses drive a mile or two over smooth roads
to church - there we find a nicely carpeted floor, stained windows and
cushioned pews. My mother, in her girlhood days, used to attend religious services
in a log school house, or private dwelling. There they sat on low, rough,
benches in a little tucked up building shingled with shakes. One of her oldest
brothers used to yoke the big brindle steers to the home-made sled and take the
whole family of eleven children to church - and sometimes those steers would
run away! People would attend church for miles around.

Copied by Stacey McDowell Dietiker
January 19, 2004