While it is not certain that the town of Osage was in the same location as the present-day town of Bartlett, the latter is at least in the same general area. Osage was the name of
a post office from 1851 to 1859 and was located "in the northwestern part of Scott Township."
Pioneer James Holt recorded in 1847, "The next spring, Brigham sent word for us to come back to the Bluffs. We were now without provisions and Emmett took a horse and started on
ahead to obtain means to get provisions; he agreed to meet us at a certain place, but did not until we got to Mousquite Creek, near our journey's end and we suffered greatly
for want of food, but by hunting wild animals and fowls, we were kept from starving.
At the Bluffs our company was broken up. Emmett and a few of us went down on the Waupensee
Creek and took up farms, in Fremont County , Iowa, we sowed buckwheat, planted potatoes and raised a crop.
“My first child by my wife Parthenia died on the 10th of August 1847. We remained here for several years and began to accumulate means. There was all manner of wild fruit,
grape, raspberry, blackberry, mulberry, strawberry and nuts of all kinds that would grow in cold climate, a great amount of wild game, deer, elk, coon, turkeys and other fouls,
fish, honey bees, all kinds of timber."
The "Waupensee Creek" James Holt wrote about was actually Wabonsie Creek. Wabonsie Lake can be seen in the above map of Scott Township. Holt and his wife, Parthenia Overton,
gave birth to a son, James Overton Holt, on 8 October 1848. The baby's birth record lists him as being born in Bartlett, Fremont, Iowa. Thus, it is assumed that the family
lived in Barlett.
Notes from Walter Farewell:
Waubonsie Lake would have been in the old Half Breed Farm neighborhood, and north of present day Thurman, Iowa.
Before the old Waubonsie lake was drained it was one of the largest lotus beds in America, 700 acares of lotus, one of the most beautiful of America's wild flowers. Artists
and lovers of wild flowers would climb the high bluffs by the lake and sit for hours enraptured by the beauty before them.
Source:
The Council Bluffs Nonpareil, July 19, 1933
