Henry Hook
My brother, Harm, and I came from Baileyville, Ill., in the year 1870. We came with team and wagon by the way of Dubuque, Waterloo and Cedar Falls. The railroad was built as far as Cedar Falls at that time. The first year I hired out to a farmer named Pattee living in German township. The same year the depot was built at Abbott. The next year my brother Harm got married and I lived with him and we farmed together. We broke up all the land we put in crop and raised wheat and barley. We rented land on shares from George Wells. We stayed on this place two years. My mother was still in the old country and when she and my brothers and sisters learned that we were well satisfied here they decided to come over. They came over in 1873. There were seven of them in all, mother, two brothers and four sisters. Mother had a little money and she bought the farm where Lupke Hook now lives, which has always been known as the home farm. The price paid for this farm was $17.00 an acre. I saved up my money that I had earned and bought 80 acres adjoining my mother's place. I paid $20.00 an acre for this. I built a house on this place when we married. We lived there five years and then sold out to the Schmidt family, in 1887, and moved to Carroll county. We never were very well satisfied there and eight years later we returned to Grundy county and bought land in Pleasant Valley township. I kept on buying land as fast as I could afford it until I had 800 acres, all in Pleasant Valley township, which I still own. We lived on the home place in Pleasant Valley township until five years ago, when we moved to Wellsburg.We have nine children living, six sons and three daughters. The sons are Barney, Ernest, Henry, Rudolph, Cornelius and Herman. The daughters are Mrs. Ben DeVries, Mrs. Peter Arends and Mrs. Chas. Ackerman. We had hard times in the early days, but we have never been sorry that we came to Grundy county. What we like best of all is that all our children, except Cornelius, who is a minister at Rochester, Minn., live around here, where we can see them almost every day.
--The Grundy Register (Grundy Center, Iowa), 24 January 1924, pg 10