BY T. S. PARVIN.

     Some seven, and five, and three years ago we wrote and published articles under the same or a similar heading to that which forms the query we have again essayed to answer. In each and all of those essays we told the "the truth, and nothing but the truth;" but upon neither of the occasions did we "tell the whole truth;" because we did not, as too many do who scribble for the press upon such themes, profess to " know it all." We have essayed to again" speak in public " and take for our following the same text. And we can truthfully say with the immortal few, that our aim is to glorify our state, "render honor to whom honor is due," and to vindicate the truth, "only this and nothing more." The time which has elapsed since we wrote our first and last paper upon this topic has " brought to light" new truths and "more light." And it may be that our contributions shall afford some data for the historian who shall undertake the task of writing the "History of Education in Iowa."
     We propose to follow this paper with one upon the "Early School Legislation in Iowa," the necessity for which may be found and made apparent by the following extract which we clipped from one of the many papers in Iowa which gave it a place in their columns.

     THE FOUNDER OF THE: IOWA SCHOOL SYSTEM.

          OREGON CITY, November 28, 1884.
          T. S. PARVIN, P. G. M., Iowa City, Iowa.
     Dear Sir and Brother:—Your letter of January 7th asking whether Berryman, rather than Benjamin Jennings, taught school in Lee County, Iowa, in 1830, was received. I could not use the pen then, nor can I now, but will try with a pencil to reply. I was residing on the Half Breed Tract, now part of Lee County in 1830. Dr. Garland (We knew him well—the name is incorrectly spelled; it is Galland—his son Washington is now, 1888, living, and the earliest settler in Iowa at Montrose, Lee County,) an eminent physician and citizen lived six miles above the present site of Keokuk on the Mississippi river, near where resided several American citizens who had children of a school age. The doctor prevailed upon me to teach a three month's school. Dr. Garland furnished room, fuel, furniture, and board in his family. While teaching he gave me the use of his medical books (with which he was well supplied) to read And after school I continued to read them till mid-summer of 1831, when I was taken sick. Convalescing, I returned to my father in Warren County, Ill. [It will be borne in mind that young Robinson, whose parents also resided in Illinois, did the same thing, removed to his father's home when school was out.]
     This school room was, as all other buildings in that new country, a log cabin built of round logs or poles notched close, and mudded for comfort. Logs cut out for doors and windows, and also fire-places. The jamb-back of the fire-places was of packed dry dirt, the chimney topped out with sticks and mud. The cabin, like all others of that day, was covered with clapboards, weighted down with cross poles. This was to economize time and nails which were scarce and far between. There were no stoves in those days and the fire-place was used for cooking as well as comfort. You mention Capt. Campbell, who went with his father to Iowa in 1830. I remember an Isaac R. Campbell, who went from near Nauvoo, Ill., to Iowa in 1830. I can hardly realize that the lad Campbell (a son of the former) whom I then knew and who would now be sixty years old, is still a resident there. I would like to relate many incidents of the early settlement of that county, but fear I might make mistakes, as some others have done.
     Dr. Ross, whom I knew well, made some mistakes. [He refers to his address read at the semi-centennial celebration of the settlement of Iowa, at Burlington in 1883. Dr. Ross, whom we also knew well, was the first postmaster in Iowa, at Burlington in 1834, and also furnished a room in his house for the first school in Burlington in 1834, taught by Zadoc C. Ingraham, who died in Missouri the past winter. His son, Mr. I., is now a citizen of Burlington. Dr. Ross died at Lovilia, Iowa, also this last winter.] Capt. Campbell's mistake in my name is easily accounted for. I usually sign my name "B." I do not remember the names of the pupils of my school [Bro. J. is quite old, over eighty years and quite feeble] or of my patrons, but I do remember that I taught. school in Iowa in;1830 and that it was the first school taught north of Missouri and west of the Mississippi river—a very large school district extending to Canada on the north and the Pacific ocean on the west, where there are now some thirteen or more states and territories. What a growth in fifty-five years! About thirty years ago I met Dr. Garland in Sacramento, Cal., tottering with old age. Some say he was buried near Sacramento with no stone to mark his grave, others that he died at Ft. Madison. I don't know. [We do, he died at Ft. Madison in 1858, where he had first located in 1828.] Thus one after another of the old settlers pass away and are soon forgotten, [a sad truth, for they builded wiser than they knew," and the present generation of citizens are enjoying the fruit of their toil and labor to build a state.]
     Your Annals [I had sent him the periodical published by the State Historical Society] of Iowa will perpetuate the names and services of some of them for the benefit of future historians.
          With fraternal regards, etc.
          BERRYMAN JENNINGS.

     This letter, around which clusters so much of interest to old settlers and those seeking to unravel the mysteries connected with the early history of our state and especially its educational history, failed to give the date (save the year) in which he taught that " first school." It was at that time (1884) however deemed conclusive and so we stated in our second paper in 1886. The Gazette's claim of priority later in that year reopened the question, when having obtained the address of Mr. Robinson, in whose behalf the Gazette put forth the claim, we addressed him a letter of inquiry as to the month in the year 1830, he had taught his school. To that letter he promptly and courteously replied as follows:

          OREGON CITY, February 14, 1887.
          T. S. PARVIN,
     Dear Sir:—Your favor of the :4th was received some days ago when my father was laboring under a severe illness. He is recovering, but unable to attend to his correspondence, and I hasten to reply for him. He does not remember the exact month, it is so long ago, but it was in the fall of 1830 that he commenced his school and closed that year in December, as near as he can recollect. Father left Iowa and came here (Oregon) in the year 1847. [Here follows some data furnished for a sketch of his life we will present in our Masonic annals should we survive our aged brother.]
          Yours respectfully,
          LILLIAN M. JENNINGS.

     The following is the letter from Capt. Campbell who not only fully corroborates the statement of Mr. Jennings but is more full and minute.

     Not having the address of Mr. Dedman, and having personally known Capt. Galland for nearly fifty years, we addressed him and give his reply in corroboration of Capt. Campbell's statement.
     Not that any further evidence is needed, though it makes "assurance doubly sure," but as containing additional facts bearing upon that very early period in our history we append the letter addressed us upon the same and other subjects by Capt. Washington Galland now as at that early date a citizen of Lee County. We are certain we need offer no apology for the insertion of these letters in full rather than present extracts therefrom.
     Capt. Galland writes:
          MONTROSE, IOWA, April 16th, 1887
          PROF. T. S. PARVIN, Cedar Rapids:
     Dear Sir and Brother:—Replying to your favor of the 9th in regard to the school taught by Berryman Jennings, now a P. G. M. of Oregon, I would say from my best recollection and limited data at my command, that the time must have been the fall and winter of 1830, and the place Ah-wi-pe-tuck (the Indian name), afterwards " Brierly's Point," then Nashville, and now changed by order of the Board of Supervisors of Lee County, to the town of Galland, that being the name of the post-office.
     The "settlers " resident with families then were, as far as I can now remember, Dr. Isaac Galland (my father), Isaac R. Campbell (father of Capt. J. W. Campbell), James and Samuel Brierly—Samuel afterwards married Sophia, a daughter of Dr. Galland—W. P. Smith, Col. Dedman (father to Tolliver, referred in Capt. C.'s letter), and Abel Galland. My father's brother lived with his family in a cabin some distance back from the river and on the hill. Among those without families was Berryman Jennings, our school teacher.
     Among the young people who were his pupils I can only remember the following names: James W. Campbell, Tolliver Dedman, James Dedman, David Galland, Thomas Brierly, Eliza Galland, and I think, but am not sure, George W. Kinney, then a lad of fifteen or sixteen years of age (a brother of my mother), and myself.
          With sincere and fraternal regards,
          WASHINGTON GALLAND.

     The testimony here produced and from living witnesses and all of them parties either teachers or pupils of the first two schools taught in Iowa conclusively establishes the following facts:
     1st. That Berryman Jennings, now of Oregon City, Oregon, taught a and the first school in Iowa, in Lee County, near the present site of Nashville on the Des Moines Rapids, October to December inclusive, 1830.
     That three of the pupils of the school yet reside in Iowa (two of whom testify to these things), viz.: Capt. J. W. Campbell, of Fort Madison, and Washington Galland, of Montrose, Iowa, and Tolliver Dedman.
     2d. That I. K. Robinson, of Mendota, Ill., taught in the same county and where Keokuk now is in December, 1830, January and February, 1831.
     That two, if not three, of his pupils are still living in Iowa Thos. Brierly and Valincourt Vanorsdal and Mr. Seth Wagoner, in Illinois.
     3d. That the claim of the third claimant for these first honors that "he was the first teacher of the first school in Iowa," is not true, as he himself says in his autobiography that " on the first Monday (fifth day) of November, 1838, he opened the first common school in Iowa." It must have been very common indeed even for that early period, as he did not seem to know that a dozen "common schools" had been "opened in Iowa," before he came to Burlington, Iowa, the 5th day of May, 1838.
     The facts are interesting to know that schools were taught in Iowa four years before our connection with Michigan, six earlier than our union with Wisconsin and eight before Iowa had an independent organization. It is also worthy of note that amid the mutations of time pupils now honored citizens of our State still survive in our midst. And that those venerable teachers still live (at this date, 1888), though past fourscore years of age, honored and respected in the countries where they reside and have lived for so many years.
     Within a year we have personally met two or three of those old pioneers, Captains Campbell and Galland, whom we have known for half a life-time and found them hale and hearty and full of reminiscences of early times.
     Within a month the "Iowa. Masonic Library " at Cedar Rapids has been presented by Louis A. Gerolamy, artist Chicago, with a fine large crayon portrait, nicely framed, of Past Grand Master Jennings, whose claim to the honor of having taught "the first school in Iowa," is fully established. Such a portrait should grace the walls, also, of the Department of Education at Des Moines—and were it not that " the schoolmaster is abroad," and but little interest, seemingly, felt in matters of "ye olden times," the fathers of our educational system would be more highly honored, and such honors no longer bestowed solely upon those—as shown in one of our extracts—who come in as laborers at the eleventh hour.

A TRIBUTE TO THE 16TH IOWA.

     Davenport was and still is the home of many of this regiment. This but adds to the pleasure we have in coming to your city. Here resides that gallant and most meritorious officer, Colonel Sanders, one of the living idols of the regiment. We are delighted to visit him at his home.
      Here was the home of one who was not permitted to return with us, one who after winning the greatest renown that comes to a volunteer soldier, found rest from the turmoils of war in the peaceful serenity of a soldier's grave; one who at the hands of our greatest leader, the gallant McPherson, received the golden medal, voted by Congress to the bravest man of the 17th army corps; the one who of all the brave men of the 16th regiment, or of the Crocker Brigade, of all the gallant soldiers of the 17th army corps, was designated the bravest of the brave; his home was here, and here his memory is cherished and the golden medal preserved to his honor. I refer to Lieutenant Samuel Duffin, of Co. K. 16th Iowa.
     In honor of him and his memory, and in honor of the memory of all his brave comrades who fell in their country's battles, or have since fallen in the battle of life, the surviving members of the 16th regiment, and of Crocker's Brigade, the bonds of whose fraternity were cemented by the agonies of war, are glad to accept the hospitalities of the good people of Davenport. "

WAR MEMORIES.

     By the favor of Gov. Kirkwood I was appointed Assistant Surgeon of the 11th Iowa Infantry Volunteers on the organization of that regiment. I joined it at Camp McClellan, the place of rendezvous, three miles above Davenport, on the Mississippi river bluff. The Colonel, A. H. Hare, lived at Muscatine, and had not yet joined. The Lieutenant Colonel, William Hall, was in command. Hall's home was in Davenport, where he had been a young attorney. He was about thirty years old, wore his dark hair, parted in the middle, long and streaming over his shoulders. He had a full dark beard and a pale intellectual face. He was kind-hearted, generous, gay with his friends, impulsive and brave. He had a fine mind, lodged in a small frail body. He labored under a chronic nervous disease, which made his legs unreliable. In walking, when he threw forward his foot to take a step, it was sure to go too far forward, or to one side, or perhaps backwards, while the other, when it came its turn to progress, would execute movements opposite and contrary. This unfortunate infirmity, which was temporarily benefited by stimulants, often occasioned him to be wrongly accused of intoxication when he was sober, and credited with sobriety when he was toned up with whiskey. The parents of Col. Hall's wife, Mr. and Mrs.Higgins, had an elegant and hospitable home on one of the hills back of the city, and here, just before leaving camp McClellan for the south, Hall took all his officers one evening to tea. Our table zests are much enhanced by the recollection of delicious flavors relished when hungry youths, and the rich aroma of Mrs. Higgin's coffee has often lent for me a sweet flavor to bad decoctions of rye and Rio since that evening.
     It was a cold snowy November day on which we left Davenport on a steamboat. The men murmured at being crowded on one boat and exposed to the weather, and Gov. Kirkwood being aboard he obtained additional transportation when we landed at Burlington, and half the regiment was transferred to another boat. We took aboard Col. Hare at Muscatine, and the Major, J. C. Abercrombie, at Burlington. The Major, who proved himself a very trusty and gallant soldier, had command of the battalion on the boat I was on. Soon after leaving Burlington supper was served on the boat, the cabin of which was assigned to the commissioned officers. At this hour a great many of the men reported themselves sick. I requested the steward of the boat in such cases to supply them with cabin fare and allow them beds in the state-room. Pretty soon the long dining table in the cabin was lined on either side with sick soldiers disposing of the cabin viands at a rapid rate. Abercrombie, who had had experience as a soldier in the Mexican war, took me aside, and told me those men at the table were evidently not sick, and that if I did not use more discrimination I would soon have the whole battalion in the cabin. After promising more care, I soon learned from the Major that he was familiar with the place of my residence, which he said he often had visited on business during the sessions here of the legislature, but, as I divined from the drift of his conversation, to pay his addresses to a young lady at the Crummy House.
     Col. Hall's ill health made his temper irritable at times. After the battle of Shiloh, in the slow march from Pittsburg Landing to Corinth, we were for some days encamped in a dense swamp, devoted previously to our coming entirely to the uses of owls and ticks. One night Hall lay there in his tent unable to sleep. He had issued strict orders against noise in camp after taps. On this night the orders seemed to be ignored. To hoo, to hoo, sounded a voice, very distinct and very human, and to a nervous man could easily be transmuted to Tough Hall, Tough Hall, to h-l, to h-l, or anything else disrespectful. The Colonel called the guard who was pacing in front of his tent, sent for the officer of the day, and had many suspects arrested. But the offender was not detected till dawn revealed the culprit roosting on a pine bough over the Colonel's tent, in the form and semblance of a screech owl. The Colonel accepted the apologies of the bird, who sent his regrets in a parting to hoo, to hoo, and Hall devoted his attention for some time afterwards to extricating himself from the toils of a huge tick.
     It was during this short campaign that the "scratches" became so prevalent as to suggest to a casual visitor the idea that the regular old-fashioned itch was raging in the army as an epidemic. All soon became familiar with the pests which occasioned the discomfort. On one occasion when the camps of the 16th and the 11th joined, Surgeon Wm. Watson of the 11th, visited a friend in the 16th, to which I had by this time been transferred. He began to chafe his friends of the 16th with the prevalence of "grey backs" and their large size in the 16th, claiming that the 11th was comparatively exempt from the nuisance. At this moment Capt. Alpheus Palmer of the 16th, by the light of our rail fire detected an enormous one crawling on the cape of Watson's overcoat. This so turned the jest against Watson that he shunned the camp of the 16th for sometime afterward
.      It was about this time that the Government having authorized an additional assistant surgeon to each regiment, the new medical officers began to join their regiments. Dr. D. C. McNeal, of Clinton county, was appointed to the 16th. McNeal was a man of varied abilities. In addition to his professional qualifications, which were good, he had been a Methodist minister and an editor, and was an amateur actor, musician and ventriloquist. He wore a full beard and his goatee reached to his belt. Soon after he joined the 16th I made a visit to Chaplain Estabrook, of the 15th, and in the course of conversation remarked on the arrival of McNeal. Estabrook was a very social man, and distinguished himself in his brave ministrations to the wounded on the field during the battle of Shiloh. On this occasion he was sitting on a camp stool at an improvised table where he had been writing. At the mention of McNeal's name, he laid his face between his hands on the table, and I could see by the convulsive motions of his sides that he was indulging in a fit of silent laughter which he could not suppress. After a while he raised his head, and, gave me some account of McNeal's varied accomplishments, which I soon afterwards learned for myself.
     It was while we were at Grand Junction, just previous to the beginning of the Central Mississippi campaign, that McNeal, tucking up his beard, changing his dress, and disguising his voice, deceived Capt. Turner, of the 16th, into the belief that he, McNeal, was Judge Thayer, then of Muscatine, but now editor of the Clinton Age, who was expected daily on a visit with others from Iowa. Turner was seated on a canvas stool, taking a hand in a game of old sledge, by the light of a tallow dip, on an inverted candle box, but was so completely deceived that he deserted the game, shook hands, and entered into conversation about home matters with the supposed judge.
     It was before this, and while we were at Bolivar, that Col. Add. H. Sanders, of the 16th, now editor of the Davenport Tribune, who was near-sighted, mortified himself before a squad of comrades. We had just gone into a new camp, and the tents were pitched irregularly. Sanders had everything in his tent always in precise order. In this instance he came into Capt. Palmer's tent, supposing it to be his own, and flopped down on the cot, and began to give directions how those present should conduct themselves while there. "I don't want you, captain," he began, "to smoke that strong pipe in here, nor you, doctor, to put your feet on that stool." Pretty soon some one intimated to the colonel that he was in the wrong pew, when he hastily beat a retreat. Sanders, however, was not given to retreating before the enemy. He was brave to rashness, and if commissioned officers had been included in the competition for prizes for bravery, he would have given Sergeant Duffin a hard tussle for the gold medal. I recollect how disappointed he was after the battle of Iuka because he had not been wounded. Two weeks afterwards we had another battle at Corinth, where Sanders was more fortunate. The first day's fight was nearly over and Sanders was still unwounded, though wooing the enemy's lead. Finally, in desperation, he rode a long way in front of his regiment, as if to reconnoitre, and the coveted bullet came, carrying away a good-sized slab of flesh from the outside of his thigh. With all his bravery he dreaded pain, and while being taken to the rear expressed some anxiety to know whether the ball was lodged and would have to be cut out which proved unnecessary, as the- missile, after laying bare his thigh bone, which glistened like a smooth quarter, had gone on, perhaps to kill another less lucky man.

RECENT DEATHS.

    O. F. MAIN, born in Canandaigua, Ontario County, New York, but a resident of Iowa since 1855, died at his home in Marion, Linn County, August 7th, 1888, aged 58 years. He had been engaged in the Methodist ministry, and was prominent in the Masonic and other benevolent orders.

     MAJOR WILLOIS DRUMMOND, formerly conspicuous in Iowa politics, died at San Diego, California, January 19th, 1888. He was elected to the State Senate of Iowa in 1857, was editor of the McGregor News and served with distinction in the war of 1861, and afterwards was Commissioner of the General Land Office during the administration of President Grant.

     W. F. HUDSON, Assistant Disbursing Clerk of the Federal House of Representatives, died August 25th last, in Washington City. Mr. Hudson's residence had been in Iowa before his removal to Washington.

     THE wife of Gen. George W. Jones, died on the 28th of last April. She was the daughter of Charles Cirrille Gregoire, a French political refugee of noble- birth, who in 1795 married Miss Mary Meunier of Philadelphia. In 1808 Gregoire removed to St. Genevieve, Missouri, where he engaged in trade with the Indians, and where Mrs. Jones was born, June 7th, 1812, and where on her seventeenth birthday she married Gen. Jones; Gen. and Mrs. Jones had had their home in Dubuque or its vicinity since 1830. Mrs. Jones ornamented the various high positions held by her husband and well represented in Washington the social refinement of the west.

NOTES.

     A NATIONAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY, has recently been formed at Washington City, with the Smithsonian Institute for its repository.

     THE city of Boston, through an authorized committee, has determined to erect statues to the memory of Genls. Grant and Sheridan and Admiral Farragut.

     The old settlers of Muscatine County celebrated Iowa's semi-centennial anniversary at Muscatine last Fourth of July. The principal speakers were Hon. J. P. Walton, Rev. A. B. Robbins, and Hon. Theodore S. Parvin.

     HON. CHARLES B. RICHARDS, of Fort Dodge, is the owner of an autograph order of Gen.Washington, dated at Valley Forge; March 9, 1778, directing Capt. Caleb Gibbs to send Lieutenant Livingston and fifty men to Norristown as an escort to Messrs. Richards, Clymer, and Potts, which has been in the possession of his family for more than a hundred years. The order, which is written on heavy unruled paper, is in a good state of preservation and little faded. Some time ago it was deposited in the State Library at Des Moines through Hon. Charles Aldrich.

     AT the beginning of 1888 there were in the army thirty-five commissioned officers whose appointments were credited to Iowa. Of these two were in the medical department, one in the pay department, three in the corps of engineers, seven in the cavalry, three in the artillery, sixteen in the infantry, one post chaplain, and two on the retired list. Eleven of them served in the volunteers and one in the regular army during the war. The highest in rank are two colonels,