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THE BRITISH IN IOWA

PART II: BRITISH INVASION OF NORTHWESTERN IOWA

Chapter XXII
DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BRITISH FROM NORTHWESTERN IOWA

Of the Britishers who were induced to come to the counties of northwestern Iowa during the eighties not many can be found living there to day. The farm life that promised wealth and happiness to the immigrants ended in disappointment and even failure for most of the young un-married men. Those who bought land and depended on hired help soon saw their farms leaving them; while others left the country to live in town where pioneer conditions did not press so heavily upon them.

At the beginning of the British invasion of the region it was freely prophesied that stock farming would bring especially big returns because of free pasturage on the prairies: cattle and sheep could range everywhere on excellent grazing land with out let or hindrance. Stock farmers were, how ever, warned that this condition was precarious since it was evident that within ten years there would not be much good free range country left east of the Missouri River. In the event of immigration cutting off free pasture, stock men were told that they could either sell their farms at probably four or five times the original cost, exclusive of improvements, and move to Dakota or Montana, or else they could turn their attention to fattening stock on grain. (294)

Some of the Britishers made money by the increase in the price of their lands; but none of them went farther west to continue stock raising. A goodly number with characteristic bulldog tenacity stuck to their farms and made a reasonable profit on their industry, many of them in time becoming naturalized American citizens. Those who bought no lands quickly dissipated their money and within a short time wandered out of the State, some eventually going back to the mother country.

Many of the immigrants after a period of residence in the West suffered so intensely from homesickness or other causes that they left for the old home never to return. R. Smyth and W. Grouse were "thoroughly disgusted with the -,beautiful west and the `Eden of Iowa', and vowed they would hereafter give America a wide berth." Captain J. D. Aubertin returned to Liverpool, and Will Young had "had enough of the wild western land where the playful cyclone rages, and concluded to spend the remainder of his days in the highlands of Scotland." Arthur Gee and his family, after giving Iowa two trials, also took permanent leave.

Mrs. A. F. Sugden and her brother returned home after selling their entire outfit - horses, cattle, implements, and imported English household goods. When H. B. Southworth joined the exodus, an American friend suggested sending him a letter of condolence on Christmas morning and added: "How crowded and tame that country must feel to a man who has roamed over our boundless prairie, and been touched by its wild untamable spirit !"

Of the ,three hundred who joined the Prairie Club during its first decade only a few are left in Iowa to tell about those early days: they reside chiefly at Le Mars and Sioux City. In the former town are G. A. C. Clarke, Adair G. Colpoys, F. K. Veal, R. M. Latham, and the four Nicholson brothers. At Sioux City dwell A. Y. Weir, Henry H. Drake, T. H. Dealtry, Percy E. Prescott, E. A. Fullbrook, and George E. Ward who was a member of the State House of Representatives from 1908 to 191.0; Francis P. Baker remains at Akron; and H. C. Christian and Randolph Payne at Kingsley. Other members of the Close colony are Will Paulton of Sioux Falls, South Dakota; A. C. Colledge and Henry Moreton, of Minneapolis, Minnesota; Herbert Cope of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada; M. J. Chapman of Pullman and A. R. T. Dent of Seattle, Washington; Will Farquhar of Joliet, Illinois; and Mowbray Farquhar of the Canadian Mounted Police.

Many lie buried in various parts of the United States: Tom Dowglass at Cherokee, J. H. Preston at Sioux City, Jack Watson at Chicago, Percy Atkinson at Hawarden, and Fred Statter in California. F. E. Romanes died in Germany; Jack Wakefield in Australia; and J. H. Grayson, Fred Paley, F. R. Price, A. Ronaldson, Con Benson, Harry Eller, and G. C. Maclagan went to their graves in the British Isles.

A considerable number are reported as still living in the British Isles: W. Roylance Court, H. Rickards, Frank Cobden, A. W. Maitland, E. F. Robertson, G. Garnett, Albert Farquhar, H. Hillyard, Walter A. Paulton, Cecil Benson, and one of the Margesson boys who married Lord Hobart's sister. The father of the colony, William Brooks Close, has lived in England in recent years. One became a tramp and another a stevedore, while a third, after several months of high living so long as his credit was good, dropped out of sight, returned one day many years later and after paying his debts with interest disappeared as suddenly as he had come. Ronald Jervis has emerged as Earl St. Vincent; Lord Hobart is now the Earl of Buckinghamshire; and Almeric Paget,, who married a sister of Harry Payne Whitney of New York and served as a member of the House of Commons for Cambridge University until a few years ago, is now Lord Queenborough. (295)

But no matter where the members of the colony strayed -- wherever and whenever a few gathered to recall and reminisce about the olden days, with light hearts they were always able to join in the colony song and its refrain:

THE COLONY SONG

1

The ship was outward bound
And we drank a health around
'Twas the year of '81 or thereabout.
We were bound for prairie farms Where like bees the dollars swarm
And our hearts, tho' young and green, were pretty stout.
I was two and twenty then and like many other men 
Among that tough community on board,
I'd been raising Cain in town and my money being gone, 
How to raise another fiver I was floored.

Chorus

Here's a health to all the boys
Who are out of this world's joys
And have to earn their living by hard toil, 
But let us hope that ere they rust, 
They may pile up lots of dust 
And live again upon their native soil.

2

In our exams all plucked and out of England chucked, 
Out of patience were our friends and most unkind;
And they told us pretty plain that ere they'd see us home again,
Our fortunes o'er the seas we'd have to find.
So we liquored up and laughed day and night aboard that craft
Until we parted at New York and went ashore. 
And from then until this time 
We have never made a dime
But hope there are better times in store.

3

For if salt pork and green tea are choicest blessings we 
Are certainly above ' all measure blessed; 
But we've been so long in need 
That we're one and all agreed 
We can very well dispense with all the rest. 
But as each man tells his tale 
'Tis monotonous and stale
We found there was no money on a farm
And every honest chum to the same low ebb has come, 
But being "bust" don't do him any harm.

4

How one in Iowa went ploughing all the day,
One in Tennessee pioneered and died.
One sold papers on the cars or cocktails at a bar 
Or in prairie stores forgot old country pride.
And one unlucky swain thought he'd just go home again 
But was received with cold. shoulders by his friends. 
One sucker dug a hole in the hopes of finding coal 
And one peddled soap and odds and ends.

5

How one went pitching hay for fifty cents a day
And one in a shanty kept a school;
North and South and East and West we have done our level best
But failed to make the dollars as a rule.
And some they took to drink and some to slinging ink 
And shepherded or cattle drove awhile, 
But never that I know so far as stories go 
Did one of us e'er make his pile.

6

Well, 'tis better here than there
Since rags must be our wear
On the prairie all are equal every man 
And we're all of us agreed 
That a gentleman in need
Must earn his daily living as he can. (296)

It is manifestly impossible to trace the course of life of all the several hundred Britishers who at one time or another sojourned in northwestern Iowa. Whether numbered among the living or the dead, they are scattered far and wide. The Close colony which began with scores of Britishers in possession of prairie farms for miles in all directions from Le Mars proved to be short-lived the lands which they owned gradually passed into the hands of other people, including many natives of the British Isles of a somewhat different type. It can hardly be maintained that they left much of a permanent impress on the community in which they lived-at least not in the same way as did their neighbors to the north, the Hollanders of Maurice and Orange City and Sioux Center and many other towns. The Dutch who began to settle there in 1869 and 1870 have never let go of their holdings; thousands of immigrants have joined them in the half century past; and they and their descendants, probably thirty thousand strong in 1922, have made the region famous for its excellence in agriculture. (297)

A survey of the population figures for the Iowa counties into which the Close brothers helped bring the hum. of life shows that the British-born residents were at one time a considerable element. (298) That they and thousands of other British immigrants were wanted and expected to come in increasing numbers - of this fact future generations of Americans will always be reminded when they glance at the map and see the names of British origin, many of which were designed to attract emigration from abroad: Plymouth County and O'Brien County, the villages of Quorn and Archer, and the towns of Sutherland, Granville (once Grenville), Alton, Ireton, Hawarden, and across the river in South Dakota the towns of Alcester and Beresford. (299)

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294 Close's Farming in North-Western Iowa, p. 24; Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. LXII, pp. 766, 767.

295 These facts were gathered from interviews with Mr. Ed Dalton of Le Mars and Mr. Henry H. Drake of Sioux City and from a letter written by William B. Close On November 30, 1921.

296 These words with music, according to Mr. Henry H. Drake, were written about the year 1884 by R. T. Patrick and W. D. Harmon to be sung "any old time".

297 See footnote 144.

298 It is interesting to note the strength of the British born element in the population of the seven counties of northwestern Iowa Since 1880, omitting a considerable number of British-Americans:

For these figures see United States Census, 1880, Vol. I, pp. 506-508, 1890, Vol. II, pp. 628, 629, 1900, Vol. I, Pt. 1, pp. 750, 751; Population: Iowa, Composition and Characteristics of the Population, 1920, pp. 21, 22; and Census of Iowa, 1885, pp. 164-166, 1895, pp. 304-307, 1905, pp. 517-520, and 1915, pp. 462-464.
     In 1885 and 1895 the British-born inhabitants of towns were separately reported and the returns for Le Mars and Sioux City were as follows:

See Census of Iowa, 1885, pp. 61, 81, 1895, pp. 332, 333.

299 The Western Town Lot Company platted all these towns in 1882 and 1883 and named them after the Duke of Sutherland, Sir Richard Granville (the navigator and explorer), Henry Ireton (Oliver Cromwell's son-in-law), Hawarden (William E. Gladstone's home), Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, and Colonel Alcester. Plymouth and O'Brien counties had been created earlier and were named in honor of the landing place of the Pilgrim Fathers and William Smith O'Brien, the leader of the movement for Irish independence in 1848. The name "Alton" can also be traced back to a town in England. The village of Archer in O'Brien County was named by an Englishman, John H. Archer, who has been heavily interested in land in that neighborhood for many years.
     The Western Town Lot Company was incorporated in the interest of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company for the purpose of securing, subdividing, and platting the land needed for town sites, and for placing lots on the market at reasonable rates so that settlers should not be at the mercy of speculators who usually demanded extortionate prices. All the proceeds secured from the sale of the lots reached the treasury of the railroad company. - A History of the Origin o f the Place Names Connected with the Chicago and North Western Railway (1908), p. 35.
     The Close brothers did not go in for town-planning, but their village of Quorn in southeastern Plymouth County received its name from the place in Leicestershire, England, where Fred Close had enjoyed many a holiday in fox-hunting. The Quorn Hunt is perhaps the best known in England to-day.

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