I first met Eliphalet Price in early
life upon the border, where the civilized and savage
commingled to pursue a common road, and for more than
a third of a century he was my neighbor and my
friend, and what I have here to say over past life is
but a tribute I owe to his distinguished worth. He
saw the country from the great lakes to the Pacific
Ocean a barren wilderness, and peopled alone by the
hunter and the savage, and he saw the same territory
rapidly converted into states and farms and fertile
gardens; and establishing over all a government and a
civilization based upon the principles of exact
justice and self-government, the greatest and perhaps
the grandest the world ever saw. In nearly all of
this development of empire, of human progress,
settlement and western civilization, with all their
attendant excitements, turmoils and passions, our old
friend was an ever constant, prominent and untiring
worker, and to write the history of such a man, to do
justice to his name and memory, and to carry him
through all the varied scenes and struggles of the
last half century of western life, in which he was
connected, would require volumes.
He was born in Jersey City, in the state of New
Jersey, on the 31st day of January, 1811, and as he
grew up he received from his father the rudiments of
a common education, and when about eighteen years of
age his father took him to New York City and bound
him as an apprentice to learn the trade of a painter.
This old relic of feudal times, called master and
servant, still forms one of the chapters of the law
of "domestic relations," and although it
has nearly vanished from western civilization, it
still clings with force to the institutions of the
older states, and at the time of which we speak it
was in its full force and rigor in the state and city
of New York, and as often made the pretense for the
very worst acts of tyranny and oppression by the
master over the apprentice. Here, however, was a
field for the genius of our friend and he soon
accomplished a thorough organization of all the
apprentices of the city into a strong society, with a
constitution and by-laws that taught the most
tyrannical master that they had rights which he was
bound to respect. This society soon raised a sum of
money with which they purchased a fine library of all
the leading works of that day, and it was here that
our old friend laid the foundation of that classical
and historical knowledge which made him famous in
after years as a writer and a scholar of no ordinary
capacity. Vicissitude and misfortune, however,
overtook his old master and he absolved young Price
from his indenture, and this threw him upon the world
to make his own way through life.
About the beginning of the year 1831 he arrived in
the city of Philadelphia, and became the local editor
of a paper called the Market Exchange, and in this
capacity he soon brought himself into notice by his
witty and spicy articles, many of which are more
witty and mirthful than those of Ward or Nasby. But
he soon tired of this work, and, looking over for
wider fields for his talent, in the fall of that year
he repaired to Washington city. He left Washington
some time in 1832, with the design of seeing the far
west and exploring the valley of the Mississippi;
traveled on foot to Pittsburgh, and after recruiting
his wearied limbs, embarked on a steamer for
Cincinnati. After remaining in this city for a short
time he took passage on a steamer for New Orleans,
and when he arrived in the latter city he found a
large number of its inhabitants stricken down with
cholera. Here for the first time since he left New
York he found himself among strangers, without a cent
in his pocket, with a dangerous and fatal disease
raging around him. He repaired to the wharf in hopes
of finding some craft that would take him beyond the
limits of that scourge. At the wharf he found a
steamer with her clerk on shore checking goods that
were being shipped upon her, and upon inquiry the
clerk informed him that they were loading for the
lead mines of Galena, and requested him to take his
place at the plank and check for him a few moments
while he procured a little medicine from a
neighboring drug store.
This he gladly did, and very soon the captain of the
boat came along and discovered that his clerk was
absent and a new man in his place, when he
immediately followed his clerk to the drug store,
only to find that he had just died of the fearful
disease. Returning in a few moments to his boat he
immediately engaged the services of our lamented
friend as his clerk for the trip. Never was a service
more gladly accepted or more faithfully performed,
and in due time we find our young friend in Galena
looking about for some vocation that would give him a
living. But to him in his youthful days, "fields
always looked greener when they were far away,"
and he turned his steps toward Iowa, arriving in
Dubuque some time in the fall of 1832.
It will be remembered that on the 21st of September,
1832, the Sac and Fox Indians had ceded to the United
States a strip of land about fifty miles wide,
extending from the Missouri to the mouth of the
Little Iowa. This treaty was to take effect on the
first day of June, 1833, but as soon as the terms of
it were known hundreds of men rushed across the great
river, took up claims and began prospecting in the
lead mines of Dubuque. The Indians protested against
this inroad, and General Zac. Taylor, who was the
commanding officer at Fort Crawford, and who was
afterward elected President of the United States, was
ordered to proceed to the purchase and drive out the
settlers. This order he executed to the letter, and
our old friend with others was compelled to leave the
territory. Like all the others, he hung upon the
border, and on the expiration of the time he returned
to Dubuque, and was among the first white men who
made a legal settlement within the limits of what is
now the great State of Iowa.
In the fall of 1834 he, in company with a party of
hunters, explored the valley of the Turkey, and being
enraptured with its romantic scenery, its rich and
fertile prairies and its rippling stream, he
determined to make the valley his future and
permanent home. Returning to Dubuque to fulfill a
contract he had entered into with Father Mazzuchelli
to build for him a Catholic church, he again, in the
fall of 1835, returned to the valley of the Turkey,
and, in company with C. S. Edson, a person well known
to old settlers of Clayton, spent the first winter
near the town now called Osterdock. In the winter of
1836 a Mr. Finly erected a sawmill on the Little
Turkey, near the present town of Millville. He
shortly afterward sold out his mill and his claim to
Robert Hetfield and Mr. Price. In the erection of
this pioneer sawmill, Joseph Quigley, still living in
Highland, was the millwright, and Luther Patch, still
living and now residing in Elkader, was the sawyer.
After a time Price sold out his interest in the mill,
selected for himself a beautiful and fertile tract of
land on the north side of the Turkey, about five
miles from Millville, and on this he built his cabin.
In 1839 he married Miss Mary D. Cottle, a lady of
culture, education, and refinement, and his equal in
liberality and hospitality. Here upon his farm they
raised a family of eight children, five of whom are
still living. Two of these, R. E. and T. C. Price,
now reside in Elkader; another son is now the
postmaster at Colorado Springs, Colo., and still
another resides in San Jose, Cal. One of his sons
fell at the battle of Tupelo, and another son, a
major of the Eighth Iowa Cavalry, was wounded at the
battle of Fort Donelson and afterward died of his
wounds. His amiable wife died in 1865 and he never
married again, but with his youngest daughter, who
still lives in Colorado, he kept the younger portion
of his household together to the last.
During his long residence of thirty-eight years in
our county he always took an active and prominent
part in State and county politics, and in the
management and organization of parties he had no peer
in the State of Iowa. In early times he was an ardent
Whig, but upon the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
he threw his whole soul and action into the
Republican party, and was among the very first, with
voice and pen, to arouse the people against the
strides and encroachments of the slaveholder. When
the rebellion broke out he took an active part in the
organization of military companies, encouraged his
sons to draw the sword, and from the beginning to the
end of the great war his voice and pen was never idle
in the cause of the Union.
In 1845 he wrote and published the thrilling and
melancholy story of the "Mysterious Grave,"
founded upon no fact whatever, and from the statement
that these words, "Erin, an exile, bequeaths
thee his blessing," was found in the grave, the
story was copied into Irish papers, and many a poor
Irish mother wept over it as perhaps the grave of a
lost and wandering son. But perhaps his most
successful story, one that called forth the greatest
and most numerous encomiums, and one that was read at
every camp fire in the army, and in every cottage
wherever the English language was spoken, is the
"Drummer Boy." It was published in the
Chicago Daily Tribune, and for tenderness of
expression, for ingenuity of theme, for elegance of
style and diction, for converting the ideal into
reality, for chaining the reader's attention and
calling from him emotions of sympathy and patriotism,
for the ease of deception and for its perfect and
consummate delusion, it is his masterpiece. No one
doubted but that the story was true, and the poor
little "Drummer Boy," like Charlie Ross,
was found in every village and hamlet in the land.
He took an active part in the organization of Clayton
County, and held the first justice court within its
limits. He was the first clerk of the Board of
Clayton County Commissioners, was elected the first
School Fund Commissioner, and served one term as a
Judge of Probate. In 1850 he took the United States
census of the counties of Clayton, Fayette,
Winneshiek and Allamakee.
In 1850 he was elected from the counties of Clayton,
Fayette, Winneshiek and Allamakee to the State
Legislature, and it was at this session that he
brought himself into notice as one of the most
skillful and sagacious politicians of the State. He
took an active part in this Legislature, in the
organization of the school system of the State, and
to his actions and suggestions we are today indebted
for some of our best laws relating to schools. For
many successive terms he was elected Governor of the
Lobby, and that body received from him an annual
message, that for keen wit and withering sarcasm has
never been excelled.
In 1852 he was appointed by President Fillmore as
receiver of the land office at Des Moines, and held
the office during that administration. In 1855 he was
elected Judge of the County Court of Clayton County,
and held the office for two years. During his term in
this office he resurveyed the roads of the county,
established guide posts and mile posts among them,
remodeled the county records, and gave names to the
streams and townships. When his term expired he had
the satisfaction of seeing his county's records and
her finances established on a safe and permanent
basis, to become a foundation for those who followed
him for all time. He left every official position
that he ever occupied with clean hands, and with a
reputation for honesty, capability and fairness. In
the fall of 1864 he followed the brave General Hatch
through all his military raids in Mississippi, and
was an eyewitness of all the battles and skirmishes
this general had with the rebel General Forrest.
He was for many years the president of the Old
Settlers and Pioneers' Association of the county,
organized the first meeting, and delivered before it
one of the finest and most eloquent speeches of his
lifetime. Long before any railroad had reached any
part of the great west, he called the people of the
county together at a mass meeting in Guttenberg, to
discuss the propriety of giving aid to a railroad
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and in his opening
speech before that meeting he declared with the most
prophetic vision that he would live to see Clayton
County checkered with railroads, and this he
accomplished with some years to spare. Shortly after
this meeting he made another speech to a few of the
old settlers at Littleport, in which he said:
"There are men in this audience, as well as
myself, who will live to see a railroad passing up
the Volga," and after the road up this stream
was completed he wrote to the author of this article
from Colorado saying in reference to it: "My
dream is fulfilled, my prophecy has come to pass, and
my mission will soon be ended, but Clayton County,
hail !"
One can hardly realize that giant form that towered
among us so long, that mingled in all our
conventions, railroad meetings, county seat courts,
balls, parties and routs, is gone forever, and that
his voice and pen, which once stirred the thoughts
and hearts of thousands, are now silent forever.
Kind, courteous and social to all, whether rich or
poor, his sympathies were aroused to the highest
pitch at distress and sorrow, and he was at your
service, while his money flowed like water. The
priest and the layman, the tramp and the trader, the
lawyer and the farmer, the rich and the poor, all
found a home and a resting place at his house and a
seat at his table. Ill health at last forced him to
take refuge in the Rocky Mountains, and in the year
1872 he sold his homestead, took the younger members
of the family, and departed for Colorado, leaving
behind him the scenes of his early triumphs,
exploits, associations and hardships, upon which his
eyes were never to rest again. In Colorado he began
the same career which characterized him in his early
days in Clayton County, and with the vigor of his
youth he visited the camps of her miners, ascended
her highest mountains, looked down upon her
widespread plains, and with his voice and pen
contributed to add to her greatness and her
resources. But old age and disease were fast
destroying his stalwart frame, and when the fatal
hour had come his death was like the blowing out of a
candle.
