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Twenty
Fourth Number
Compiled under the supervision of
William C. Hayward,
Secretary of State
and
John M. Jamieson,
deputy
by Guy S. Brewer
Des Moines: Emory H. English, State
Printer; E.D. Chassell, State Binder; 1911.
_______________________________________________________________________
The Nativity of the
Pioneers of Iowa
by F.I. Herriott, Professor of
Economics and Political Science, Drake University.
Transcribed by Sharyl Ferral
The habits and manners of the
primeval inhabitants of any country, generally give to it a
distinctive character, which marks it throughout after ages –
Wither’s Chronicle.
The lineage of a people, like the
genealogy of a family, is not commonly looked upon as a matter of
general importance. The wayfaring man is wont to regard it as
interesting and worth while only to antiquarians and scholastics.
But states or societies, no less
than individuals, are the outgrowth of heredity and environment.
Life, be it manifest in individual organisms or in social organisms,
is a complex or resultant of those two variables. We certainly
cannot understand the nature of significance of the customs and
institutions of a people or a state unless we know the character of
the environment of that people. But no less true is it that we can
neither comprehend the character of a people or the peculiarities of
their social development, nor measure the forces that determine
public life and action in the present, unless we understand the
sources of the streams of influence that unite to make them what
they are. A people cannot break with its past nor discard inherited
political and social ideas, any more than a man can put away his
youth and its influences. Social or political life may be greatly
modified by the necessities of a new environment but heredity and
ancestral traditions continue to exert a potent influence.
I.
THE NEW ENGLAND TRADITION.
For years the declaration –
“Emigrants from New England” settled Iowa – has been made by the
N.Y. Tribune Almanac, a popular standard book of reference,
whose compilers have always maintained a fair reputation for
accuracy in historical matters. The assertion – enlarged often so
as to include the descendants of New Englanders who earlier swarmed
and pushed out into the valley of the Mohawk and into the pretty
lake region of New York, thence southwesterly around the Great Lakes
down into Pennsylvania and thither into the lands out of which were
carved the states of the old Northwest Territory – reflects probably
the common belief or tradition of the generality.
Justice Samuel F. Miller, a
Kentuckian by birth, was a practicing lawyer in Keokuk from 1850 to
1862, when he was appointed by President Lincoln a member of the
Federal supreme court. In 1884, in a post-prandial speech before
the Tri-State Old Settlers’ Association, he said: “The people (of
Iowa) were brought from New England, interspersed with the vigor of
the people of Kentucky and Missouri.”(1)
In 1896 in an address at the Semi-Centennial of the founding of the
State, the late Theodore S. Parvin, who came from Ohio in 1838 as
private secretary to Robert Lucas, the first territorial governor of
Iowa, and who was ever after an industrious chronicler of the doings
of the first settlers, declared that the pioneers of Iowa “came from
New England States, the younger generation directly, the older
having migrated at an earlier day, and located for a time in the
middle states of that period and there remained long enough to
become somewhat westernized. They were from New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. There was an element of
chivalry, descendants of the old cavaliers of Virginia, some of whom
had come through the bloody ground experience of Kentucky and
Tennessee; these were found mostly in the southern portion of the
territory.”
Here and there we find contrary or
divergent opinions. Occasionally we encounter assertions that
original New Yorkers or natives of Pennsylvania or emigrants from
southern states constituted the important elements in the tides of
the western popular movement between 1830 and 1860 that flowed over
into and through Iowa. But even when speakers and writers recognize
that the immigration into Iowa was not entirely from the states of
New England they almost always regard such other streams as of
secondary importance or as subsequent to the inflow of the New
Englanders or their westernized descendants. Issuing from this
common belief we have the general opinion that the predominant
influences determine the character of the social and political life
and institutions of Iowa have been Puritan in their origin.
In what follows I shall examine
briefly the grounds on which this tradition rests. I shall first
consider the premises of the belief; second, the social conditions
and political developments persistent throughout the history of Iowa
that are inexplicable upon the New England hypothesis; and third,
facts that clearly suggest if they do not compel a contrary
conclusion respecting the region whence came our predominant pioneer
stock.
The New Englander has always been
in evidence in Iowa and his influence manifest. George Catlin on
his journey down the Mississippi in 1835, found that “Jonathan is
already here from ‘down East’.” In 1834 the name of Iowa’s capital
city was changed from “Flint Hills” to Burlington, at the behest of
John Gray, a son of Vermont. Father Asa Turner, a son of Yale,
while on a missionary expedition in 1836 found a settlement of New
Englanders at Crow Creek in Scott county. Stephen Whicher, himself
from the Green Mountains, found “some families of high polish from
the city of New York,” in Bloomington (Muscatine), in October,
1838. In all missionary and educational endeavors in Iowa, New
Englanders have from the first days played conspicuous parts and
have been potent factors in the development of the State. Father
Turner preached Congregationalism in “Rat Row,” Keokuk, two years
before Rev. Samuel Clarke exhorted the pioneers to embrace Methodism
in the “Grove”. In 1843 came the “Iowa Band,” a little brotherhood
of Andover missionaries and preachers, graduates of Amherst, Bowdoin,
Dartmouth, Harvard, New York City University, Union College, the
Universities of Vermont and Yale. It may be doubted if any other
group of men has exerted a tithe of the beneficial influence upon
the life of the State that was exerted by those earnest workers.
The two oldest educational institutions in the State owe their
inception and establishment to the farsighted plans and persistent
self-sacrifice and promotion of Asa Turner and the Iowa Band.(2)
It is not extravagant to presume that it was the emulation aroused
by those apostles from New England that created the “passion for
education” among the pioneers of Iowa, that resulted in the
establishment of the fifty academies, colleges and universities
between 1838 and 1852. From this fact doubtless Iowa came to be
known as the “Massachusetts of the West.”
The election of James W. Grimes
governor of Iowa in 1854, and the revolution in the political
control of the State which that event signified, first attracted the
attention of the nation to Iowa. Prior to that date Iowa was
regarded with but little interest by the people of the northern
states. She was looked upon as a solid democratic state and was
grouped with Illinois and Indiana in the alignment of political
parties in the contest over the extension of slavery.
Suddenly the horizon changed. The
Kansas-Nebraska bill produced a complete overturn. Grimes, a
pronounced opponent of slavery, a son of New Hampshire, representing
the ideas and traditions of the Puritans, was elected chief
magistrate of Iowa and James Harlan was sent to the United States
senate. At the conclusion of that critical contest Governor-elect
Grimes wrote: “Our southern friends have regarded Iowa as their
northern stronghold. I thank God it is conquered.” In the
accomplishment of this political revolution New Englanders energized
and led largely by members of the Iowa Band, were conspicuous, if
not the preponderant factors. The immigration of population from
New England was then approaching flood tide. “Day by day the
endless procession moves on,” declared The Dubuque Reporter.
“…They come by hundreds and thousands from the hills and valleys of
New England, bringing with them that same untiring energy and
perseverance that made their native states the admiration of the
world.”(3)
The prompt, firm stand of those pioneers when shocked into
consciousness by the aggressions of the southern leaders, the
brilliant leadership of Grimes and Harlan for years thereafter and
the long continued supremacy of the political party they first led
to victory, probably afford us no small part of the explanation of
the theory of the supremacy of New England in the settlement of
Iowa.
Not the least important premise of
this view, it may be suspected, is the observation so frequently
made by students of western history in the past three decades that
“migration from the Atlantic states to the interior and western
states has always followed along the parallels of latitude.
Illinois is a remarkable illustration of this tendency… Southern
Illinois received its population from Virginia and other southern
states, while northern Illinois was chiefly settled from
Massachusetts and other New England states.(4)
Historians Fiske and Schouler make similar observations about the
lines of western popular movements. Now if we extend eastward the
line of the northern boundary of Iowa it will pass through or above
Glen Falls near the lower end of Lake George, New York, through
White Hall, Vermont, Lacona, New Hampshire, striking the coast near
Portland, Maine. Extending a similar line eastward from the
southern boundary (disregarding the southeastern deflection made by
the Des Moines River) we should pass just north of Pittsburg,
Pennsylvania, and come to the coast not far from Sandy Hook. If the
general conclusion respecting western migration is universally and
precisely true, Iowa, it will be observed, would naturally have
been settled by New Englanders or their westernized descendants in
New York, Michigan and Wisconsin, and by those in Indiana, Ohio and
Illinois. We have been told recently by Mr. George Moore, that
under the “Ordinance of 1787, New England men and ideas became the
dominating forces from the Ohio to Lake Erie” in the settlement of
the old Northwest Territory.(5)
A necessary consequence of this fact, if true as alleged, would be
that the large emigration to Iowa from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois
prior to 1860 was predominantly New England stock, or subject to
Puritan ideas and institutions.
The theory that Iowa’s pioneers
were of Puritan origin, while resting on these strong premises, and
others that may be mentioned, breaks down when viewed in the light
of common and notorious developments in the political and social
life and institutions of the pioneers, many of which are manifest
and potent in the life of the State today. New Englanders were
conspicuous, energetic and vocal prior to 1840; they were
disputatious and vigorous promoters of their ideals of government,
law and morals and religion prior to 1860; but neither they nor
their kith and kin from New York and Ohio were supreme in Iowa in
those days. If they were supreme in numbers, how are we to account
for the absence of so much that is distinctly characteristic of the
customs and institutions of New England in the life of this first
free state of the Louisiana Purchase?
In the local government of Michigan
and Wisconsin the impress of New England’s democratic ideals, her
forms and methods of procedure, are to be observed in striking
fashion. In Minnesota and the Dakotas the same is largely true. In
Illinois the “intense vitality” of the town meeting system of
government so possessed the minds of immigrants from New England
that it overcame the prevalent county form of government, and now
controls nearly four-fifths of the area of Illinois, although it was
not given the right of way until 1848. Here in Iowa, it is not
untrue to say, that the town meeting and all that it stands for in
New England has been conspicuous chiefly by its absence. Governor
Robert Lucas urged the adoption of the township as the unit for
school purposes. An annual mass meeting was adopted in the scheme
therefore. But neither became a vigorous institutional growth.(6)
Prof. Jesse Macy has shown
us that there is strong warrant for doubting the vitality of many of
the laws first adopted for the regulation of local affairs in the
territory.(7)
Not a few of those statutes were enacted pro forma, not
especially in response to insistent local demand. Conditions did
not compel compact town or communal life. The pioneers depended
upon township trustees and school directors. They relied upon
county commissioners. Finally it is almost impossible to conceive
of New Englanders deliberately or even unwittingly adopting the
autocratic county judge system of government that prevailed in Iowa
from 1851 to 1860. It struck full in the face every tradition of
democracy cherished by the people of New England.
If New Englanders settled Iowa, why
did the people of the east experience a shock of surprise when the
report reached them that the Whigs in 1846 had captured the first
general assembly under the new State government.(8)
“What gain had freedom from the admission of Iowa into the Union,”
exclaimed Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune of March
29, 1854. “Are Alabama and Mississippi more devoted to the despotic
ideas of American pan-slavism ...?” Was not his opinion justified
when one of our senators could boldly declare in congress that “Iowa
is the only free State which never for a moment gave way to the
Wilmot Proviso. My colleague voted for every one of the compromise
measures, including the fugitive slave law, the late Senator
Sturgeon, of Pennsylvania, and ourselves, being the only three
senators from the entire non-slaveholding section of this Union who
voted for it.”(9)
Von Holst ranks Iowa as “a
veritable hot bed of dough faces”(10)
These current assumptions and conditions do not suggest that the
State was originally or predominately settled by emigrants from the
bleak shores and granite hills of New England where love of liberty
was ingrained.
The people of New England from the
beginning of their history were alert and progressive in the
furtherance of schools, both common and collegiate. Among our
pioneers there was, as we have seen, great activity in the promotion
of “Higher” institutions of learning, but the movement was largely
the result of missionary zeal and work. It was not corporate and
communal as was the case in New England. In 1843 Governor John
Chambers expressed to the territorial legislature his mortification
on realizing “how little interest the important subject of education
excited among us.”(11)
Notwithstanding the great legal educational reforms secured by the
legislatures of 1856 and 1858, the backward condition of Iowa’s
rural schools in contrast with those in states west, north and east
of us, has been a matter of constant complaint and wonderment.(12)
If one thing more than another
characterizes the New Englander it is his respect for law and his
resort to the processes of law for the suppression of disorder and
violence. Coupled with, if not underlying this marked trait, are
his sobriety, his love of peaceful pleasures and his reserve in
social life. In the early history of Iowa we find much of
boisterous carousal in country and town. In 1835, Lieut. Albert
Lea was refused shelter late on a cold night, at the only house near
the mouth of the Iowa river which was “occupied by a drinking crowd
of men and women.” A correspondent in The New York Journal,
writing from Dubuque in 1839, declared that “the principal amusement
of the people seems to be playing cards, Sundays and all;” while
another observer speaks of the “wide and unenviable notoriety” of
Dubuque. One may come upon sundry such accounts of pioneer life in
various cities along the river and inland. Along with this sort of
hilarity and reckless pleasures alien to Puritan character we find
gross disregard of law and order frequent in election contests,
flagrant corruption and considerable popular practice in Judge
Lynch’s court. Brutal murders, cattle and horse stealing, and
counterfeiting appear frequently in the calendars in the early
days. Outbursts of mob fury and hanging bees, the institution of
societies of Regulators and Vigilantees form considerable chapters
in the careers of many counties in the State.(13)
This lawlessness can hardly be made to square with the traditions
that New Englanders brought with them to Iowa, traditions that
universally govern their conduct as citizens wherever we find them.
Finally we may note a complex or
miscellany of facts that have always given more or less color to the
history of the State, the significance of which is not commonly
discerned. These facts consist of sundry intangible psychic or
“spiritual” traits of the pioneers and of their descendants,
characteristics often vague and varying and difficult to visualize,
but which close observers may clearly perceive.
Iowa, by reason of the marked
fertility of her soil and favorable climate, has become the garden
spot of the continent. Her citizens have attained distinguished
success in the accumulation of wealth. The high level of general
contentment and prosperity of the citizen body has long been a
matter of comment and admiration among peoples in neighboring
states. The high degree of popular intelligence and education , and
the prevalence of high standards of private and civic righteousness
are no less marked. All these things admirable and more are
incontestable. They no doubt suggest the preponderance of Puritan
or northern influences in the life of Iowans. Nevertheless one does
not long study the history of Iowa, or converse with those familiar
with the early days of the State, or scrutinize our life in recent
years, before he becomes dimly conscious of something in the
character of large portions of the population that clearly
distinguishes them from the New England type of citizen. About the
time the writer became interested in the make-up of Iowa’s pioneer
population he asked an early lawmaker of the State, (the late
Charles Aldrich, founder and curator of the Aldrich Collection and
the Historical Department) if, in his opinion, Iowa was first
peopled by emigrants from New England, and his reply was:
“That is a common
opinion but I have long doubted the truth of the assertion. Iowa
has been very slow in making progress in education, in the promotion
of libraries, in the improvement of our city governments, in the
beautifying of our cities and towns, and in the public provision of
facilities for art and culture. In New England, cities promote
general culture as a matter of course. In 1856 Governor Grimes,
himself a New Englander, urged public provision for libraries in
country and town. But nothing came of it. Our people did not
become aroused to the importance of libraries until late in the
nineties, and then you know it was probably the munificence of the
Ironmaster of Pittsburg, and the conditions of his gifts that
stirred our people into active promotion of libraries.
“Take the long struggle
of the friends of the State University before they got that
institution of learning on a firm foundation. It was not until
after 1880 that the vigorous opposition to its enlargement and
expansion ceased. From the fifties right on to the eighties the
advocates of university education found it hard to overcome, not
only active opposition, but the inertia and indifference of
legislators and public towards public expenditures for education.
This same characteristic was observable in many other directions.
We have made marked progress in Iowa to be sure. But it has been
hard sledding, I can tell you. I don’t understand the reasons for
such an attitude of constant hostility and bush-whacking opposition
to forward movements that prevailed go generally in Iowa before
1880. It was hardly in harmony with the known liberalism of New
Englanders.”
This attitude towards “forward”
movements in Iowa, this “unprogressive ness” many would not regard
in such an adverse fashion. In their estimation it represents not
indifference to the finer arts and culture of civilization but
rather a strenuous individualism, a sturdy independence and
self-dependence instead of an inclination to resort constantly to
the agencies of government. New Englanders from the very beginning
of their colonial history have been much given to socialism. They
turn naturally to the state and communal authorities to secure civic
or social improvements and popular culture. The people of Iowa, on
the contrary, have certainly been normally inclined to improve
things chiefly via the individualistic route. They have been, and
now are, instinctively opposed to the enlargement of governmental
power that entails increased taxation and greater interference with
what the people are prone to regard as the peculiar domain of
personal freedom and selection.
All of a piece with the traits just
referred to is the “placidity” of so much of our life. One often
hears the comment that there is little that is interesting or
picturesque either in our history or in the character of the
population. We are pronounced “prosaic.” There is much that is
old-fashioned, out of date; but it is not quaint or romantic.
Travelers have noted that while there is much of commendable success
and wealth throughout the commonwealth there is a monotony in the
local life, a lack of ambition, and general contentment with things
as they are. Land and lots, corn and cattle,” hog and hominy,”
these things, we are told constitute our sum mum bonus.(14)
The hasty and promiscuous observations of travelers, who sojourn
briefly among us, are not always to be accepted without salt. Yet
the fact is obvious that there is in the Iowan’s character and in
his life a noticeable trait that we may designate Languor, a certain
inclination to take things easy, not to worry or to fuss even if
things do not satisfy. We may observe it in commercial and
mercantile pursuits, in characteristic of the New Englander. The
Yankee, whether found in Maine, or Connecticut, or New York, is
alert, aggressive, eager in the furtherance of any business or
culture in which he is interested. In all matters of public
concern, especially if they comprehend considerations involving
right and wrong, the New Englander is ardent, disputatious,
relentless. He agitates, educates and preaches reformation. But
this is not the characteristic disposition of the Iowan.
II.
FROM WHAT REGIONS SHOULD WE EXPECT IOWA’S PIONEERS?
There is a subtle attraction about
exclusive explanations of political events or institutional
developments that is wont to lure us into erroneous conclusions –
conclusions that are too extensive or sweeping. It is untrue to say
that the population of Iowa prior to 1850 was made up entirely of
emigrants from any one section of the country. The pioneer
population, no less than the present population, we shall find, was
an infusion of peoples hailing from various regions. The
representatives of the several race elements each and all played
parts more or less important in the life of the State. But in the
coalescence or collision of the peoples from the various sections in
their new habitat some one race or group of immigrants predominated
and determined the character of the government and the general drift
of political opinion. In what follows I am concerned to ascertain
and to make clear what the dominant elements or streams were among
the pioneers of Iowa.
We have seen that while there are
many facts in the history of Iowa that tend strongly to substantiate
the tradition that New Englanders first settled the State the
absence of the distinctive local institutions of New England and in
their stead political conditions, institutions and social habits of
radically unlike their stead political conditions, institutions and
social habits of radically unlike types, suggest, if they do not
enforce the conclusion that peoples from other regions dominated by
different habits and ideals constituted the major portions of the
streams of pioneer immigration prior to 1850. Our question now is –
Whither shall we proceed from New England to discover the ancestral
seats of the pioneers whose habits, notions and traditions of
government and society so powerfully affected the currents of
politics and the development of forms of government in Iowa during
the formative period of the State when its fundamental institutions
were given their “set” and the civic and social traits of the people
were so largely determined? Into the lands of the tall pines and
the deep snows north of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence; or
into the middle states; or into the vast regions south of Mason and
Dixon’s line and the Ohio river?
The nativity of the pioneers of
Iowa, those settling in the State prior to 1850, unfortunately
cannot be determined precisely by a resort to census enumerations.
We are compelled to have recourse to inductive proofs gathered from
sundry sources and to various deductive or general considerations
governing the movements of population westward from the Atlantic
seaboard from colonial times up to the outbreak of the Civil war.
Such evidence is circumstantial and often variable in character;
nevertheless it affords us bases for definite conclusions.
The character of a state’s
immigration is determined, of course, by many and various conditions
and factors. But in the last analysis the nature of the immigration
and the rate of influx are determined by two sets of conditions and
causes, both being in the long run, of equal force and importance.
The first set is the character of the economic advantages which a
state offers and the expense of travel thereto. The second complex
of causes is the conditions, economic, political and social, in the
countries or states whence the population may or does emigrate. In
brief, we shall discover the character of Iowa’s pioneer peoples in
their migrations. We must appreciate Iowa’s geographical location,
the chief features of her topography, her natural products having
commercial value, the routes and modes of travel to her borders. We
must likewise realize the character of the predominant industries in
the regions whence the state may have received it immigration and
the economic, political, and social consequences with respect to the
redundant population in those regions. Space limits obviously
prevent satisfactory treatment of all these antecedent conditions
and factors, and I shall consider chiefly the first set of
considerations mentioned.
Furs, metals, wooded streams and
beautiful prairies, with highly fertile acres and favorable climate,
have been Iowa’s chief economic advantages throughout her history.
Prior to 1830 furs and metals were the attractions that lured
frontiersmen within the State’s borders. The one mineral found, viz:
lead, while of consequence was not a very important factor so far as
concerned its immediate effect upon pioneer immigration. Furs, on
the other hand, were an important factor. Buffalo and deer
flourished on our prairies and beaver and otter thrived in our
rivers and streams. Since 1840, however, neither our metals nor
our fur bearing animals have constituted the predominant or
persistent attractions of Iowa. The attraction has been her
beautiful and bountiful lands.
The routes of travel by which the
pioneers gained access to the haunts of our beavers and to our
fertile aces were mainly three: First, via the Great Lakes to Green
Bay, thence up the Fox river to Lake Winnebago, thence across to the
Portage, and down the Wisconsin river; second, via the Ohio river,
thence up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers; third, overland by
wagon. The degree of use of these routes before the advent of the
railroad can only be surmised. Prior to 1845 certainly the river
routes were the highways chiefly used by the westward bound
emigrants. From 1845 overland travel by wagon became increasingly
common until the railroad became a practicable mode of travel, round
about 1860.
With such commercial and industrial
attractions and such routes of travel thereto we should naturally
presume that Iowa’s pioneer population in the main hailed from the
land of the pines and from south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Indeed,
when we consider the nature of the industries of the people to the
northeast and southeast prior to 1840, and the economic effects upon
redundant population such a conclusion seems to be enjoined.
The first people to penetrate and
frequent Iowa in any numbers were the French and Canadian hunters,
traders and voyageurs. No large or durable French
settlements, however, were found when the immigrants began to come
into the State after 1830. From this fact it is perhaps commonly
assumed that people of French extraction of Canadian lineage formed
no considerable proportion of the State’s early population . This
conclusion, however, is hardly warranted. But as our special
concern here is the major factor in the pioneer population, I shall
pass over this interesting element and turn immediately to the
population that came into Iowa via the Mississippi river and
overland by wagon. From what section did the major or predominant
number come?
We may determine this in various
ways; first, by noting the nativity of the men chiefly in control in
the State’s prenatal period; second, by ascertaining the nativity of
the first residents in numerous sections; third, by the nativity of
the men in power in the territorial and State governments in the
pioneer days prior to 1850; fourth, by comparison of the returns of
the national census of 1850; fifth, by a study of the industrial ,
political, religious and social habits and institutions of the
pioneers; sixth, by a study of contemporary opinion; seventh, by a
similar study of the pioneer immigration into and emigration from
the states of the Ohio valley, namely, Pennsylvania, the Virginias,
Kentucky and Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, Wisconsin and
Missouri. I shall undertake here but a brief consideration of some
of these modes of approach to the subject.
The nativity of the officers in
charge of the governmental agencies in a region often, if not
usually, indicates the nativity of the pioneer population – at least
it points to the origin of the major political and social influences
that prevail when the political habits and institutions of the
people are being established. In the first settlements of the upper
Ohio valley the hardy pioneers usually pushed ahead of the army and
the assessor and justice of the peace; but in the Louisiana Purchase
the military authority always, and often the civil jurisdiction of
the national government were “extended” over its vast unsettled
regions previous to or coincident with the influx of settlers. The
reports and correspondence of such officers would naturally have a
pronounced influence upon relatives, old friends and neighbors “back
in the states” that would induce emigration to the region where
“splendid opportunities” awaited those who would but take them.
III.
SOUTHERNERS IN CONTROL OF THE GOVERNMENT.
When France released her authority
over the Louisiana Purchase in 1804, the region embracing Iowa was
for a short time attached to the territory of Indiana, over which
William Henry Harrison , a son of old Virginia, was governor. At
St. Louis, in 1804, he negotiated the treaty by which the United
States gained the right of access to most of the lands of the Sacs
and Foxes. It was a Marylander, Gen. James Wilkinson, stationed
then at St. Louis, who ordered Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike forth on his
exploring trip up the Mississippi. Col. George Davenport, a one
time partner in the American Fur Company, and influential in the
history of Scott county and Davenport, served under Wilkinson, being
with him on the Sabine during the trouble with Aaron Burr.(15)
Among the officers stationed at Ft. Madison in the winter of 1808-9
was a Kentuckian, Lieut. Nathaniel Pryor, a member of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition.(16)
The
first governor having intimate relations with the region embracing
Iowa was Capt. Merewether Lewis, a son of Virginia, the leader of
the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The Brigadier General and Indian
Agent for the territory was his distinguished companion, Capt.
William Clark, another son of Virginia. Upon the organization of
Missouri Territory (that included Iowa) in 1812, Gen. Clark was made
governor, holding the office until 1821, when Missouri entered the
Union. Governor Clark’s voice, however, continued potent in the
region as Indian Agent until his death in 1838; one noteworthy
instance being the treaty of Gen. Clark that Antoine LeClaire,
afterward so prominent in the history of Scott county, was taken
into the American service and given an English schooling to enable
him to serve as an interpreter. Among the first “white” women in
Clayton county, it is claimed, was a former slave or house servant
of Gen. Clark. She was a mulatto.
During the period from 1821 to
1834, when Iowa was merely a part of the unorganized territory of
the United States, its affairs were looked after by officers of the
army and Indian Agents, whose work consisted mainly of protecting
the Indians against aggressions of the whites. Among them were many
southerners who later acquired great fame in national affairs. The
first officer sent to look after the Galena miners was Col.
Willoughby Morgan, a Virginian. Col. Zachary Taylor was another
Virginian with whom the miners in Dubuque came into direct collision
on July 4, 1830. Col. Taylor ordered them to disperse and on their
refusal sent troops from Ft. Crawford to arrest them. Years after
he declared to Mr. Lang worthy that “those miners at Dubuque were
worse to manage than the Seminoles or even the Mexicans.”
Associated somewhat intimately with Taylor, especially during the
Black Hawk war, was a Kentuckian of note, Lieut. Jefferson Davis.
He is declared to have acted with and for Taylor when the Mission
School for the Winnebago Indians was established in Allamakee county
in 1854. Davis was also assigned to the adjutant ship of the First
U.S. Dragoons, of which Henry Dodge was colonel. In that regiment
Davis, we are told by the late Gen. James C. Parrott of Keokuk,
himself a Marylander, was a “great crony of my (Parrott’s) Capt.
Browne.” The captain referred to was Jesse B. Browne, afterwards
one of the first merchants of Keokuk and the speaker of Iowa’s first
territorial house of representatives that convened in Burlington in
December, 1838. With another Iowans, G.W. Jones, later of Dubuque,
Jefferson Davis formed in those early days a fast friendship that
endured until death severed the tie – a friendship that had a
momentous influence upon the political views and conduct of one, if
not both of Iowa’s first senators, a friendship that eventually
caused the imprisonment of Gen. Jones on the charge of treasonable
conduct during the Civil war. With that same regiment was Lieut.
Albert M. Lea, a North Carolinian, whose report on explorations
throughout Iowa determined the site of the second Ft. Des Moines,
and the publication of his little book of “Notes,” in Philadelphia
in 1836. Another southerner of note in the same regiment was Capt.
Nathan Boone, the youngest son of the great Daniel Bone, of
Kentucky. He aided Lieut. Lea greatly in furnishing data for the
latter’s map of Iowa.
Another distinguished southerner
intimately associated with the preterritorial days of Iowa was
Robert E. Lee. With respect to Lee, Mr. Langworthy suggests that it
was probably largely due to his report to congress in 1838 that Iowa
received her name. There are some who claim that Lee county was
named in honor of the efficient and genial officer who studied the
region of the Rapids so thoroughly. One of the classmates of Davis
and Lee at West Point was afterwards a notable figure in Iowa’s
history, Charles Mason, for many years Judge of the Supreme Court
and subsequently the author of the Iowa Code of 1851. In the
service with these men, especially in connection with the Black Hawk
war, were Generals E.P. Gaines, a Virginian and Henry Atkinson, a
North Carolinian, after whom Ft. Atkinson, located on Turkey river
in Winneshiek county, was named. At this fort was stationed Capt.
J.J. Abercrombie, a Tennesseean, and Lieut. Alfred Pleasanton, a
Washingtonian, both of whom rose to high rank in the Union army,
and Lieutenants Simon B. Buckner, Henry Heth, Abraham Buford and
Alex. W. Reynolds, all of whom became general officers in the
Confederate army. Another conspicuous figure in the negotiations
with the Sacs and Foxes following the Black Hawk war was also a
Virginian, Gen. Winfield Scott.
Next to Gen. William Clark, of
Missouri, the most noteworthy Indian Agent of the national
government immediately charged with the supervision of the interests
of the Indians in Iowa and Wisconsin, was “a grand old Virginian,”
Gen. Joseph M. Street. It was he who strove so vigorously to
initiate the policy of mission schools among the Indians. His
services for the nation’s wards won for him honorable distinction in
the Indian annals of the middle west. He lies buried in the
graveyard at Agency City, Iowa, near by the grave of the chief
Wapello, of the Sacs and Foxes. Gen. Street’s son-in-law, Capt.
George Wilson, was in the same company with Jefferson Davis at Ft.
Crawford. Both were in the company that expelled the Dubuque
miners. Capt. Wilson later became the first adjutant of the militia
of the territory of Iowa. Gen. Street’s son, Joseph H.D. Street,
was the first register of the land office in Council Bluffs.
Another prominent if not dominant
figure in the Black Hawk was Henry Dodge,(17)
He soon thereafter became governor of Wisconsin territory and
thereby of Iowa. He was a native of Indiana, but he spent his youth
in Kentucky and began his public career in Missouri in 1805. He
gained distinction in the latter state, holding many offices from
sheriff and marshal up to the major general of Missouri’s militia
and member of the constitutional convention of Missouri in 1820. He
was one of the positive factors in the first legislative enactments
passed by the legislature of Wisconsin that first met at Belmont,
Wis., and later at Burlington, Iowa.
Of the general associations of men
constitute any considerable factor in determining their conduct, in
creating their attitude or state of mind with respect to life and
its affairs, then enough has been shown to indicate that southern
rather than New England ideas and traditions dominated the men who
controlled Iowa, when it was in the initial processes of beginning,
when it was inchoate, as the lawyers would put it. Their presence
in and about Iowa was unquestionably a potent fact in determining
the character of the inflow of immigrants that began in 1830. Let
us ascertain, as far as may be, the nativity of the first settlers.
The first frontiersmen, other than
the Canadian traders and trappers and voyageurs, to frequent
Iowa were doubtless Kentuckians. With Lewis and Clark, besides
Nathaniel Pryor already mentioned, were Sergeant Charles Floyd and
nine other young men, all Kentuckians. Floyd’s remains now lie on
the bluffs of the Missouri river near Sioux City. When William Hunt
was fitting out his Astorian party at St. Louis in 1810 he was
anxious to secure and did enlist the services of several Kentuckian
hunters and river men.(18)
On their way up the river both the scientist, Bradbury, and Hunt
separately encountered three Kentuckians returning, who for three
years preceding had been hunting and trapping at the headwaters of
the Missouri and Columbia.(19)
That many of these “men of the western waters” had frequently
penetrated Iowa far inland is surely not a violent presumption.
Col. John Smith of Missouri, some
time after the death of Julien Dubuque and the sale of the latter’s
“Mines of Spain” at St. Louis, went up the river in a keel boat with
sixty men, bent on mining and smelting lead in the region around
about Dubuque. The belligerent attitude of the Indians, however,
effectually interfered with his plans.(20)
The inhabitants of the mining region of Galena were mainly people
from Kentucky, Tennessee and southern Illinois, a region inhabited
largely by people from the former states. It was Col. James
Johnson, of Kentucky, brother of the celebrated Co. R.M. Johnson,
who in 1823 inaugurated the lead mining in northwestern Illinois and
southwestern Wisconsin. With him were Col. James Simrall, of
Kentucky, the commander of Kentucky dragoons in the campaign in the
northwest between 1812 and 1813; and John S. Miller, of Hannibal,
Mo.(21)
Among that mining population was a notorious mining character,
“Kentuck Anderson,” who had a widespread reputation as a bruiser in
fist fights, who later went over to Dubuque and in a feud six miles
southwest of Dubuque was killed in 1836.(22)
All of southwestern Wisconsin was
settled chiefly by southerners. It was their presence and
predilections that secured the adoption of the county commissioner
system of local government in Wisconsin, and maintained it until the
state was admitted into the Union in 1848, despite the wishes and
protests of the New Englanders and New Yorkers who had gained
control in Michigan and who were rapidly coming into Wisconsin.(23)
Col. Arthur Cunynghame traveling across Illinois in 1850 encountered
numerous caravans or wagon trains of the Kentuckians and
Tennesseeans returning from the Galena mines for the winter to their
homes south of the Ohio.(24)
We shall see later that the Dodges and Governors Clark and
Hempstead, were among those interested in lead mining around
Galena. Iowa, no doubt received prior to 1850, no inconsiderable
number of the southern people from southern Wisconsin and northern
Illinois. It is clear that the people who first began to look with
covetous eyes across the Mississippi to the attractive lands in Iowa
in the main hailed from the south.
We find southern men, or men of
southern extraction, or of southern affiliation no less conspicuous
and prominent in the government of the territory and State prior to
1850 and even well up to the outbreak of the Civil war. Governor
Robert Lucas, the first chief executive of the territory, was a
native of Virginia, a descendant of that sturdy, Scotch-Irish stock
that so early pushed westward through the gaps of the Alleghanies
into the valleys converging on the Ohio. His successor, John
Chambers, although born in New Jersey in 1789, spent his life mainly
in Kentucky where he died. Governor James Clark was born in
Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania. In 1836 he went to Missouri,
thence to Belmont, and finally to Burlington. He married a daughter
of Governor Henry Dodge, and thereby probably resulted his
appointment. The first governor of the new State was Ansel Briggs,
a Vermonter, a Whig in Ohio, who became a democrat when he settled
in Jackson county, Iowa, in 1836. His successor, Stephen Hempstead,
although born in Connecticut, spent his youth in St. Louis, gained
business experience in the lead mining region of Galena and settled
in Dubuque in 1836. Governors James W. Grimes and Ralph P. Lowe
were northern men by birth and affiliation. Governor Samuel J.
Kirkwood was a Marylander, molded as was Governor Lucas by a
subsequent residence in Ohio.
In the relations of the territory
and State to the national government, southerners and men of
southern predilections were likewise dominant in most of the
important positions. The first federal judge was John James Dyer, a
native of Pendleton county, Virginia, now West Virginia. But for
his refusal to consider the democratic nomination he probably would
have been the first governor of the State of Iowa. The United
States marshal was Dr. Gideon S. Bailey of Van Buren, a native of
Kentucky. Judge Dyer’s successor in 1855 was another Virginian,
James M. Love. Iowa’s first territorial delegate to congress was
W.W. Chapman, who was born and educated in Virginia under the
tutelage of the noted lawyer St. George Tucker. His successor in
1841 was Augustus Caesar Dodge, a son of Governor Henry Dodge, born
during the latter’s residence in St. Genevieve, Mo., and he was
Iowa’s national representative until the State was admitted into the
Union in 1846. When the first legislature broke the senatorial
deadlock of 1846, the first senators elected were A.C. Dodge and
George W. Jones. The latter was born at Vincennes, Indiana, spent
his youth in Missouri, and was educated at Transylvania University,
Kentucky. One could without doing violence to language claim one
and perhaps both of Missouri’s distinguished senators as Iowa’s
guardians and representatives in congress. Thomas H. Benton had,
as is well known, a direct family interest in Iowa through his
nephew who early attained distinction in Dubuque and later in State
affairs in Iowa, and Senator Lewis F. Linn was a half-brother of
Governor Henry Dodge. So industrious was Senator Linn on behalf of
the interests of this State that he was known as the “Iowa Senator”.
Iowa’s first representative in the
lower house of congress was Shepherd Leffler, of Burlington’ William
Thompson of Mt. Pleasant, was our second; both sons of the Keystone
state. Daniel F. Miller, our third representative, was born in
Maryland, and our fourth, Lincoln Clark of Dubuque, was born in
Massachusetts, but he had been a resident of Alabama from 1830 to
1848. Of the six other representatives in congress prior to 1860
one, James Torrington of Davenport was a North Carolinian, and
Timothy Davis of Dubuque was a New Jerseyan who lived in Kentucky
from 1817 to 1847.
Striking evidence of the domination
of men of southern affiliations and antecedents in Iowa’s political
affairs prior to 1850, and even beyond, is afforded in the
membership rolls of the early legislatures and constitutional
conventions. The delegation from this side of the Mississippi in
the Wisconsin legislatures that met first at Belmont and later at
Burlington, numbered 18 out of the 39 members. Of Iowa’s quote
there was only one representative of New England, and one from New
York, whereas there were four from Pennsylvania (three being from
Washington county). The south had eight representatives; one each
from Virginia and Georgia, and three each from Kentucky and
Tennessee. There was one each from Ohio and Illinois. In the first
legislature of the Iowa territory in 1838, there were twenty
southerners, five New Englanders, eight from the middle states, and
five from Ohio and Illinois. Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and
Tennessee were the southern states represented. Disregarding the
southern stock among the people of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois,
sons of the south constituted more than half of the membership. The
records of nativity are not complete for subsequent sessions and the
states of origin cannot be given except for the State senate in
1851, and the fifth general assembly that met in 1854. In the
senate of the third general assembly (1851) southerners continued
the most numerous, seven as against two from New England. In 1854,
however, we note an increase in the relative proportions of the
representatives from the middle and northwest states. Nevertheless
there were in the Senate ten southerners and only four New
Englanders, and in the lower house sixteen from the south and but
nine from northeast of the Narrows.
In the constitutional conventions
that convened in 1844, 1846 and 1857, we find men hailing from south
of Mason and Dixon’s line greatly outnumbering the New Englanders.
In the first convention there were eleven Virginians, six North
Carolinians, eight Kentuckians and one Tennesseean, twenty-six in
all; while New England was represented by ten; the middle states by
twenty-three, of whom thirteen came from Pennsylvania; Ohio had
eight, and Indiana and Illinois each one. In the second the numbers
were fifteen from the south, eight from New England, four from the
middle states and five from the northwest states. In the convention
of 1857 the south had ten, New England six, the middle states eleven
and the Northwest states nine representatives.
[The table showing the “Nativity
of Some of Iowa’s Legislative Representation” has not been
reproduced here]
IV.
SOME OF THE SOUTHERN STOCK AMONG THE FIRST SETTLERS.
The declarations of local
chroniclers respecting the “first” events in pioneer times, such as
the “first white child” born, or marriage solemnized, or the first
house built, or the first church dedicated, are often born of misty
memories or hasty surmises indulged in by ardent patriotic
temperaments. Nevertheless, while subject to suspicion, and often
heavy deductions, taken altogether they may afford us considerable
data from which substantial conclusions may be drawn. A cursory
examination of the histories of the counties of Iowa, of the few
memoirs, journals and letters relating to the first years of the
State will soon convince one that New Englanders were not always the
first settlers in all of the counties, and contemporary opinion
often indicates that their presence was rare in various communities.
In Lee county, excluding the French
Canadians and Creoles, the first American settlers are said to have
been Richard Chaney, a native of Prince Georges county in Maryland,
and Peter Williams, of Kentucky or Tennessee. The first merchant
of Ft. Madison, it is asserted, was one Walsh, a Baltimorean.
Hawkins Taylor, himself one of the first settlers, states that Lewis
Pitman, A Kentuckian, was the first settler “in all the section
round about” West Point; and in Charleston, he informs us, there was
a man by the name of Allen who “prided himself on being a Yankee –
an article scarce in that section.” Of the five members of the
legislature from Lee in 1838 four were from southern states: Capt.
Jesse B. Browne, Kentucky, William Patterson, Virginia, Hawkins
Taylor, Kentucky, C.J. Price, North Carolina, and James Brierly,
Ohio. Among the immigrants to Ft. Madison in 1837 was a family of
North Carolinians whose head was John A. Drake, afterwards the
founder of Drakesville in Davis county. One member of that family,
Francis Marion Drake, became governor of Iowa in 1896. When Gen.
Joseph M. Street was ordered to drive back the squatters from the
second Purchase he appointed a Virginian as the first licensed
ferry-man over the Des Moines, a man who afterward exercised a
marked influence upon his fellows in territorial days, Mr. Van
Caldwell, the father of Henry Clay Caldwell, a prominent state
senator in 1860 and ’62, and later a judge of the Federal Circuit
Court for the District of Arkansas, and still in active service.
Southerners were not an
inconsiderable number in Des Moines county. The first county clerk
and city postmaster of Burlington was a Scotchman, Dr. Wm. Ross, who
had lived many years in the south, in Kentucky and Missouri. In
1836, Lieut. Albert M. Lea bought in the “raw village” of Burlington
from “one David, a shrewd Kentuckian,” four lots fronting the court
house “in expectancy,” and the next year sold them to John
Pemberton, the father of the celebrated officer who years after
surrendered Vicksburg to Gen. U.S. Grant. In 1838 Gen. William
Thompson, Iowa’s second representative in congress, a Pennsylvanian
whose parents moved into the Keystone state from Virginia registered
at the “Wisconsin House, the largest hotel” in Burlington, whose
hostess and assistants were “all West Virginians from the flats of
Graves Creek.” One of the most influential of the first pioneers
was Isaac Leffler, a Pennsylvanian, who had served eight years in
the legislature of Virginia and represented that state in congress.
He was one of the representatives of Demoine county in the Wisconsin
legislature at Belmont. In the first territorial legislature four
of Des Moines representatives were from Kentucky and Virginia, one
each from Ohio and Pennsylvania, and two from New Hampshire.
Another notable early settler of Burlington was no less than John C.
Breckenridge, of Kentucky, who became vice president in 1857. Here
is interesting to note that in the case of the fugitive slave
“Dick,” whose owner sought by suit to recover him in order to take
him back to Missouri, not only were both the leading attorneys
southerners, but so was the mayor of the city. Mr. M.D. Browning,
for the plaintiff, was a Kentuckian, and Judge David Rorer, for the
defendant, a Virginian, and the mayor, S.A. Hudson, who was expected
to maintain peace and order, was a Kentuckian.
In Scott county we find men from
south of the Ohio river much in evidence in the early settlements.
Mr. Barrows, one of the first surveyors and cartographers of Iowa,
writing in 1863, says that “probably the first settler in Scott
county” was Capt. Benj. W. Clark, a native of Virginia, who had
commanded a company of mounted rangers in the Black Hawk war. He
was given the first ferry franchise between Rock Island and
Davenport. He founded the town of Buffalo. Bowling Creek in Scott
county derives it name from James M. Bowling, another Virginian.
The town of Princeton was settled first by a Kentuckian, Thomas
Hubbard, Sr. The names of Col. George Davenport and Antoine
LeClaire have already been mentioned.
The first settler in Clinton
county, it is said, was one Elisha Buell, a New Yorker who had been
“a pilot on the Ohio and lower Mississippi,” coming up from St.
Louis in 1835. Perhaps the most notable and forceful character
among the first settlers of Jackson county was Col. Thomas Cox, a
Kentuckian who had been a member of the senate of the first state
legislature of Illinois and had served in the Black Hawk war before
coming to Iowa.
The population that came across to
Dubuque between 1830 and 1840 from the Fever River or Galena mining
region was a variegated mixture of Canadian French and Scotch,
Irish, Yankees and Southerners. Excepting the Canadian infusion the
majority of the “down easters” had been previously “westernized”
either in southern Ohio or southern Illinois, or in Kentucky and
Missouri, e.g. the Hempsteads and the Langworthys. The southerners
were influential. Among them were Thomas S. Nairn and General Wm.
Vandever, Marylanders, Wm. Carter, Iowa’s first manufacturer of
shot, and General John G. Shields, Kentuckians and the Emersons,
John King, General Warner Lewis, Major Richard Moberly and William
G. Stewart, Virginians. John King had the distinction of being the
founder and editor of The Dubuque Visitor, the first
newspaper printed in Iowa (1836). His associate, Andrew Keersecker,
who was the printer or compositor of the firm, was likewise a
Virginian.
Concerning Cedar Rapids, we are
told that “it should be remembered that in the settlement of our
city and its vicinity a strong and important element was from the
south. That element brought a rich strain of blood, and means, and
intelligence into the raw community. And with this element the
force of tradition and pride of race and early education held to
accepted ideas of their section.” Another writer only recently
declares that those “influential pioneers” came “from Maryland,
Tennessee, Virginia and from South Carolina, and from a number of
southern states,” and they “left a social impress upon the community
which, even to this day, has not been entirely obliterated.” Among
the number that came from South Carolina were the three Bryan
brothers, Michael, B.S. and Hugh L.; Mr. and Mrs. E.G. Staney, Mrs.
Rutedge and two sisters, and Donald M. McInosh, a “brilliant
lawyer.” But the chief star of them all was Mary Swinton Legare, a
sister of Hugh S. Legare of South Carolina, who became attorney
general in President Tyler’s cabinet and later succeeded Webster as
secretary of state. Miss Legare was her brother’s constant
companion until his death and later the editor of his literary
works. She married Lowell Bullen, of North Brookfield, Mass., in
the “old muddy church” in Cedar Rapids, and lived in Marion for some
time, but she exerted her great social influence chiefly in Cedar
Rapids.
A census taker in Cedar and Johnson
counties in 1836, and the first sheriff of Johnson county appointed
by Gov. Henry Dodge, was Col. S.C. Trowbridge, a Virginian. In
Walter Terrell, one of the early millers of the State, Iowa City had
another “fine old Virginia gentleman,” highly educated in the
classics and mathematics, widely traveled and influential among his
fellows. Rev. John Todd, on his arrival at Percival, Fremont
county, in October, 1848, found that most of the Methodists
thereabouts were “from Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri.” In 1854
James W. Grimes spoke at Glenwood, some thirty miles north of
Percival in Mills county, in behalf of his candidacy for governor,
and in a letter to Mrs. Grimes describing his reception he said:
“When I came here I found that the population is entirely southern.”
Following up the Des Moines river
valley we find numerous sons of the Old Dominion, Kentucky and
Missourian among the first settlers. In Jefferson county the “first
white settler” was John Ruff, a Virginian. In Mahaska the De
Lashmutts, Edmundsons, Phillips and Seevers families brought with
them the traditions of the Cavaliers and of the proud gentry of the
Blue Grass region.
The man who was the occasion of the
“Tally War” during the rebellion was a Tennesseean. In Monroe
county one John Massey surveyed Albia. One naturally conjectures
whether he was a lineal descendant or relative of Nathaniel Massie
of Kentucky, who surveyed Virginia’s lands in south central Ohio in
1789-92. A large proportion of the Mormons who stopped in Monroe
county came “from Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia and other
mountainous regions.” Claiborne Hall, a Virginian, was the first
settler in Red Rock, Marion county, coming up from Missouri in 1833,
and the two following him were from Kentucky. George Gillaspy,
likewise from Kentucky, settled first in Louisa county (1840), going
to Marion in 1843. He became assessor, sheriff, treasurer of board
of public works, member of the constitutional convention of 1857,
and the first democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in Iowa in
1858. A fugitive from justice in Missouri is alleged to have been
the first settler in Madison county, but soon there followed him a
“colony of newcomers” from Missouri, among the party was a McCrary,
“an old Tennessee mountaineer.”
The first white settlers in Polk
county came in when the second Fort Des Moines, at the “Raccoon
Forks” was garrisoned in 1843. Among the troops and the attaches of
the garrison were a number who remained permanently in the region,
and one finds southern blood common, coming in directly or
indirectly through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The government
contractors, the brothers John B. and W.A. Scott, came via Indiana
from North Carolina stock. The tailor of the fort, J.M. Thrift, was
the son of a Virginia slave owner and Baptist preacher who took his
slaves to Ohio and gave them their freedom, whose grandson is now
(1906) adjutant general of Iowa’s militia. Peter Newcomer, who was
granted permission to take a claim at Agency Prairie on condition
that he would build a bridge over Four Mile creek, was a
Marylander. One of the first trappers along the Des Moines was
Landon Hamilton, a Virginian, who a few years since left his estate
to the city of Des Moines and to the State of Iowa. Among the
southern stock that came in later was James C. Jordan, a Virginian,
afterwards state senator, whose home just west of Des Moines became
a noted station on the Underground railway. Another Virginian was
John H. Given, father of Mrs. Pauline Given Swalm, and another was
Thos. N. Napier, a county judge under the law of 1851. M.D.
McHenry, an attorney and later State senator and Jas. A. Williamson
were prominent Kentuckians. In the development of the
transportational facilities of Des Moines were Dr. M.P. Turner, a
Missourian, who became interested first in the ferry franchises and
later inaugurated the first street car system, and Jefferson S.
Polk, a Kentuckian, who upon graduation from Georgetown College
entered upon the practice of law in Des Moines in 1856 –since the
early nineties he has been the manager and chief owner of the
electric railways of Des Moines. Des Moines and Polk county was
settled by great numbers of Indianians and Ohioans whose ancestors
came from south of Mason and Dixon’s line and the Ohio river. Many
names of men of note might be mentioned; a few may be cited – Thomas
J. Saylor and Alexander C. Bondurant, after whom Saylorville and
Bondurant were named, Senators P.M. Casady and Col. C.H. Gatch, Col.
Isaac W. Griffith and Gen. Ed. Wright, Judge Wm. H. McHenry, St.,
and Tacitus Hussey.
Southern stock predominated in the
first settlement of Boone county. It was named after Captain Nathan
Boone who first surveyed the region; William Boone, a relative,
early settled near Boonesboro that commemorated the old home of
their great namesake in Kentucky; many of his descendants are found
in Worth and Des Moines townships in Boone county today. In the
same townships are also many relatives of the Virginian who became a
noted circuit rider in Illinois, Peter Cartright. A South
Carolinian has his name preserved in the town of Luther, and a
Virginian in Zenorville. The common practice of western emigration
preceding by “families” and “neighborhoods” is excellently
illustrated in the career of the Hull family. Three brothers,
James, George and Uriah, of Virginia Scotch-German stock, settled in
and about Boone between 1847 and 1850, and their numerous families
and relations almost immediately made them the most potent political
factors in the county, an influence which they maintained until the
war and after. Two other brothers, John and C.J. McFarland,
representatives of southern stock and views, early attained
positions of marked influence, the former in banking and business
and the latter on the bench. Judge McFarland was an exceedingly
picturesque character in the annals of the county judge system.
One may find some interesting
evidence of the make-up of the population in various section s of
the northwestern counties of Iowa in the muster rolls of the
Northern Border Brigade, raised in the fall of 1862 to guard our
frontier against the threatened forays of the blood-thirsty Sioux.
The five companies, comprising 16 officers and 254 men, were
recruited from an extensive region including Harrison, Shelby,
Woodbury in the southwest, Hamilton and Hardin in the southeast and
Emmet and Kossuth on the north. The lieutenant-colonel, James A.
Savage, of Sioux City, was a Tennesseean. Of the 270 there were 24
from New England, 55 from New York and Pennsylvania, 34 from the
southern states, 84 from the northwest states, and 7 from Iowa. The
first mentioned were chiefly in the northern counties. In the
southern and western counties the southern states and Ohio and
Indiana claimed the major number. In company B, for instance,
recruited chiefly in and about Ft. Dodge, 18 out of the 42 native
born were southerners, mostly North Carolinians and Tennesseeans.(25)
This somewhat drearisome recital of
particulars may be closed by one other reference.
During the high waters in the
Missouri and Floyd rivers in March, 1857, it was discovered that the
floods were encroaching dangerously near to the grave of Sergeant
Floyd, the young Kentuckian of Lewis and Clark’s party who died and
was buried on the river bluffs in 1804. His remains were taken up
for reinterment. On May 28, 1857, under directions of Capt. James
B. Todd, late of the United States army, they were taken to the
steamer for transfer to their present resting place. The pall
bearers whose names are preserved, were W. Craft, of Virginia, T.
Griffy, of Kentucky, L. Kennerly, of Missouri, W.H. Levering, of
Indiana, N. Levering, of Ohio, and D.W. Scott of the army. In
Woodbury it appears that southerners seem to form a goodly
proportion of the population if the suggestions of those names were
worth consideration.
If we examine into the nativity of
the pioneers among the professions we find many noteworthy
southerners.
Iowa’s first preacher probably was
a Kentuckian, Rev. David Lowry, a Cumberland Presbyterian, who
assisted Gen. Street in his work with the Winnebago Indians at the
Mission school in Allamakee county. In Mahaska county in 1844, Mrs.
Phillips tells us, “Cumberland Presbyterians seen to predominate.”
“Rev. Launcelot Graham Bell, a Virginian, organized the first
Presbyterian church” at West Point, Lee county, at Muscatine, at
Iowa City, and in cities and towns along the southern part of the
State to the Missouri. It was Rev. John Hancock, of Kentucky,
assisted by Mr. Bell, who started the first Presbyterian church in
Council Bluffs. The first Presbyterian preacher in Red Rock, Marion
county, and the first resident pastor in Des Moines was a North
Carolinian, Rev. Thompson Bird. The first preacher of the Christian
church in Iowa was David R. Chance, a Kentuckian. He was one of the
seven representatives of Demoine county in the legislature at
Belmont in 1836. His experiences with legislative virtue in the
location of the territorial capital did not enhance his faith in
human nature. It was Elder D.S. Burnet, of Baltimore, who
established the Christian church in Iowa City,. One of the forceful
and constructive men in the Methodist church was Rev. Samuel Clark.
He was born in Virginia, and was chaplain of Virginia’s
constitutional convention in 1829-30, in which sat ex-presidents
Madison and Monroe. He was one of the founders of the Wesleyan
University at Mr. Pleasant and the father of the brilliant editor of
The Keokuk Gate City, Sam M. Clark. Bishop Loras of the
Catholic church, who came to Dubuque in 1836, was stationed in
Mobile, Alabama, from 1829 to 1836.
Among the doctors of the State were
Dr. Enos Lowe, of Burlington, a native of North Carolina. He was
made chairman of the constitutional convention that met in Iowa City
in 1846 that framed the constitution finally adopted. Dr. John D.
Elbert of Keosauqua, Dr. John W. Finley of Dubuque, Dr. John F.
Henry, of Burlington, were Kentuckians. Dr. W. Patton of Council
Bluffs was from Virginia. Dr. G.L. Brown of Marion county was a
Tennesseean. There were two physicians in the first territorial
legislature and both hailed from the south, Dr. Gideon S. Bailey of
Van Buren county, from Kentucky, in the house of representatives,
and Dr. Jesse B. Payne of Henry county, from Tennessee, in the
council. In the constitutional convention of 1844, four out of the
five doctors who were members were from the south. In the
convention of 1846 honors were even, one was from Alabama, one from
North Carolina, and two from Vermont.
In the military service several
distinguished names are met with: Gen. James C. Parrott of Keokuk,
Gen. J.G. Lauman of Burlington, Gen. William Vandever of Dubuque,
all Marylanders; and Gen. John Edwards of Chariton, and Gen. James
A. Williamson of Des Moines, were both Kentuckians.
Southerners loom up prominently in
the early annals of Iowa’s legal profession. Besides Judge Caldwell
already mentioned, and Judges Dyer and Love referred to, Judge James
Grant, a North Carolinian who settled in Davenport, was a man of
remarkable force of character if one-half that hosts of admirers
relate of him be true. He was a member of the first constitutional
convention of 1844, and he called the second convention to order in
1846, and was a potent factor in their deliberations. Other
southern lawyers in those conventions were W.W. Chapman of Virginia,
our territorial delegate to congress, Wm. R. Harrison, Washington
county, from North Carolina, H.P. Haun of Clinton county, from
Kentucky, and G.W. Bowie, of Des Moines county, from Maryland.
Judge Dyer’s brother-in-law, Ben M. Samuels, a Virginian, was one of
the forceful lawyers of Dubuque. In Mahaska county we have the name
of William H. Seevers, who gained fame both as a codifier and as a
judge of the State supreme court. A vigorous lawyer in the pioneer
days of Council Bluffs was Judge R.L. Douglass, a native of
Maryland. One of the leaders in the constitutional convention of
1857 was William Penn Clarke, a Marylander. Another Marylander then
rising into prominence was C.C. Nourse of Keosauqua, who later
became attorney general of Iowa. The name of one Iowa lawyer,
however, stands above all, Samuel F. Miller of Keokuk, a Kentuckian,
who practice law in the Gate City from 1850 to 1862, when President
Lincoln made him associate justice of our great supreme court at
Washington.
In the development of the public
schools of Iowa men from the southern states were not a little in
evidence. A young Kentuckian, Berryman Jennings, was the first
school teacher in Iowa, conducting a school in Lee county from
October to December, 1830. W.W. Jamison, a Virginian, a graduate of
Washington college, was among the first teachers of Keokuk. The
first school house was built three years later at Burlington by Dr.
Ross, a long resident Kentuckian, already mentioned. It was Gideon
S. Bailey of Van Buren, also a Kentuckian, who introduced the first
school laws in the territorial legislature in 1838. The schools of
Council Bluffs were started by Mr. and Mrs. James B. Rue from
Kentucky. In 1838 a nephew of the author of “Thirty Years View,”
Thomas H. Benton, Jr., a Tennesseean, educated in Missouri and
Tennessee, founded a classical school in Dubuque. Ten years later
he entered upon an influential career as State superintendent of
public instruction that did not cease until his death in 1867. The
influence of Rev. Samuel Clarke in the founding of the Iowa Wesleyan
University at Mt. Pleasant has been noted. The founder of Cornell
college at Mt. Vernon was Rev. Geo. B. Bowman, a North Carolinian.
The first instructors in Oskaloosa college, in 1861, were two
brothers, Rev. Geo. T. and W.A. Carpenter, both sons of Kentucky.
The former was made president and held the office until 1880 when he
with the assistance of his brother-in-law, Gen. F.M. Drake, founded
Drake University in Des Moines.
V.
SOME OPINIONS.
Among the pioneers opinions were
now and then expressed concerning the nativity of the population.
As we might anticipate the subject was not one that, amidst the
press of efforts to subdue forest, prairie and stream, would
seriously engage attention or elicit seasoned opinion. Personal
associations, especially political and religious affiliations,
usually narrowed vision and interfered with impartial judgment. A
few recorded opinions are found that are of interest although they
are somewhat divergent; some were expressed early in the history of
the State, some in memoirs and recollections published in recent
years.
Writing to Peter Cooper in 1868,
Governor Samuel Merrill, a native of Maine, who came to Iowa in
1856, declared that the State was “settled mainly from Ohio, Indiana
and Pennsylvania, with a large admixture from New England.” Judge
Francis Springer, also a son of Maine, who represented Louisa and
Washington counties in the territorial council in 1840-41, and in
1857 became president of the third constitutional convention, stated
in his “Recollections,” published in 1897, that “the first settlers
of Iowa, it has been said, were, from southern Ohio, Indiana and
Illinois.” Professor L.F. Parker, one of Iowa’s pioneer teachers
and historians, writing in 1893, said that “the earliest settlers
came largely from southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and the most
northerly of the southern states; Pennsylvania soon furnished a
large contingent. ... About 1854 large additions were made to the
population from New England and from its earlier overflows into New
York and northern Ohio.” Mr. George Duffield of Keosauqua, a
pioneer of 1837, has recently told us that when his father, James
Duffield, started west in 1837, there were thousands of settlers “on
the move” towards Iowa, leaving Pennsylvania and Ohio. “They (the
Duffields) were joined on their way down the Ohio by movers from the
Carolinas, Kentucky and other states, and all were afloat in keel
boats, ‘broads’ and steamboats.” The observation of the late
Theodore Parvin respecting the settlement of sons of the Old
Dominion in southern Iowa has already been quoted. According to
Hawkins Taylor “Yankees were a scarce article” in Lee county in the
first years of the territory. During the winter if 1841 the late
Mr. James Hilton of Monroe county made “a pedestrian tour of the
counties of Lee, Des Moines, Henry, Jefferson and Van Buren” and he
found that “by far the greater part of the settlers in that part of
Iowa were from Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana...”
Three opinions are especially
noteworthy. They were expressed by men whose experience with and
knowledge of the pioneers were both extensive and official. Each
opinion was expressed in connection with or relative to a critical
event in the life of the territory or the State. The nativity of
the people was consciously considered in the first and third and
evidently in the mind in the second: hence their significance.
When the first proposals for the
organization of the territory of Iowa were being urged upon
congress, the lynx-eyed, far-seeing guardian of slavery, Calhoun,
was stoutly opposed. George W. Jones, the delegate of Wisconsin,
who urged our case “told him that the inhabitants were mainly from
Missouri, Kentucky and Illinois; that the institutions of the south
had nothing to fear from them. Mr. Calhoun replied that this state
of things would not last long; that men from New England and other
states, where abolition sentiments prevailed, would come in and
drive him from power and place.” The error of both Jones and
Calhoun was their lack of appreciation of the abolition or
anti-slavery sentiment among the southerners who came north.
Writing to Salmon P. Chase upon
conditions in Iowa in 1856, Governor Grimes declared: “the southern
half of our State is strongly pro-slavery, but I think we will be
able to carry a majority with us for free principles. ... The north
third of our State will be to Iowa politically what the Western
Reserve is to the state of Ohio.” The implications plainly are:
first, people of southern sympathies, if not of southern lineage
numerically prevailed in Iowa up to 1856; second, the same was true
of southern Ohio; and third, the opponents of slavery, if they were
to win in their fight against the arrogant advance of the leaders of
the southern system had to depend upon the division of the southern
residents in Iowa. The latter fact has not been fully appreciated
in Iowa. No more has a similar state of facts in southern and
western Pennsylvania, in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.
In 1859, excluding slavery, the
question that vexed Iowans locally more than any other matter, was
the continuance of the county judge system that was instituted in
1851. The gross disregard of economy in financial administration,
and often flagrant misuse of their autocratic powers in many
districts outraged the dearest traditions of the New Englanders and
New Yorkers who came into Iowa in such numbers between 1850 and
1860. Mr. Julius H. Powers was elected to the senate in 1859 from a
district in north central Iowa comprising nine counties. He was
chairman of the senate committee on county and township
organization. In describing the contest in the legislature over the
attempt to revolutionize the system of local government, Mr. Powers
explains the animus of the struggle, and so far as I can discover he
is the only observer or writer who has perceived the profound social
and political consequences of the different streams of pioneer
immigration into Iowa in the ante bellum period:
“Two tides had flowed
into Iowa in populating the State, one from the east, bringing the
New England element and habits, with its memory of town meetings and
individual rights, and one from the south, bringing with it the
southern element with its thoughts and polity.
“In the early
settlement of the State the southerner had largely predominated, and
the State’s early organization was fashioned and moulded by that
influence, and the old baronial system had been perpetuated through
the slave power where necessity required a centralizing. To abolish
this one man power and disburse it among the many was looked upon by
the southern element as dangerous in the extreme, and considerable
bitterness was engendered when a change was demanded.
“Party lines were
thrown down, and former influences and surroundings controlled the
vote.”
VI.
THE SHOWINGS OF THE CENSUS RETURNS
All these things may be so; and
still the numerical preponderance of southern stock in Iowa prior to
the civil war is by no means demonstrated. The predominance of
southerners among the men charged wit the supervision of this region
in the preterritorial days may have been a mere chance occurrence.
The preference of the national government for men of southern blood
or views in the territorial appointments was due, some may contend,
to political conditions affecting the entire nation. Again the
large number of southerners in our early legislative and
constitutional assemblies, while very suggestive, is not in and of
itself proof of the numerical preponderance of southern stock. As
to opinions they usually are based on promiscuous and vagrant
impressions. The facts may be far different.
We have three census enumerations,
the federal counts of 1850 and 1860, and the state census of 1856,
that enable us to determine, with precision, the nativity of Iowa’s
pioneers at the close of the period here under consideration. A
comparative study of their returns enables us clearly to discern the
predominant elements in the previous decades.
According to the federal census of
1850 the number of native born New Englanders in Iowa was only
5,535; of which 813 were natives of Maine, 580 of New Hampshire,
1,645 of Vermont, 1,251 of Massachusetts, 256 of Rhode Island, and
1,090 of Connecticut. The pioneers hailing from the middle states
aggregated 24,516; Pennsylvania was credited with 14, 714, and New
York with 8,134. The total number born in the southern states
amounted to 30,954. Virginia gave us 7,861; Maryland 1,888; North
Carolina 2,589; Tennessee 4,274; Kentucky 8,994 and Missouri 3,897.
From the states of the old Northwest territory we received 59,098;
Ohio sending us 30,713; Indiana 19,925; and Illinois 7,247. The
native born Iowans numbered 50,380.
There are some striking exhibits in
the foregoing. In the first place the inhabitants of Iowa who
claimed New England as their place of birth did not number four in
the hundred of the population of 1850. Second, the number hailing
from the southern states was nearly six times the number coming from
east of the Hudson. Third, there were more native born Virginians
than there were native born New Englanders altogether. Fourth, the
number of Kentuckians likewise outnumbered the total number coming
from New England.
The enumerations of 1856 and 1860
show some increases, both absolutely and relatively, in the numbers
hailing from New England and the middle states. Nevertheless the
people of the south continued to outnumber the natives of New
England three and two to one, as may be seen from the following
summery. Even in 1860 the Virginians in Iowa alone exceeded the
total number coming from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont:
| |
|
1850/percent |
1856/percent
(26)
|
1860/percent |
|
| |
New England |
5,535/3.2% |
18,389/4.3%
|
25,040/4.4% |
|
| |
Middle States |
24,516/14.3% |
85,196/20.0% |
103,173/18.1% |
|
| |
Southern States |
30,954/18.1%
|
54,942/12.9%
|
54,006/9.4%
|
|
| |
Northwest States |
59,098/34.5%
|
172,303/40.6% |
193,005/33.9% |
|
| |
Iowa |
50,380/29.6% |
93,302/21.9% |
191,148/33.7% |
|
| |
Other States |
138/0.8% |
122/0.3% |
2,460/0.5% |
|
| |
|
---------------- |
---------------- |
---------------- |
|
| |
Total natives |
170,621 |
424,254
|
568,832 |
|
The significance of these figures
cannot be appreciated, however, until we realize that the peoples
coming to Iowa from Delaware, from southern and western Pennsylvania
and from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and southern Wisconsin were
likewise predominantly southern in their ancestry, affiliations and
traditions. This fact, I believe, is no less demonstrable than the
preponderance of southerners in Iowa in ante bellum days.
The New England tradition must be
adversely considered, and presumptuous though it may seem, Justice
Miller’s judgment must be reversed; the decision must be Iowa was
settled first by sons of the Old Dominion interspersed with the
vigor of New England. Upon such a holding much that is inexplicable
in Iowa’s history becomes easily understandable. We can readily
appreciate why Senator Dodge could so confidently proclaim in the
senate in 1854 that he and his colleague, General Jones, wit the
senator from Pennsylvania were the only senators from the north who
had voted against the Wilmot Proviso and for the fugitive slave law;
and why Governor Grimes found the south half of Iowa so strongly
pro-slavery.
This predominance of southern stock
among Iowa’s pioneers, the prevalence of southern traditions among
the dominant political forces of the State prior to the civil was
had ineradicable effects upon the life and institutions of Iowans.
Throughout the entire history of the State one may discern a sharp
cleavage among the people of Iowa that in general typifies the
traditional conflict between the Cavalier and the Puritan. It is
manifest not only in the political life of the State, but in the
social life of the people, in industry and commerce, in church and
religion, in education and modes of recreation – sundry phases of
which the writer hopes some time to set forth.
Endnotes
1. A
reprint of a brochure entitled, Did emigrants from New England First
Settle Iowa?
Note
--- Numerous foot notes citing authorities, appearing in the
original manuscript, are omitted from this article.
. Denmark Academy, and
Iowa College founded at Davenport in 1846, and in 1858 moved to
Grinnell. L.F. Parker’s Higher education in Iowa, p. 137,
and Adams’ The Iowa Band, pp. 103-125.
3.
Quoted in N. Howe Parker’s Iowa as It Is in 1855, pp. 5-6.
4.
Shaw’s Local Government in Illinois, pp.
5.Moore’s The Northwest Under Three Flags, p. XX.
6.
Henry Sabin, Iowa’s distinguished Superintendent of Public
Instruction, a New Englander by birth and education, has the
following pertinent observations in his last biennial report
(1897).“It is worthy of note that the first of these governors
[Robert Lucas] in his message urged the adoption of the township as
a basis of school organization. It never can be sufficiently
regretted that we ever departed from his recommendation,” p. 20.
“There is no question that the commission [viz. of
1856] favored the township system. ...Governor after governor, the
state superintendents in unbroken line, prominent educational men,
have remonstrated in vain, and in vain have attempted to secure a
simpler organization. It will remain rooted in the prejudices until
better ideas of school economy render it odious,” p. 22.
7.
Macy’s Institutional Beginnings in a Western State, J.H.U.
Studies, vol. II, pp. 22-23. Annals of Iowa (3d series), vol. V. p.
337.
8.Niles Register, Nov. 14, 1846, p. 176, and Nov. 21,
p. 178.
9.Salter’s Life of Grimes, p. 114. Congressman John
Wentworth of Chicago, in 1853 (?) introduced Grimes to President
Pierce who knew the Whig relatives of Grimes in New Hampshire.
Wentworth conceived it to be a “great joke” to introduce him “as the
next Governor of Iowa, as he was. Pierce thought he would have to
change his politics first.” Memorandum of Wentworth quoted in
Salter’s Grimes, p 7.
10. Von
Holst, Constitutional History, vol. V. p 278.
11 The following from Dr. Salter’s Life of Grimes strikingly
illustrates the contention above: “He (Grimes) presided at an
educational convention held in Burlington, June 7, 1847, in which
the duty of the State to provide for the education of all children
by equitable taxation was earnestly advocated and the profound
regret expressed that the first general assembly of Iowa had made
no provision for building school houses by law, but had left the
whole matter to voluntary subscription.” p. 26.
12. In
his report in 1887 State Superintendent J.W. Akers, in some
perplexity pointed out the striking similarity of the conditions of
education in Iowa to those prevalent in the southern states, pp.
57-58. Dr. W.T. Harris, National Commissioner of Education , showed
that while Iowa spent large sums for schools, the schedules of
salaries for teachers were the lowest of all the north central
states. (Report, 1895-96, p. LXVIII). In his presidential address
before the State Teachers’ Association in 1902, President Charles E.
Shelton of Simpson College said appropos of the rural schools:
“Something must be done for our country schools. I
want to say to you tonight my friends, that I believe that
three-fourths of the teaching in the rural schools of Iowa is
absolutely worthless, and that an equal proportion of the money
spent is absolutely thrown away. I do not say this upon simple
speculation and conjecture, but it is the experience of every man
and woman here...” (Proceedings. p. 17.)
The Association by formal vote commended the “entire
address of President Shelton for its common sense treatment in
every particular and its clear statement of the various important
phases of the real education of the boys and girls who go to make up
the citizenship of our State and nation.” p. 12.
13. The
following ringing letter of Grimes to the sheriff of Clinton county,
written in the last year of his term as Governor, affords both
instructive reading and interesting evidence of the character and
extent of lawlessness in eastern Iowa in the fifties:
EXECUTIVE OFFICE, IOWA, BURLINGTON,
July 8, 1857.
Your letter of the 29th, June, in which
you state that you have warrants in your hands for the arrest of
persons who seized and hanged Bennet Warren in your county on the 25th
inst.; that you are “informed that a very large combination has been
formed, banded together by agreement or oath to execute similar
outrages upon other persons, and protect and defend any of their
members who may be attempted to be dealt with according to law,” and
that this combination is supposed to number “about two thousand
persons in Jackson and the adjoining counties,” has been duly
received.
You ask me “what course shall be pursued?” I answer
unhesitatingly, serve the warrants in your hands and enforce the
laws of the State. You have authority to summon to your aid the
entire force of your county. If you deem it to be necessary to do
so, call for that force, and prosecute every man who refuses to obey
your summons.
If the power of your county is not sufficient to
execute the laws, a sufficient force from other counties shall be
placed at your disposal.
I am resolved that, so far as in me lies, this
lawless violence, which, under the plea of administering justice to
horse thieves, sets at defiance the authorities of the State, and
destroys all respect for the laws, both human and divine, shall be
checked. I shall have no hesitation, therefore, when officially
advised of the exigency, to call out the entire military power of
the State, if necessary, to crush out this spirit of rebellion,
which has shown itself in your county.
I shall direct all the military companies in the
State to hold themselves in readiness for duty. – Salter’s Grimes,
pp. 93-94.
See G.W.
Ellis’ In By-Gone Days, in which is described at great length
the numerous mobs and lynchings in Jackson county, reprinted from
the Record of Maquoketa, Iowa. See, also, Porter’s
History of Polk County, pp. 505-507, 525-529, 531-543.
14. See
Rollin Lynde Hartt on The Iowans, in the Atlantic Monthly,
vol. 86, pp. 186, et seq.
15.
Annals of Iowa (1st ser.) vol. I, p. 99. After his
discharge from the army Col. Davenport was employed in the service
of Col. William Morrison of Kentucky, a government contractor.
16.
Annals of Iowa (3d ser.) vol. III, pp. 98-99. Tuttle in his
History of Iowa (p. 60) credits Zachary Taylor with
constructing Ft. Madison but without warrant.
17.
Governor Ford of Illinois disputes Gen. Dodge’s fame as the hero of
the Black Hawk war. See his History of Illinois, pp.
146-159.
18.
Irving’s Astoria, ch. XIII.
19.
Bradbury’s Journals (Thwaite’s ed.), p. 98; Irving’s
Astoria, ch. XIII.
20.
Iowa Historical Record, vol. XVI, p. 105.
21.Dr.
Moses Meeker on Early History of the Lead Region, Wisconsin
Historical Collections, vol. VI, pp. 272-280. Caleb Atwater, in his
Tour to Prairie du Chien, says erroneously, that “Gen Henry
Dodge, of Missouri,” first settled in and began to work the lead
mines. American Antiquities, p. 170.
22.
Meeker Ibid, foot note of L.C.D. (Lyman C. Draper), p. 275.
23.
Wis. His. Coll, vol. VI, pp. 502, 506, 507, Spencer’s Local
Government in Wisconsin.
24.
Cunynghame’s A Glimpse at the Great Republic, p. 52.
25.
Capt. W. H. Ingham’s article, The Iowa Northern Brigade of
1862-3, Annals, (3d ser.), vol. V, pp. 513-523.
26.
Some of the items included in the totals (for 1856) here given are
so blurred in the original tables that the numbers may be subject to
slight corrections. |
