Henry County Pioneers - 1833

THOMAS, DYALL, HOLLAND, GASS, WALTER

Posted By: Pat Ryan White (email)
Date: 6/1/2019 at 08:05:26

STORY OF PIONEERS IN COUNTY RELATED AT L.L.A.
[Martha Thomas Dyall]

The Ladies’ Library Association held the regular fortnightly meeting at the library on Monday afternoon.

The subject for roll call discussion was, pioneer economies as contrasted with the prevalent luxuries of today. Some of these economies caused a ripple of merriment, some more pathetic, brought a sigh.

The paper of the afternoon was given by Mrs. Mate Holland Gass and consisted mainly of the story of her grandmother, Mrs. Lovicy Holland who came from Indiana with her father’s family and neighbors numbering seven families in all and four young men, to take possession in the new Black Hawk purchase the first day it was opened up for settlement which was Aug. 16, 1833. While waiting the opening day the pioneers went into camp on the opposite side of the river from Ft. Madison, the men of the party crossing over to select the sites for the new homes they were to make in the beautiful land we now call Iowa.

It was Aug.17, 1833, the band of fifty souls crossed over into Iowa. It was the following day that the first death among them occurred, that of Mrs. Holland’s baby brother, Willis Walter, who was laid to rest wrapped in a winding sheet, placed in a rude packing box – with sorrow as genuine as that attested to by costly funerals and banks of hot house flowers. This was the beginning of the little cemetery between Augusta and Burlington. This settlement was called Hoosier Point.

The settlers chose for home sites the edge of the woods where logs for the cabin, stones for the chimney, crystal spring for water, wood for fuel and game for food, were to be found.

The story Mrs. Gass read was written by her father, the well-remembered J.M. Holland, and was published in the Burlington Hawkeye Dec. 15, 1907. Mr. Holland’s father and his mother, the pioneer girl, Lovisy Walter, who came into Iowa with these first settlers were married in 1837. Their marriage license was the second issued in Henry County.

[Undated news clipping, probably “Mt. Pleasant News”]