CHAPTER XII.

When I began my story, my purpose was to relate my recollections of the early settlers, their heroism in battling with the hardships and privations they were compelled to meet in converting the wilderness into the grand and glorious land we see to-day. My idea was to give to the present generation a plain and true account of the way things appeared to me in that long ago time. But I find myself continually wanting to tell about the children and grandchildren of those honest pioneers who have done and are still doing honor to themselves and to their worthy ancestors.

This part of Iowa did not have for its first white settlers a lot of thieves and schemers. There may have been a few of that sort, but if there were I can't think of any just now. All that I knew, and I knew a good many, were honest and obliging, willing that their neighbors should enjoy all the rights they claimed for themselves. They were generally God-fearing, Christian people, and had faith in God and in one another. The first settlers in the town of Oskaloosa, and the country immediately surrounding it, were the people I knew most about in the pioneer days. There were little groups of settlers here and there all over the county. I knew the reputation of almost all, and was personally acquainted with many of those who were among the first to make homes in the wilderness. There was Dr. Warren, who lived in the extreme western part of the county; he practiced medicine, and was well spoken of as a physician, and was a grand, good man. He was a devout Methodist, and would go a long way to attend a religious meeting, especially Methodist. He was a licensed preacher, but did not take a regular circuit.

In 1845, when there was not a meeting-house in Mahaska County, the first court-house was built at the northwest corner of the public square in Oskaloosa, on what was called the "eye-tooth lot." Not long after it was finished, the Methodists held quarterly meeting therein. As is the custom among Methodists, they held what is called an experience, or speaking meeting. In that day it was their habit at those meetings to testify, or relate their religious experience, especially their conversion and the circumstances leading up to the same. There were Methodists here and there all over the county, or wherever there were a few families living near enough together to call each other neighbors. The Methodist folks from those remote settlements, as well as those near by, were at that meeting. Those people, strangers one to another, had come from different States and different localities: many of them had not had a privilege like that for months. I saw many faces there I had never seen before; many were shabbily dressed, women came with sunbonnets on, and some with little babies in their arms; men in threadbare old-fashioned clothes. But honesty and earnestness of purpose were plain to be seen in their faces, though brown with exposure to sun and prairie winds. I can see them yet, though more than half a hundred years have come and gone since I sat with tears in my eyes and listened to the artless stories, told with simple eloquence, of the time, place and circumstances which led to their giving their hearts to, the Lord and finding peace to their souls. I remember one young woman in particular. I didn't know who she was then, and I don't know yet, but in my mind I see her as she stood up in that meeting with a calico sunbonnet on and a little baby in her arms, and with tears streaming down her face, told about giving her heart to God at a camp-meeting back in Indiana, and that He had kept her in peace, though far from her old home and from meeting, living with only her husband and baby in a cabin a long way from neighbors. She went on to say: "If it was not for my faith in God I don't know what I would do. Wolves howl around my house and rattlesnakes crawl in my yard. Often when my husband is away from morning till night, breaking prairie or making rails, I am compelled to leave my baby and go away off to a slough to get water. When I start I lift my heart to God and say, 'Lord, please to take care of my baby,' and the Lord has always taken care of me and my baby. I have suffered no harm, though I have met many a rattle snake on my way to the slough." When that woman had ceased speaking I saw tears in the eyes of many a rugged, sun-burned man.

After many others bad testified, Dr. Warren rose up and made a speech which I have not forgotten; neither have I forgotten the way he appeared to me that day. He was near six feet high, with dark brown hair, and gray eyes with a tenderness in their expression. There was a look about him of chivalrous manliness that women are not afraid to meet, though they were alone in a wilderness. His voice and look were the kind that children instinctively take to; but what he said was this:

"My Christian friends, brothers and sisters, I find myself a stranger in a company who seem to be strangers to each other; many of us never saw each other's faces until we came to this meeting. We seem to have come to this meeting with a common purpose-that of worshiping the God and Father of us all, and of having. our spiritual strength renewed. We have come to this new country from various States and various localities; the places of our nativity are widely separated from each other; there are scarcely two families from the same neighborhood. I have listened with much interest to the stories told by One and another, of your conversion, faith and Christian experience. As you talked, this thought came to me. No matter how diversified our homes and surroundings, whether among the tall poplars and clear, gravelly streams of Ohio and Indiana, the blue grass meadows of Kentucky, the wide prairies of Illinois, the hills and springs of Tennessee, or the New Purchase of Iowa, the religion of Jesus Christ is the same. Forsaking sin, resolving deep down in the heart to serve God, and trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ are followed by the same results, no matter where. I will go from this meeting with my heart full of thankfulness. May the Lord continue to bless and keep you all."

Dr. Warren was an educated Christian gentleman; he went, after a long and useful life, to an honored grave. Some of. his children and grandchildren are citizens of Mahaska County to-day, and are valuable members of' society. Dr. Warren's son, Robert Warren, is now a citizen of Des Moines, but his boyhood, his young manhood, and his mature manhood days, clear on to the days when men arrive at the place where they begin to go down the hill of life, were spent in Mahaska County. Robert Warren has been a member of the State Legislature, and in many ways honored with the confidence of Mahaska's citizens. Robert Warren is a man amongst men; he is a fine-looking man, rather tall and well-proportioned, and like his father, at first sight one would feel that he was a man to be trusted.

Not long after coming to Mahaska County I heard that the Rev. Allen Johnson was in this region, and about two weeks after I began teaching that first school; I was told that Bro. Johnson was going to preach in Oskaloosa. I borrowed my uncle's black horse, Phillis, and came on' a new road to Oskaloosa. Bro. Johnson preached in an unfinished and unoccupied log house. There was no floor, but the walls were up, a clapboard roof on, and a door sawed out. From somewhere, I presume, away down in Jefferson or Van Buren County, Mr. Canfield, the owner of said house, must have gotten the plank of which some seats were improvised, and a sort of raised platform at one end. I have learned since that the first court ever held in the county was held in that house and that platform was the judge's bench. Rev. Johnson preached from that rostrum that day to an audience of perhaps thirty persons. He told us he would preach two weeks from that day at the house of Dr. Weatherford, where he proposed to organize a Methodist society, or class. The house where Bro. Johnson preached on that 29th of September, 1844, stood on Lot 5, Block 20, o. p., Oskaloosa. Dr. Weatherford's house was on Lot 7, Block 19, o. p., Oskaloosa. When that meeting was out and I had gone out of the house, I met my old acquaintance, Dr. Porter, who was very polite and proposed to assist me in mounting my horse, which was hitched up by Smith & Cameron's store. The doctor had much to tellme as we walked along toward Phillis, about Oskaloosa's prospects and possibilities. I remember with what pride he pointed to a pile of lumber on the east side of the public square, saying, "We are going to have a tavern. Mr. Charles Purvine is going to build right away, and won't that be a Godsend to we young fellows? And not only to us, but to the people we have been sponging on?" "I guess you have not been sponging very bad," I replied. "I don't know what else to call it," he said, "for here are Cage Williams, A. D. Jones, Esquire Edmundson and myself without a roof to cover our heads. If the people in these little cabins you see around here didn't shelter us and feed us and let us have a place to hang around in we would have to leave, or camp out on the prairie and go hungry. Of course, we try to compensate them, but we all feel like we are contracting a bigger debt of gratitude than we can ever pay." "That seems to be the natural order of things,"
I replied, "my uncle and aunt take in everybody that come along, make beds on the floor, feed them and their teams, and I never hear them say anything about debts of gratitude." "Well," said the doctor, "if there are not a whole-souled lot of people around here, I don't know where you would go to find them."

I climbed on a box, the doctor led Phillis up beside it, I took my seat in the saddle and joined my friend, Patterson Martin. He had found a much shorter road to Oskaloosa than the one the doctor's wife and I traveled on our first visit.

I never think of those early times without remembering the unfeigned friendship and kindness of Patterson and Amanda Martin. Little Mary, who was a baby when I first knew them, is the wife of Mat Crozier, one of Mahaska's prosperous farmers, and has a house full of sons and daughters of her own. John N. Martin, the second child of Patterson and Amanda Martin, Captain Martin now, served his country through the war of the rebellion, and is a respected citizen of Oskaloosa. Patterson Martin sleeps in Forest Cemetery. His devoted wife had a handsome monument erected to his memory, and his children plant flowers on his grave. His widow, Amanda, owns and occupies with her son Byron a valuable little farm and a comfortable and pretty cottage, not far from the place where they built their first cabin.

Amanda Martin, one of the very few of we old settlers who are left to tell the story of the early days, is bent with age and broken in health, but she, by great effort, comes to see me often. I am always glad to see her, and every time we meet we have a talk about the people and the things of long ago. In all the fifty-five years that she has gone in and out among the people of this region, no one can truthfully say a word of harm of Amanda Martin. She was a self-sacrificing wife and mother, a kind and obliging neighbor, an humble Christian. Her children have reason to be proud of the mother who has lived in one neighborhood more than half a century, and all that time had the confidence and respect of her neighbors.

Amanda Martin came with her husband and baby to the New Purchase in 1843, lived in the crudest of crude cabins, and endured all the hardships of first settlers. At first their shanty was hardly a bar against the wolves that made night hideous with their howling. Deer were so plentiful they were often seen near their house; in those days deer were sometimes run down by dogs. One day Mr. Martin's dogs ran two deer close to their house; they were so near worried out that Mr. Martin killed
them with an ax. That was late in the Autumn of 1844. I remember how excited he was when he came to my uncle's house, bringing a great big piece of venison and relating his adventures. We were surprised, for that was an unusual feat, even in that time of plenty, in the way of game.

There was a family by the name of Coontz, living not far from my uncle's. Their children all went to my school. One day, not far from the time Mr. Martin had slaughtered the two deer, Mrs. Coontz came running with all her might, bare-headed and screaming:
"Mr. Cox; a bear! Mr. Cox; a bear!"
Uncle Aaron, as soon as he caught her meaning, snatched his rifle from its wooden hooks above the cabin door, slung on his powder horn and proceeded to follow Mrs. Coontz. She managed to tell him on the way that she had heard a pig squealing down by the cornfield fence and on investigation found one of their shoats in the grasp of a bear. She called Mr. Coontz, who came with his gun and two dogs, at sight of which the bear ran up a tree. Uncle and Mrs. Coontz hurried to the scene, found Mr. Coontz with gun in hand, but afraid to shoot lest he should miss the bear and be attacked himself by that ferocious beast. Uncle Aaron was a sure shot. The dogs were making a big fuss, and the bear was away up on a limb of a dead tree, quietly watching things down below. Uncle took aim, fired, and brought the bear down, wounded. Both dogs jumped on the bear, which was not too badly wounded to make resistance. Mr. Coontz, to help the dogs out, seized a club to facilitate matters, but in his excitement struck one of his dog's the blow intended for the bear, which laid the dog out for a while. My uncle in the meantime had loaded his· gun again, and the second shot put a quietus on the bear. Uncle was a modest man, never taking any glory to himself. and when he was sure the bear was dead he walked off home, leaving the Coontzes in undisputed possession. But the next morning Mr. Coontz came over, bringing a great big roast out of that bear's shoulder. It wasn't a large bear, but was fat. In that day bear's oil was thought to be an excellent oil for the hair. My cousins, Eliza Ann and Elizabeth, and myself cut a lot of fat off, of that roast and rendered it out. We girls put the oil in a bottle and held it in common.

While I am talking about game I want to tell about the prairie chickens. My uncle had some shock corn out in the Winter of '44 and '45, and thousands of prairie chickens would light in that field. My cousins, William and James, made traps and caught hundreds of them. Prairie chicken is splendid meat, and nothing can excel the gravy on corn-bread but we realized that Winter that there was such a thing as having too much of a good thing. How well I remember how pleased and triumph. ant those boys used to look as they came from their traps with both hands full of chickens.

In the Autumn of '44', when I was teaching that first school, and the Winter following, I went to Oskaloosa as often as I had opportunity and could find an excuse for going. That good uncle would let me ride Phillis when I didn't go in a wagon or sled with the Martins. My third trip was to the meeting given out by Bro. Johnson as the time and place he expected to organize a class, or society of Methodists. I had learned the way and was not afraid. That Sabbath morning, October 13th; 1844, I mounted Phillis and went alone through woods and sloughs and glades and across Spring Creek. I had learned to watch out for blazed trees. For fear the young generation will not know what "blazed" means in the way we used the word, I will explain. It was chopping out a big chip, or peeling bark off of trees along a dim road.

When in 1894 the fiftieth anniversary of that first organization of the Methodist Church had rolled around, the Methodist people of Oskaloosa proposed to and did hold a jubilee celebration lasting eight days. They gathered all the history relating to the church, both ancient and modern, which they could depend upon as being correct, and produced the same in one way or another at that meeting. Letters were received and reminiscences related. Rev. E. H. Waring, once pastor of the church in Oskaloosa, but now retired, was one of the prime movers in getting up that jubilee celebration. He came one day to see me and told me about it and requested me to write an account of the first organization of the Methodist Church in Oskaloosa, and read it on anniversary day. I knew I was the only person in all this country who was there and witnessed that crude and humble beginning. I remembered well the day, and almost all the people, and nearly every circumstance connected with it. I promised Mr, Waring to write as true an account as I could, and read it on the day designated. I give here just what I read on that fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the Methodist Church in Oskaloosa.

Reminiscences. of the Early Days. [BY MRS. T. G. PHILLIPS]

Some of us who have arrived at the age of three score years can, by turning our thoughts back to childhood and early youth, see with the mind's eye a plain, unpretentious home where dwelt our parents, brothers and sisters. We remember with what pure delight we slaked our thirst at the spring which bubbled out of the hillside, forming a little brook which wandered off through the meadow, its banks lined with mint and rushes. The orchard with big apple trees whose limbs were bending down with great red apples; the great, tall poplar trees looking so grand and holding their heads clear above the beech and sugar trees, the old meeting-house where we were wont to assemble on Sunday; the school-house where we were taught "the three R's," and besides "the three R's," a little of English Grammar and Geography.

About 1837 we began to hear a country talked of west of the Mississippi River called "Blackhawk's Purchase." A little later on we heard it called Iowa Territory. We heard wondrous stories of its broad prairies, rich soil and beautiful rivers. About that time there occurred a great financial crisis which led to the breaking of many home ties. Young men with small fortunes, besides health and pluck, bade farewell to parents and sweetheart; older men with families, whose earthly possessions, great or small, had been partially or wholly swept away by the panic, by any means or another made their way to Iowa Territory. Some of us remember a time in the early forties, when our household goods were piled into big wagons, the neighbors coming to bid us good-bye, the four horses or long string of oxen hitched to, the wagon, the tearful parting with relatives and neighbors, the last look at the old home, the crack of the driver's whip, when we began to journey toward what seemed to us a far-off country.

The journey to some of us was delightful. The warm, happy, Indian Summer days; the mellow nights, just cool enough to make camping out pleasant; the poplars and beech and sugar trees arrayed in all the gorgeous coloring which a typical October can give in Ohio and Indiana; the crossing of big prairies in Illinois; the sluggish Illinois River, where were thousands upon thousands of ducks, and finally the great "Father of Waters," are things which do not fade out of the minds of people of ordinary intelligence. The bluffs along the west bank of the great river were covered with oak, elm, hickory, and many other kind of trees and shrubs. To the west were great prairies, interspersed with groves and traversed. by creeks and rivers whose banks were lined with various kinds of trees, festooned with vines whose grace of foliage cannot be described with pen or portrayed with artist's brush. The newcomer found everything here to make a prosperous, rich and beautiful country. Farms were opened, towns sprang up near the Mississippi, and before long the pioneer was found building his cabin and turning over the prairie sod as much as fifty miles west of the great river. In 1843 another purchase of lands was made by the United States government from the Indians. This purchase embraced, among others, what is now Mahaska County. While the Indians were still here, hunters and other adventurers had discovered a grand region lying between the Des Moines and Skunk Rivers. In journeying up through this region they beheld all about them a most charming prospect. Up the divide a vast native meadow, with tall grass waving and flowers blooming, groves to the right of them, groves to the left of them, a vista of green sward in front of them. Looking to the northwest could be seen what seemed to be the timbers bordering the Des Moines and the timbers bordering the Skunk, each reaching out an arm as if trying to clasp hands across the billowy mass of green. It was found that the Des Moines and Skunk Rivers drew nearer each other at this place than in all their meandering course toward the great Father of Waters. Those early discoverers thought "Narrows" an appropriate name, so they called this place "The Narrows."

On the 1st day of May, 1843, white people were given the privilege of coming into this charming place and selecting claims whereon to make homes for themselves. There was not quite such a rush to get in here as there was to enter the Cherokee Strip, but there was something of a rush. Men staked out their claims by torchlight, and when daylight came on the first day of May all the land around and about The Narrows was claimed by somebody. Many families came and settled about through the country in '43. Some lived in tents, some in rudely constructed log cabins, and some even lived for a time in the bark huts left by the Indians. The people who first located on the "Six Mile" prairie thought, and with reason, that they had found the very garden spot of the country. There were several Methodist families among the first who settled on the Six Mile prairie, and it is said that the very first sermon ever preached in Mahaska County was by a young Methodist preacher named Lewis, in somebody's cabin on the Six Mile prairie.

Those early settlers soon began to speculate and maneuver about the location of the county seat. The geographical center of what is now Mahaska County is about two miles north of the place then called The Narrows. The Six Mile prairie people wanted the county seat, the Center people wanted it, and the Narrows people wanted it. The Narrows could boast of having one residence and one other small cabin, with a sign on top on which was painted in large letters the word, "Grocery." The residence was occupied by Perry Crossman and wife, Mrs. Jones, who was Mr. Crossman's mother-in-law (a lady possessing much native wit and shrewdness), and her two sons, George W. and John W. Jones. Mrs. Jones also had a handsome young daughter, Sarah, who is now Mrs. McWilliams, and a citizen of Oskaloosa. The Commercial House, with the sign of grocery on top, was not a wholesale establishment, but did a retail business. not only in groceries, but in what is called "general merchandise." Mr. Crossman and the Jones brothers were sole owners and proprietors, and enjoyed without competition the entire trade of The Narrows. When the commissioners who were appointed to locate the countyseat came in the Spring of '44 they found hospitable entertainment at the Crossman-Jones residence. There they made their headquarters while examining the different points claiming to be the best locations.

That was an early Spring, and by the first of May the groves and prairies looked lovely. The commissioners looked at Six Mile; they looked at the Center, and were rather favorably impressed with that place, not only on account of its being the geographical center of the county, but on account of the many beautiful groves. Among those groves were a number of slight depressions which we called "sloughs." At that time they were all clothed in green and looking their best. After examining all points they assembled at the Crossman-Jones residence to talk it over and make their decision. Mrs. Jones was present during their deliberations and eagerly listening to their remarks, heard one gentleman say: "The Center is a desirable location' on account of those groves being clustered in there so nicely. Why, the Center has seven groves." Mrs. Jones, on hearing this remark, took the liberty of making the following speech: "Gentlemen, you say the Center has seven groves; well, sure enough it has seven groves; but did you notice that mixed up with those seven groves are ten sloughs?" One of the commissioners remarked: "Mrs. Jones is about right." The others thought so, too, and that is the way the county seat came to be located at The Narrows. This was on Saturday, the 11th day of May, 1844.

The new county seat was named "Oskaloosa." A quarter section of land was selected, surveyed and laid off into town lots; these lots were offered for sale to the highest bidder. Several were sold, but bids were so low the sale was stopped for a while. Very soon some log houses were commenced. The first court was held in an unfinished log house. On September 14th, 1844, there were just fifteen little log cabins in Oskaloosa. The first sermon preached by a Methodist in Oskaloosa was on Sunday, September 29th, 1844. Allen Johnson was the preacher. He announced at that meeting that he would on October 13th, hold a meeting at the home of Dr. Weatherford, at which meeting he proposed to organize a class, or society. He requested all who held letters of membership in the M. E. Church to take them with them. By that time several Methodist families had located in Oskaloosa. Dr. Weatherford's house was a log cabin of one room about 15 by 18 feet in size, and was located on Lot 7, Block 19, in the town of Oskaloosa. The weather generally was lovely that fall, but that particular Sunday was cloudy. There was a chilliness in the air which made one think all the time that it was going to snow; but it didn't snow. Dr. Weatherford and his wife made their one room as comfortable as they could for the meeting; some fifteen or twenty persons had gathered there by eleven o'clock. The doctor was only a brother-in-law to the church, but he had skirmished around among the neighbors and borrowed chairs enough to almost seat the entire congregation; as many as could, sat on the bed. In the wide fireplace a heap of logs were blazing which sent a glow of warmth over the faces of that little group. The coffee-pot and sauce-pans hung on the wall; the water-bucket with gourd dipper sat on a box; some blue edged plates ornamented a shelf on the wall. That state of things seems amusing to people of to-day, but that earnest group of worshipers never thought of being amused. Brother Johnson came in, warmed his hands, took off his overcoat, seated himself by the little table where a Bible and hymn-book had been placed, sat in silence a few moments, then proceeded to open the meeting by reading a hymn, He informed the congregation that the hymn would be sung in common meter, and would some brother please lead in singing? We will sing without lining.

"0, for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer's praise."

Brother William G. Lee led the singing. There were good singers in Oskaloosa, even then. The whole congregation knelt while Bro. Johnson prayed; he preached, then invited all who wished to join by letter or by giving him their hand to come forward. Some twelve or fourteen persons then formed the little band which constituted the beginning of the Methodist Church in Oskaloosa. Among those who that day gave their letter or their hands to Bro. Johnson, were Dr. William G. Lee and wife, Samuel Gossage and wife, George Jennison and wife, Mrs. Mary Weatherford, Mrs. Hannah Phillips, and the writer of this, who was then Semira A. Hobbs. The others I cannot recall. After that little organization, meetings were held regularly in one little cabin and another until the court house was built, which was the next year, 1845.

In these days of fine churches, with cushioned pews or opera chairs, carpets, pipe organs and electric lights, young people smile at the idea of holding meetings in little log cabins lighted with a tallow candle or a grease lamp made in a pie pan; but we who lived here fifty years ago and helped to lay the foundation of Iowa's present greatness, saw nothing ludicrous in those crude and humble beginnings. Heavenly meetings were held in those little cabins. For a Methodist preacher, in those days, training in a Theological school was not thought to be necessary, but to be soundly converted, feel a call to preach, and have a tolerable education were the main requirements. Some of that class found their way into the wilds of the New Purchase fifty years ago, and with an eloquence born of faith and an earnest desire to serve God and save souls, stirred and melted the hearts of their hearers. Souls were converted and shouts of joy were heard. Prayers and old-fashioned Methodist songs and love feast meetings, where the brethren and sisters would meet and relate their Christian experiences, made those little log cabins seem "Heavenly places."

All the good people who first came and helped to make this country great and prosperous were not Methodists, though a considerable portion of them were Methodists of the old stamp. The first church erected in Oskaloosa was by the Cumberland Presbyterians. In the very early days they were more numerous than any other denomination. They built their church tn 1846, and at that time had a large membership, but in 1849 so many of them went to California their church here was almost broken up. Other branches of the Presbyterian Church were represented by good and substantial families, whose children and grandchildren are among Mahaska's best citizens to-day. There were a few Baptists here, and in the Spring of 1845 there was a society organized in Smith & Cameron's new frame store building, on Lot 1, Block 28, o. p., Oskaloosa. Mr. Post was the minister.

The red man's bark huts were still standing in Kishkekosh, and his footprints scarcely washed out by the rain, when a little colony of Quakers appeared on the scene and located on one of the most beautiful and fertile spots to be found in Mahaska County. Quakers are and always have been Orthodox in principle, devout in their allegiance to Christ. Quakers were first to discover that women had brains; the first to emancipate women from church slavery and place them side by side with men in the ministry and an affairs of church. Among their fundamental principles are freedom and justice. Quakers make good citizens. They establish and carry on good schools, and add to the prosperity of any community wherein they establish themselves' in any considerable numbers. They never permitted their members to buy and sell men and women. No denomination has done more to enhance business, prosperity, education and moral culture in Mahaska County than the Quakers.

Much is said in these days about the sacrifices made by the families of early settlers. They did break sod, make rails, cook, eat and sleep all in one room; they sometimes went many miles in order to procure corn meal to make bread, which things were somewhat inconvenient, but there was very little sacrifice about it. If we who were the actors on that early stage were making sacrifices, we were not conscious of it. Not many of us had been accustomed to luxuries before we came. Those who had been accustomed to better things before they came, seemed to accept the situation cheerfully. I don't remember of hearing any talk of "sacrifice" in the early days. We had many things which in these days are called luxuries; we had wild turkey and quail, and venison and prairie chicken; we had blackberries and wild gooseberries and strawberries, and an endless variety of plums. There was very little suffering for want of food.

The more I think about the pioneer men and women the more I admire their character. I can hardly recall a man or woman among them who was not honest, honorable, brave, hospitable, high-souled. The most of them have joined the great majority, but if we look about us we will see some of Mahaska's best citizens among their descendants.

Saturday, October 13, 1894.