HISTORY OF STORY COUNTY, IOWA
BY W.G. ALLEN
LETTER FROM JOHN RANDOLPH GOODEN, OF OHIO, JANUARY 30, 1857.
[For the Advocate.]
"Mr. Editor: Happy—thrice happy—am I to make the acquaintance of the Story County Advocate. A little over one year ago, I went to Nevada, and at that time there were but eight or ten log cabins to mark the spot where your now prosperous village stands. When I left there this past spring, some three hundred intelligent and enterprising inhabitants were present to interpret the mystery of its prosperity and progress. Few counties, indeed, can boast of a faster people, and but few justly boast of a richer soil. Its settlement would have been, no doubt, more rapid, had its peculiar advantages been sooner made known. Situated as it is, in the geographical center of the State, with a sufficiency of excellent timber and rich, rolling prairie, it would be passing strange, indeed, did it not receive a consideration equal to the advantages presented. As the capitol question is again agitated, and Ft. De Moine begins to lay the wires, it would be well for you to urge your claims—for claims you have—for a central location. This vexed question ought to be settled, in my mind, on the equitable principle of `popular sovereignty'—regardless of past `compromises' and `compacts.' Then send out the Advocate as the representative of Story County, and let the masses know that the "Injins" have long since left your regions, and in their stead remain as intelligent and go-a-head-ative whites as ever graced the soil of the `Hawkeye,' or any other State. While the farmer in this county expends a life of toil and vexation in opening up a farm which seldom benefits him, but sometimes his posterity ; the Iowa farmer, with less expense, less toil in the short space of three or four years by proper industry, may be the owner of a well cultivated farm—clear of roots and stumps—and, in the language of somebody, ` be a monarch of (nearly) all he surveys.' I have no doubt, from what has already transpired, that my wildest conjectures and anticipations in regard to the future of Story County will, ere long, be realized. It is said, that `Westward the star of Empire takes its way,' and I am inclined to believe that the emigration to the west next spring will be very great; yet Kansas will, doubtless, receive a share. There is