Osceola in Clark County, in the eastern part of Union County, in the southwestern part of Cass County, and in the southern part of Mills County. But the principal Mormon settlement was near Council Bluffs.26 These thrifty people thus made generous contributions to the settlement of the country in southwestern Iowa. Other settlers had moved into this section by 1847, and with the great overland immigration through southern Iowa to California in 1849 and in 1850 Kanesville (Council Bluffs) became a typical frontier town like Weston and Independence in Missouri.27

Iowa never attracted foreigners in the same proportions as did Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but in 1847 there came to Marion County a company of earnest and thrifty Hollanders who made no small contribution to the intelligence and industry of the State. About a thousand of them had left Holland under the direction of Henry Peter Scholte. From New York they had gone west to St. Louis and here Scholte left them while he set out accompanied by a chosen committee to select a home for his colony in Iowa. Land was offered them in Lee County but the title appeared doubtful and Scholte decided to seek advice from the agent of the United States land office at Fairfield in Jefferson County. After carefully investigating the selections to which his attention had been directed Scholte persuaded his companions to agree to buy from pioneers who had not completed payments on their claims and who did not therefore have clear titles.

While Scholte busily examined the maps of the land office

26 Negus's The Early History of Iowa in The Annals of Iowa (First Series), Vol. IX, pp. 578, 579.

27 For a good account of Council Bluffs see Babbitt's Early Days at Council Bluffs. The Annals of Iowa (First Series), Vol. IX, pp. 670-672, gives material on Council Bluffs as a frontier community.

in Fairfield other members of the committee were investigating the country in that vicinity. Finally, upon the recommendation of a Baptist missionary whom they met by chance the committee decided to investigate lands on the frontier about seventy miles west of Fairfield. On July 29, 1847, the missionary acting as guide conducted the committee into the section located in the northeastern part of what is now Marion County. So well pleased were they with the country and with the terms which they were able to make that deals were closed immediately with several pioneers living in the vicinity of the present town of Pella and south along the Des Moines River. Having purchased the land and completed other arrangements for accommodating the company the committee returned to St. Louis where their friends were awaiting their report.28

When the five committeemen made a report to their comrades in that city nearly all of them were eager to move northward immediately. Some of the members of the company, however, had secured profitable employment in St. Louis and it was decided to have them continue at their work temporarily while the others went ahead and prepared homes. About five or six hundred of the party, having supplied themselves with an adequate supply of food and clothing, took passage on a Mississippi River steamer and arrived at Keokuk within two days. Horses, wagons, and other things essential for an overland journey were purchased, and the company proceeded up the Des Moines Valley, arriving at their destination in August, 1847. Scholte had made a contract with some Americans for the construction of fifty log cabins and for the delivery of some lumber, all of which was to have been attended to before the

28 Van der Zee's The Hollanders of Iowa, Chs. VIII, IX, and X, provided the most of the data on the Hollanders given above. See also Niles' Register, Vol. LXXIII, pp. 48, 167.

company's arrival, but these things had not been done. The Hollanders were keenly disappointed, for they had hoped to find at least the materials for their homes.29

Despite such a discouraging beginning the company proceeded at once to lay out a town which they called Pella, and to construct temporary dwellings to shelter them while they selected their lands, prepared to till the soil and to build more substantial homes. The streets of Pella "Strooijen Stad" or Straw Town as it was called - were given such names as Extension, Addition, Washington, Franklin, Columbus, Liberty, Union, and Independence; while the avenues were called Perseverance, Inquiring, Reformation, Gratitude, Patience, Experience, Confidence, Expectation, and Accomplishment. In a few years these streets and avenues were lined with rows of simple wooden houses interspersed with a few dwellings of red brick, and the eighteen thousand acres of fertile land which Scholte had selected were converted into profitable farms on which the owners had constructed comfortable homes. Wild fruits grew in abundance in the woods, and on their farms the Hollanders raised good crops of Indian corn, flax, wheat, buckwheat, and vegetables. From their cows which were provided with shelter during the long winter, contrary to the custom of the American frontiersmen, the Dutch obtained generous quantities of rich milk and made more than enough butter and cheese to supply their own needs. In

29Imagine a number of bakers, tailors and shoemakers, painters, officeclerks, business managers, and such like", exclaims their historian, "who had all their lives been used to the city life of Europe. some of whom hardly knew what a cow or a pig looked like, nor had the slightest knowledge of farm implements; who had left neat and comfortable homes and had never known or seen others imagine such people suddenly transplanted to an open prairie, with here and there some timber, seeing nothing but grass, trees and sky, and finding no protection against the elements! It takes but a few lines

to tell it, but to live it is something wholly different."- Quoted in Van der Zee's The Hollanders of Iowa, p. 68.

fact "Iowa cheese", which was shipped by these thrifty farmers, became famous in the St. Louis market.30

Irish and German immigrants formed settlements south of the Hollanders, the former occupying fertile lands in the western part of Monroe County and the latter selecting what was considered a barren country on Coal Creek, sometimes called the Dutch Ridge. The Irish on account of their poverty were compelled to make their meager resources yield the largest possible returns, and by selecting fertile lands were soon living in comfort. The Germans, although in possession of sufficient funds to pay for the best in the country, selected the ridge lands which were covered with white oaks and dense undergrowth where they too established a prosperous community and lived a comparatively isolated political life.31

The United States census reports show that nearly one hundred and fifty thousand people moved into Iowa during the decade ending in 1850. These immigrants, as shown by the maps accompanying the reports, had occupied the eastern and southern parts of the State, with the exception of a very small area in the extreme northeastern corner and a circle around the present town of Quincy near the center of Adams County in the southwest. The entire north and northwestern parts of the State were still unoccupied. The decade beginning in 1850 was to witness a migrating tide which was to sweep over the waste places of the State and to inundate the valleys and hills with more than sufficient human energy to build up a Commonwealth of the first rank.

There were several things which encouraged migration during this period. Railroad lines had been completed to the Mississippi, and so the eastern border of Iowa was 30 Van der Zee's The Hollanders of Iowa, pp. 77, 78.

31 Hickenlooper's An Illustrated History of Monroe County, Iowa, pp. 188,

easily reached. It was during this decade also that the railroads began advertising western lands. Land speculators and land companies offered inducements which appeared most alluring to the land hungry men of the more densely populated areas farther east. Guides for emigrants were published in great quantities, and articles "containing glowing accounts of the beauty, advantages, and fertility of the Iowa country appeared in hundreds of Eastern newspapers until the name 'Iowa' became a household word; and those who were so fortunate as already to own a home in that far-famed State wrote enthusiastic letters to their relatives and former neighbors urging them to come and share in their prosperity."'32

These inducements combined with a fatal epidemic of cholera in the middle States and a severe drought throughout the Ohio Valley during the summer of 1854 brought homeseekers to Iowa by the thousands, particularly during the years 1854 to 1856. ""The immigration into Iowa the present season is astonishing and unprecedented'", writes Mr. Clark quoting from an account published in an Eastern journal in June, 1854. "For miles and miles, day after day, the prairies of Illinois are lined with cattle and wagons, pushing on toward this prosperous State. At a point beyond Peoria, during a single month, seventeen hundred and forty-three wagons had passed, and all for Iowa. Allowing five persons to a wagon, which is a fair average, would give 8715 souls to the population." " "Commenting on this statement," continues Mr. Clark, "an Iowa City editor added: "This being but the immigration of the month, and upon one route only out of many, it would not be an unreasonable assertion to say that 50,000 men, women, and

32 Clark's The Westward Movement in the Upper Mississippi Valley During the Fifties in the Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, 1913-1914, p. 215.

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