USA > Iowa > Marion County > Pella > Souvenir history of Pella, Iowa : contains a concise story of the founding and life of Pella, Iowa > Part 23
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The mother of whom I am writing was not born, nor was she reared, in the West. The blood of the movers did not course in her veins. To her a home was not something on four wheels; it was a fixed place where year after year the same flowers bloomed like familiar faces returned, and where year after year the same birds came to nest and sing. She belonged to one of the oldest and proudesl civilizations of Europe. She came out of surroundings that were ages old, to live in those that were ages young. If the new things thrilled her, the memories of the old must sometimes have depressed her. She was often bewildered. She spoke of wandering out into the prairies like a child lost in a strange land. They seemed so wide and the sky stood so high over them. At night their stillness broken by the howlings of the wolves made her think of death. And when the winds moaned through the grasses by day their billows reminded her of the seas she had crossed.
I never understood what she told me about such feelings and impressions until many years afterwards when for the first time I heard Dvorak's New World
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Symphony-as I listened to that beautiful music I recalled what she had told me, and the meaning of it was made plain to me. She had been homesick amid her new surroundings; she had longed for the old scenes. The composer of that music had lived on the same prairies and he had mingled their moanings with the same memories and longings of an alien soul. As she might have painted Blash- field's picture, so she might have composed Dvorak's music, if the gift of the genius of the painter and the musician had been hers.
But when she had children of her own, the past must have vanished from her mind, for children belong to the future. She was soon dreaming and planning for them in her new and multitudinous land. She hoped for them better things than had befallen her-for that is the ever recurring hope of all mothers. When they began to build a college in the town near where she lived-a university they called it in those days-she dreamed and hoped all the more. The projectors of that college thought of it as a voice crying in the wilderness, but she thought of it as a doorway and a gate for her children, for the born and the unborn. In that door- way they would stand on the thresholds of other worlds, and by that gate they would enter the future which she craved for them. Glimpses of other worlds had come to her, and dreams of places whose walls were wider and whose roofs were higher than cabins on the prairies. She told me that as she watched the builders of that college she thought that every brick they layed in mortar was like a kind and comforting word spoken to her. And perhaps her happiest and proudest days were those when her children went to school at that college.
And they were beautiful days-they are still beautiful to me in memory. Bright mornings, noondays steeped in sunshine, and lingering twilights. Balsams and four o'clocks blossomed in the gardens, verbenas and portulacas crawled out of their beds to burst into bloom, mignonette sweetened the air, and holly-hocks and sunflowers and trailing morning glories vied with each other. Creaking wagons passed slowly by and disappeared on dusty roads. No one was in a hurry, and, perhaps, no one was worried over many things.
How times and manners and customs have changed! How simple were human wants in those days, and how complex they are today! What was then a luxury is now hardly a subsistence. What was then a day's journey is now the flight of a moment. In those days they still scanned the almanacs, and every year they read the Bible through to their children, dewy morning in the Garden of Eden to the effulgent splendors of the New Jerusalem of which the seer dreamed in the sunset of his life on Patmos Island. Now in every home in Iowa they read what happened in the world yesterday. The rising sun brings the message from the four corners of the world, and from the seven seas thereof. What was done in Africa and Asia last night is talked over at the dinner tables of the four corners of the state. Marvelous and miraculous! But if we think of things they dreamed not of, have we forgotten others which they knew? Even in her day, George Eliot sighed because leisure was gone-"gone where the spinning wheels are gone, and the pack horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons." Men and women also, live faster now. They think they live. And yet do they take time to live?
But these days are gone. They will not return. Three hundred thousand automobiles have displaced the creaking wagons. Humanity is now on wheels. It is going up into the air. We call it progress and we boast of it and rejoice in it. But if we must think of those other days as slow and prosaic and uninterest- ing, still let us not forget that we are the beneficiaries of those who lived so leisurely then, and who planned so much for the future. We are their debtors-
1 Dvorak lived for a time in Winneshiek County and is said to have composed portions of his symphony while under the spell of the Iowa prairies. His Iowa home was in the village of Spillville, near Decorah.
" Central University, at Pella, which was founded by the Baptists of Iowa.
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let us pay our debts to them at least in the tokens of remembrance. And let us not despise their ways, lest those who come after us despise our ways. May not the historian of 2020 moralize over the old fashioned things of 1920, even as we now moralize over the past! All wisdom has not yet been garnered, neither has all progress been achieved. And in the meantime, folly, as Satan among the sons of God and men, is also present.
Ah, yes, they were old fashioned days and old fashioned ways! But there were in them many beautiful relations between parents and children. If much was then exacted of children, much was also bestowed upon them. Mothers would have lived on crusts rather than deprive their children of schools. They measured their passing years not by the riches they accumulated in twelve months, but by the growth and progress of their children. Stocks and bonds were less, but flesh and blood were more. The mother of whom I have been writing, and of whom I am still thinking-and there were many such in Iowa then-was hap- piest when her children were gathered around the evening lamp-and one lamp served all- each one with a book or slate. All idleness was waste, and all waste was sin.
And books! what a supreme veneration that mother had for books. What was the secret message she discerned as her children pored over the printed pages? Was there some magic power in them which she coveted for them; some key to the riddles of the future-the key which she did not find herself? She often told me that her brother who had died in his youth had written things which might have been printed in books had he lived to perfect them-and I thought she wanted me, who had been named after him, to finish his work. And years later when I placed in her hands my own little book-a mere pamphlet which' I had bound in covers to please her-what a delight she took in it! Of such trifling things was happiness made in those old leisurely days that are gone. And yet is there anything that has come into the world that is better or more divine than love between mothers and their children?
But books around evening lamps were not all of life. The out of doors in the sunlight and the twilight were also much, or even more, to that mother. She taught me to love the fields and all that in them is. She was mindful of the flowers and the trees, of the growing corn and the lowing cattle; of the larks in the meadows and the eagles soaring in the skies. She watched for the coming and the going of the water fowls when the sun changed in his course. And all these things are forever associated with my memories of her. I never see æ' prairie lily in bloom, and I never hear a whippoorwill calling, that I do not think of her in the beautiful days of old. My delight in them comes from the delight she had in them. And could any of us "have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it?"
When I went away to do the things which she would have me do, if she had not planned them for me before I was born, as often as I returned to the old home we walked through the fields, by the hedges and the rail fences, and under the trees which she never ceased to love. And always back of the orchard, she would point out to nie where the sweep of the prairies had been, when she was young and Iowa was young. And always she tried to tell me how beautiful they had been to her-and if anything had been ugly and bitter, she seemed to have for- gotten about them. She remembered still the nesting places of the birds, and the nooks in which the fairest flowers bloomed. She talked about the robins in the apple trees and the thrushes in the hedges; of the violets in the hollows and the roses on the ridges. She knew where the wild lilies still blossomed in patches of sod which the plows of men had never upturned, and where grew the clusters of pale gold which the Indians called puccoon, but which she called fillette, out
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of another language. And when darkness fell, until late into the night, she talked about the past, her own more than fifty years in Iowa, of Indians and settlers, of wolves and storms. Some of these things I have tried to write into this book- but not all of them, for there are things that a mother can tell her son that he can not tell to others.
But she never finished telling her story of Iowa, for one afternoon in the spring of the year, the threads of her remembrance and of her life were broken. She passed away while waiting for a cup of tea, the social afternoon cup which she herself had poured for so many others, for 4 o'clock had always been tea time in her home. It was the best way for her to leave the earth which she had loved so much through nearly four score of years.
She was only one of the many pioneer mothers in Iowa. She did not live in the sight of the world. She died unknown to fame. But after having written so much about so many others, I could not do less than write something also about her-and how poor is the little I can do for her, compared with the much more which she did for me.
--
Washington Street in the Early Days. Looking West From Northeast Corner of the Square
20
Reminiscences
Geo. A. Jewett
Pella celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary just as I am also celebrating my seventy-fifth anniversary. I was born on the 9th day of September, 1847, in Red Rock, but twelve iniles away from Pella. My father, George Enoch Jewett, and my mother, Patty Matthews Jewett, were both born in Lake county, Ohio, and came to Henry county, Iowa, in 1838, coming with their parents and their brothers and sisters. My father and mother were married in Henry county in 1839. My grandfather, David Lewis Jewett, and my father, George Enoch Jewett, and my grandfather, Osee Matthews, and two of his sons, Reuben Matthews and Simpson Bell Matthews, were all present at the treaty with the Sac and Fox Indians, which was made at Agency in the fall of 1842 with Keokuk, the celebrated Indian chief. This treaty stipulated that the Indians should give up their land as far west as the red rocks on the Des Moines river and beyond that was to be Indian territory until October 10, 1845. These red rocks are just above the town of Red Rock, where I was born and where I have often played when a boy.
My father and mother and my grandparents, May 1, 1843, moved up into Marion county, and settled on Lake Prairie, and in 1846 they sold out to the Holland colony and moved on up to Red Rock, where I was born the following year, 1847. I have often heard my mother tell of the early days in Marion county, when the Indians were their neighbors.
The first election in Marion county was held at Lake Prairie the first Monday in October, 1843, in which my grandfather, Osee Matthews, and his two sons, Reuben and Simpson, and my father, Geo. E. Jewett, participated. There was an Indian village near their claim which was called Keokuk's town. In the spring of 1845 a meeting was held to organize the county; it was held at the home of Nathan Bass; my family was represented at this meeting by my grandfather, Osee Matthews, and his three sons, Reuben, Simpson and Homer, and by my father, George Enoch Jewett. Red Rock wanted to be the county seat, as it was on the river, but the flood of 1851 destroyed all hopes of that, as many people were forced to leave the town. My uncle, Reuben Matthews, wanted to call it Center county, but the name Marion prevailed, and June 10, 1845, the legislature at Iowa City so named it. The first postoffice in Marion county was on Lake Prairie, 1845; the first white child born in Marion county was my cousin, Amanda Lenora Alfrey. My uncle, Osee Matthews, Jr., built the first saw mill in Marion county, in 1846, on Mixel's creek, back of Red Rock. My uncle, Simpson Bell Matthews, built the first flour mill in this section of the state in 1854 at Red Rock.
I can remember as a boy hearing of the project of building a college at Pella and in 1857 my mother decided to remove to Pella that she might place myself and my older brother, Homer, in this school. I remember well this removal. I was walking along behind the wagon which contained our household effects and I remember just as well as if it was but yesterday, a man on horseback met us and he asked me, "Where are you moving to, bub?" and I recall with what pride I answered to Pella to go to school. It was an event in my young life.
So we removed to Pella. Our first home was just north of the college campus, the northwest corner, in a little frame house. This was the first time I had ever gone that far and I remember Pella now as it looked to me, then a boy of ten, a good many brick houses, some log houses, I thought it was a wonderful place and as I looked at the college building it seemed an immense affair, I could easily have been convinced that it was the largest building in the whole world. It
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stood then just as it stood but a few days ago when the fire destroyed it. It was on the prairie, not a shrub or tree around it. I remember as I was out examining a chain pump in the yard and turning the crank to see the continuous flow of water, it was something new to me as I was accustomed to carrying water from a spring. There were many chain pumps in Pella at that time and as I was exam- ining that pump I heard a bell. In astonishment I looked around to see where that noise came from. I finally located it coming from the belfry of old Central College and as I have often since related I have many times heard Big Ben, said to be the loudest toned bell in the world, that hangs in the tower house of Parlia- ment in London, but Big Ben never sounded half so loud as did the little bell in old Central in September, 1857. And again I have often listened to Bowbells in the tower of Bow Church on Cheapside, London. These bells are noted as the sweetest toned bells in all the world. No one is a true Londoner unless he is born in the sounds of Bowbells. There is a story that Dick Whittington, when a poor lad with a pack on his back was sitting on a milestone in Islington, North London; he was leaving London to seek his fortune and Bowbells com- menced to ring and he was represented as holding his hand to his ear and listen- ing to it and he interpreted it as saying, "Come back, come back, and be Lord Mayor of Londontown." He heeded its summons, he went back and thrice was he Lord Mayor of London. But as sweet toned as Bowbells were, they never sounded half so sweet as did that little bell in Central on the 9th day of September, 1857.
As I said at that time old Central campus was but a vacant prairie; the splendid trees which you see there now I helped to plant some sixty years ago. I was not in school then, but hearing that a frolic was to be made of this I went down and assisted in the planting.
I soon formed acquaintances with my Holland friends which have remained during all these years. The cordiality, the hospitality, the sincerity of these people has always remained with me as a delightful inspiration.
The old timers remember the stepping stones that we used to cross the streets. Do you remember the fireworks one Fourth of July when fire accidentally got in the packages and they shot off in all directions? I was there and hid on the ground behind a tree.
What a splendid lot were the members of the faculty of Old Central, in my days, with Dr. Gunn, the president, there was Dr. Scarf, Prof. Currier, who after- wards went to Iowa City; Mother Stoddard and Miss Mitchell, who taught the primary department where I first entered.
What great times we had during the Lincoln-Hamlin campaign. We organ- ized a junior Wide Awake Club, wore capes and caps and carried a torch and halloed for Lincoln while the older boys were in the regular Wide Awake Club. I remember one time during that campaign when we went with wagons across to Knoxville and took part in a parade. Then came the Civil War and the shot was fired on Fort Sumter and what exciting times we were having in school in those days. In our literary society we were debating in reference to the Dred Scott decision, was slavery to be carried into the territories, was Mason and Dixon line to be extended west to the Pacific? We were in earnest as if the fate of the union depended on these debates. Then came the call to arms when every able-bodied young man in Central enlisted in the war. I was but thirteen and one-half years old and deep was my regret at the time that I could not go.
It is always a pleasure to me to speak of the splendid members of the faculty of Central. Mother Stoddard and Dr. Scarf insisted that I stay in school but as I had to leave the school to go into the country to work they mapped out a course of reading and study and had me come in and make occasional recitations until I finished my course.
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But when we contemplate the wonderful results of the labors of the pioneers of the Holland colony, when we see the splendid city of homes, we are moved to be thankful for the splendid work they did.
I have kept in close touch with Central and Pella all these years, was a mem- ber of the Board of Trustees of Central several years representing the alumni, and it is a pleasure to me to look back over the sixty-five years I have known Pella and to testify to the faithfulness and loyalty of its citizens both then and now.
Mrs. Adriana Maria Hasselman-Van Horsen
With my parents, Adam Peter Hasselman and Alida Christina Gerdesse Tim- mermans, and seven brothers and sisters, I came to America in the sailing vessel, the Maastroom, which left the Netherlands early in April, 1847.
As others have already described the voyage up to the arrival in St. Louis, I will begin my narrative at that point. While we left Holland with a family of ten members, there were but nine when we arrived in America. My infant sister, Anna Susanna, died at sea.
In St. Louis we lived for some three months in a large room in a two-story building on River street. Living at that time was very cheap. I well remember that mother would go to the market to buy the material for our dinner, and that twenty-five cents was sufficient to buy meat, potatoes and vegetables enough for a dinner for nine persons.
While we had no ice cream, cake or pie, we could buy a bucket full of de- licious peaches for ten cents. I will never forget the time when father came home with a huge, round object which, when he laid it down on the floor, burst open and exposed to our astonished eyes a deep red interior. We children had seen so many turtles crawling about in St. Louis that when we saw the object with its red interior, we ran away in fear, thinking it was some kind of new and fear- some river beast. But when father cut a generous slice for each of us. we soon concluded that our adopted country produced more luscious fruit than any we had ever enjoyed in the home land. It has already been recorded in the history of that time how the good Christian people of St. Louis vied with each other in open-hearted hospitality toward the strangers within their gates, and how one of their largest church buildings was offered, rent free, for the use of our people during their entire stay in the city.
In harmony with that spirit an American Sunday school teacher called on us the first Sabbath morning of our stay and asked that all the children should come to the school where he taught. Upon learning from father that we were afraid to go far from the house because of the many negroes, none of whom we had over seen before coming to America, he offered to take us with him and prom- ised to bring us safely back after the services. Not only did he do this, but from that time until we left for Pella, this Godly man came for us every Sabbath morn- ing. This was not only for our spiritual good, but it was a great help to us in mastering the English language.
When the Commission finally sent word that a suitable location for the colony had been secured, our household goods were packed back into the nine large boxes in which they had made the journey from Holland, and in the last part of September we started by steamboat for Keokuk. The trip lasted about twenty- four hours, and the scenes along the mighty Father of Waters made an impression on us that remains to this day.
At Keokuk a fortunate incident occurred that enabled us to start for Pella the next morning after our arrival at Keokuk. Father met a man who had just
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come from near Pella with two good horse teams and wagons. This man was an American who lived near Pella, and father at once made arrangements with him to take the family back with him. So the next morning we started on the last lap of the long and momentous journey commenced nearly six months before, in our native town of Gouda, Holland. The trip from Keokuk lasted about one week.
Here and there along the way there were small log houses for the accommo- dation of travelers, but these we often found occupied when we arrived and then we all slept in the covered wagons. To us children this was an adventure that we greatly enjoyed. The weather and roads were fine and I will never forget how thrillingly interesting the way through the new and strange country was to us all. Across miles of prairie studded with beautiful autumn flowers, through seemingly endless stretches of virgin forest, across bridgeless streams, we wended our way toward the "City of Refuge" that was to be our home for many years to come.
Often we children got out to gather the flowers which grew everywhere in wild profusion. We also wanted very much to stop long enough to gather a store of the hickory, hazel and walnuts with which the forests abounded, but except when we were camped for the night, the driver refused to stop very long as he wanted to take advantage of the favorable weather and road conditions.
We arrived at the farm home of Cornelis Den Hartog at noon and found a bountiful dinner awaiting us. On this farm there was a second log cabin only partially completed, which was to be our first home in the new land. We moved in that same day and as father was a carpenter he immediately started in to finish the house.
In the spring father bought a lot in Pella just across the street from the Ben Blommers home, where he built a long shed-like house, where we lived for five years. This was large enough to afford living accommodations for the family and a carpenter shop for father. Owing to its size this house was generally re- ferred to by the early settlers as "Noah's Ark."
While we naturally missed many comforts and conveniences to which we had been accustomed in our well ordered home in the Netherlands, I can truly say that none of us ever regretted coming to Pella. On the contrary, we have always felt a deep sense of gratitude to God for having guided us to this goodly land and to the "City of Refuge;" and in the evening of a long life, during which I have seen Pella grow from a crude pioneer village into the beautiful little home city that we all love, I can truly say from a full heart that, in the providence of God,"Our lines were cast in pleasant places."
Editor's Note .- Mrs. Adriana Maria Hasselman-Van Horsen, to whom we are indebted for the above interesting and vivid account of early history, is living at the goodly age of eighty-four years and nine months, in the city in and near which she has spent the greater part of her long life. We feel assured that all her many friends will join us in the wish that she may yet be spared for many years, to tell us more of the interesting experiences through which she passed in the pioneer days.
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