IAHENRY-L Archives

From: "Cathy Joynt Labath" <>
Subject: [IAHENRY] Mount Pleasant in 1857
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 14:21:07 -0500

Burlington Weekly Hawkeye
Burlington, Des Moines, Iowa
Wednesday, July 8, 1857


Letter from the West.
Correspondence from the Cincinnati Gazette
MOUNT PLEASANT-COMFORTS AND ATTRACTIONS-NEW ENGLAND HOMES-CHURCHES AND
ACADEMIES
Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, June 22, 1857.
Mount Pleasant is a thriving town of 5,000 inhabitants, the county seat
of Henry county, and situated thirty miles northwest of Burlington. The
Burlington and Missouri Railroad which is designed to intersect the Missouri
river at the mouth of Platte, is completed to this point. It runs through a
beautiful country, fertile, well watered, rolling, with a sufficiency of
timber, and dotted all over with improved farms, substantial farm buildings
and flourishing towns. The whole region of the valley of the Des Moines,
including the triangle between the river and the Mississippi, is one of the
garden spots of the West, smiling with plenty and full of the indications of
substantial progress. Take this little town for example.
Here are a number of brick blocks on the public square that would not
disgrace Walnut or Main streets. The occupants appear to be full of bustle
and business. Scattered over the wide area which is covered by the town,
embosomed among trees and shrubbery, are numbers of tasteful dwellings,
which show that the plans and pictures in Downing's books have been studied
west of the Mississippi. Half a dozen church spires, surmounting respectable
and even elegant edifices, give relief to the picture, while, if you stroll
a little out of town you find a large and handsome structure of brick, which
on inquiry you find to be a University. This belongs to our Methodist
friends, shrewd pioneers in education, as in every other good cause, who, a
little ambitiously perhaps, have designated their respectable college the
Iowa University. In another direction the foundation and first story of a
massive Asylum for Lunatics, which, when completed, will do honor to the
State, are just reared above the prairie; and if after the stroll which we
have suggested, you feel inclined to take your ease in your in, a house with
all the "modern improvements," including a printed bill of fare of dinner,
invites you to tables groaning with plenty, ( and in this instance for once,
well cooked) nice airy chambers, and good beds, but with not a drop of the
"creature" to be had for love or money. This is one specimen of Iowa.
Another specimen, more unique-al little colony of Yankee farmers, have
settled together on a beautiful prairie, fifteen miles south west of
Burlington, and have given to the cluster of houses, hardly enough together
to be called a village, the name of Denmark. It is a piece of New England,
transplanted bodily and set out in the prairie. The neat houses, white with
green blinds, comfortable barns and roomy sheds, the roads shaded by
plantations of maple and locust; the trim flower gardens; the Congregational
Church, as near the center of the settlement as may be, with spire and bell,
and long rows of sheds to shelter the farmer's team when he comes to
"meeting," the snug district school, and not far off and in dignified
companionship with the church, the stately Academy, also furnished with its
spire and bell, all make up a feature of New England as true to the life as
you can see in the old Bay State. Enter their houses and you will find rye
and Indian bread, and Johnny cake. Their text books of political and
religious faith are the Tribune and Independent, and they go to meeting of
Sundays, (morning and afternoon service at sound of bell, with an hour's
intermission between,) and sing out of Ward Beecher's hymn book to the good
old tunes of Old Hundred and Mead, and noble men and women they are, true as
steel to the faith of their fathers.
Their thrift and economy have been amply rewarded. Their farms
purchased at Congress price are worth $30 per acre, with ready market at the
river for all they can raise. There are some thirty dairy farms in this
settlement, keeping each fifteen to one hundred cows, and devoted
exclusively to making cheese, which competes with the Western Reserve
article in the Burlington market. Their chief difficulty is the high price
and scarcity of labor. Farm hands command $22 per month; and year before
last fields of wheat were permitted to rot on the ground because labor could
not be procured to harvest them.
The tide of emigration through this country to Western Iowa and
Nebraska is immense.- Like and army of locusts it sweeps every thing eatable
out of the country. This morning a dozen wagons of movers, drawn each by two
yokes of oxen, went through Mount Pleasant, every wagon well garnished with
children's faces. Of course they were headed toward the setting sun.
I.D.F.

This thread:

• [IAHENRY] Mount Pleasant in 1857 by "Cathy Joynt Labath" <>