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From: "Cathy Joynt Labath" <>
Subject: [IAHENRY] !! Free Press; Henry Co, IA; Aug 14, 1879
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 07:31:28 -0600


The Free Press
Mount Pleasant, Henry, Iowa
Thursday, Aug. 14, 1879

A Yankee's Notion of Iowa.
(Hamilton N.Y. Republican)

MT. PLEASANT, IOWA,
July 6, 1879.

Mount Pleasant, a thriving young city of 5,000 or 6,000 inhabitants, is 28
miles west of Burlington. This city in southern Iowa is somewhat noted for its
educational advantages, the Iowa Wesleyan University is here, founded by James
Harlan, who lives here. Its advanced system of public schools is of the very
best. It is called the Athens of Iowa. Also a model Lunatic Asylum, the best in
the west; at least west of the Mississippi, where crazy folks can be as crazy as
they wish to be, and be kindly treated, always.
The season here is good and crops very good, corn, the ruling crop, best
fields as high as a horse's back, and tasseling out, stalks an inch through,
grass very good, I never saw such fine fields of timothy and white clover,
meadows and pastures, very little red clover. The fall wheat and rye is about
all harvested and stands in shocks, spring wheat and oats are beginning to turn
yellow. The stock of horses and cattle and hogs are well bred. The best horses
are grades from the Norman blood. I saw a gray Norman stallion of pony build,
short back and long hips and broad and flat limbs and good motion, weight 1700
pounds. A three year old grade mare of fine proportions, weight, 1270 pounds.
The cattle are mostly grade Durhams, good size and good in flesh. Hogs (the
leading stock crop, for they pay the best,) are innumerable, and all black or
black and white; white hogs are as scarce as white crows. I went to a farm where
they had a cheese or butter factory. There was about 75 cows and they had the
milk of 125 more, and 300 black hogs of the Berkshire kind, large and little and
the soil and mud they rolled in made them shine so the dirtiest looked the
cleanest.

THE PEOPLE
I will try and describe an Iowa crowd in contrast with a New York state
crowd. The Fourth was a great day in Mt. Pleasant. My brother, who has lived
here since 1868, says it was the largest crowd he ever saw here. The county
literally emptied itself into the city, and at the time of the balloon
ascension, about 4 p.m., the vast crowd is variously estimated at from five to
ten thousand people. The first contrast that struck me was the large number of
vigorous men and women in the prime of life, and so many young men and women
leading and carrying in their arms young children and babies, and such a large
number of children and such a small number of old men and women. They are very
scarce and of course are very dear. I felt rather lonesome, but consoled myself
by thinking if I stayed here long enough I might become dear. There is also a
large sprinkling of colored people. When the war began, they ran away from
Northern Missouri and have never gone back. They are uniformly quiet and jolly,
with their black faces, white teeth and numerous children. They are first rate
to chink into a crowd. The people came in to town in the tidy phaeton, in the
nice family carriage, in the square box democrat, in the strong built farm
wagon, in the rude prairie vehicle, on horse back and mule back, for they are
good riders, most always at a gallop; and thus they poured in in the morning,
and poured out at night. I never saw so many people together, so quiet and
apparently so happy, and for a wonder, I didn't see a single person the worse
for liquor! Indeed there is no intoxicating drink allowed to be sold within to
and a half miles of the city.
Once more and I am done. One reason why I like to stay here is there are so
many Throops. A brother and family, another brother's children, a nephew edits a
paper, the FREE PRESS. Van Cise & Throop. Van Cise is in the Black Hills, and my
bother takes his place as associate editor. I call it a very good western paper.
Will send you a number. The country about Mt. Pleasant is well timbered. Big
Creek, out two or three miles, surrounds it like a horse shoe, and four to ten
miles out the Skunk River, a large stream, surrounds it in the same way. Both
these streams are crookeder than fourteen rams horns. My brother says where Big
Creek rises and empties- a running length of 100 miles- is only ten miles apart,
and some bends in it, and the Skunk, are forty rods across and a mile and a half
around. These streams are heavily timbered, with cottonwood , oak, elm,
butternut and ash, some maple, soft and hard. The shade trees are most all soft
maple, which grows very thrifty and high. All good farms have groves of them
about their homes. One man showed me a nursery planted with the seed three years
ago, and some of them were ten feet high.

GOSSIP.
I saw one day riding into the country a sign, "Cabage Plants for sale." I
wouldn't buy any thing of any body who couldn't spell right. A girl a dozen
years old, astride a velocipede, bare foot and going fast. A woman riding a
horse on a man's saddle, with a baby and a tin pail. A bright, plump girl on a
smooth, bay pony, on which she sat as graceful as a duck upon the water. A young
girl riding a horse to rope hay, in a twenty-acre meadow, with a barn at one
end. These are some of the contrasts in the country compared with ours. It
think, as B.F. Taylor said about California, "It's the climate." T.

Cathy Joynt Labath
Henry Co, IA USGenWeb Project
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iahenry/index.htm
Iowa Old Press
http://www.IowaOldPress.com/


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