IASCOTT-L Archives

From: "Cathy Joynt Labath" <>
Subject: [IASCOTT] Pioneers Settlers Assoc Memorial Speech, 1872
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 15:48:46 -0600

ANNALS OF IOWA
VOL. X IOWA CITY, JANUARY, 1872 NO. 1.

MEMORIAL SPEECH BY JUDGE GRANT
The Scott County Pioneer Settlers' Association, of Scott county, held
their fifteenth annual festival at Davenport, on the evening of January 9th,
1872, on which occasion the Hon. James Grant pronounced the following
eloquent eulogy on some of the pioneer dead of Scott county:-
There is always a sadness attendant on our annual meetings. This
association was created to preserve from oblivion the memory of the early
settlers of this county, and to make some permanent record of past events,
which otherwise would be forgotten when our day and generation had departed.
We have all lived so many years in this community that we are now old
men and old women. Long before our organization was created, a large
majority of the settlers of this county-prior to December 1, 1840-had passed
out of existence, without a record of even their names, much less their
history.
Every year since our organization we have been called upon to mourn the
death of some members of this body whose lives had been passed in usefulness
among us, and whose memory was endeared to us by fond recollections. Antoine
Le Claire, Ebenezer Cook, Willard Barrows, and Charles Metteer, who had held
high positions in society, end been presidents of this body, have all died
and been buried by this society, with the honor and respect due to
well-spent lives. Never, in the last fourteen years, have we met, in this
hallowed congregation, without performing the melancholy duty of funeral
honors to some brave men or women, who had periled their lives in the
wilderness, and had been coworkers with us in all these honest and honorable
labors which made this the garden of the valley, and filled it with
intelligence, luxury, and refinement.
But in the past year, our associates greater in number and personal
character and influence than ever before have died; and the year 1871, from
its beginning to its close, has gathered from our midst a harvest of death
without a parallel in our history. During that period, eighteen men and
women-whose lives had been long, useful, and honorable among us-have been
taken from earth to a life immortal. They are numbered as follows:-
Thomas Jones, Leroy Dodge, Jabez A. Birchard, Ebenezer Cook, James
Davenport, Rodolphus Bennett, Alanson Noble, Michael Cooper, William Wilson,
Isadore Dapron, Jas. Jack, Mrs. Isabella Maclot Wallace, Mrs. Charles H.
Eldridge, Mrs. Ephraim Lane, Mrs. Wm. H. Gabbert, Mrs. J. M. Dunn, and Miss
Lucy Campbell-daughter of Andrew W. Campbell-and Mrs. Milo Pollock.
You do not expect me to give a short history of the life of each or any
of our deceased friends, but in this large array of names, the mention of
every one of which will carry our memories to days long vanished, and recall
characters and events which had years been forgotten, there are some who
occupied the very front ranks in the march of civilization and order which
created this county.
Thomas Jones died early in the year. Leroy Dodge, James Davenport,
Ebenezer Cook, Jabez A. Burchard, and Rodolphus Bennett, all died between
the harvest and the fall of the leaves of 1871. They were among the greatest
of the great men of Scott county, in days of yore; they continued tall trees
in the forest of talent, industry and energy which has honored Scott county
since its habitation by the whites. They trod on and literally rubbed out
the receding footprints of the red man, when the Caucasian wave rolled its
white crest west of the Father of Waters in Iowa.
Leroy Dodge was, for a long period of his early life, a steamboat pilot
and owner, on the river which runs from us to the gulf. He settled in this
county and became a leading and prominent farmer, in 1839. He was elected to
the legislature in 1852. No man in his township was more intelligent or
useful. In private life he was a good husband, a kind father, and an
exemplary neighbor.
Ebenezer Cook has occupied as large a place in the confidence of the
inhabitants of this county as any other man. He was first clerk of the
district court after its organization in this county. He held various places
of trust and honor-was in the constitutional convention of 1845-was alderman
and mayor of your city, and was connected with the Rock Island railroad from
its organization. He was a banker, and at one time the leading one in the
state. As clerk of the court, he signed my license to practice law in Iowa.
One of the first citizens of the county that I ever saw-my calling and his
own brought us in constant intercourse for over a quarter of a century. He
deservedly held a high place in your esteem, and his loss to you, as a
people, will be long and deeply deplored. This is not a place or occasion
for indiscriminate praise or general adulation, much less for censure.
We knew Ebenezer Cook as well as any man outside of his own family, and
few men have lived a more useful life-few have done more to give this county
and this city' the exalted position which they hold in the state of Iowa. In
private life, who was his superior? James Davenport was a man who possessed
many elements of character in common with Ebenezer Cook and Leroy Dodge. He
was a well informed man-perhaps like those early settlers, not well
educated; a man of generous impulses, greet prudence end circumspection in
affairs. He, with John Sullivan and a few others like them-among them, Dr.
Barrows-undertook to build the town of Rockingham, as the county seat of
this county, and no greater compliment can be paid to their ability than to
say, that for four years they kept it an open question. They contested the
palm of place and pride against the most beautiful town site on the river,
with a little neck of sand surrounded by a swamp-against all the odds of
wealth and talent scarcely inferior to their own, until the whole territory
was convulsed with the contest.
Jabez A. Birchard was of the most intelligent-perhaps I shall offend no
one if I say he was the most intelligent farmer that honored the early
history of Scott county. In those days it was my privilege to see him
often-to know him well. His knowledge not only of farming, but of those
general affairs which interest the masses, was very great and very exact. He
only lacked the confidence which is needed to make a public speaker, to have
been as distinguished in public assemblies as he was the acknowledged deader
of his neighborhood.
Rodolphus Bennett was once connected with a great publishing house in
one of the eastern states. He was the first mayor of the town of Davenport,
and would have held many places of public trust, but office-holding and
office-seeking were not congenial to his nature. If time permitted, I should
speak largely on the excellent characters of the other old settlers, men and
women, who have died during the past year.
It has been to us a year of sadness, "days to be remembered, for they
shall see many." It comes home to our hearts' core-it follows our waking
hours, that death has demanded a hecatomb of offerings from our once
numerous but now little, band of pioneers. Our pale faces have erased the
land-marks of the red son of the prairies; we have cultivated where he
hunted; we have supplanted his wigwam with the dwelling, the church, the
seat of justice, and the school; we have banished his barter trade of skins,
and made depots for commerce and trade by river and rail; we have built
up-with the help of our dead-a little republic, where the plow has
superseded the bow and arrow, in earning a livelihood, and where
intelligence and virtue have driven away barbarism and vice. And, so far as
is proper, we may congratulate ourselves and our children, upon the heritage
we have created. But death has stricken both leaders and people of the
ancient days. We who live, are being swallowed up and absorbed by a later
generation, and we are now on the utmost verge of time.
When we look over the long funeral array of 1871, we involuntarily look
each other in the face, and the anxious thought of who shall go next,
betrays itself without utterance. We are old men and women, fast tottering
to the grave; we must soon follow the large concourse of 1871. A few years
like the past and none of U8 will be left to condole or congratulate.
In the past history of this society, its members who now survive have
been afflicted with many sorrows. Scarcely one among us has not lost a
connection or relative-a father or mother, a husband or wife, a brother or
sister, a son or daughter. Each one has had the piercing iron of anguish
enter into his soul, and his life obscured by shadows, clouds, and darkness.
Other misfortunes-the loss of estate, the destruction of business, the waste
or loss of labor-have been endured at some time of our now long life, by
nearly every one now present and absent who belongs to this goodly company.
But the clouds do not always flit between us and the sun. Calamity has
been the exception, not the rule of our lives. We have been, and those who
survive now are, useful men and women. Our lives have been, in the main,
happily and profitably lived, and the future has no perils for us beyond
what are common to our nature.
There is a future in this world to the memory of the dead of 1871, and
we to-night record it. A life of energy, industry, and truthfulness, has
been rewarded in their case by honor and respect in old age and death. Their
labors have lived after them. Ours, in common with theirs, will survive U8.
We were all, like our county, new men. We began with frontier life, with
privations and hardships. Our greatest efforts of either mind or body were
little things. We planted a prairie, with a held here and another there; a
log cabin in this place, another miles away; we settled a village on the
banks of the river; we organized a society first, a neighborhood, then a
county, then a village, and then a state.
We can now behold a county with nearly all its land under the plow.
Every township has its village, the county seat the largest city in the
state, and the state one of the greatest in a great Union.
We have lived in the age of progress, and we have kept in the
fore-front of civilized advancement. We are not now frontiersmen, cut off
from civilization, fighting with savages and wild beasts for the land; but
we are in the center of a continent of civilized life. Whatever in the
progress of art and science contributes to the usefulness and happiness of
man, we enjoy. Railroads, telegraphs, steam engines, machinery, everything
that lightens labor and gives it value, is ours.
We have created the first city and county of the state. We have the
best cultivated fields, and the largest number of any county in Iowa; and we
have the most comprehensive and best organized system of public education in
the state, and one which will bear honorable mention in any state.
We organized society in the desert. We who survive enjoy civilization
in its highest form, and whatever is found to be most useful in the arts.
Whatever of happiness there is in morality, and in intelligence, in the
school and church, in education and refinement, in constant and easy
intercourse with our fellows, in confidence and cheap transit of trade, and
sale of products of labor, in the telegraph and printing press-is ours
to-day, and to the end of our lives. Most of the old settlers of this county
survived the privations, the wants, the perils, and poverty of frontier
life. They endured most suffering from 1833 to 1884, but they lived to greet
the dawn of a better day for themselves. They saw the bright sunshine of the
rosy-fleeced morn of prosperity, and lived to feel its meridian splendor on
themselves and their families. "Surely goodness end mercy attended them all
their days, and they shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."


Cathy Joynt Labath
Scott Co, IA USGenWeb Project
http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/index.htm

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• [IASCOTT] Pioneers Settlers Assoc Memorial Speech, 1872 by "Cathy Joynt Labath" <>