The British in Iowa

Front matter

Class Jjlfc 50

Book-rB-e. V'Z-

CQEOUCHT OEHJSIS

Part II British Invasion Of Northwestern Iowa

I. The Close Brothers 57

II. Farming the Virgin Land, 1878-1879 . 63

III. The Closes Extend Their Holdings . 68

IV. Headquarters at Le Mars 72

V. A Pamphlet on Farming in Iowa . . 77

VI. Iowa Made Attractive to Englishmen 87

VII. English Settlers AVelcomed at Le Mars 94

VIII. Formation of the Iowa Land Company 99

IX. Prohibition and English Immigration 109

X. Later History of the Close Brothers 113

6 CONTENTS

XI. Contributions to Agriculture . . . 120 XII. Immigrant Farmers in the English

Colony 129

XIII. Farm Pupils in the English Colony . 141

XIV. Iowa Englishmen and the Rugby Colony 157

XV. Fame of the Le Mars Colony .... 161 XVI. Business and Professional Life in the

English Colony 174

XVII. A Story of Coal 178

XVIII. Games and Sports Among the English 187 XIX. Saloons and Other Things American 210 XX. Social Life: The Prairie Club . . . 221 XXI. English Church Life in Northwestern

Iowa 237

XXII. Disappearance of the British from

Northwestern Iowa 245

Index 295

Author's Preface

Few phases of the history of the world so strongly and so steadily excite the imagination as the swarm ings of the races of mankind across the surface of the earth. Mongols and Tartars in Asia, and Hmis, Goths, Norsemen, Moors, and Turks in Europe: these and other peoples successively supplied much of what is spectacular and fascinating in the chronicles of ^the Old World. Equally striking and picturesque is the migration by land and sea of whole tribes of barbarian Angles and Saxons from the forests of northern Grermany, and of Danes and Normans at a later day, to make their homes in the British Isles.

To Americans who like to claim British and European origins as their own, the early wanderings of the world's great human family extend a powerful appeal ; but more intimate and personal is the story of the peopling of the New World, not only by hordes of emigrants from the Old World but also by their American-born descendants. Covering a period of four centuries that extraordinary story, though now complete in its main outlines, has never been fully told and can not be so long as the American continents continue to drain the population reservoirs of older lands.

For reasons chiefly economic and religious, millions of the sons and daughters of Europe have abandoned their ancestral haunts to seek better homes in the vast open spaces of settlements overseas. Other millions, lured by the call of the wild and moved by the spirit of adventure, likewise forsook friends and kindred to try their fortunes beyond the Atlantic. In North and South America they braved the hostility of scattered tribes of aborigines and the hardships incidental to pioneering in the wilderness. The struggle to conquer nature, begun by these enterprising colonists generations ago, has been continued by their descendants, constantly reenforced by fresh accessions from all the racial stocks of Europe.

Pausing to look back over the years consumed in the long process of subduing and occupying a continent, anyone who reflects upon man's ceaseless battle with the forces about him must be impelled to take pride in the results already achieved: cities and towns and farms, raised as if by magic from the soil, now stand as monuments to commemorate three centuries of human achievement.

Impressed by what has been done to convert a wilderness into the abode of more than one hundred millions of people, ever}^ citizen of Iowa who lets his fancy wander back into the century not yet ended since permanent settlements in his State began naturally inquires who the first inhabitants of his neighborhood were, where they came from, and what part they played as builders of the State and nation. From a contemplation of the Iowa pioneers he may go even farther back and seek to discover who his paternal and maternal ancestors were, where they dwelt, and what they did in their workaday world ; and being somewhat of a genealogist at heart, he would, if he could, construct his family tree with roots striking deep into the remotest past, not altogether from reasons of family pride but because he finds here a panorama of bygone days that pictures life itself.

There is, to be sure, in all this nothing suggestive of the practical or materialistic; but as the passing years awaken State and local pride, popular interest in such matters is almost certain to increase. In Iowa, long called the garden spot of the Mississippi Valley, historians have not yet followed all the streams of native-born Americans and of foreigners that have poured into its fertile fields: no one has fully told of the expansion of the American people from the Mississippi River westward to the Missouri. Much remains to be done before the Iowa chapter in that remarkable romance of imniigration and settlement, begun less than ninety jeavs ago, can be called complete.

For more than a century and a half after its discovery, the Iowa country continued to be little more than the home and the hamit of a few thousand Indians. To this wilderness primeval, white men — French, British, and later Americans — had resorted to trade with the native inhabitants ; some had come to explore the prairies and valleys ; and just a few had established homes in the neighborhood of Keokuk. The real invasion and occupation of the Iowa country, however, did not begin until the government of the United States opened wide the gates to immigration in the month of June, 1833.

The march of the frontier of civilization from the Mississippi River westward and from the State of Missouri northward forms the Iowa chapter in the fascinating story of the expansion of the American people across the continent. By what means and agencies the vast domain acquired from the Red Men was eventually placed in the hands of settlers, who the original grantees of land patents were, and whence the pioneers came — these are some of the questions to which the future historian of Iowa must find answers.

The two studies ]3resented in the following pages are designed as contributions to the larger task. The first treats in a more or less general way of the British element in the population of the Commonwealth of Iowa; and the author believes it should inspire those who would like to have a more detailed and intimate view of the subject with the possibility of further historical investigation in that field. The second study relates to the interesting episode of the coming of several himdreds of Britishers to that portion of Iowa which was the last to be occupied by homeseekers. This part relates largely to northwestern Iowa though settlements were also made in Minnesota.

Nine years ago the author began gathering information on the British invasion of northwestern Iowa, but not until the summer of 1921 could time be found to finish for the press what other activities had so long delayed. In the pursuit of his task the writer sought and obtained help from many sources, and acknowledgements are due Mr. C. W. Pitts of Alton; Mr. Ed Dalton, Judge C. C. Bradley, and Mr. Adair G. Colpoys of Le Mars; and Mr. S. R. Watkins of Chicago, Illinois. Especial thanks are due Mr. James C. Gillespie, publisher of The Le Mars Sentinel, for permission to use the files of old newspapers in his possession. Without the frequent quotation of "scoops" and gossipy news items from those volumes the author feels that contemporaneous American interest in the ''colony" centering about Le Mars could never have been fully grasped.

The author is grateful also to Mr. John W. Probert, manager of Close Brothers and Company of Chicago, for an outline sketch of the general history of the firm and corporation with which he has been connected almost from the beginning. Mr. Probert's account, though based on memory, tallies closely with the facts as acquired from other sources. In answer to an inquiry after the books of accoimt of the early years of the firm in Iowa, Mr. Probert replied that the records were all gone by now. Consequently, the author can not vouch for the accuracy of statements about the extent of the company's operations, derived as they are from contemporaneous newspaper announcements. Authentic information on the operations of a typical land company in that part of the Iowa wilderness which was the last to be brought under the dominion of man would have been especially valuable because, so far as the author knows, no such matters have yet been made the subject of investigation and permanent record in Iowa and perhaps not in any other part of the Middle West. In passing, one can not help but regret that valuable materials on the history of the settlement of the State such as the books of account of land companies are being lost or destroyed.

In conclusion, the author wishes to acknowledge the encouragement received from Professor Benj. F. Shambaugh and' the assistance rendered by William B. Close, Esq., the founder of the British ** colony", who has for many years been living in England. His excellent pamphlet on farming in northwestern Iowa, published in 1880, contains a great amount of indispensable material; and his letters from a London hospital, in the autunm of 1921, when he was recovering at the age of nearly seventy from the effects of an operation and a bad attack of influenza, furnished many facts not otherwise discoverable. Mr. Close stated that although it seemed rather strange to him that so much interest should be taken in his old settlement he was glad to aid in ever}^ way. To Mr. Henry H. Drake, an old Oxonian and for forty years a resident of northwestern Iowa, the author is greatly indebted for his kindness in helping to round out the story in many respects.

Jacob Van der Zee

The State University of Iowa Iowa City Iowa

PART I BRITISH EMIGRANTS IN IOWA

I

Until the year 1850 English-speaking but native-born Americans overwhelmingly predominated in the flow of immigration to the settled portions of Iowa. Hailing from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and the New England States, they were the descendants of the racial stocks that had originally peopled the Atlantic seaboard areas.^ Their names for the most part bore witness to an English ancestry, but many of the Iowa pioneers could not have concealed a different extraction — such as Scotch, Irish, Dutch, German, Moravian, Swedish, and French. They were, indeed, the offshoots of all the strains represented in the population of the older States.

JOHN^ B. NEWHALL

In the early forties, when the British public was being showered with journals, travels, letters, and notes relating to America — all too frequently prepared by superficial observers — there appeared upon the lecture platform in various parts of England, the home of his ancestors, a man who brought his hearers first-hand information of the American frontier and of the social and economic condition of its people. He spoke not from books, nor did he draw upon imagination for romance or distorted pictures of that vast, boundless, open country on the western shore of the Mississippi. On the contrary, he came before his listeners as a witness of the things his eyes had seen in that primeval wilderness.

In 1834, the second year of Iowa pioneering, John B. Newhall had joined the rush of emigrants to the Iowa country, and so he could make the proud boast that he was one of the first to lay eyes upon the prairies blooming there in solitude. In 1841 he had written a book on lowa,^ and having made his home in this inviting region he could truthfully say to the English people in 1844:

I participated in rearing the first land marks of a young and rising state — new cities have sprung up before me — I have witnessed the great work of civilization in all its various stages, from the lone cabin of the frontier settler, to a happy and intelligent population of 170,000 souls!'

At Birmingham, Liverpool, London, and other cities he preached the utility of emigration.* Appalled by the ugliness and wretchedness of life in those crowded centers in contrast with the easy circumstances of the same class of people in

America and animated by a sincere desire to promote the happiness of his fellow men, Newhall in 1844 published a handbook and guide for prospective British emigrants. Englishmen naturally questioned his motives and jumped to the conclusion that he was a speculator or land agent — "as though it were impossible, in the Nineteenth Century, for a man to be actuated by a Spirit of Philanthropy, of humanity and love."

Newhall found it necessary, therefore, to assure his readers that nothing could be further from the truth than that he was mercenary : he asked them to believe that there was ''a loftier purpose to live for, than bowing to the shrine of Mammon." And, despite their prejudices against the United States, he invited their attention to the claims of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, especially the latter two, *' possessed of a Soil miri vailed in the variety and excellence of their productions, and rapidly settling, by a people, who are bound to the Anglo- Saxon race by the indissoluble ties of kindred, religion, and above all of Language."

To the British agriculturalist as well as to the industrious artisan, merchant, capitalist, trader, and day laborer, he pointed out all the advantages of the New West, especially describing the Territory of Iowa: the face of the country, soil, products, timber and woodland, rivers, prairies, climate, and seasons, public lands and land offices, the best fields for settlement, the average prices of articles of family consumption, the average prices of cows, horses, sheep, and necessary farm implements, the principal towns, and the moral and social character of the people. Furthermore, Newhall gave explicit instructions about the long voyage across the Atlantic, the choice of ship provisions, and routes to the American interior.

These matters constituted the sort of information then required — particularly by the emigrant societies which had sprung up in many parts of the mother country. Of that movement so silently but rapidly spreading through English shires, Newhall recorded his conviction that ''associative Emigration is the true principle to work upon, it will do more to mitigate the woes of our common humanity, than the numberless political agitations of the day; it will effectually strip emigration of the miseries and hardships that have so frequently attended the isolated wanderer. "°

Most interesting was Newhall's answer to the Englishman's question whether he could succeed with $500 in his pocket. He did not hesitate to say that the industrious and prudent man could lay the foundation of a handsome property with such a sum : for less than $400 the emigrant could be comfortably settled upon an eighty-acre tract supplied with a good house, yoke of oxen, horse, cow, twelve sheep, poultrj^, pig, wagon, plough, harrow, seed, and thirty weeks provisions until a small crop was raised for subsistence. To quote his exact words: *'And if you do not happen to have a 'Home sick Wife,' I can see no reason why, with ordinary Good Luck, blessed with patience and perseverance, you should not prosper equal to your utmost expectations."

Thus established and with $100 left over, the British emigrant was warned not to let the surplus ooze away. A capital error generally made by emigrants was to spend their last dollar on land at the outset, thus dooming themselves to several years of up-hill work and perhaps discouragement. Another piece of Newhall's advice reads: *'If you have £500, purchase 320 acres, a half section; cultivate it well, load your own flat boats with your own produce, take it to New Orleans, and realize a handsome return, without having it wasted away by the commissions of the Merchant."^

Too many English people, in those days when hunger led to the repeal of the Corn Laws, imagined that setting foot upon American soil would mark the end of all their sorrows; whereas in reality arrival in the New World too frequently only aggravated their woes. For months the newspapers of England were filled with accounts of the return home of hundreds of disillusioned emigrants who brought back doleful stories of their experience in New York and other Atlantic ports. These disappointed ones became a stumbling-block to others who heartily yearned to improve their forlorn condition. Lest such destitute, disheartened persons should become a criterion of the wisdom of emigration to the Valley of the Mississippi, Newhall declared:

Can we expect men to be benefitted, who rush headlong and blindly to America, without any fixed object, or ultimate aims, either of occupation or place of abode? .... I am willing to venture the assertion, that America possesses all the advantages, and inducements for the industrious, persevering and frugal Emigrant, now that it ever has from the day of its first discovery. But those advantages are not to be found '* picked up" on the pavements of every Atlantic city .... It is a mistaken notion, if people suppose the hogs run about the streets there, already roasted, with a fork stuck in their backs, crying come "Come, Eat me." Here has been one great cause of failure and disappointment.^

Newhall also cautioned Englishmen against the ''runners" at the ports, a set of harpies who fleeced and robbed emigrants of their money at every opportunity; he begged them not to lose sight of the fact that while hundreds had returned home, thousands had remained in America and were doing well ; and he emphatically declared that if they did not have sufficient nerve to endure privations for a few months in Iowa, they had better never leave their homes, for success would not crown their efforts.*

ALICE MANN"

Before the era of railroad building in Iowa, the State had been introduced to the people of the United States not only through the newspapers of the time but also through tourist handbooks and emigrant guides, of which a goodly number had been placed on sale before the Civil War. That some of these descriptive sketches, prepared primarily for American consumption, found their way to the British Isles there is little reason to doubt; but the information which Britishers acquired on the general subject of emigration was obtained more because they sought it than because Americans brought it to them.

For a considerable time the United States had been the most favored field of emigration in Great Britain, not even Canada and Australia excepted. The British public had been placed in more or less intimate touch with the northern portion of the Union as the best suited for immigration: by the year 1850 several gentlemen had written books based on tours of the West or residence in America, and such testimony was eagerly sought because people believed it to be unprejudiced and impartial. Eventually, Alice Maim, a printer of Leeds, took the results of their practical observation and experience along with Newhall's instructive little books (to which her only objection was ''that they are rather flowery") and out of such materials wove a compact guide which went through several editions.^ Having compiled such information mainly for the working and industrial classes, Miss Mann clearly described conditions in the mother country" in the following terms:

Emigration must continue to he a subject of ever-increasing interest to the British people. Hemmed in as we are by the sea in all directions — the greater part of the land in our own country monopolized by the high aristocratic families — with a population steadily increasing in the face of diminished demand for labour in consequence of the ever-increasing productions of our mechanical powers, — the desire to emigrate to new and virgin soils, where every man may, with comparatively little difficulty, become an independent landowner, — cannot fail to extend, with the increase of information as to the extraordinary capabilities which the United States as well as the British Colonies, offer to the free labourers of this and all other countries of the Old World."

But these foreign lands were a well spring of hope also to the heads of middle class families who found it increasingly difficult to maintain their households respectably and to establish their children in overstocked business or professional careers. To quote Miss Mann's words:

Competition for subsistence is every day growing more keen; and the anxious parent is puzzled what to do with his rising sons and daughters. One year the manufacturing class complains of distress, and another year the agricultural class. Both classes are alike diligent, anxious to work, and to work hard provided the gains of their labour promise to maintain them decently. But often their labour is in vain, and they feel as if their place at Nature's Board were already occupied, and they must turn their eyes elsewhere.^^

From such intense competition at home industrious farmers, laborers, and mechanics were asked to look to the boundless, unoccupied lands where ''no man need suffer from want of the means of physical comfort; no fear need be felt as to the future of a family, no matter how numerous." Individuals who contemplated a change of scene were, however, properly cautioned in these words :

Not that men have to work less diligently there than they do at home. By no means ! It would be practising a gross deception, w^ere we to inculcate that any man could thrive in the States or in the Colonies, without the practice of steady, persistent, daily industry. The idle and the drone will be a poor man there, as he will be at home. He is a cumberer of the ground everywhere. But let a man work with a will, let his labour be directed by even the most ordinary share of intelligence, and then we say he has a prospect of success and prosperity before him in these new lands, such as but rarely falls to his lot in this old and labour-stocked quarter of the globe. He has to submit to inconvenience and perhaps distress, in leaving his o^v^l native land, and voyaging his way across the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. Many dear ties have to be severed; but he thinks of the promised land before him, and looks forward with hope to the inheritance he is to bequeath to his children.^^

To the wide-awake, industrious Englishman who regarded economic conditions at home without a sign of hope, Miss Mann declared, many regions of the earth still unpeopled and American States like Iowa still waiting for settlers beckoned with positive assurance.^* Such a man, fortified by steadiness, resolution, and a stout heart, need not hesitate to venture out on the emigrant's career — he could make up his mind to ''rough it" for several years ''before he can settle quietly down under his vine and fig-tree, and gather in their fruits". In Iowa, which was the Far West of that day, the thriving towns of Burlington, Dubuque, Davenport, Fort Madison, Iowa City, and Bloomington (now Muscatine) were commended as presenting excellent opportunity for skilled labor. Miss Mann's delineation of the face of the Iowa country also carried hope to those who wanted better returns from agriculture. Her attractive statement reads as follows :

The State of Iowa, in the picturesque beauty of its scenery, and the richness of its verdure, much resembles the finest portions of the south of England counties; though, in native richness and fertility, it far surpasses any portion of this country. Here and there it is partially wooded, somewhat like a gentleman's park in this country, being moderately undulating, and no where, in the southern part of the State, rising into hills or mountains. All is green and cultivable. On the margins of the rivers there are occasional ranges of "bluffs," intersected by ravines.^^

The prairies, climate, productions, crops, timber, seasons, and other matters of interest were likewise briefly touched upon. Indeed, an Englishman by the name of Rubio who had written a book on his rambles in the United States was quoted as speaking in the highest terms only of Iowa ^' which stands A 1 for emigrants, in his estimation". Declared Miss Mann:

We can imagine few conditions of life more favourable to the enjoyment of earthly happiness than that of a settler on a rich piece of land in Ohio, Illinois, or Iowa : he is in the midst of plenty — the land teems with abundance — labour is never without its reward — and its fruits are all the labourer's own. He may not be rich in gold or silver coin; but if the land he tills be his ow^n, and that land produces more than sufficient for his own wants and the w^ants of all his household, has he not here the elements of the most substantial happiness? Let him take courage, then, and struggle onward."

People who showed the white feather, "Miss Nancy" emigrants who returned to England after a tr}^ at the New World, were held up as dismal illustrations of the sort of stuff that could not succeed anywhere.

GEORGE SHEPPARD AND THE CLINTON COUNTY SETTLEMENTS

During the winter of 1849 George Sheppard, an Englishman, delivered several lectures at Hull, England, extolling Iowa as a State where ''health, wealth and beauty are spread out in every direction". So forceful w^as his presentation of the advantages of emigration to America that a society was organized for the purchase of a tract of land, and Mr. Sheppard was engaged to help make the selection of a site.

On May 15, 1850, the emigrants sailed from Liverpool on the ship ''Columbus" and reached New York after a six weeks' voyage. Upon arriving at Davenport, Iowa, the}^ made arrangements with Cook and Sargent (land agents and bankers), to assist them in their undertaking. On the stage route to Dubuque, at a place nine or ten miles northwest of De Witt — the seat of government in Clinton Comity and then a small town with a log cabin tavern — the emigrants purchased about two thousand acres of oak timber and prairie land and divided it according to the sums of money each had invested in the enterprise. Upon a hill which commanded a beautiful view east, south, and west, they laid out forty acres in oneacre lots and called the village Wei ton. High hopes were naturally entertained of the future of this i^lace, situated on the military and mail road between Davenport and Dubuque. Writing to friends in England in the summer of 1850, George Sheppard noted" that land speculators were watching the colonists' movements, and he prophesied ''that within twelve months from this not an acre will be purchasable near us except at double the government price. ' '^^

A number of buildings rose on the spot which these people had chosen — hotel, shops, stores, and dwellings. For a time the colony flourished; but its members having been trained as mechanics and artisans — tailors, bookbinders, painters, and others — found pioneer life unattractive, and so they forsook their farms and returned to their trades, scattering to other towns throughout the country. This village which died out is still known as "Old Welton". The name is also perpetuated in another village not far to the south and in the township where it lay, "a monument to the designs of its founders."

Of a different character weve the English families which began to settle in Eden and Center townships w^est of the town of Camanche in the same county. Nearly all are said to have come from the village of Killingham, Lincolnshire, England. Bringing capital with them, they bought out the pioneers of the I'egion and in 1879 were reported as largeh^ engaged in stock raising, thrifty and enterprising, with broad fields and fine farm-houses. In their vicinity the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad selected a site for a station ; and when the town-planners were debating a name for the place, the superintendent of construction, standing by a pile of rails and noting the words **Low Moor, England" stamped upon them, succeeded in securing the adoption of that name. Since then Englishmen have always been found in this neighborhood.^^

During these years William Lake, an Englishman by birth and president of St. George's Benevolent Association of Clinton, Iowa, interested himself in immigration to such an extent that he was in communication with the British Working Men's Association. He declared his belief that if the horribly cruel and unjust quarantine regulations of the port of New York were improved, immigration into the United States could be doubled.'^