IAGenWeb - Marion County |
    |
Image of page online.
Meantime, Mr. Scholte, as the president of the colony, visited Washington, where, he says, he was well received by the officials of the government. He went to Boston, which he found in such Emersonian enthusiasm that he refers to it with sorrow as the capital of "Amerikaansche rationalismus." In Albany he was cordially welcomed by the descendants of early settlers from Holland. In that city he preached in his native language. These welcomes were repeated and doubled in New York City, where he found many families which had perpetuated the language of their ancestors in Holland. He was welcomed in all the Dutch Reformed churches (the adjective Dutch has since been dropped from the name of this church), and in many of the Presbyterian churches also. In the profuse welcomes, the colonists journeying toward Iowa were referred to as men and women destined to set up the worship of the true God in the wilds of the West. They were referred to as missionaries instead of home-seekers. "Everywhere," wrote Mr. Scholte, referring to his experience in New York, "the name of Hollander is a title of honor."
While they tarried in St. Louis a committee came from Nauvoo, out of which the Mormons had just been driven, and offered to sell that city outright. But they had come to America to make homes of their own. In due time the spies sent out from St. Louis reached Fairfield, Iowa. There the death of the child of the register of the land office played an important part in the location of the colony. Mr. Scholte, while attending the funeral, met Rev. M. J. Post, a Baptist missionary, who had traversed all of the then known Iowa. Mr. Scholte writes that in this man he "noted the hand of God," and he did not let go of it until Mr. Post had promised to go with the commission in search of a site. Mr. Post led them to what he called the finest tract of land in the state, the divide on which the city of Pella stands. The commissioners bought the claims within the desired tract and then returned to St. Louis, where the news of their purchase was received with much rejoicing.
The journey of the home-seekers was at once resumed, by steamboat from St. Louis to Keokuk. They embarked one Saturday afternoon and the following Monday morning stepped on Iowa soil. On the intervening Sunday religious services were held on board the boat, Dominie Scholte himself preaching the sermon, in which he likened their journey to that of the children of Israel to the Promised Land. At Keokuk a heavy rain was falling when they landed. For the journey inland some hired and others bought wagons with horses or oxen. The people of Keokuk were amused as well as benefited in a financial way, for the immigrants paid for everything in gold, which was then seldom seen in the West.
The writer's grandfather, Mathias de Booy, placed his family with their household goods in a wagon drawn by two horses, the price of the whole outfit being $250. But when the time for starting came the horses refused to move, however much he talked to them about the necessity of doing so. He was arriving at the conclusion that he had been swindled when fortunately an interested spectator, who had been much amused, stepped forward and assured him the horses were all right, except that they did not understand Dutch. The stranger thereupon spoke to the horses in the vernacular of Keokuk, and immediately they started, almost at a run, and the owner began to wonder whether they would understand enough Dutch to stop when he wanted them to!
It was a curious procession that made its way up the Des Moines river valley. Quite a spectacle it must have been for the natives. There were more than seven hundred colonists in strange garb and speaking a strange language. Some rode in wagons drawn by horses and some in carts drawn by oxen, and some walked,