come from near Pella with two good horse teams and wagons. This man was
an American who lived near Pella, and father at once made arrangements
with him to take the family back with him. So the next morning we
started on the last lap of the long and momentous journey commenced
nearly six months before, in our native town of Gouda, Holland. The trip
from Keokuk lasted about one week.

Here and there along the way there were small log houses for the
accommodation of travelers, but these we often found occupied when we
arrived and then we all slept in the covered wagons. To us children this
was an adventure that we greatly enjoyed. The weather and roads were
fine and I will never forget how thrillingly interesting the way through
the new and strange country was to us all. Across miles of prairie
studded with beautiful autumn flowers, through seemingly endless
stretches of virgin forest, across bridgeless streams, we wended our way
toward the "City of Refuge" that was to be our home for many years to
come.

Often we children got out to gather the flowers which grew everywhere in
wild profusion. We also wanted very much to stop long enough to gather a
store of the hickory, hazel and walnuts with which the forests abounded,
but except when we were camped for the night, the driver refused to stop
very long as he wanted to take advantage of the favorable weather and
road conditions.

We arrived at the farm home of Cornelis Den Hartog at noon and found a
bountiful dinner awaiting us. On this farm there was a second log cabin
only partially completed, which was to be our first home in the new
land. We moved in that same day and as father was a carpenter he
immediately started in to finish the house.

In the spring father bought a lot in Pella just across the street from
the Ben Blommers home, where he built a long shed-like house, where we
lived for five years. This was large enough to afford living
accommodations for the family and a carpenter shop for father. Owing to
its size this house was generally referred to by the early settlers as
"Noah's Ark."

While we naturally missed many comforts and conveniences to which we had
been accustomed in our well ordered home in the Netherlands, I can truly
say that none of us ever regretted coming to Pella. On the contrary, we
have always felt a deep sense of gratitude to God for having guided us
to this goodly land and to the "City of Refuge;" and in the evening of a
long life, during which I have seen Pella grow from a crude pioneer
village into the beautiful little home city that we all love, I can
truly say from a full heart that, in the providence of God, "Our lines
were cast in pleasant places."

Editor's Note.--Mrs. Adriana Maria Hasselman-Van Horsen, to whom we are
indebted for the above interesting and vivid account of early history,
is living at the goodly age of eighty-four years and nine months, in the
city in and near which she has spent the greater part of her long life.
We feel assured that all her many friends will join us in the wish that
she may yet be spared for many years, to tell us more of the interesting
experiences through which she passed in the pioneer days.

MISS LOIS MARTIN

The subject of this sketch was born October 5, 1849, in Mason county, W
est Virginia. At that period the spirit of unrest which led to a vast
migration to the West was fermenting, and in the fall of 1854, "Squire
Martin," as he was known to his neighbors both then and in later years,
with his wife and three children embarked in a broad-tired,
wide-tracked, canvas-covered prairie