History of Clayton County, Iowa From the Earliest Historical Times Down to the Present: Including a Genealogical and Biographical Record of Many Representative Families, Prepared from Data Obtained from Original Sources of Information; Volume 1

Excerpt from History of Clayton County, Iowa: From the Earliest Historical Times Down to the Present; Including a Genealogical and Biographical Record of Many Representative Families, Prepared From Data Obtained From Original Sources of Information
And, added to this tide of Americanism, there came, but a few years later, the very pick and flower of foreign immigration. Not the dregs of Europe, but the very best and strongest of its civilization. Wearied of the oppression of monarchies, eager for the wider opportunities of the newest of the new lands, from Germany and Ireland and Norway and all the countries of northern Europe, came the strongest and bravest of their peoples. This engrafting, under perfect conditions of freedom and equality, of the stability and thrift and frugality of the Old World, upon the alertness, the nervous energy and the indomitable spirit of the New, has been one of the most successful and most upbuilding processes in the evolution of mankind, and nowhere has it shown better results than in Clayton county.
Back of the pioneers we come to the mysterious, romantic shadow land of history. Across the screen are thrown dim pictures of a wild and untamed land, of herds of buffalo and droves of deer, of red-skinned warriors and rude Indian villages, of bloody massacres and dangling scalps.
Following, in rapid succession, we see the stately, saintly Fathers, soldiers of the Church, meeting the showers of savage arrows with the emblem of the Cross. Upon the broad bosom of the Mississippi we hear the lilt of French songs, as strong-backed rowers send the canoes of early explorers to marvel at the beauties of the Iowa shore.
Floating on the swift current of the Wisconsin come the Canadian voyageurs, the traders, the trappers; here, on the borders of Iowa, to meet the adventurous brother who had made the equally long and arduous journey from New Orleans, for this juncture of the rivers was the natural meeting point of the civilizations which came from the north and east and from the south.
Every wave of war which swept over Europe plashed, finally, upon the banks of the Upper Mississippi. It was here that the French made their last stand against the aggressiveness of Great Britain and sought by superior cunning to maintain commercial supremacy, even after the fortunes of war had deprived them of the great Dominion.
Even as a child might play with a diamond, unwitting of its value, so this great region became the plaything of Europe's kings, and these headwaters of the world's greatest river became the last skirmish line on which the British, the French, the Spanish and, finally, the American struggled for mastery; and thus the known history of Clayton county reaches back for more than two centuries and a half.
And, back of all this, is the unknown history of long forgotten races; a history unwritten, save in the mounds and bones found on the majestic bluffs which guard the Mississippi.
It is the purpose of this history of Clayton county, therefore, not to be a reference book, only; not a mere compilation of names and dates and statistics, however valuable and necessary these may be, but to present, to the favored sons and daughters of old Clayton, the story of their past, as an inspiration for their future, and to preserve for them a readable account of the great events, the great lives, the great struggles, the great hardships which have made possible the still greater blessings of to-day.
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