The Story of Iowa

White, Judy Wallis. The Story of Iowa.

The First White Settler

In the year 1788 a young Frenchman, by the name of Julien Dubuque, came down from Canada in search of adventure. He stopped at Prairie du Chien, * in Wisconsin, just above the mouth of the Wisconsin river, and started a trading post across the Mississippi, where the beautiful little city of McGregor now stands.

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Other Early Settlers

Shortly after Dubuque built his cabin, a friend by the name of Basil Gaillard, whom he had met at Prairie du Chien, came to be his neighbor. He obtained a tract* of 5,760 acres in what is now Clayton County, in and around the prosperous city of McGregor, and here he lived for many years

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Iowa Pioneers

When the tide of immigration finally set in toward Iowa, the state was peopled as if by magic. The papers of 1854 were filled with long accounts of the vast crowds which filed in from the east and south. “The roads were thronged with teams, and the groves and woodlands and prairies were alive with

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Iowa As A State

Iowa became a state December 28, 1846. She was the twenty-ninth state to enter the Union, and the fourth state carved from the Louisiana Purchase. Ansel Briggs was the first governor. The capitol building was then located at Iowa City, but in obedience to the feeling that the seat of government should be nearer the

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French Missionary

America had been discovered almost two hundred years before a white man set foot in Iowa. In June, 1673, Father Marquette, a French Missionary, and a Canadian trader by the name of Joliet, with five companions whose names are not now known, sailed down the “Great Father of Waters, ” as the Indians called the

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