EARLY COMMERCIAL TRAVELLING IN IOWA.

BY FRANK M. MILLS.

In 1868, while employed on the old Iowa State Register, I suggested the formation of the Old Settlers Association, and called a meeting at the Demoine House for the purpose of organization. It so happened that I could not be present. There were a goodly number of first settlers there, so they constituted themselves charter members, and limited the firstclass members to those who came prior to January 1, 1856. This cut out many prominent citizens who came in 1856. (After '56 hard times came on and there was not much more immigration here until after the war.) I was out by about ten days. Those who had been here fifteen years were allowed afterward to join.

When I arrived first in Des Moines it was a village of less than two thousand people, but about the liveliest village you ever saw. I came early in January of 1856 on a voyage of discovery, crossed the Mississippi on the ice at Burlington, and took the stage coach there for Fort Des Moines in about the coldest of weather.

When the coach reached Oskaloosa, I was met by an old Indiana friend or two, the versatile "Linkensale' of later newspaper fame, and Ed Alvord, scion of the head of the Western Stage Company, who insisted I should abandon my visit to Raccoon Forks and settle in Oskaloosa, as the Fort was a dirty, sickly hole which never would be more than a struggling hamlet. I told them I would see Des Moines first, but that if I did not like it, I would come back to Oskaloosa.

I decided the future capital was good enough for me, and went back to Indiana to arrange for moving out. In the early spring I came by boat from Cincinnati, arriving at 'Lurton Dunham Ingersoll.

Keokuk, Iowa's greatest city at that time, on April 4, 1857, my twenty-fifth birthday. There with my wife and ten-weeks' old baby, I took the coach for Des Moines where we arrived after six days and nights constant going, as the frost was just coming out and the roads breaking up. There were

twenty in and on our coach. Some of us walked and carried a rail part of the time. In the early morning of the tenth we arrived at Uncle Tom Mitchell's stage station' and waited for daylight and breakfast. There were ten coach loads of us for the same purpose, meeting from Burlington, Iowa City and Des Moines."

When we got to the village the river was up and the float bridge swung round and no crossing. Fort Des Moines was a very lively point just then. The Capital had just been voted from Iowa City. The commissioners were in town and had located the site and there was great rejoicing on the East Side and much indignation on the West Side of the river. Land seekers, town-lot speculators and settlers rushed to the new seat of government. Building was rampant, shanties were going up by the hundred, and the noise of the hammer and the saw waked you in the early morning and kept you awake until midnight.

I came here intending to open up a shoe store, but it was impossible to find a vacant room, so John Daugherty, a brickmaker, who came when I did, and I joined forces and started a brick yard. S. A. Robertson arrived the next day after I did and was at once offered the superintendency of the erection of the Savery (now Kirkwood House). Conrad Youngerman had arrived shortly before with but a dollar and a half in his pocket, as he told me, and had started a brick business. Mr. Robertson also started one and we three good friends, although in a sense competitors, made our impress on the season's building. I furnished the brick for the Sherman block on Court avenue, for the big Methodist church

Now Mitchellville, Polk County.-Editor.

The travel from Keokuk on the Old Dragoon Trail was joined usually by the Burlington travel at Agency City, Wapello County, but often at Brattain's Grove, near Utica, Van Buren County, or above that point. The travel from Davenport, and Iowa City, Dubuque, Marion and Marengo joined the Old Dragoon trail usually near Mitchellville, Polk County.Editor.

where the Iowa Loan & Trust Building now stands, for the three-story Jim Campbell building for steamboat supplies on the point, for the Jones Hotel on the East Side, and many other buildings, beside piecing out the Savery House, the Exchange Block, and other buildings, mainly supplied by my competitors. Near the close of the season Mr. Daugherty said the prudent thing was to stop as the weather might block us. However, I was ever optimistic so bought his interest in the plant and hired him to burn another kiln, which proved a success. I sold the kiln to A. Newton to build his fine home on Fifth street, and cleaned up $800 profit, which, with what I brought with me and my share of the summer's business, gave me a capital of $3,500 to start my shoe business. I also sold eighty acres of land adjoining Isaac Cooper's farm on Four Mile Creek, which I had bought a year or two before at five dollars per acre, for $800, with which I bought a lot next the Baker Drug Store on Court avenue.*

I graduated in the brick business in the fall, but Robertson and Youngerman continued, and each of them accumulated in it at least a half million dollars, and were to the last among the city's most prominent and progressive citizens.

To secure a location, I was compelled to buy a building on Court avenue for $1,200 cash. Not to encroach on my store capital, I borrowed of Col. J. N. Dewey the necessary sum for six months at forty per cent interest per annum, the standard rate then, which I was able to pay at maturity. Col. Dewey always was a good friend, but seemed to consider himself thereafter a sort of benefactor and sponsor for my success.

At the same time I started my shoe store my brother Webb* and my older brother J. W. and myself each put in two hundred dollars to start a small job printing office, that Webb might have something to make a living at until he got ready to go into the practice of law, he having already been admitted to the bar. When I opened my shoe store in the fall

"The Baker Drug Store was on the southeast corner of Third Street and Court Avenue.

"Noah W. Mills enlisted May 4, 1861. Appointed Second Lieutenant. Promoted Captain June 1, 1861. Wounded in battle of Corinth, October 4, 1862, "while fighting with the most conspicuous courage and coolness." Was promoted Colonel October 8, 1862, and died of wounds October 12, 1862.

there was but one other shoe store, that of Stacy Johns. B. H. Corning and Jim Kemps made boots and shoes but kept no general stock. Charley Kahler was an apprentice to Corning.

The next spring there were seven shoe stores. In the meantime, the job printing was successful, and having a good opportunity, I sold my shoe business and building and invested the proceeds in the printing concern, and Webb and I undertook to boost the printing and publishing business to the limit of our capacity. Soon we had Tac Hussey, who had come a few months before I did, as our chief artist. We started a blank book and stationery and county supply department, and by dint of hard work and persistent canvassing we acquired an extensive clientage.

When the Civil war broke out, Webb, having been Captain of the Wide Awakes in the Lincoln campaign and an officer in the local military company, insisted that I should waive my right as elder and allow him to go into the field, and that I should remain and look out for the business and our little families. We owed a large sum of money, had much money coming to us, and a considerable stock of merchandise on hand. Things looked pretty blue for the business. In addition to this every man in our employ able to bear arms enlisted. Business was poor. I spent a large part of my time. the rest of 1861 in raising the Tenth Iowa Regiment, which I recruited and swore into service and transferred to the State government. I also raised afterward some two hundred recruits for the Second and Tenth regiments.

The loss of my brother at the battle of Corinth left me with the entire responsibility of the business and our families. I had to hustle. I boomed the business to the extent of my capacity, and incidentally, I boomed and boosted for Des Moines to such an extent that for years our business became known far beyond the boundaries of the State, reaching into Missouri and Minnesota, and covering Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Colorado, Wyoming and other territories, even bearding the lion in his den and making a good customer of Brigham Young himself, selling him and his Zion Co-Operative Mercantile Institution several thousand dollars' worth

of our products in the course of a few years. The first engraving of his portrait was done by us to go on their certificate of stock.

Ours was about the only concern which caused the outside world to pay tribute to Des Moines. In the early days before we had railways, every stage coach which left Des Moines was loaded in its boot with our shipments of orders filled. The United States Express Company reported by Billy Quick that we were their largest customers in the State.

In the meantime our business had grown so that larger quarters were necessary, so we built on Fourth street the building that is the present Munger European Hotel. We added lithographing, wood engraving, map engraving, coloring and mounting, law book and other publishing, stereotyping and electrotyping, we did the State binding and printing for years, published the Register, the Homestead, and sundry weekly and monthly publications. All of this required some two hundred hands and much money. We found an able and willing helper in Des Moines' first great banker, Frank Allen. We owed him at one time through his three banks here and his two outside ones, over $150,000. Bad banking it would be called now, but we were depositing much of the time near a thousand dollars a day. He had no other security than his faith in us, yet when he afterwards failed and final settlement was made there was a balance in our favor.

To keep up the volume of business persistent effort was necessary. We kept out from four to a dozen travelers. In the earlier days I went out a good deal myself, in all sorts of weather and conditions that now would not be undergone by any rash traveler. Orders were for much smaller amounts than now, except for county supply for their first outfit. We had aggressive competition for this, and we kept our men on the frontier. We invaded Denver, and our traveler Charley Cranston took an order from a Denver bookseller for several hundred volumes of octavo sheep-bound standard poems. This necessitated a hurried trip to Chicago, where I ransacked' wholesale and retail book houses, and then could not half fill