Pella rises from southern Iowa prairie

Image: Pella Convention & Visitors Bureau

So back in the summer of 1847, 800 or so Dutch immigrants led by Hendrik "Henry" P. Scholte, an affluent Dutch Reformed minister and leader of a secessionist faction within that denomination, arrived at the site of a town they named Pella --- just up the road and across the Red Rock Dam from Lucas County.

Today, we think of Pella in terms of tulips, Central College, Vermeer, Pella Windows, extreme neatness --- and more Reformed churches than you can shake a stick at. Those Dutch are still going strong.

About all that has to do with Lucas County is the fact that William McDermott and his family, first settlers in our Cedar Township, had settled near what became Pella first, but sold their claim to Mr. Scholte for $1,000 that long-ago summer and headed south and west to Lucas County.

Here's how Dan Baker describes McDermott's arrival in his 1881 history of Lucas County: "He (McDermott) came from Illinois and first settled near Pella, Marion county, but the Dutch were crowding too closely, and he sold his claim there for $1,000, and pushed out to a new locality. With his capital thus acquired, two yoke of cattle, a wagon, his household effects and family, he started for Monroe county, where he reached the house of Henry Harter, in August, 1847, with whom he left his family while he made a prospecting tour for a new home. He came into Lucas county, some fifteen miles distant, and he was so pleased with the country that he laid claim to one hundred and sixty acres in section 16 (Cedar Township) of its virgin soil upon which to make his future home and rear his family."

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Mr. Scholte (left) and his party had regrouped in St. Louis during the spring and early summer of 1847 after arriving in the United States and made arrangements to have cabins built on their newly acquired land in Marion County before moving there during August --- or so they thought. As it turned out, the cabins hadn't been  built and the new arrivals found themselves camped out on the prairie.

A correspondent for The Church Intelligencer visited Pella during late winter 1847-48 and a bit of his report was published as follows in The Davenport Gazette of Thursday morning, April 6, 1848:

Interesting Dutch Colony --- The Holland immigrants recently settled in Iowa have named their new settlement "Pella," from Pella beyond the Jordan, to which the early Christians fled upon the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. It is two or three months old, and numbers 800 inhabitants. Large numbers are to join them in the spring, when their Pella will suddenly become a populous prairie town.

It is a singular sight, says a correspondent of the Church Intelligencer, the velvet jackets and wooden shoes of the Puritans of the 16th Century in the midst of the prairies of the New Purchase, that stretch from the Des Moines to the Cheeaque, in Iowa. They are living in camps covered with tent cloth, or grass and bushes --- the sides barricaded with all sorts of odd-looking boxes and chests from the Netherlands.

These people are respectable and intelligent. When they took the oath of allegiance to the United States a few weeks since but two made their marks. Many of the leading men possess unusual refinement and education.

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Progress had been made a year later when the following dispatch was published in the Weekly Miners' Express, Dubuque, on Jan. 9, 1849:

PELLA --- This village, the site of the Holland settlement in Iowa, we learn presents a thriving appearance. A saw mill lately constructed by Mr. Scholte has commenced operations and cuts on an average four thousand feet of oak timber daily. It is intended to put in operation by means of the same  power several run of stone next spring.

During the coming season, a considerable body of emigrants, it is expected, will be added to their number.

Habits of industry are gathering around them the elements of comfort and wealth, and the traveler in a few years will find in the wilderness of the prairie a populous and highly cultivated district --- Holland in miniature.

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By 1851, Pella was beginning to take shape and some of the traits that still mark it were coming to the fore. Here's a final report for this morning from The Iowa Democratic Enquirer, Muscatine, of Saturday, Sept., 13 1851.

Pella: Our recent visit to this town has convinced us that the untiring industry and commendable economy of our Holland neighbors will eventually build up a town and country that for wealth, beauty and convenience will be second to none in the State of the same population and advantages. We noticed a number of substantial and ornamental improvements since our last visit a little over a year since.

The heavy crops of corn, potatoes, garden vegetables, &c, all testify that the husbandman has not been idle, and give the further assurance that industry directed by a proper knowledge of practical farming will be rewarded by a profitable yield, even through the season may have been an extraordinary one.

The comparatively good state of the roads also show that while our people have generally been grumbling about mud, mud-holes and bad roads generally, they have been industriously engaged in a sensible way in repairing them. In this particular we are sure there are many communities in this State that might learn an important lesson.

The public square in Pella, instead of being a noisome dust-hole, and a common resort for horses, cattle, sheep, hogs and other animals, is neatly enclosed with a plain fence. The inside is partly devoted to horticultural purposes and partly to shrubbery.

On the outside, and entirely surrounding the square, is a paved walk for the accommodation of pedestrians in muddy weather. The principal streets are also improved on each side with stone pavements.

We have not visited a village for a long time that has made so many valuable, substantial and ornamental improvements in the same space of time.

The traveler will find a good hotel, and an accommodation landlord at the Pella House, where he can obtain food and rest, and all the necessary accommodations to make a short stay agreeable.