George Madden’s diary

Anyone having an interest in life in southwest Iowa during the years prior to the Civil War would enjoy George Madden’s diary. Madden, born in Ohio in 1829, was 25 years of age when he relocated to a claim not far from here. He started his diary that year and maintained it until the militia unit he belonged to marched south in the early days of the war. 

In the late summer of 1854 he crossed the Mississippi at Burlington, his horse pulling a buggy with a few supplies. Madden, as he would do several times, walked across Iowa. He describes the prairie and people, finding fewer and fewer of the latter as he traveled west. A typical entry, that of September 29, 1854, follows:

We reached Pisgah and a house on a hill and a most beautiful spring at the foot of the hill. We crossed the Grand River and reached a point of timber to stop for noon. This country has very extensive prairies and is thinly settled. We are now in Union County. It has no county seat as yet. We are still traveling through very thinly settled territory, just here and there a house. Put up with Mr. Riggs after traveling 35 miles today. 

Charge for lodging and meal was 80 cents. Mr. Riggs informed us we were 20 miles out of Pisgah and that it was 22 miles to Quincy, the Adams county seat. We proceeded about 15 miles to the French Colony here. We turned south down the Nodaway River and were informed that it was about 25 miles to Hawleyville or McAlpin’s mill. The trail we traveled before we came to the colony had no settlements on it. There was some prairie broken in only one place. Reached Hawleyville about dusk after traveling briskly for several hours. 

Later Madden wrote of going to the land office in Kanesville, which is now Council Bluffs.

Wed. Oct. 11. Left Wheeler’s Grove and reached Kanesville at 2:30 o’clock. Land Office closed. Went to the Missouri which is about three miles from town and crossed over on the steam ferry to the Nebraska side. Went to Omaha City and put up there. Omaha City, as I am told, was laid out last June in the present year, 1854, and now has about 15 or 20 frame houses or cabins or shanties or tents altogether. This will perhaps be the seat of government. Omaha City will probably be a place of some note in the future. The Omaha tribe of Indians, numbering some 300 warriors and about 800 altogether, are camped some eight or ten miles from Omaha City waiting to be transported by the United States government to some other destination.

Madden writes of splitting rails, building a cabin, courting and marriage, planting an orchard. A Democrat, he believed individual states—and not the federal government—should make their own decision on the slavery issue. He was neither an abolitionist nor a Lincoln supporter, but he was a loyalist and felt strongly enough about the preservation of the union to enlist. He was still a young man when his diary ended just prior to his death.

 

Roy Marshall is a local historian. E-mail him at news@redoakexpress.com.