This had been purchased by her husband while on a visit to Council Bluffs, in the state of Iowa, the previous autumn. It was in those days a long journey to undertake, especially as a large portion of it must be made either in stagecoach or by steamboat, and was therefore looked forward to with a great deal of interest.
STARTS FOR IOWA.
Finally making her adieu to her parents, to brother, sisters and relatives, she started westward about the 20th of March. A few days were spent with Mr. C. A. Bloomer, a brother of her husband, at Little Rock near Buffalo, and several more in the family of Mr. F. V. Chamberlain, in Chicago. That city was just then beginning to put on metropolitan airs and had a population of 40,000 or 50,000. Here Mrs. Bloomer bade good-bye to a niece who had accompanied her thus far, and who took the cars to meet a brother in the central part of the state. Leaving Chicago, the travelers proceeded by railroad to Alton. The country on either side of the road exhibited the vast prairies of the state in an almost unbroken condition for a great part of the way, and it is recollected that from the car windows deer and other game were frequently seen running at large. Springfield, the state capital, was then only a small village. The railroad terminated at Alton, and from thence the passage was by steamboat to St. Louis. At that city, then just beginning to loom up in importance among the great western towns, the halt was first at a hotel; but a call having been made at the hospitable home of Mrs. Frances D. Gage, her house thereafter became the home of the travelers until they embarked on a steamer on the Missouri River for their destination.
We now give Mrs. Bloomer’s reminiscences, written some years later by herself:
“EARLY DAYS IN THE WEST.
“In compliance with the wishes of my old-settler friends, I have called to remembrance and jotted down some of the events connected with the early years of my residence in this western land. I fear they will not prove as interesting to my readers as they were to me at the time of their occurrence and are now as I recall them after a lapse of thirty-eight years.
“One beautiful spring day in the middle of April, 1855, I first set foot on Iowa soil in our neighboring city of Glenwood. We came from our New York home to settle in Council Bluffs. The only public conveyance at that time to this section of the country was the stagecoach across the state from Davenport and the Missouri-river steamer hailing from St. Louis. Preferring the steamer we went to St. Louis to embark for our destination, but learned on reaching there that owing to low water no boat had yet been able to come as far as this city, St. Joseph having been the farthest point reached.
“DELAYED IN ST. LOUIS.
“Encouraged with the hope that by tarrying in St. Louis a week we could come all the way through by steamer we restrained our impatience and spent a week very pleasantly with our old-time friend, Frances D. Gage. She was a noted writer and lecturer of that day, but has since laid down the burden of life and gone to her reward.
“During our stay in St. Louis Mrs. Gage and I together held a woman’s-suffrage meeting in the library hall of that city, which was largely attended and well received by press and people. At the end of a week as there was yet no prospect of a rise in the river we took a packet and came on to St. Joseph. Here we had to wait two days for the stage, which only made tri-weekly trips to Council Bluffs and had left the very morning of our coming to the Missouri town, some hours before we arrived. The hotel at which we were obliged to stop was a very ordinary affair, as was common to western towns at that early day. The waiting was long and tedious. We could not even walk about and view the city because of a high wind that prevailed and sent the dust in clouds into our faces.