Jun 27, 2024 - Sale 2675

Sale 2675 - Lot 301

Unsold
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(WEST--IOWA.) John D. Parmelee. Letter describing life on the early Iowa frontier, and plans for the founding of Des Moines. Autograph Letter Signed to sister Ann Parmelee Ranslow of Georgia, VT. 4 pages, 9¾ x 7¾ inches, on one folding sheet, with address panel with manuscript "25" marking on final page; minor wear at folds, seal tear; presentation note from the next generation below address panel. With typed transcript, and 1959 provenance note. River Des Moines, 27 March 1843
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This letter was written on the Des Moines River about 100 miles downstream from what is now the city of Des Moines, near what is now Ottumwa. At this point, the Sauk and Meskwaki (a.k.a. Fox) people had sold their Iowa lands the year before and were in the process of relocating. The letter writer John Denison Parmelee (1813-1885), a recent settler who ran a trading post, describes the planned new settlement at Des Moines which would be established that May:

"The Indians have sold their whole country, but have possession of one half of it for three years more. This will cause us to remove our trading post 100 miles up the river by the first of May & there remain 3 years & then south of the Missouri. . . . We shall be on the north side of the Des Moines directly opposite the mouth of Raccoon River. . . . Since the 12 of this month, I have been to RC River & taken men & provisions for building our post on the ice."

Much of the letter describes John's new wife Hulda Jane Smith (1825-1902), who was raised on the Iowa frontier. Her father Jeremiah Smith (1788-1868), a grist mill operator near Ottumwa, was one of the first American settlers of Iowa. Parmelee writes: "Her father was employed to build a mill for the use of the Indians. . . . The old man has for some 15 years lived on the frontier or in an Indian country, quite illiterate himself & of course took no pains to educate his children & rather low in circumstances. He lived in Indian country during the Black Hawk War when all of the whites left the frontier for garrisons. . . . Perhaps she would not pass for a lady there in that land of musick & dead language study. She has been raised on the frontier or in Indian country, never saw an apple or a peach before it was plucked from the tree; she speaks the Sac & Fox tongue as well as they do themselves. She can read & write but very little."