Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/436



year old. A short time after their arrival a party of four young men from Bed Wing, Minnesota, camped on the straits separating the two Okoboji lakes. They were Dr. I. H. Herriott, Bertell Snyder, William and Carl Granger. They were the first white men to paddle a canoe on these lakes. Fascinated by the loveliness of the country each took a claim, and together they built a cabin on a peninsula, now known as Smith’s Point. The next settlers were from Delaware County, Iowa; James H. Mattocks, his wife Mary, and four children, Alice, Agnes, Jacob and Jackson. They built a cabin opposite Granger’s on the slope extending down toward the straits from the south side. Robert Mathieson and a son lived with them. Both of these cabins overlooked East and West Okoboji Lakes. Some weeks later Joel Howe, his wife Millie, with six children (Lydia, Jonathan, Sardis, Alfred, Jacob and Philetus), settled on the east shore of East Okoboji. A daughter, Lydia, had married Alvin Noble, and they had a son two years old, named John. This family, with Joseph M. Thatcher and his young wife, Elizabeth, with their infant daughter, Dora, occupied a cabin a mile north of Howe’s, at the upper end of the grove. A trapper, Morris Markham, boarded with Noble and Thatcher. These people were all from Hampton, in Franklin County.

Six miles northeast, on the west shore of Spirit Lake, William Marble and his young wife, Margaret, recently married in Linn County, had taken a claim and built a cabin. These made a settlement among the lakes, separated by distances of from one-half to six miles, of six families, in which were living sixteen men, eight women and fourteen children. This little colony, coming to the lakes in the summer of 1856, had not been able to raise crops sufficient to furnish food for the winter. Early in February their supply of provisions was nearly exhausted. It was a long perilous journey to the nearest settlements where provisions could be procured. But with