The Fort Dodge Messenger: July 9, 1904

Otho Township People Celebrate

This is the Day Given Over to Commemoration of Arrival of Pioneers.

Event Takes Up Whole Day

The Old Settlers Will Be Joined by the Younger Generation in Celebration There of the Days of Auld Lang Syne.

Today at the N.H. Hart home southeast of Otho, will occur a birthday party that will also commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of a band of pioneer settlers in Otho township. The read date of the arrival of the party was in June, but owing to another social event which occurred in the neighborhood on that date, the present gathering was postponed and is to occur on July 9, the birthday of N.H. Hart.

This party of early settlers arrived in Webster county in June, 1854, when the present city of Fort Dodge consisted of only four or five little log houses and this place as the county seat had scarcely received consideration. These settlers came to Webster county at a time when it required nearly every man in the county to be present at a “house raising.”

Beside the old settlers whose names appear below there will be many of the younger generation present, the children, grandchildren and other relatives of those named, who have come into the world at far more recent dates. The gathering will be largely in the form of a family reunion, as all present will be related either by blood ties or marriage.

The event will take up the entire day and will be entirely of a social nature. A big dinner will be one of the important events of the day, and the old timers will spend the remainder of the time in chatting of the early times when “forty miles to mill” was a short journey.

The old setters expected to be present are:

O.P. Fuller, Mrs. D.F. Claflin, F.B. Drake, G.D. Hart, L.W. Hart, Williams, Iowa.

Tags: 1904, Claflin, Drake, Fuller, Hart