Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Past and Present of Buena Vista County, Iowa
In presenting the first history ever compiled of Buena Vista county the editors are conscious of many shortcomings and inaccuracies which must exist. The task has been met with hardship at every step because of the deplorable condition of the public records in the county. In reading the following pages it will be seen that in 1866 all of the records of the county, bearing in any way on the financial transactions of the board of supervisors and officials, were carried away by two absconding county officers and were never recovered. Again, in 1877 the courthouse burned and the only records saved at that time were the minute books of the Board of Supervisors.
No one, who has not undertaken to trace the history of the county, can realize the disadvantage under which the historian labors when confronted by such conditions. It has been necessary to depend upon the memory of men, uncertain at best, for everything, and while we have been treated with uniform courtesy by all who have been consulted the inability of our informants to remember dates and the unreliability of their recollections must be apparent.
We have had much help from the files of county papers, especially of The Storm Lake Pilot, in getting data upon which to base our fragmentary history. Judge G. S. Robinson, now of Des Moines, but formerly a prominent citizen of this county, compiled a sketch of the early history of the county which was published in 1870, and this has been of much help. James D. Adams, another early settler, published a series of papers of early history in The Alta Advertiser in 1884 and James M. Hoskins published W. S. Lee's notes in The Sioux Rapids Republican in 1891, both of which have helped us. Mr. Hoskins has also kindly verified many of the statements made in these pages and as he had an active part in county affairs for more than twenty-five years, and his memory is remarkable, we believe the dates and incidents related are correct.
Our sincere thanks are due to the gentlemen named, and to many others, for their assistance in gathering the data upon which the first part of this work has been based. It is a beginning, at least, to preserve these matters in perma nent form, and it is our hope that some future historian of the county may find the time to complete the work.
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