Land of our fathers

My father’s house sits on a parcel of land first described in an 1851 abstract, 3 years after statehood and half a century after the Iowa Territory rounded out the Louisiana Purchase. 160 acres were given to Anna F Strong , “mother and heir at law,” under an act of Congress, signed all the way to President Fillmore “to raise for a limited time an additional military force.” Her son, Private, Third Regiment, US Infantry, did not survive our war on Mexico.

First European settlers arrived in 1833 from back east, but decades passed before for owners lived on this patch. Orlin Oatman, Anna’s assignee, died in Buffalo and left it to his wife Sarah who married George Washburn who sold it Stevenson Burk; wife, name of Parthenia P, sold her dower share for $200. New immigrants pushed west on land newly “cleared” of Indians, planting in the deep black soil. Railroads sped up the pace to the Pacific. The Barrows and the Messengers each bought half the tract and in 1931 charged Arnest Lopata $10 to string electric poles overhead. Then, resident owners removed squatters, or landed farmers, depending how you look at it, and after the second war the land was scissored into patches, sold to developers. They annexed it to the city, laid streets, ran water, and carved Anna Strong’s inheritance into lots young families could mortgage from the Bohemian Savings and Loan. Split foyers sprouted on soilless, treeless tracts, waiting to grow up into neighborhoods. The house that sits on Lot 8 is the house my father built.

A “For Sale” sign sits in the front lawn of my father’s house today. Sudanese refugees live on one side and Mormons rent on the other. What next page will the abstract write?