Iowa Band

The Iowa Band was a home missionary initiative that worked at northwest frontier in the nineteenth century.

The Iowa Band started as a group of 12 Christian ministers, all trained at Andover Theological Seminary, who agreed to carry the gospel into a frontier region. The band was a part of the American Home Missionary Society that included Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists as members. Some prominent men from this organization of home missionaries were Daniel Lane (leader of the Keosauqua Academy where he stayed and trained young people), Harvey Adams, Erastus Ripley, Horace Hutchinson, Alden B. Robbins, William Salter (Influential in starting Iowa College), Edwin B. Turner, Benjamin A. Spaulding (stationed in Muscatine), William Hammond, James J. Hill (Missionary to Mt. Pleasant), Ebenezer Alden, Ephriam Adams (scribe) and C.E. Brown who came earlier in the Maquoketa area. (Bates was an Iowa native that joined.)

The spirit with which these home missionaries went forth was ably expressed by one of the Iowa Band when he said: "The understanding is among us all, that we go west not for a temporary purpose, unless the great Head of the Church shall make it so. We go to remain permanently -- to live and die there -- and God grant us grace to carry out this purpose."

The group arrived in 1843, and each minister selected a different town in which to establish a congregation. Many stayed in the above mention towns while others continued on west past Iowa into Kansas and Nebraska. The Iowa Band's motto was "each a church; all a college."

After a number of years when each minister worked independently, the ministers collectively helped to establish Iowa College in Davenport. Later board officials moved the college to Grinnell and changed its name to Grinnell College. The letters and journal of William Salter, a member of the Iowa Band, depict the commitment and philosophy of this small group. At one point, Salter wrote the following to his fiancée back East: "I shall aim to show that the West will be just what others make it, and that they which work the hardest and do the most for it shall have it. Prayer and pain will save the West and the Country is worth it, "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered. "

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