Famous modern photographer from Des Moines

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[Gertrude] Käsebier (née Gertrude Stanton) had a photographic studio on Fifth Avenue in New York…Her career had taken off late in the 1890s, when Alfred Stieglitz published and exhibited her photographs. She was, he asserted, “the leading artistic portrait photographer of the day”…

As an adult, Käsebier lived most of her life in the east, but her childhood was more diverse than that. She was born in 1852 in Des Moines, Iowa, and spent her first eight years in what was then called Fort Des Moines. When her family moved westward to profit from providing supplies to prospectors, her father became the first mayor of Golden, Colorado.
    
It was while living in Iowa and Colorado that she became intrigued by Native Americans, specifically Lakota Sioux. She later recalled that, during her childhood, it was a simpler, less treacherous time.…

The full story is told in a new book by Roy R. Behrens, titled DREAMS OF FIELDS: Memory Traces of Iowa’s Past (Ice Cube Press 2025). 

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from Tipton, Iowa, to the California gold fields

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In early 1849, Sarah Royce and her husband were living in a small community about three miles from Tipton, Iowa, 60 miles west of the Mississippi River.

There had been a flurry of rumors about the abundance of unclaimed land in California. They had also heard that gold was found, the year before, at Sutter’s Creek, about 45 miles east of Sacramento.

They soon joined the ranks of those who were called the “Forty-Niners” because, in 1849, they packed their essential belongings in covered wagons, and all but blindly headed west.…

The immensity of their journey, powered by three yokes of oxen, from Iowa to California, soon became apparent. It took them an entire day to reach the town of Tipton, having traveled only three miles…

As it turns out, Sarah Royce was the mother of Harvard Philosopher Josiah Royce, a colleague of William James and George Santayana at Harvard. He persuaded her to share her memories of that trek. The full story is told in a new book by Roy R. Behrens, titled DREAMS OF FIELDS: Memory Traces of Iowa’s Past (Ice Cube Press 2025). Online link.