Let me show you the way. Take Hwy 10 east and south out of Sutherland, dip into the river valley, then turn left at the top of the hill and follow the signs to the Prairie Center, a sweet place worth a visit. There’s a postage-stamp cemetery there, but that’s not it. Say hello to the Center's little bunch of buffalo.
We’re looking for Dutch Fred’s grave , so head back to 10, turn right, descend the hill, cross the river, then take the first left--you're on gravel, going south. When the road turns west, then south again, stay with it. Now it gets tricky.
A plush carpet of old prairie runs in and over the hills created long ago by the Little Sioux river. When you start climbing, stop the car and look east. Look hard. Keep looking until you spot a stone, the only marker in all that bushy prairie grass. That stone marks what remains of Old Dutch Fred, who wasn't Dutch, but German, a single-minded guy who left his wife and daughter in Prussia, divorced her in fact, gave her her freedom, but never gave up the dream of having the two of them join him once he grabbed his dream from a place called America.
In 1856, the trip over the brine just about killed him. It was awful, worse than that. Some passengers got together, wrote a letter, slipped it into a bottle, then tossed it into the sea. That letter listed the horrors on the ship, then offered this: "We want to deter immigration through any agent," it said. "We regret having made the decision to travel to America."
Wasn't easy, coming over, but Dutch Fred was undeterred. He arrived in New York jobless, just a few coins in his pocket. "I am a farmer, and I will find land to till and grow crops," he'd tell people. "That is all I know." Literally, that was. He couldn't read, spoke broken English, and had no idea what a map was. "I am a farmer, and I will find land to till and grow crops," he'd say.
He discovered there was a war on. He'd left Prussia to avoid one. In Philly, he worked at a brewery, got the job by stopping a fight in a bar. He became a good friend of the working girls because he refused to let them come to harm.
Inched west. In Cleveland, he watched a man nail up a poster, a man who told him out west there was free land if you lived on it for five years--place called Iowa.
"Where is Iowa?" Fred said. Man with the hammer pointed west.
The railroad ended at Cedar Falls, where Dutch Fred bought a wagon, a yoke of feisty red oxen, and supplies.
But he made it there--which is to say "here," and tilled land in the northwest quarter of section 34, Waterman Township, O'Brien County. That's what he was, a farmer.
He made no enemies, but the hoppers ruined his few first and final years on the land he always wanted.
You'll honor his memory if you take a winding road that slumbers between the hills to a place his gravestone stands mightily and alone in the prairie grass. Some wayward meadow lark may pipe out the melody old Dutch Fred used to hear, and maybe still does.
Sit there for a while--nobody's around. Give him your ministry of presence. He was a kind man who cared for his yoke of oxen no less than his neighbors, but he died alone, half the world away from the only woman and child he ever loved.
Get there early morning. When the sun puts some space between itself and the horizon, it lays a Midas touch over every thing, the whole world around Dutch Fred's grave buttery and golden. Seems to me that's when you'll see him.
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I am indebted to Carolyn Rohrbaugh's Dutch Fred: Immigrant, as well as the trip she took me on to find the old man's grave.
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