Zach Lahn

And that in Germany, when they came over, they had just, you know, left this feudal system.

They were trying to have an uprising.

They were defeated.

They were exiled.

Iowa came online right in 1846.

Heavy agrarian culture.

So you have these people that were fleeing a country primarily because they wanted to control their destiny.

They wanted to own their land.

They wanted to have the ability to build their communities.

And then you see what happens with the expansion, the potential expansion of slavery.

And all these very wealthy people on the East Coast that were slave owners wanting to make the Midwest slave states so they could control it.

I firmly believe that part of the reason that Iowa stood up in the way that they did was because they fled that situation in their own country and they didn't want it happening where they were.

So he came over.

And then about 20 years later, my great-great-grandfather came over on a ship from Hamburg by himself at 14.

And he was in the stowage of the ship, and he made his way to Iowa.

And then in 1900, they built... He and his uncle built our family homestead in Belle Plaine.

And that place...

was a place of deep stories for decades and decades.

From the Great Depression, to World War II, to my great-great-uncle fighting in World War I, going overseas, fighting in World War I and coming back to run the local newspaper.

While his brother kept everything steady with the farm.