French Aeronauts In Iowa in 1876?

Location. Taylor Township, Iowa
Date: February 1 1876 Time: early morning
It is well known that a number of the best aeronauts in France have been at work for some time endeavoring to perfect an airship by which aerial navigation would be made as safe, and much more speedy, than water navigation. It may be that their labors have been at last crowned with success,… and that the almost incredible story related below is a fact, and the airship reported to have been seen yesterday morning in Taylor Township, possibly, the successful invention on a trial rip around the world.
As Mr. Randolph Seegeese went out about daylight yesterday morning to attend to his stock, he was terribly frightened and astonished to hear a voice issue from the gray twilight in the early dawn above him and inquiring in broken English, “Say my friend, what State is this?” Mr. Seegeese is a good Catholic, and, first taking time to devoutly cross himself, he looked up and saw what almost struck him dumb with wonder and surprise. For, poised in the air, not more than one hundred feet over his head, was an immense balloon, or number of balloons, supporting a regular ship or boat that must have been at least seventy or eighty feet in length. He could also distinguish the heads of several people bending over the sides of the remarkable craft, and presently the voice again hailed with the inquiry, “Will you please, tell us, sir what State this is?” By this time Mr. Seegeese had recovered enough in self-possession to answer, “Iowa.” “What city is that over there?” again asked his interrogator, nodding his head towards the south. “Marshalltown,” responded Mr. Seegeese. ““Where is the Missouri River?” was the next question.
“You are about half way between the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers now,” answered Mr. S. “Oui, thank you!” said the voice. A moment after some order was given in a language which Mr. Seegeese did not understand and the huge canvas paddle-wheels, like the arms of an old-fashioned, windmill, slowly revolved, and the monster silently yet, rapidly ascended, and bore off in a westerly direction. Mr. Seegeese said it was hardly light enough for him to see this wonderful machine sufficiently plain to attempt a thorough description of it. there were three immense balloons, the largest above the other two, which were rigged quite close to the boat—apparently a wooden structure built after a ship’s model, and seventy or eighty feed in length by sixteen or twenty feet wide amidships. The vessel was also ten or fifteen feet deep, and, from what he supposed to be the cabin windows in the stern, lights were shining brightly. There were huge paddle-wheels or arms, attached to each side of the ship, that appeared to propel it in any direction desired by those navigating this most singular of all remarkable craft. From behind, an enormous rudder, also of canvas, fastened in a light frame, extended fully forty feet, he is quite certain. This, also, as the strange ship, bore away to the westward, revolved rapidly. That she was operated by steam power, he knows, for he plainly heard the hiss of escaping vapor as the machine, ship, balloon, or whatever it may be called, stood nearly stationary in the air, a hundred feet or less above his head.
Just as the aerial vessel moved off, a flask was thrown over the side, which fell near him. Mr. Seegeese hastened to pick it up, hoping that it might contain some account or clue to the mysterious voyagers—where they came from, where they were going, or, to state it in the emphatic language of Mr. Seegeese, “who the devil they were, anyway, sailing around in the clouds at daylight, frightening honest people out of their wits.” The flask Mr. Seegeese brought in the city with him yesterday afternoon, and it is now on exhibition at the Marshalltown Iowa Times office. It is evidently of foreign manufacture, and entirely empty—worse luck! There was a peculiarly pungent odor about it, however, which experts, who examined it this morning, pronounced to have been produced by the presence of ‘absinthe’—a liquor in very common use in France. The fact of its French origin is also conclusively proven by a stamp on the bottom of it containing the words “Louis de Berneau, Rue de Kremlin, Paris.”