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"Past 2 Present"

Hardin County, Iowa

I have no books which are specifically for this County, but most counties are included in the Iowa statewide books

• Click here for a brief history of Hardin County

Periodicals

• 1856 State Census
• Abandoned Towns
• Andreas Atlas Patrons
• Chester Cemetery
• Early Marriages 1866-1869
• Record of Wills - Book "B"
• Township Map

HARDIN COUNTY lies in the fourth tier south of Minnesota and midway between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. It is twenty-four miles square and contains an area of five hundred seventy-six square miles. The county was created in 1851 and named for Colonel John J. Hardin of Illinois who was killed in the Mexican War. The Iowa River flows through the county from the northwest in a southeasterly direction furnishing water power and along its banks are found borders of woods and excellent stone quarries.
     The first settlement was made by Greengury Haggins who came with his family from Keokuk County in 1849 and made a claim on the Iowa River and in the southeast corner of the county. During the next season Samuel Smith, James A. Dawdey, William Robinson and Abraham Grimsley came with their families and settled in the same vicinity. In the fall of 1850 Jacob Kidwiler made a claim about ten miles above Eldora. The next settlement was made in the vicinity of Iowa Falls by B. I. Talbott and family. In 1851 several families of Quakers settled on Honey Creek in the southern part of the county. During the same year Isaac S. Moore, James Miller, Thomas Benedict and others settled on the north fork of the Iowa River where they laid out a town called Point Pleasant. In January, 1853, Jonathan and Samuel Edgington settled near Eldora. The county entered the land where Eldora was located in June, 1853, for the county-seat. In 1853 the Edgington Brothers opened a store on the new town site. During the same year mills were built at Hardin City and Iowa Falls.
     The county was organized in February, 1853, by the election of the following officers: Alexander Smith, judge; James D. Putnam, clerk; Samuel Smith, recorder and treasurer; Thomas Bennett, sheriff, and William Shafer, school fund commissioner.
     The first term of District Court was held at Eldora in November, 1854, by Judge C. J. McFarland. In October, 1855, the town of Iowa Falls was laid out in the northern part of the county by J. L. Estis, Homer Stevens and others who emigrated from Kane County, Illinois. The first building in the new town was erected by M. C. Woodruff and J. F. Brown the same year. O. M. Holcomb established the first newspaper at Eldora in 1856, the Hardin County Sentinel, with J. D. Thompson as editor. A town was laid out in the northeast corner of the county by J. W. Ackley in 1857 to which he gave his own name. No houses were built until the advent of the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad in 1865 when Ackley began to make a rapid growth. Steamboat Rock was laid out in 1855 on the Iowa River five miles above Eldora. The Central Railroad of Iowa runs through the county from north to south.

Source: History of Iowa: From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century by Benjamin F. Gue. New York: The Century History Co. 1903 #