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"Past 2 Present"

Poweshiek County, Iowa

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

Periodicals

Palimpsest:

• Men Were Too Fiery for Much Talk: The Grinnell Anti-Abolitionist Riot of 1860 (Spring 1987)

POWESHIEK COUNTY was created on the 17th of February, 1843, and named for a chief of the Sac Indians. The name signified "Roused Bear." This county is in the fifth tier west of the Mississippi River, in the fourth north of the Missouri State line, is twenty-four miles square and contains five hundred eighty-two square miles.

Richard B. Ogden was the first white settler, taking a claim in Union township in the spring of 1843. Daniel and Joseph W. Satchell and Richard Cheeseman settled near him the same year. In 1844 Mahlon Woodward, Thomas Rigdon and others arrived. William English settled on Mill Creek in 1845 where he built the first sawmill in the county. Martin Snyder, in 1846, took a claim adjoining the land upon which Montezuma stands. Henry Zook settled in a grove on Bear Creek in 1845 and in 1846 John J. Talbott with his wife, seven sons and six daughters came from Ohio, locating in a grove which took the name of the family and which was near where Brooklyn stands. Talbott entered the first tract of land in the county in 1851 and became the first postmaster. The survey of public lands was completed in 1847. The first school was taught in the winter of 1847-8 by Stephen Moore in a log cabin in Union township. In 1847 the first mail route was established from Iowa City to Fort Des Moines, running through Poweshiek County, over which the mail was carried on horseback.
     The county was organized in April, 1848, by the election of the following officers: Richard B. Ogden, Martin Snyder and Jacob Yeager, commissioners; Stephen Moore, clerk; Isaac G. Wilson, treasurer, and William English, sheriff. The county-seat was located at Montezuma where land was entered by the county and platted for the town. Lots were sold to raise money to build a court-house. William H. Barnes erected the first building at the new county-seat in 1848. Isaac G. Wilson built a log hotel the same year and in June, 1850, the first store was opened by Gideon Wilson. In 1856 John Cassady established the first newspaper, the Montezuma Republican.
     In March, 1854, J. B. Grinnell, Dr. Thomas Holyoke, Rev. Homer Hamlin and Henry M. Hamilton from the States of New York and Massachusetts laid out a town for the purpose of planting a colony and founding a college. The town was named Grinnell for the projector of the enterprise. During the year several buildings were erected; a store was opened by Anor Scott, a hotel was started by George Chambers and a small building erected for school and church purposes. Grinnell college was founded in 1855.
     Brooklyn was platted by Robert Manatt in April, 1855, and the first house built the same year by Robert Shimer. Malcom was laid out in 1866 by Abel Kimball and Z. P. Wigton. The Rock Island Railroad was built through the towns of Grinnell and Brooklyn in 1863.

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 #