BLACK HAWK COUNTY TOWNSHIPS BEGINNINGS
Tragedy Hits
Tragedy
came to
Samuel Marsden, and William Wrought were township elections clerks with Samuel Roberts, Samuel Gibson and Horace Beckwith judges.
There were a few early land entries but William P. Thompson explained with the 1850’s :Money was scarce in Iowa and interest high—there were some who bought homes, cheaply too, and made payments on then, but were unable to continue, and lost what had been paid. Money demanded 20 per cent interest and short loans at banks brought 2 per cent a month. Many took home loans from eastern parties at 10 per cent and paid handsome premiums in order to get them.”
Byron Sargeant recalled that during the winter of 1855-56, Horace Beckwith floundered in the deep snow on his way to Black Hawk Creek for wood and “after he had burned up most of the posts and rails in his cattle yard, some four or five men on the Black Hawk Creek took horse teams, went to the timber, loaded their sleds with timber and drew it to Mr. Beckwith’s.”
When they first saw him, Mr. Beckwith was crawling out through the roof of his house by slipping a roof board to one side—the snow was up to the roof on the outside.”
Rails Miss, Barclay Dies
James Barclay, after whom the township was named, had the complete plat of a town ready when Dubuque and Pacific railroad surveyors staked the line through his property but in 1861, the rail line went south through Jesup instead and Barclay town withered.
In the first township election, Barclay emerged as clerk and a Justice with William C. Morton the oher justice. Barclay later kept a hotel at a place called Camp Creek.
Jason
Stubbs, who arrived in 1857, recalled seeing only one deer after coming here
but said rattlesnakes and wolves were plentiful. Darkness and the lack of a good trail ofter resulted in Barclay settlers losing their way home
from
Arrivals to the township before 1860 included Dr. James Munsey. John Schuler, Dan Brunn, T.F. Rice, L. Lewis, Charles Kleckner, H. Buss, W. Walker, H. Oliver, Cyrus Smith, Enoch Jenkins, Thomas Cunningham, John Buhner and Gregor Neith.
Fox township had a house built in 1849 by Stephen Howell but it was not until 1858 that it became designed as a separate township.
In that
year, the county court set aside Fox from
Henry Gray, Stephen Howell and Peter Cox had broken the first ground in the township in 1852. L. Hubbert erected a bridge across Spring Creek in 1858 and E. M. Buechele built a township store in 1888.
The township became steeped in German, Dutch and French ancestry with the arrival of such men as Broche, Joung, Sauerbrie, Hueblein, Klackeman, Lichtenberg and Boowbower.
On Feb. 1,
1858, the
Isaac K. Vanderberg was elected clerk; Thomas E. Homer and John E. Burlaw, justices and Hiram E. Bundy and Daniel Falkner, constables.
Homer was
19 when he arrived with his father in 1858 and immediately began to teah school in deserted log cabins. At that time,
Homer said it was possible to drive to
B.G. Updike
was postmaster at the town of
The township population in 1858 was 108 but there were still 25 sections without an inhabitant.
Settlers to
The
earliest known settlers of
In that
year, Union was set apart from
Newell’s marriage to Sarah J. Benham in 1855 was the first in the township.
Other early
settlers were Clinton Bozarth, who came in 1854 and
married
A township
named
Milton
Smith opened his tavern that year on the
The
The names of early settlers included Deeming, Eyestone, Leversee, Henry, Rundle, Webster, Sunderdin, Jacob, Callaghan, Decker, Brown and Kerr.
Confusion for Cedar, Big Creek
Despite an
abnormality in its first election site,
Cedar and
Big Creek Townships were both ordered to set aside as a civil division in 1856
and elections scheduled for April 7th of that year. Somehow the polling plac for Cedar voters was designated at Jesse Wasson’s home in Big Creek and Big
Creek voters cast their ballots in the
The
election results stood however and B. L Doxey emerged
Abraham Turner, who entered in land in Section 18 in the spring of 1853, was the first settler in the township.
Another early arrival, Jacob Koch, related that in 1853, “a story came up from the river that the Indians were on the war path and that they were massacreing all of the settlers.
“We had one little babe then and my wife and I took it, hitched up our oxen, and started up the river to seek a place of safety. When we reached Miller’s Creek was came across a man who had built a little cabin and he induced us to stay all night with him.
“The next day we returned home and I found that the story of the Indians had originated from a stampeded drove of ponies which had been frightened by a charivari for James Virden.:
The first postoffice in the township, called Eliza, was established in the home of John Forbes on Mud Creek.
Eagle Twp. Vote in 1858
Eight
votes, four Republican and four Democratic, cast on Mar. 1, 1858 resulted in
the election of Owen McManus, first clerk; N.P. Camp, Michael Mitchell,
justice, and James Sheen (?) and Joseph Millage,
constables of
When C.W. Eighmey and wife arrived in 1856 the
He later recalled that one day he and his wife saw a wagon pulled by oxen and driven by a man and a woman approaching in the distance. When the outfit got within a few hundred feet of the house the man stood up in the box, took off his hat, waved it and yelled lustily.
The Eighmeys had never before seen such a performance but the stranger explained he was so glad to find someone else living in that section of the county that he could not restrain himself.
J.H. Meade and Cicero Close made the first land entries in 1854 but apparently did not settle in the township.
Arrivals after 1860 included William McGarvey, Damon Mott, Charles Strubel, H.B. Eighmey, William Bomber, M. Bateman, A. Bronson, Joe Easher, O. Eighmey, P.P. Eighmey, Jacob Fike, A.W. Garnder, William Schrader, Nick Beck, P.W. Kline, T.J. Humphrey and Joseph Kerr.
Chances are they were among the 100 township residents who attended the first Fourth of July celebration in C.W. Eighmey’s grove in 1866.
Newell Pioneers in
Wahington is another of the county’s townships given an irregular boundary because of the natural obstacle of the river.
It was organized in 1857 with E.G. Young, clerk; W.J. Sherman and Elijah Eggers, constables; J. Ackerson and John Knapp, justices and Jow W. Hitchcock, James Newell and Velorus Thomas, trustees.
Newell is
generally regarded as the first white settler in the county, arriving in 1845
to locate on the forks of the
E.G. Young arrived shortly after Newell the same year.
The Knapps arrived in 1851, John to settle in section 22; Benjamin in section 26 and Sam and Judson in section 15.
Orange Once was
No reason
can be found, but
Obediah Lineaweaver had been elected clerk and William L. Manning and John Parker, justices of the peace.
Samuel Owens was the first to enter a land claim in the township but Samuel Whiate, arriving in 1853, was the first to settle here. He built a house on the later location of the Murphy farm.
White used
lumber hauled from a mill at