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Iowa was admitted into the Union as a sovereign and independent State, December 28, 1846.
The first election held in Cedar County, under State organization, was held on the second Tuesday of October, 1847.
The first sale of lands returned delinquent for taxes, was held on the 17th day of April, 1848. The lands then offered were delinquent from 1845.
May18, 1846, the first Court House was accepted by the County Commissioners.
Harvey G. Whitlock, a reputed Mormon and a self-constituted physician, settled at Antwerp, in the Summer of 1839, and was the first resident physician in the county. He afterward moved to Tipton and occupied the corner where the law, exchange and banking office and large private library building of Hon. W. H. Tuthill is now located.
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The first resident couple of Cedar County, to be joined together in the sacred bonds of wedlock, were W. A. Rigby and Miss Lydia Barr. They were married at Muscatine, because a license could not be had in the county of their residence by reason of the unorganized condition of Cedar County.
Margaret, daughter of Hector Sterret, now the widow of Levi Jennings, was the first white child born in Cedar County. She was born about the 1st of September, 1836.
It is believed that Joseph Poston, at Poston’ Grove, was the first male child born in the county.
An effort was made to establish the date when, and the name of the party who made the first entry of Government lands, but the effort was not crowned with success.
Judge Tuthill had the following copy of a Land Office receipt, which is transmitted with these pages:
No. 2 RECEIVER’S OFFICE AT DUBUQUE, I.T., November 1, 1838.
Received from David W. Walton, of Cedar County, Iowa Territory, the sum of two hundred dollars, being in full for the southeast quarter of Section No. Fifteen, in Township No. Seventy-nine, of Range No. Two west of the 5th P.M., containing one hundred and sixty acres, and __________ land, at $1.25-100 acre.
TH. MCNIGHT, Receiver.
