IAGenWeb - Marion County |
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On July 4, 1848, the county commissioners ordered that township 76, range 19, should be erected into a new civil township to be known |p. 121| by the name of Polk, in honor of James K. Polk, at that time President of the United States. It was further ordered that the first election should be held at the house of Warren D. Everett. There was some opposition to the organization of the township, led by Josiah Bullington, who, with others, signed a remonstrance. Then, in response to a petition of Jeremiah Shepperd and others, the territory was attached to the Township of Knoxville, but on October 3, 1848, the court recognized the legal existence of Polk as a separate and distinct township and the boundaries were then fixed to include "all of township 76, range 19, except the two southern tiers of sections, and all of township 76, range 20."
As thus defined the township included all the present Township of Polk, all of Union, and about sixteen square miles of the northwest corner of Knoxville. On January 8, 1850, it was reduced to its present area of twenty-four square miles--the northern two-thirds of township 76, range 19. The Des Moines River enters near the northwest corner and flows in a southeasterly direction across the township. In section 10 it receives the waters of the White Breast Creek, which comes from the southwest. Along these streams the bottom lands are level and the soil is far above average in fertility. White Breast Prairie, north of the Des Moines River, is a beautful stretch of country, well adapted to agriculture, and many of the first settlers selected claims in this part of the township. Polk is bounded on the north by Summit Township; on the east by Lake Prairie and Clay; on the south by Knoxville, and on the west by Knoxville and Union.
In 1843 Alexander Caton, Mordecai Yearns, Michael S. Morris, George Wilson, Andrew Stortz, George, Edward and Rachael Billaps, a man named Stevenson and his three sons--George, James and Andrew--all settled on the White Breast Prairie, and Richard R. Watts located a claim near where the old Village of Coalport was afterward laid out. During the next three years Andrew, George and William Karr, Frank, Warren D. and John Everett, John Babcock, Robert Ethrington and a few others settled within the limits of the township.
Richard R. Watts and John Babcock were both from Ohio. The latter was a believer in the Mormon faith and his wife was a member of that church. It is said that during one winter Watts and his family were "dependent upon the services of a coffee mill for their daily bread," and during the season ground by this primitive method ten bushels of buckwheat. Think of that, ye women of the Twentieth century! When the household runs short of breadstuffs in the present day, it is an easy matter to give an order to the grocer by telephone |p. 122| and in a short time have a sack or barrel of flour delivered at your door. But three score and ten years ago, when Marion County marked the western limit of civilization in Iowa, there were neither telephones nor grocers--not even mills to grind the grain.
The first school in the township was taught by an Englishman whose name has been forgotten. It was taught in a little log house built for the purpose near the upper end of the White Breast Prairie about 1848. John Everett taught the second term in that house, which also served the purposes of a church, religious services being frequently held there by the Baptists and United Brethren. The great flood of 1851 swept the schoolhouse away, but some years later a frame building was erected near the site, but on higher ground. In 1914 there wre six school districts in the township, in which ten teachers were employed, 158 scholars enrolled, and the value of the school property was $3,200, exclusive of the land upon which the buildings stood.
In 1850 Warren D. Everett, Michael S. Morris and James Karr joined together and built a saw mill near the south bank of the Des Moines River. It was a crude affair, driven by horse power, but it answered the purpose in the absence of a better one, and much of the lumber used by the early settlers was made by this mill.
The Wabash Railroad runs through the northern part of the township. Fifield is the only railroad station within the township limits. Coalport and Rousseau were laid out at an early date, but neither ever grew to any considerable proportions. Their history is given in the chapter on Towns and Villages.
Perry is the only township in the county having a smaller area than Polk. The latter therefore stands fourteenth in size and valuation of taxable property, but is thirteenth in population. In 1910 the United States census rported the population at 555, and in 1913 the property was assessed at $539,116.