of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 90-91
COMMISSIONERS COURT. The first officials of Muscatine county consisted of three members of a commissioners' court, the jurisdiction of which was almost without limitation. The act providing for the organization of Muscatine county was passed by the first Wisconsin territorial legislature in December, 1836, and if any organizing commissioners were selected by the law makers, no record of their names is obtainable. It must be remembered that Muscatine county was organized, not under the laws of Iowa territory, but under and by virtue of a legislative enactment of the Wisconsin territory. Hence, by reason of the absence of any recorded authority, the historian has no means of describing the exact methods adopted by the men who had in hand the formation of a government for the new county. The probabilities are, however, that a meeting was held, when candidates were selected for the offices of the commissioners' court, a clerk of the court, a sheriff and others, and that an election very likely was held in January of 1837. In October, presumably the fourth day of the month, the first term of the commissioners' court convened. At this session the court adjourned, according to the clerk's minutes, "until the 5th inst.," which leads to the assurance that a former meeting of the court had been held in October and prior to the fifth day of that month. Here the reader's attention is directed to a marriage license discovered, bearing date February 13, 1837, and issued by Robert McLaren, as clerk of the commissioners' court. It is barely possible, however, that McLaren was, at the time, clerk of the United States district court, which held its first session at Bloomington (Muscatine), April 24, 1837. Unfortunately, these discrepancies are difficult of reconciliation with exactness, and impossible of verification, as the fire which partially destroyed the old court house in 1864, burned many of the loose documents having a place in the structure and, in all probability, a record of the proceedings of the commissioners' court, antedating that of S. Clinton Hastings, whose "minute" book of the commissioners' court has for its first recorded transaction the meeting of the court prior to October 5, 1837. And at that first session of the court in October, the record implies that Hastings did not act as clerk, but one, J. R. Struther. It is therefore strongly suspected that for some time after this first session of the court, the minutes of its proceedings were written from memory by Mr. Hastings.
The writer is limited for his data relating to the early history of the formation of the county and the proceedings of its pioneer officials to the "minute" book, kept by S. Clinton Hastings, clerk of the commissioners' court. From that loosely-kept journal it appears that at the first session of the court only two members of the court were in attendance and there is nothing to show who was the third member. Defects of this character are numerous and much to be deplored.
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