of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 249-250
LAKE TOWNSHIP. This township was organized July 2, 1859, and comprises all of township 77, north of range 3 west, lying east and south of the Cedar river, and that portion of township 77, north of range 4 west, lying east and south of the Cedar river, together with about eight sections of township 77, north of range 2 west. It is bounded on the east by Bloomington, on the west by Pike, on the south by Cedar, Seventy-Six and Bloomington, and on the north by Goshen and Moscow townships. The Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railroad passes through the township from east to West. A good part of Lake is prairie, the soil is very fertile and as a consequence farms are highly cultivated and the tillers of the soil prosperous to a very gratifying degree. There are eight school subdistricts which have school nine months in the year, with an average attendance of pupils of seventy-two, the cost of which is $3.75 per capita.
The township was early settled, and in 1839 and previous thereto the following had taken claims in Lake and were cultivating their farms: Samuel Lucas was on section 25; Judge Joseph Williams on section 25, where he had built a pretentious "big house" and tenement houses, his aim at that time being to establish a plantation pretty much on the southern order of things. Governor Robert Lucas owned a tract of land on section 27 and at infrequent intervals lived there. General Joseph E. Fletcher had a farm on section 26, on which Colonel Kincaid built for him his first cabin in 1840. David R. Warfield arrived in Muscatine in 1834 and later settled in this township, on section 28. Here he built a log cabin. Horatio Sumner located on section 11, and George Bumgardner, first county surveyor and the first one to teach school in the county, on section 30. An improvident well digger by the name of Baker, took up a claim on section 36 and John LaFourette on section 25.
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