LINCOLN TOWNSHIP.
The first settler in township 85, range 21, was John Campbell, who made his home on section 12 in the year 1854. He was followed in 1855 by Jacob Miller, Mr. Buckdaw, Thos. Reagan, John Gilmore, Levi Norton, H. C. Wickham, and perhaps Mr. Jeffers. There was no addition to the population by immigration for five years, at which time W. H. Terwillager made his appearance. But as an evidence that the township was having accessions in another direction, it may be stated that the family of Mr. Wickham now (1876) consists of himself and wife, and five sons and eight daughters, all natives of Lincoln Township. The eldest is not quite seventeen years of age. It is quite remarkable that there has never been a physician called in Mr. Wickham's family. The township is now being well settled, and good school houses dot the prairie in all directions.
INDIAN CREEK TOWNSHIP, 1816.
T. C. Davis even yet grows enthusiastic over the early Indian Creek days, and recalls with great enjoyment the recollection of the fishing, 'coon hunting, deer killing, and elk chasing times. Prairie wolves gave music at nights, and grouse furnished the standard dish in their season. " Uncle Tommy " and Jerry Corey laid out Iowa Center in August, 1855, and engaged in trade, displaying their goods, wares and merchandise in the log cabin in which Jerry's family lived, and for the time it was store, parlor, bed-room, kitchen and hotel. (The compiler of this history now, 1886, ate dinner at this " Headquarters " in, 1854, and found it very much as above de'scribed.) The salt, sugar and molasses were kept in a small outhouse. It was Jerry's turn one day to draw molasses for Billy Wood. He started the faucet and set the jug, and then went out to entertain Billy while it filled. They struck up a hog-trade, forgot all about tile running sweets, and when it was looked for the jug was buried in the escaped contents of the barrel. F. M. Baldwin, with the Young Bros., erected a frame building and began trade in 1855. M. M. & T. .l. Ross opened a store in 1856; and the same year there were two steam saw and flouring mills erected. In 1857 the Baptists, aided by the community generally, built their brick church, said to be the first building in the county for church purposes. (There is some doubt about its being the first church building erected in the county. The Cumberland Presbyterian church was built about the same time in Nevada.)
HOMICIDES AND OTHER ITEMS.
About August, 1853, Barnabas Lowell lived in a cabin on East Indian Creek, north of the McDaniel saw-mill. He had quite a large family, and the older children slept in a rough addition to the cabin. One of the older boys was sent for the neighbors in the night with the story that his mother was sick, but when they arrived life was extinct. The children told some story about hearing disturbances between their parents, and though the body was buried before any investigation, it was afterwards exhumed and a