USA > Iowa > Delaware County > History of Delaware County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 5
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42
PENAL INSTITUTIONS
The governor, by an aet approved January 25, 1839, was anthorized to draw the sum of $20,000, appropriated by an act of Congress in 1838. for public buildings in the Territory of lowa and establish a state penal institution. The aet provided for a board of directors, consisting of three persons, to be elected by the Legislature, who should superintend the building of a penitentiary to be located within a mile of the public square, in the Town of Fort Madison, Lee County, provided that the latter deeded a suitable tract of land for the purpose, also a spring or stream of water for the use of the penitentiary. The citizens of Fort Madison executed a deed of ten acres of land for the build- ing. The work was soon entered upon and the main building and the war- den's house were completed in the fall of 1841. It continued to meet with additions and improvements until the arrangements were all completed accord- ing to the designs of the directors. The labor of the conviets is let out to
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contractors, who pay the state a stipulated sum for services rendered, the state furnishing shops and necessary supervision in preserving order. The Iowa Farming Tool Company and the Fort Madison Chair Company are the present contractors.
PENITENTIARY AT ANAMOSA
The first steps toward the erection of a penitentiary at Anamosa, Jones County. were taken in 1872, and by an act of the General Assembly, approved April 23, 1884. when three commissioners were selected to eonstruet and con- trol prison buildings. They met on the 4th of June following, and chose a site donated by the citizens of Anamosa. Work on the building was com- meneed September 28, 1872. In 1873 a number of prisoners were transferred from the Fort Madison prison to Anamosa. The labor of the convicts at this penitentiary is employed in the erection and completion of the buildings. The labor of a small number is let to the American Cooperage Company. This insti- tution has a well equipped department for female prisoners, also a department for the care of the criminal insane.
STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
A state historical society in connection with the university was provided for by act of the General Assembly, January 25, 1857. At the commencement an appropriation of $250 was made, to be expended in collecting and pre- serving a library of books, pamphlets, papers, paintings and other materials illustrative of the history of Iowa. There was appropriated $500 per annum to maintain this society. Since its organization the society has published three different quarterly magazines. From 1863 to 1874 it published the Annals of lowa, twelve volumes, now called the first series. From 1885 to 1902, it pub- lished the Iowa Historical Record, eighteen volumes. From 1903 to 1907, the society has published the Iowa Journal of History and Polities, now in its fifth volume. Numerous special publications have been issued by the society, the most important of which are the Messages and Proclamations of the Gov- ernors of Iowa, in seven volumes, the Executive Journal of lowa, 1838-1843, and the Lueas Journal of the War of 1812.
10W.A SOLDIERS' HOME
The Iowa Soldiers' Home was built and occupied in 1888, at Marshall- town. The first year it had 140 inmates. In 1907 there were 794 inmates. including 112 women. The United States Government pays to the State of Towa the sum of $100 per year for each inmate of the soldiers' home who served in any war in which the United States was engaged, which amount is used as part of the support fund of the institution. Persons who have property or means for their support, or who draw a pension sufficient therefor, will not be admitted to the home, and if after admission an inmate of the home shall receive a pension or other means sufficient for his support, or shall reeover his health so as to enable him to support himself, he will be discharged from
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the home. Regular appropriation by the state is $14 per month for each mem- ber and $10 per month for each employe not a member of the home.
OTHER STATE INSTITUTIONS
There are Clarinda and Cherokee state hospitals for the insane and one at Knoxville for the inebriate.
It is strange, but true, that in the great State of lowa, with more than 60 per cent of her population engaged in agricultural pursuits and stock- raising, it was not until the year 1900 that a department of the state govern- ment was created in the interests of, and for the promotion of agriculture, animal industry, horticulture, manufactures, etc. The lowa Department of Agriculture was created by an act of the twenty-eighth General Assembly. In 1892 the Iowa Geological Survey was established and the law which provided therefor outlined its work to be that of making "a complete survey of the natural resources of the state in the natural and scientific aspects, including the determination of the characteristics of the various formations and the investigation of the different ores, coal, clays, building stones and other use- ful materials." It is intended to cooperate with the United States Geological Survey in the making of topographical maps of those parts of the state whose coal resources make such maps particularly desirable and useful. The State Agricultural Society is one of the great promoters of the welfare of the people. The society holds an annual fair which has occurred at Des Moines since 1878. At its meetings subjects of the highest interest and value are discussed and these proceedings are published at the expense of the state.
THE CELEBRATION OF THE FIFTIETHI ANNIVERSARY OF THE CONSTITUTION OF IOWA
By Jolin C. Parrish
In the year 1907 the State of Iowa closed the first half century of existence under the constitution of 1857. In April, 1906, the General Assembly, look- ing forward to the suitable celebration of so important an anniversary, passed an act appropriating $750 to be used by the State Historical Society of Iowa, in a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the constitution of 1857. It was eminently desirable that the celebration should oceur at lowa City, for it was at that place, then the capital of the state, that the constitutional con- vention of 1857 was held. And it was particularly fitting that the exercises should be placed under the auspices of the State Historical Society of lowa, for the same year, 1857, marks the birth of the society. While the convention was drafting the fundamental law of the state in a room on the lower floor of the Old Stone Capitol, the sixth General Assembly in the legislative halls upstairs in the same building passed an act providing for the organization of a State Historical Society. Thus the event of 1907 became a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the State Historical Society as well as a commemoration of the semi-centennial of the constitution of 1857.
In due time plans were matured for a program covering four days, begin- ning on Tuesday, March 19, and closing on Friday, March 22, 1907. It con-
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sisted of addresses by men of prominent reputation in constitutional and his- torical lines, together with conferences on state historical subjects. On Tuesday evening Prof. Andrew C. MeLaughlin, of Chicago University, delivered an address upon "A Written Constitution in Some of its IIistorieal Aspects." He dwelt in a scholarly way upon the growth of written constitutions, showing the lines along which their historical development has progressed.
The speaker of Wednesday was Prof. Eugene Wambaugh, of the Harvard Law School, one of the leading authorities in the country upon questions of constitutional law and formerly a member of the faculty of the college of law of the University of Iowa. Professor Wambaugh, taking for his subject, "The Relation Between General History and the History of Law," outlined the his- tory of the long rivalry between the civil law of Rome and the common law in their struggle for supremacy, both in the old world and the new. In closing, he referred to the constitution of Iowa as typical of the efforts of the American people to embody in fixed form the principles of right and justice.
Thursday morning was given over to the conference on the teaching of history. Prof. Isaac A. Loos, of the State University of Iowa, presided, and members of the faculties of a number of the colleges and high schools of the state were present and participated in the program. In the afternoon the conference of historical societies convened, Dr. F. E. Ilorack, of the State Ilis- torieal Society of Iowa, presiding. Reports were read from the historical depart- ment at Des Moines and from nearly all of the local historical societies of the state. Methods and policies were discussed and much enthusiasm was aroused looking toward the better preservation of the valuable materials of local his- tory.
The history of the Mississippi Valley is replete with events of romantic interest. From the time of the early French voyagers and explorers, who paddled down the waters of the tributaries from the North, down to the days of the sturdy pioneers of Anglo-Saxon blood, who squatted upon the fertile soil and staked out their claims on the prairies, there attaches an interest that is scarcely equaled in the annals of America. On Thursday evening, Dr. Reu- ben Gold Thwaites, superintendent of the State Historical Society of Wis- consin, now deceased, delivered an address upon "The Romance of Mississippi Valley History." He traced the lines of exploration and immigration from the Northeast and East and drew interesting pictures of the activities in the great river valley when the land was young and the ways full of wonder to the pioneer adventurer.
Friday's program elosed the session. On this day Gov. Albert B. Cummins attended and participated in the celebration. At the university armory before a large gathering, he spoke briefly on the Constitution of the United States, pay- ing it high tribute and at the same time showing the need of amendment to fit present-day needs. Ile then introduced Judge Emlin McClain, of the Supreme Court of lowa, who delivered the principal address of the day. . Indge McClain took for his subjeet "The Constitutional Convention and the Issues Before It." He told of that memorable gathering at the Old Stone Capitol in Iowa City fifty years ago, when thirty-six men met in the Supreme Court room to draft the fundamental law for the commonwealth.
Vol. 1-3
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
The members of the convention of 1857 were from various ocenpations. The representatives of the legal profession led in numbers with fourteen mem- bers, among whom were many men of prominence. William Penn Clarke, Edward Johnstone and J. C. Hall were there. James F. Wilson, afterward so prominent in national polities, was a member, then only twenty-eight years of age. J. C. IIall was the only delegate who had served in either of the pre- ceding constitutional conventions of the state, having represented Henry County in the convention of 1844. There were twelve farmers in the convention of 1857-rugged types of those men who settled upon land and built into the early history of the state its elements of enduring strength. Among the remain- ing members were merchants, bankers and various other tradesmen. They were a representative group of men and they attacked the problems before them with characteristic pioneer vigor.
The convention of 1857 chose for its presiding officer, Francis Springer, an able farmer and lawyer from Lonisa County. Many were the discussions that stirred the convention. One of the first was over the proposition to move the convention bodily to Dubuque or to Davenport. The Town of lowa City it seems had not provided satisfactory accommodations for the delegates, and for hours the members gave vent to their displeasure and argued the question of a removal. But inertia won and the convention finally decided to remain in Iowa City and settled down to the discussion of more serious matters.
The constitution of 1846 had prohibited banking corporations in the state. But there was strong agitation for a change in this respect, and so the con- vention of 1857 provided for both a state bank and for a system of free banks. The matter of corporation was a prominent one before the convention. So also was the question of the status of the negro. The issues were taken up with fairness and argned upon their merits. The convention was republican in proportion of twenty-one to fifteen. The delegates had been elected upon a party basis. Yet they did not allow partisanship to control their actions as members of a constituent assembly. On the 19th of Jannary they had come together and for a month and a half they remained in session. They adjourned March 5th and dispersed to their homes.
That the members of the convention did their work well is evidenced by the fact that in the fifty years that have followed only four times has the con- stitution of 1857 been amended. Nor did these amendments embody changes. the need of which the men of 1857 could have well foreseen. The first two changes in the fundamental law were due to the changed status of the negro as a result of the Civil war. In 1882 the prohibitory amendment was passed but it was soon declared null by the Supreme Court of Iowa because of tech- micalities in its submission to the people and so did not become a part of the constitution. The amendments of 1884 were concerned largely with judicial matters and those of 1904 provided for biennial election and increased the num- ber of members of the House of Representatives.
With these changes the work of the constitutional convention of 1857 has come down to ns. Fifty years have passed and twiee has the convention been the subject of a celebration. In 1882, after a quarter of a century, the sur- viving members met at Des Moines. Francis Springer, then an old man, was present and presided at the meeting. Out of the original thirty-six members,
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
only twenty responded to the roll call. Eight other members were alive but were unable to attend. The remainder had given way to the inevitable reaper. This was in 1882. In 1907 occurred the second celebration. This time it was not a reunion of the members of the convention, for only one survivor appeared on the scene. It was rather a commemoration of the fiftieth birthday of the constitution of the state. Only one member of the convention, John H. Peters, of Manchester, Iowa, is reported to be now living.
The celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of our funda- mental law was marked by a unique feature. There were present and partici- pated in the program three aged pioneers of the state, a survivor of each of the three constitutional conventions. These three conventions met in 1857, in 1846 and 1844 respectively, fifty, sixty-one and sixty-three years ago. On the opening day of the celebration, J. Scott Richman appeared upon the seene. Sixty-one years ago he had come to Iowa City as a delegate of the convention of 1846. Eighty-eight years old, with patriarchal beard and slow step, he eame as the only living member of the convention that framed the constitution under which Iowa entered the Union. On Thursday there came from Marion, Samuel Durham. a tall pioneer ninety years of age, the sole survivor of Iowa's first constitutional convention -- that of 1844. His memory ran back to the days of Iowa's first governor, Robert Lucas, for he had reached Iowa from Indiana in the year 1840. On the last day of the program these two old constitution makers of 1844 and 1846 were joined by a third, John II. Peters, who had come from Delaware County as a member of the last constitutional convention of fifty years ago. They sat down together at the luncheon on Friday noon and responded to toasts with words that took the hearers back to the days when Jowa was the last stopping place of the immigrant.
Thus the celebration was brought to an end. From every point of view it was a success. Probably never again will the state see the reunion of repre- sentatives of all three constitutional conventions. Time must soon take away these lingering pioneers of two generations ago, but the state will not soon forget their services, for they have left their monument in the fundamental law of the commonwealth.
CHAPTER II
INTERESTING GEOLOGICAL DETAILS
Delaware County belongs to Northeastern Iowa, a region that has beeome noted the world over by reason of McGee's exhaustive memoir on its Pleistoeene history. Delaware lies direetly west of Dubuque County and its northeast corner is only about eight or ten miles distant in a direct line from the Missis- sippi River. Its fertile lands early attracted the stream of settlers overflowing from the mining region around Dubuque. The main body of the county is in- elnded in the great Iowan drift plain, but in the extreme northeast it embraces some of the rugged irregularities of the Driftless Area. Delaware has Clayton County on the north. Buchanan on the west, and Jones and Linn bound it on the south. The eastern boundary of the county is twelve miles west of the fifth principal meridian, the north-south line to which all the ranges of town- ships in the state are referred. The county is ent into approximately sym- metrieal north and south halves by the Second Correction line. Sixteen con- gressional townships are included in the area, the eight townships north of the correction line being severally somewhat larger than those south of it.
The area at present included in Delaware County was among the first re- gions west of the Mississippi to be studied by geologists. It was traversed in the antumn of 1839 by a party organized, under the direction of Dr. David Dale Owen. to explore the mineral lands of the United States. Each township was examined, quarter section by quarter section, and notes were made on the timber, soils and rock exposures.
Owen's work of that year began below Davenport and was carried, in lowa, as far north as MeGregor, and so Delaware County is only a small part of the area explored by the remarkable survey of the autumn of the year 1839. The soils are graded as first, second and third class-first class soils, in the judgment of the pioneer explorer, being rather rare, even in Delaware County. No minerals were noted in the area we are considering except some indications of iron ore.
DRAINAGE
One system controls nearly all the drainage of Delaware County. The Maquoketa River enters the county in Richland Township and flows nearly southeast, leaving the county finally in South Fork Township. Above Forest- ville, in Richland Township, the valley for some distance is a rock-walled gorge cut in Niagara limestone, and for two or three miles below Forestville the valley retains the gorge-like character as it passes through loess-covered high- lands. In the southern part of Richland Township, however, the stream enters the Iowan drift plain through which it flows until it passes Manchester. Two
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
miles below Manchester it leaves the low plain of Iowan drift to follow a canyon ent in the highlands that extend from that point to the southern limits of the county. The valley at certain points in the highlands is more than two hundred feet deep. The singular habit, first fully described by McGee, of streams avoiding low plains and entting deep chasms through rocky highlands, is well illustrated at many points along the Maquoketa in Delaware and Jones counties. This puzzling behavior has not yet been fully explained.
Contrary to the view sometimes entertained, these deep valleys dissecting uplands are much older than the age of the loess, older than the lowan drift, older than the Kansan. Undisturbed loess comes down on the side of the deep valley to the level of the water at Fleming's Mill, south of Delhi. The red- dish brown Buchanan gravels, in beds undisturbed since the elose of the Kansan Age of the glacial epoch, lie in the lowest parts of the valley at Hartwick and Ilopkinton. The erosion in the bottom of this valley, like the erosion on the drift plain itself, has been inappreciable since the disappearance of the lowan iee.
The tributaries of the Maquoketa from the west are mostly small, unim- portant prairie streams that have their headwaters in the sloughs of the Iowan drift plain. Prairie Creek, or Coffin's Grove Creek, as it is sometimes called, begins in slough lands in the eastern part of Buchanan County and flows east- ward through the southern part of Coffin's Grove Township to join the Ma- quoketa a mile above Manchester. In section 28 of Coffin's Grove, the channel of Prairie Creek is eut through a rocky hill, timbered and covered with some loess, but elsewhere the channel of the stream is a shallow depression cut but little below the general level of the adjacent prairie.
Buck Creek and its branches drain the undulating prairie land of ITazel Green Township and part of Milo and Adams. The upper branches of the stream have no definitely marked channels, the drainage waters being eon- ducted along the sags or sloughs. Near the center of Hazel Green Township the channel has better definition but is a mere shallow ditch in the prairie. In the western part of Union Township, Buck Creek enters a gap in the loess- covered plateau and flows thence to its junetion with the Maquoketa in a deep valley, sometimes between rocky walls that rise 125 feet above the level of the stream. The walls are developed into picturesque, rugged, fissured, weather beaten cliffs in section 9, of Union Township.
A few streams flow into the Maquoketa from the east. Honey Creek, with its principal tributary, Lindsey Creek, drains the larger part of Honey Creek Township and the northern part of Delaware. It joins the Maquoketa above Manchester. Honey Creek, together with its branches, is throughout most of its course a simple prairie stream flowing in a shallow channel through the ordinary drift plain ; but in the west half of section 35, Honey Creek Township, the stream wanders in a broad valley bounded by rocky cliffs twenty-five feet high. The region contains some deposits of loess but there are no signs of Iowan drift. All the drift exposed below the loess or at the surface is of Kansan type.
Plum Creek is the largest affluent of the Maquoketa in Delaware County. Its ramifying branches extend to the northern part of Oneida and Bremen townships, and the southwest part of Elk Township pays tribute to this stream through a system of undefined channels or sloughs. The initial branches and
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
upper reaches of Plum Creek conform to the usual type of streams flowing in an uneroded drift plain; but east of Earlville the creek enters the region of the Delhi plateau, flowing through roek gorges and among loess hills that over- look the drift plain throughout most of the remainder of its course, to its junetion with the Maquoketa in section 11, of Union Township. For a short distance, in seetions 20, 28 and 29 of North Fork Township, Plum Creek follows the western margin of the low drift plain from which the Delhi platean rises abruptly to the westward, but in section 33 of the township named, it turns away from the drift plain to follow a rock-walled chasm cut through a portion of the plateau. At the top of the chasm the rock ledges are overlain by residual chert and Kansan drift, but the Towan drift does not rise above the plain which constitutes the paradoxical divide between Phun Creek and North Maquoketa River.
The North Maquoketa River flows through the eastern part of North Fork Township, and through seetions 1 and 12 of South Fork. The area draining into the North Maquoketa is unimportant. Above Rockville in North Fork Township and in its short course in South Fork this stream flows in a deep valley, the borders of which rise conspicuously above the general level of the neighboring plains. For a few miles below Rockville the North Maquoketa has a channel in the Iowan plain, a condition that affords a feasible crossing for the Farley & Cedar Rapids branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway.
Bear Creek has its origin in a number of small branches draining the central part of Colony Township. It flows southward through sections 2 and 10 of Bremen, emerging from the loess-Kansan area and passing out npon the lowan drift near the southwest corner of the last named section. During the oceupa- tion of the county by lowan glaciers the lower part of the valley of Bear Creek was choked with ice and the valley was undrained except by overflow to the north into the valley of Little Turkey River. As a result of the conditions noted Bear Creek was robbed of part of its drainage area, the waters from the northern part of this area being permanently turned into the Little Turkey. From section 10 of Bremen Township, Bear Creek flows near the margin of the lowan drift, in an ancient valley that was only partially filled by glacial debris and enters the North Maquoketa at Dyersville.
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