Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/457

  officers:  James G. Upton, judge; Edmund Gillette, clerk; William Woodward, recorder and treasurer; John Harlow, sheriff, and M. V. Burdick, prosecuting attorney. Vernon Springs was the first county-seat and there the first mill was built on the Turkey River by George Sprague in 1853. Mr. Miller opened the first store the following year. Harriet Cole taught the first school in a log cabin at Oregon Grove in 1854. The land upon which Cresco stands was entered in 1853 by one Mr. Barber who built a log cabin in the woods which was purchased by Martin L. Shook in 1854 and was known as Shook’s Grove. In 1866 it was owned by Augustus Beadle, W. M. Strong and B. H. Edgarton who laid out the town of Cresco. Judge Samuel Murdock held the first court in the county at Howard Center in 1857.

In February, 1858, a weekly newspaper was established at New Oregon named the Howard County Sentinel with J. H. Field as editor. The Milwaukee Railroad runs through the northwest part of the county passing through the towns of Cresco and Lime Springs. HUMBOLDT COUNTY, as first created in 1851, embraced sixteen townships, including the four northern townships of Webster. In 1855 the General Assembly apportioned the territory constituting Humboldt, equally between Kossuth and Webster, and on the 1st of July following, Humboldt County became extinct. On the 26th of February, 1857, the county was again established with its original boundaries. Through some unexplained manipulation of the bill for the restoration of the county it was discovered, that, after this passage and before it reached the Governor for his approval, the south tier of townships had been erased from the act. The next Legislature attempted to correct the error but in the meantime the new Constitution had been adopted which provided that county boundaries could not be changed without the consent of a majority of the electors of each county affected. The