Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/460

 postmaster in the county serving from 1860 to 1872 at Ida Grove. The old town of Ida Grove was on the north side of the river near the junction of the Odebolt and the Maple. When the Northwestern Railroad was built in 1877, a new town was laid out on the south side of the Odebolt which also took the name of Ida Grove and became the county-seat. In 1877 the Blair Company laid out the town of Battle Creek on the Maple Valley branch of the Northwestern road. IOWA COUNTY was created in February, 1847, from territory belonging to Keokuk. It lies in the fourth tier west of the Mississippi River, also in the fourth from the south line of the State and is twenty-four miles square containing an area of five hundred eighty-four square miles. It was named for the Iowa River which flows through the northern part of the county.

The first settler within its limits was Edward Ricord in 1837. Linaeas Niles, John Burget and Mr. Cleveland in 1844 made claims near where Homestead now stands. Soon after Robert Mckee, R. F. Mason, Amos Crocker, Charles Kitchen, Williams Downward and Absalom Washington with their families settled along the Iowa River near where Marengo now stands. Edward Ricard built the first house in the county in 1844 in a grove on Old Man’s Creek in the south part of the county.

In 1843 representatives of a German community selected a large tract of land in Iowa County for the purpose of planting a colony called the Amana Society. The members hold peculiar religious views in some respects similar to the Quakers. They own most of the land in Amana township, which is held in common and the business is conducted by persons chosen for that purpose at annual elections. They are divided into seven settlements where they have stores, shops, mills and factories. Many of their dwellings are large and each occupied by several families. The county was organized in 1847 and the