Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/468

  a post on the Iowa River where for several years he carried on traffic with the Indians. Soon after Philip Clarke and John Myers settled near him and opened farms. In 1838 Gilbert and Clarke laid out a town which they named Napoleon and which became the first county-seat. Settlers came rapidly and in the fall of 1838 S. C. Trowbridge received a commission from Governor Lucas to organize the county. He called an election at Gilbert’s trading house on the 10th of September at which Henry Felkner, Abner Wolcott and Samuel Strugis were chosen county commissioners. The first term of court was held at Napoleon in 1839 at which Judge Joseph Williams presided. The county-seat remained at Napoleon until the Capital of the State was located at Iowa City when it was moved to that place and the town of Napoleon soon reverted to a farm. The first school was opened by Jesse Berry at Iowa City in 1840. On the 10th of June, 1841, the first number of a weekly newspaper was issued by William Crum and called the Iowa Standard which was a supporter of the Whig party. In December of the same year the Iowa Capital Reporter, a Democratic journal, was established by Van Antwerp and Hughes. The first frame house was built in Iowa City by Wesley Jones in 1839 in which he opened a store. Walter Butler the same year built and kept a hotel. Jacob De Forest was the first mayor of the capital city in 1853. JONES COUNTY was established in December, 1837, from territory belonging to the original county of Dubuque. It lies in the second tier west of the Mississippi River and the fourth south of the Minnesota line. It is twenty-four miles square and contains an area of five hundred seventy-six square miles. The county was named for General George W. Jones who, as delegate in congress, secured the creation of the Territory of Iowa, and who was one of the first United States Senator when it became a State. The Wapsipinicon and Maquoketa rivers