Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/477

 the fall of 1845 by a vote of the people Fort Madison was again made the county-seat. Commissioners appointed in 1840 had selected a site for the county-seat near the geographical center of the county, where a town was laid out and named Franklin but no buildings were erected and the business of the country was never transacted there. By act of the Legislature of 1855 a court with concurrent jurisdiction was established at Keokuk where a deputy clerk kept records of the court. A history of early settlements at Fort Madison and Keokuk will be found elsewhere. LINN COUNTY was created in December, 1837, and named for Lewis F. Linn, United States Senator from Missouri. It lies in the third tier west of the Mississippi River and in the fourth south of the Minnesota line. The county is twenty-four miles wide by thirty long containing and area of seven hundred twenty square miles. The Cedar and Wapsipinicon rivers flow through it in a southeasterly direction having fine belts of woodland along their banks.

In February, 1838, John Mann of Pennsylvania, settled at Linn Grove on Upper Big Creek, where he built a mill and log cabin for his family. In 1851 his mill was carried away by a flood and he was drowned. John Crow of North Carolina took a claim on the Wapsipinicon in April, 1838. Soon after Robert Dean, John Gibson, Peter McRoberts and others settled in Franklin township; Judge Mitchell, Jacob Leabo and Mr. Henry in Bertram township and several families made homes in Linn township, in Marion and other localities. In July, 1838, Israel Mitchell laid out the first town and named it Westport. In September of the same year William Stone staked out a town plat where Cedar Rapids stands and called it Columbus. The first store in the county was opened at Westport in the fall of 1838 and William H. Merritt opened one at Ivanhoe in the spring of 1839. The first election