Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/488

 a large number secured claims upon which they made homes. During the year settlements were made at Red Rock, White Breast, Bluffington and other localities, making a population of more than seventy families.

In the spring of 1845 the citizens held a meeting at the house of Nathan Bass on Lake Prairie and took the first steps toward organizing a county government. Commissioners were chosen, located the county-seat in August and gave it the name of Knoxville in honor of General Knox of the Revolutionary War. An election was held at which the following county officers were chosen: Conrad Walter, William Welch and David Durham, commissioners; Sanford Dowd, clerk; F. A. Barker, probate judge; James M. Walters, sheriff; David T. Durham, treasurer, and Robert S. Lowrey, recorder.

Judge Williams held the first court at the new county-seat in March, 1846. The first settlers in Knoxville were Luther C. Conrey, Lysander W. Babbitt, George Gillaspy and Lewis Pierce. Mr. Conrey built the first house.

In 1847 a colony of Hollanders under the leadership of Henry P. Scholte located at Lake Prairie where they purchased 13,000 acres of land upon which they built sod houses thatched with slough grass. In the spring of 1848 Mr. Scholte and others laid out a town which they named Pella, the “city of refuge.” In February, 1855, H. P. Scholte and Edwin H. Grant  issued the first number of a weekly newspaper called the Pella Gazette which was the first journal established in the county. In 1853 the preliminary steps were taken to organize a college at Pella which was named the Central University of Iowa.

In October, 1855, William M. Stone, afterwards Governor of the State, established the Knoxville Journal at the county-seat. The Des Moines Valley Railroad was the first built into the county. MARSHALL COUNTY was created in January, 1846, by a division of the original county of Benton. It lies in