Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 4.djvu/325

 upper Des Moines, Boone and Iowa rivers. Lieutenant Lea wrote the first description of that part of the country ever published, from notes and maps made while on the march. After his return, he published a book of forty-five pages to which he gave the title “Notes on the Iowa District of Wisconsin Territory.” This is believed to have been the first time the name “Iowa” was applied to the country which two years later became the Territory of Iowa. While in camp on the shores of a beautiful lake in southern Minnesota, Lieutenant Lea made a plat and sketch which was sent to the War Department, where the name “Albert Lea” was given it. He soon after resigned his commission and purchased claims at the mouth of Pine Creek on the west side of the Mississippi, eighteen miles below Rock Island, where he laid out a town which he named Ellenborough. He expected this to be an important city as the country became settled but the founding of Davenport on one side and Muscatine on the other, ruined his hopes and the plat became in time a farm. Lieutenant Lea was employed as a civil engineer to assist in establishing the disputed boundary between Iowa and Missouri. In 1841 he was chief clerk in the War Department and in 1843 was Professor of Mechanics in the University of Tennessee. During the Civil War he was an officer in the Confederate army. He died at Corsicana, Texas, on the 30th of January 1891. JOSEPH B. LEAKE was born in Cumberland County, New Jersey, April 1, 1828. In 1836 he removed with his parents to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he received his early education. He entered the Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, graduating in the class of 1846. After leaving college he studied law in Cincinnati and was admitted to the bar in 1850. Coming to Iowa in 1856, Mr. Leake opened a law office at Davenport. In 1861 he was elected to fill a vacancy in the House of Representatives at the extra session of the Eighth General Assembly in 1861. He was elected to the Senate of the Ninth General Assembly, serving at the regular and extra sessions, when he resigned to enter the army. Mr. Leake was commissioned captain of Company G, and was soon promoted to lieutenant-colonel of the Twentieth Regiment of Volunteers. He participated in the Battle of Prairie Grove, where he commanded the regiment. Soon after his command was transferred to the Army of the Tennessee, and after the fall of Vicksburg the Twentieth Regiment joined the Army of the Gulf in the Mobile campaign. Colonel Leake was taken prisoner at the Battle of Bayou Fordoche, remaining in a Confederate prison until July, 1864. In 1865 he was brevetted Brigadier-General for conspicuous services and was mustered out in July of the same year. Upon his return to Iowa, General Leake was again elected to the State Senate of the Eleventh General Assembly where he was chairman of the judiciary committee. Later he occupied several positions of trust in his home city and county. Early in the seventies General Leake removed to Chicago, where in 1879 he was