# History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/3/Counties/Hardin

​among which are Twin Lakes, Crystal Lake and Eagle Lake.
On the 9th of September, 1854, Anson Avery made a claim at Upper Grove and in October, George Nelson located near him. The following year Reuben and Orick Church, Thomas and Malcom Magill and Benoni Haskins joined the settlement. In September, 1855, John Mabin and Jacob Ward settled in a grove on Lime Creek near Ellington. The first settlers at Crystal Lake were Edwin Trumbull and Myron Booth who arrived in 1865.
The county contains sixteen townships, making an area of five hundred seventy-six square miles, and was organized in June, 1858, by the election of the following officers: R. P. Rosecrans, judge; George Loupee, clerk; Reuben Church, treasurer, and Benoni Haskins, sheriff. On the 4th of November, 1865, John I. Popejoy and James Goodwin were appointed commissioners to select a site for the county-seat. They located it where Concord now stands. A tract of land was donated to the county by Thomas Seymour and in May, 1867, was platted and named Concord. Previous to the selection of Concord the county business had been transacted at Ellington, where in 1860 W. E. Tucker and Mr. Tobin had established a newspaper named the Hancock Sentinel. A brick courthouse was built at Concord in 1868. The Milwaukee Railroad was built through the county in 1869-70, running a mile north of Concord, where in July, 1870, John Mabin laid out a town named Garner. Britt is a flourishing town on this road near the middle of the county. In the southeast part of the county the town of Goodell is located on the line of the Cedar Rapids Railroad.
SANDSTONE BLUFF ON THE IOWA RIVER, NORTH OF ELDORA
The first settlement was made by Greenbury Haggins who came with his family from Keokuk County in 1849 and made a claim on the Iowa River and in the southeast corner of the county. During the next season Samuel Smith, James A. Dawdey, William Robinson and Abraham Grimsley came with their families and settled in the same vicinity. In the fall of 1850 Jacob Kidwiler made a claim about ten miles above Eldora. The next settlement was made in the vicinity of Iowa Falls by B. I. Talbott and family. In 1851 several families of Quakers settled on Honey Creek in the southern part of the county. During the same year Isaac S. Moore, James Miller, Thomas Benedict and others settled on the north fork of the Iowa River where they laid out a town called Point Pleasant. In January, 1853, Jonathan and Samuel Edgington settled near Eldora. The county entered the land where Eldora was located in June, 1853, for the county-seat. In 1853 the Edgington Brothers opened a store on the new town site. During the same year mills were built at Hardin City and Iowa Falls.
The county was organized in February, 1853, by the election of the following officers: Alexander Smith, judge; James D. Putnam, clerk; Samuel Smith, recorder and treasurer; Thomas Bennett, sheriff, and William Shafer, school fund commissioner.
The first term of District Court was held at Eldora in November, 1854, by Judge C. J. McFarland. In October, 1855, the town of Iowa Falls was laid out in the northern part of the county by J. L. Estis, Homer Stevens and others who emigrated from Kane County, Illinois. The first building in the new town was erected by M. C. Woodruff and J. F. Brown the same year. O. M. Holcomb ​established the first newspaper at Eldora in 1856, the Hardin County Sentinel, with J. D. Thompson as editor. A town was laid out in the northeast corner of the county by J. W. Ackley in 1857 to which he gave his own name. No houses were built until the advent of the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad in 1865 when Ackley began to make a rapid growth. Steamboat Rock was laid out in 1855 on the Iowa River five miles above Eldora. The Central Railroad of Iowa runs through the county from north to south.
HARRISON COUNTY was created in 1851, lying on the Missouri River in the fourth tier north of the Missouri State line. It contains an area of six hundred ninety-five miles and was name for General William H. Harrison, ninth President of the United States. The valley of the Missouri River on its western border spreads out in level bottom land to the width of from four to ten miles and is of unsurpassed fertility. The Boyer River runs through the county in a southwesterly direction and the Little Sioux crosses its northwest corner. On the 3d of April, 1848, Daniel Brown took a claim on Willow Creek in a grove near where the village of Calhoun stands. He was robbed by the Indians who plundered his cabin and drove away his horses and cattle. Among the earliest settlers were Silas Condit, two brothers named Chase, James Hardy, Charles Lepenta, Dr. Robert McGovern, Andrew Allen and Jacob Pattee. For several years the early settlers were annoyed by wandering bands of Indians who came through that region on hunting expeditions.
The county was organized in 1853 by the election of the following officers: Stephen King, judge; P. G. Cooper, treasurer; Chester Hamilton, sheriff; William Cooper, clerk, and John Thomson, school fund commissioner. In March, 1853, the county-seat was located by commissioners near the geographical center of the county where a town