History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/3/Counties/Marion
MARION COUNTY was created in June, 1845, from territory embraced in the original county of Demoine. It lies in the fifth tier west of the Mississippi River and in the third north of Missouri, is twenty-four miles square and contains five hundred seventy-six square miles. The county was named for General Francis Marion of the Revolutionary War. The Des Moines River and its tributaries flow through the county in a southeasterly direction; the water courses are usually bordered with forests and the county has large deposits of coal.
The first white settlers were Indian traders who, as early as 1841, established trading posts at several points. William Phelps was the first who opened a trading house near the eastern border. John Jordon, Gaddis, Nye, Turner and Shaw established posts near Red Rock. The county was opened to white settlers May 1, 1843, when 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.