This was for ten years a village of some note; but its prospects have been blighted by the engineer's transit. Its business is represented by a small store and post office.

There is a Christian Church near the town, which has a fair membership. The society is now without a regular Pastor.

THE TOWNSHIP.

Both forks of the Chariton enter Independence Township, and unite on Section 14.

Griffinsville post office is located on Section 23.

The exposure of coal-beds in this township is remarkably favorable for mining, but, so far, little has been done to develop this industry.

This township lies about equidistant from the two market towns, Centerville and Albia.

There is a Covenanter, or Reformed Presbyterian Church, in the southeast corner of Independence, known as Walnut City Church. This society was formed March 5, 1868, the first ruling Elders being Matthew Chestnut, Samuel Milligan and James W. Daugherty; the Deacons, Joseph Manners, J. C. Dunn, Andrew S. Milligan. The members were John McConnell, Matthew Chestnut and wife, Mary Jane, Annie and Matthew Chestnut, Samuel Milligan and wife, J. C. Dunn and wife, F. Gilchrist and wife, Martha McConnell, Joseph Manners and wife, John M. Dunn and wife, A. N. Dwer, James Daugherty, A. S. Milligan and wife, James W. Daugherty and wife, Amelia Lowry, Margaret L. Stevenson, Mary Stevenson, Martha Stevenson, Martha Milligan.

Rev. Isaiah Ferris has been the only Pastor, having come in 1870, and withdrawn in 1876.

The church was built in 1871. It is forty feet square, and walls eighteen feet high. Its cost was about $1,500.

There are now about fifty members. The Elders are the same as noted above, with the addition of Johnson Robinson; the present Deacons are William Thursby, J. C. Dunn, S. H. Carlyle and A. S Milligan.

J. Č. Dunn is Superintendent of the Sabbath school; N. Patton, Assistant; Elizabeth Chestnut, Secretary; Amanda Patton, Treasurer. The teachers are Matthew Chestnut, S. T. Sherrard, Mrs. Lizzie Sherrard, Etta Robb, N. Patton, J. W. Daugherty, Mrs. A. Woodburn. There are about thirty-five pupils.

SHARON.

(Sharon Township.)

The plat of Sharon is situated on the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 33, Town 69, Range 17, and was out laid by William C. Packard, the deed having been acknowledged November 29, 1856. The survey was made by John Potts. The streets running east and west are King, Main and Prairie, and the north and south street is Johnson.

So reads the record, but the town has vanished; its site being now torn up yearly by the stirring plow. In 1857, the place had half a dozen dwellings, two stores, a tavern and saloon.

Samuel Swearingen built a saw and grist mill on Chariton River, near here, about the time the town was founded, which did a very successful business for several years. The mill property subsequently passed into the hands of a Mr. Staley, and was afterward transferred to Mr. Packard. The dam and mill were

K

obliterated by a flood a dozen years since, and the growth of Centerville sapped the vitality of the little burg.

The saloon referred to above was closed by the accidental death of Wilkinson, described elsewhere. The administrator found no stock on hand belonging to the lamented decedent, whose friends gave him as touching and affectionate a burial.

The Rock Island road has a water-tank near the old town, which is also named Sharon on the time-card.

The Baptist society in this township, which was formed about 1852, have a church-building near Kirkwood Post Office.

JOHNS TOWNSHIP.

This is the only township in the county bounded entirely by Congressional lines, it being Town 69, Range 19. The surface in this township is quite level, and is mainly prairie. This is undoubtedly, everything considered, the best precinct in the county for agricultural purposes, and the condition of its farms shows that the people appreciate their advantages.

This township was the scene of the murder committed by S. A. King upon his wife and Frasier, and also of the stage robbery, both of which are given in detail in another place.

Johns is without a railroad at present, and its only prospect at present is from the extension of the M., I. & N. R. R. westward. Its people, however, can reach stations on either of four railways and return in one day, so that what is lost in time is nearly made up in rates.

The township is thickly settled with a peaceful, intelligent population, who have provided six schoolhouses for the use of their children, and there are four church-buildings.

One of these, known as "Concord," is entitled to be named as the oldest Baptist society in the county, and is, beyond doubt, either the second or third society ever organized in Appanoose. The origin of this Church will be found in the account of Walnut City. There is also another Baptist society, with a good building in the southwest part of the township, known as "Little Flock," which has a good membership.

There are two other church-buildings, located near together, in the eastern part of the township; one, a Methodist Episcopal, known as Bethel, and the other, Philadelphia, belonging to the Christian society. Both are very creditable buildings.

A HEALTHY STATE.

Hon. M. M. Walden mentions that a few years after the termination of this dispute, an old lady who became, by virtue of the Supreme Court's decree, a resident of Iowa, remarked that there used to be a great deal of sickness in her family while living in Missouri, but that since living in Iowa, it was a great deal healthier! An Irish bull could not be neater than this.

Mr. James Hughes gives what appears to be the same story in this form: While the surveyors were engaged in their work, they stopped to obtain some water at a cabin inhabited by a family living on the disputed strip. Having ascertained their business, the good wife begged the party, "for gracious sake, to locate the line south of her house, "for Missouri always was a sickly

hole."

A PARTING WORD.

The compiler of the preceding pages has visited nearly every portion of the county, in the prosecution of his labors, and finds a feeling existing that is much to be regretted. For three years prior to 1878, a partial failure of crops has occurred, which, added to the pinching times experienced by all classes throughout the United States, caused by the adjustment of values to a specie basis, has discouraged many farmers of Appanoose, and, in some cases, land is offered at half its actual cash value, and sometimes even less.

Farmers of Southern Iowa, your land is worth in gold, at least twenty dollars an acre to you, or to anybody else. Can you afford to throw away the labor of years in a fit of despondency; leave long-tried friends, break up associations formed ten to twenty years ago, to endure again the hardships and trials of making new farms in a frontier State? Your children have claims upon you for educational opportunities that you may not be able to secure in regions farther west.

Because there is a mortgage on the farm for half its value, is it sensible to give away the other half, for the reason that your credit is low and you have the blues?" There are men and women in your midst who have lived weeks at a time by grating corn or grinding it in a coffee-mill, who have not tasted coffee, tea or sugar for months at a time, while earning their homes and making settleeasy for you.

Appanoose County has a future of grand possibilities; and the stranger who has worked among you during the "Squaw Summer" of 1878, and has learned to esteem the people here, not only for their industry, frugality and morality, but for the "Old Virginia" blood, is anxious that those he has met shall obtain the reward of the better times in the immediate future, when, with a modified system of agriculture, involving less labor and greater profits, each one of you will pass down the years in comfort, surrounded by old-time friends and neighbors.

The profits of agriculture are derived as much from waiting as from present labor. Friends, ask your gray-haired neighbors about the times in 1837, in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, when land could not be sold at all, except to creditors. The poorest land in those States now sells regularly at from $35 to $50 per acre. Shall some of the best land in Iowa be abandoned because some one else has a contingent interest in it for a half or third its real worth? Wait another year, friends

"LEARN TO LABOR AND TO WAIT."

MISSING BOOK FOUND.

Since our history of Appanoose County has gone to press, a long-lost book, containing the first records, has been unearthed, from which we copy the following account of the election of the first County Commissioners and their transactions:

Be it known, That on the first Monday, the 5th day of October, A. D. 1846, Reuben Riggs, George W. Perkins and J. B. Packard, County Commissioners elected at the general election, held on the first Monday of August, A. D. 1840, in and for the county of Appanoose, and Territory of Iowa, met at the store of Spencer Wadlington, near the center of the said county of Appanoose; then and there convened and organized a Board of County Commissioners, for said county, in pursuance of and Act of the Legislative Assembly, approved January 13, 1846, for the organization of said county of Appanoose.

MONDAY, October 5, 1846. The office of Clerk of the Board of County Commissioners being vacant, J. F. Stratton was appointed Clerk pro tem. of said Board.

On motion, the Board adjourned until to-morrow, the 6th, at 9 o'clock, A. M.

TUESDAY, October 6, 10 o'clock, A, M.

J. F. Stratton filed the necessary bond and oath and took his seat.
Jonathan Scott, Assessor, filed in his assessment roll.

The assessment roll received and examined.

Be it ordered, By said Board, that a percentage of 5 mills on the dollar on all taxable property be levied for county purposes on said assessment, as a county tax.

Be it ordered, By the authority aforesaid, that a poll tax be levied, of 50 cents per poll, for county purposes.

Be it ordered, That 3 mills per cent. be levied on said assessment for the support of common schools.

Be it ordered, By the authority aforesaid, that all that portion of the assessment returned by the Assessor as related to property and polls that came into the county after the 1st day of March, 1846, be rejected and stricken out.

Be it ordered, By the authority aforesaid, that Dempsey Stanley, Sebastian Streeter and William Crow be appointed Viewers, to view and cause to be surveyed and marked, the route for a road or highway, commencing on the east line of the county of Appanoose, at the quarter-section post, on the east line of Section 13, in Township 69 north, Range 16 west, and to run from thence westwardly on or near the quarter-section line through Sections 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18, continuing on or near said line, as the formation of the land will admit, to the Chariton Creek, at a riff near the center of Section (16) sixteen, in Township 69 north, Range 17 west, and from thence by the most eligible route to the northeast corner of Section twenty-four (24), in Township 69 north, Range 18 west, thence west on the section line dividing Sections 13 and 24, to the northwest corner of said Section 24. Said Viewers to meet at the house of J. F. Stratton on the first Monday of November next, and proceed to view and cause to be surveyed, and make returns to said Board on the first day of the January, A. D. 1847, term of said Board without expense to the county.

Be it ordered, By the authority aforesaid, that the seat of justice of the county of Appanoose this day located and designated by Andrew Leach and William S. Whittaker, Commissioners appointed by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa, to locate said seat of justice shall be known by the name of the town of Chaldea.

Adjourned.

WEDNESDAY, October 7, 9 o'clock, A. M.

Be it ordered, By the authority aforesaid, that J. F. Stratton, County Surveyor, proceed to survey. lay out and plat the town of Chaldea, as soon as practicable, agreeable to a plan exhibited by J. F. Stratton and approved by said Board of County Commissioners.

Be it ordered, That Andrew Leach be allowed the sum of twelve dollars for his services as Commissioner to locate the seat of justice of Appanoose County.

Other orders were passed allowing William S. Whittaker the sum of $16 for services as Commissioner to locate the seat of justice of Appanoose County, to be paid from the proceeds of town lots, in the town of Chaldea; J. F. Stratton, Clerk of the District Court, the sum of $39.08 for services rendered in the organization of Appanoose County; Jonathan Scott the sum of $22.50 for assessment of county for year 1846; also a further order rejecting and setting aside the above charge of Jonathan Scott for taking the

census.

Concerning the Judges and Clerks of the August election of 1846,

it was

Ordered, That the Clerk of the Board of County Commissioners issue orders to the persons who served as Judges of the August election.

Be it ordered, That the Clerk of the B. C. C. issue orders to the persons who served as Clerks of the Election, August, 1846.

Eight Clerks; amount, $7.60.

Amount of all bills allowed, $86.18.

J. F. STRATTON, Clerk,
REUBEN RIGGS,

Attest,
Signed,

GEORGE W. PERKINS,
J. B. PACKARD,

County Commissioners.

The account of Jesse Wood, Collector and Treasurer, with the Board of Commissioners, for the year 1846, stands as follows:

Tax list for the year 1846-total valuation of assessment, $24,055, on which the following tax is levied :

The Board of Commissioners, at their January term of 1847, abated taxes as follows:

October 5, the sum of $12 was added to the County Treasury by taxes paid.

Among further proceedings of the Board of Commissioners, at their first term of 1847, are the following:

Abatement of the taxes of William S. Manson, Daniel and William Sparks, Christian Zuck, Nathaniel Bartlett and Harvey Campbell-most of them on the ground that they or their property were not in the county on the first Monday in March, 1846. Also ordered that no premium be paid for killing

wolves.

William S. Manson was "appointed Recorder of Deeds for the said county of Appanoose."

Report of the Viewers and Surveyors appointed at the October term, to lay out the Appanoose Ridge Road, was received, read and filed.

Ordered, That Viewers and Surveyors be appointed to mark out "a road commencing at Chaldea, thence by the nearest and best route to the line between David Shaeffer's and William Puthers; thence to William S. Townsend's; thence, northwesterly, on the nearest and best route, to intersect the Indian Trace, near the north boundary of said county."

Jonathan Scott, Isaac Riggs and James McCarroll were appointed View ers; David R. Sparks, Surveyor.

Further abatement of taxes for David Shaeffer, Jesse Wood, George W Benner, Nelson Alverson, Levin Dean and Nathaniel More.

Ordered that the school tax may be paid in county orders, and the Treas urer was directed to receive such orders.

The sum of $10 was appropriated from the first money coming into the treasury for books and stationery, for the use of the several county officers. Ordered, a tax on each grocery license of $25 per year.

Allowed the account of J. F. Stratton, of $1.56, "for services rendered as Clerk of the District Court, in swearing Andrew Leach and William Whitaker, Commissioners, and filing certain papers therein named."

Also, further bills of J. F. Stratton, for making out tax-list, notifying and making returns of October election and for stationery furnished, to the amount of $33.26.