CHAPTER VIII.
COUNTY SEATS AND COUNTY SEAT CONTESTS.
From History of Audubon Co., Iowa (1915)
by H. F. Andrews
When Dayton was selected the county seat, June 20, 1855, there were not to exceed seventy voters in the county and nearly all of these resided in what is now Exira township; a few lived adjoining about Ballard's, in the edge of what is now Oakfield township, and there was one settler in section 34, in what is now Hamlin township. Hamlin's Grove was then the center of the business interests. Exira and Oakfeild had not then been platted. There were a few settlers living where Oakfield was afterwards laid out and not to exceed half a dozen families about the future town of Exira.
At the time the commissioners located the county seat they visited the settlement at Viola, now Exira, which was the extreme northern outpost of civilization, with no immediate prospect of further extension in that direction.
The first sale of town lots at Dayton was advertised by Daniel M. Harris, county judge, for November 22, 1855, at which time but one lot was sold, the price being fifty cents. The sale was adjourned to June 3, 1856, when eighty-five lots were sold, at prices ranging from one dollar and fifty cents to nine dollars each. That was about the last public business transacted at Dayton. The two residents of the town, Mr. Archer and Rev. Mr. Baker, soon moved away, and no one has since resided on the place. It is now occupied as a farm.
The first court was held in the log school house at Hamlin's Grove in November, 1855. The personnel of this first court was as follows: Hon. E. H. Sears, judge; John W. Beers, clerk; Benjamin M. Hiatt, sheriff; grand jury, David L. Anderson, foreman, Charles E. Marsh, W. H. H. Bowen, J. L. Frost, John Countryman, Ed. Gingery, John Crene, John Seifford, Allen McDonnell, John S. Johnson, Nathaniel Hamlin, Joseph S. Kirk, Richard M. Lewis. They found an indictment against Thomas S. Lewis for illegal sale of intoxicating liquor.
The petit jury were, G. W. Taylor, Mark Heath, Hiram Perkins, James H. McDonnel, William Walker, William Carpenter, George Wire, Reuben Kenyon, Bryant Milliman, Robert Stansbery and James Mounts. The first case was Blanchet S. Shacklet vs. Richard C. Meek. The jury retired to the grove to deliberate on their verdict, and decided the case "according to law and evidence."
[Early Courthouse Photo - Coming Soon!]
On March 3, 1856, a petition was submitted to the county judge for removal of the county seat to a place called Viola, now Exira. The prayer of the petitioners was granted and the election held at the house of John S. Jenkins on April 7, 1856. But the proposition was defeated. At an election held in April, 1861, the proposition to change the county seat to Exira prevailed. Old settlers do not recall any spirited contest on that occasion. On June 6, 1862, a petition was presented to the supervisors for the removal of the county seat from Exira to Oakfield, which was denied. In 1866, a petition was circulated asking the removal of the county seat from Exira to Louisville, which failed for the requisite number of petitioners.
During the years 1872-3 a fierce, hot fight raged in the county over the effort to remove the county seat from Exira to Hamlin. John W. Scott, Esq., of Exira, was leader of the Hamlin forces, assisted by Freeman, Sanborn, Kimball, Gunn and others in the north part of the county, by O. C. Keith and others from Oakfield, and by Nathaniel Hamlin, Newt Donnel and others from Troublesome. The people of Exira proper were united, "tooth and toe-nail," to resist the effort.
Mr. Hamlin and an able array of associates iaid out an elegant town site in sections 1 and 2, in what is now Hamlin township, called Hamlin, in 1872; but the plat was not recorded until the following year.
Petitions for the removal were circulated to all parts and corners of the county, and remonstrances were, in like manner, circulated by Exira people. The excitement was intense and the whole people were on the war-path, taking part in the controversy. Messengers of both factions were out canvassing for signers, some on foot, some on horseback and others in carnages. It was a livelv time and every voter in the county was interviewed, and some of them many times. As soon as one party would secure a signer to the petition or remonstrance, another canvasser would be after him to get his name on the opposition paper. Printed slips were used declaring how the signer desired his name to be counted, either for the petition or for the remonstrance, as the case might be, bearing date, the day, hour and minute when signed.
There were then living south of Exira some people called "Woods Rats." It was a sort of neutral territory, the people of which did not seem to have anv decided opinion on the question, but would sign any and all papers, petition, remonstrance or printed slip, presented to them. They vacillated back and forth from petition to remonstrance, and vice versa. One man changed his mind eight times by signing the various papers and slips. The law as it then stood made no express provision to cover such case, and the contestants acted on the theory that the last signing indicated the preference of the party signing; hence the importance of giving exact date of signing to a minute. The law has since been changed in that respect, declaring that where the name of the same person appears both on the petition and remonstrance, it shall be counted for the remonstrance only.
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Transcribed by Cheryl Siebrass, July 2022, from History of Audubon Co., Iowa (1915), by H. F. Andrews, page 144-146.
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