THE FIRST SETTLER.
After the above was in type I met Dan. W. Ballard, of Ballard's Grove, who informed me that his brother, Mormon Ballard, and himself obtained a permit from St. Green of the Dragoon, and Capt. Robert Allen, A. Q. M., at Des Moines, (for the latter of whom Dan was then butchering), which gave the brothers authority to select their claims, and they made their selections in 1847. He states that they moved their families into the Grove, March 8, 1848. Each of them built a house of split logs 14x16 feet, with floor and doors made of puncheons. Simon Ballard, their father, came in the fall of 1838, and died about two years after, his being the first death in the county. He was buried at the Grove.
Ben Jeffers, Reuben Baddock and Washington Thomas came and made selections in 1849, and brought their families in 1850.
S. M. Cory came in the spring of 1850; first settling at Ballard's Grove. The Ballards opened the first farms, raised the first crops, and furnished food and shelter to many of the early settlers who made their homes in the west part of the county.
Dan also tells of going to Des Moines to the election of 1848 and voting for Zachary Taylor for President.
From all this it would seem that the first settlement was made by the Ballards; though when Parker settled in the eastern part of the county he had no knowledge of their settlement.
The settlement of Jasper County began in 1843, when the eastern part of that county was first open for settlement, and in 1846 the population was about two hundred. Quite a number of the early settlers of Story had been still earlier settlers in Jasper, among them T. J. Adamson and family, who settled in Jasper in 1845, and removed to Story County in 1854. Settlements were begun at Ballard's Grove, Walnut Grove, Iowa Center and all along the Skunk River, and Squaw and Indian Creeks, and the principal groves of the county, in 1851 and 1852.
George N. Kirkman was probably the first citizen who lived on his own land, his entry dating April 8, 1851, it being the second entry made. Thomas Lowe, who afterwards lived in the county many years, made an entry in section 26, township 82, range 23, on the twelfth day of November, 1850, that being the first entry. Squire M. Cory made the third entry, July 9, 1851, nearly twenty-five years ago, and as a Story County land owner outranks any other living man, and is still a resident of Story, and on the farm he then entered. The fourth entry was made by Jeremiah Cory, near Iowa Center, August 20, 1851.
For some years these settlements were mainly in the two distant parts of the county, the southeast and the west. There were two election precincts, one of which must have voted near where Iowa Center now is, and the other probably near Judge Evans. The earliest election returns show the relative strength of the two settlements, as the vote of each precinct was cast solid for men from