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| In writing the story of Pomeroy and vicinity it seems fitting to look back many years to the time when the Indians were the only inhabitants of Iowa, which means "Beautiful Land" in the Indian language. Many centuries before the Indians came, Iowa was covered with water, but eventually became dry land. At one time Iowa was supposed to have had a tropical climate and vegetation of all kinds grew luxuriously. Through the ages coal was formed below ground. Later we had a very cold period and glaciers covered the state, four in number. The first glacier was the Nebraskan, second Kansan, third Illionoisian, and the last Wisconsin. These glaciers account for the good black and fertile soil, also for so many huge boulders in northern Iowa were also formed by these glaciers. Temperatures again warmed and man began to appear. It is not known when the first people came to Iowa, but they were the ancesters of the Indians who were here when the first white people came. At one time the well known Indian chief, Black Hawk, was possesser of Iowa but as settlers came farther west, the land was gradually taken from him. As most of us know Iowa was a part of the Louisiana purchase in 1803, and when this was divided into two parts we were still Louisianna, later changed to Missouri. At one time Michigan, Wisonsin, and Iowa were known as a territory of Michigan. Michigan was later made a seperate territory and Wisconsin and Iowa were together. Eventually Wisconsin and Iowa were both established as territories, the act becoming effective in 1838. In 1846 Iowa was admitted as a state. Calhoun county was part of Dubuque county for some time, but in 1851, fifty new counties were created and Calhoun County was known as Fox county. |
In 1853 the name Fox was changed to Calhoun after John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. The first settler of the county was Ebenezer Comstock, who settled near Lake City in 1854. Others soon followed, among them the Fleece Family, whose daughter Mary was the first white child born in the county. Mary became the wife of L.W. Moody, who in the early days of Pomeroy was the owner of many acres of valuable land around Pomeroy. He was also predisent and stocklholder of one of the local banks (First National). The first settler in Butler township was Edmund Briggs who settled near Pomeroy. He came in 1868 as did Claus Holtorf, and John Heide, who settled west of town. Mr. Holtorf was the first German settler in this part of the county. He was also the first president of German Mutual Insurance company. Mr. Briggs built the first house in Pomeroy. Since very few of the trials and tribulations as well as the happy times have been written into the stories or biographies of the early settlers it seems fitting to write about early life in a new country. Picture if you can a vast rolling priarie with tall grass, no trees except around Twin Lakes and along natural streams and sloughs everywhere at certain times of the year. This sounds like a bleak outlook but these pioneers were of hardy stock and they could see better things ahead. Most of them were immigrants from Europe, having come to this country because of militarism, the so called State Church, and some because of the potato famine in Ireland. |