{"id":19,"date":"2007-12-13T12:34:33","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T17:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/?p=19"},"modified":"2014-01-15T15:51:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T21:51:22","slug":"the-freaks-and-follies-of-frontier-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/2007\/12\/13\/the-freaks-and-follies-of-frontier-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Freaks and Follies of Frontier Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or, the slightly shady, two-part\u00a0story of how Davenport became the county seat.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part One:\u00a0 the Mystery of the Missing Townships<\/em><\/p>\n

If you take a look at the outline of Scott County, you’ll see that a township or two appears to have been removed from\u00a0the southwest corner, without a natural phenomenon (a river, mountainside, etc.) to explain it:<\/p>\n

\"County<\/p>\n

So, where are these ‘missing’ townships?\u00a0 Muscatine County\u00a0has them.
\nWhy? Well . . .<\/p>\n

The First Territorial Legislature in December of 1837 passed an act to draw up the borders of several new counties.\u00a0 The supposedly impartial process was gummed up by people\u00a0concerned with the appointment of county seats.\u00a0 Many prominent landowners and businessmen thought that their towns\u00a0deserved these powerful–and lucrative–positions.\u00a0\u00a0 Others tried to make money by buying land for towns specifically designed to be county seats.\u00a0 As county seats were usually centrally located, these speculators tried to move county borders around so that their special town would be the best candidate.<\/p>\n

Scott County representative Alex W. MacGregor favored Davenport or Rockingham for county seat, but knew\u00a0that Buffalo would be strong competition if Scott County were to extend too far west along the Mississippi River.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a Dr. Reynolds of Muscatine\u00a0 had financed a town called Geneva, which he hoped would become the seat of his county.\u00a0 He worried, however, that Bloomington would be too strong a contender–unless he could push the Muscatine County border east upriver.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two men struck a deal, and Muscatine County ‘took’ a nice square piece out of the riverfront land originally meant for Scott County.<\/p>\n

Buffalo ended up stuck in\u00a0the lower corner of Scott, and Davenport and Rockingham battled it out in the county seat election, just as Mr. MacGregor had hoped.\u00a0 But Dr. Reynold’s own hopes were dashed–in spite of his efforts, Bloomington (later renamed Muscatine) was chosen as the seat of Muscatine County.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for Part Two: The Election(s)
\nIf you think political compaigns are crazy now, try 170 years ago!<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\n________________<\/em>
\nSource:\u00a0 History of Davenport and Scott County, Iowa<\/em> (Downer, 1910)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or, the slightly shady, two-part\u00a0story of how Davenport became the county seat. Part One:\u00a0 the Mystery of the Missing Townships If you take a look at the outline of Scott County, you’ll see that a township or two appears to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[313,229,312,107],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-history","tag-county-seat","tag-election","tag-muscatine-county","tag-scott-county"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXc-j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5184,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/5184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}