History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/Asa C. Call
ASA C. CALL, one of the first settlers in Kossuth County, was born in Ohio in 1825. He was a graduate of Oberlin College and studied law. In 1850 he went to California remaining several years. In 1854 he, with his brother, Ambrose A., made a journey into northwestern Iowa far beyond any settlement and entered a large tract of prairie and woodland on the east fork of the Des Moines River. Here they built log cabins and began to found a settlement. They built a mill on the river bank and laid out a town which they named Algona. They secured the organization of Kossuth County, of which Algona was made the county-seat. Here, for years, the two enterprising brothers labored with great success to secure settlers and were liberal promoters of every enterprise for building up Algona. They established a newspaper, projected a college and finally secured one of the trunk lines of railroad. Asa C. was the first judge of the county, an influential Republican and in 1884 a delegate from Iowa to the National Republican Convention. The two brothers were for more than thirty years the most widely known of the pioneer settlers of northwestern Iowa and realized ample fortunes from their early investments. Asa C. died on the 6th of January, 1892.