town laid out by Thomas and Jeremiah Clark and D. C. Hilton, and name for the proprietors; the plat embraced forty acres.
The first county officers were: John Palmer, judge; W. C. Burton, clerk; Abner G. Clark, treasurer; R. T. Crowell, sheriff, and Hardin Baird, prosecuting attorney. The permanent organization of the county was made in October, 1854. A post-office was established at Coon Grove in 1853 of which Abner G. Clark was the first postmaster; later this settlement became Clarksville. In the spring of 1855 Miss Malinda Searls opened the first school in a log cabin at Clarksville. J. D. Thompson, judge of the Thirteenth District held the first term of court in the county in October, 1857. In July, 1858, Palmer and James established a newspaper at Clarksville, naming it the Butler County Transcript. This was the first paper in the county. The Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad was built through the south part of the county in 1865.
CALHOUN COUNTY is in the fourth tier from the north line of the State, also in the fourth east of the Missouri River and has sixteen townships, each six miles square, making a total area of five hundred seventy-six square miles. It was originally named Fox but at the session of the Legislature of 1853 a change was made to Calhoun, in honor of the famous South Carolina Senator. Twin Lakes, lying in the northern part of the county, cover an area of about seventeen hundred acres and vary in depth from three to twenty feet. The northern lake is about half a mile wide and two and one-half miles in length.
Ebeneezer Comstock was the first white settler in the county. In April, 1854, he moved with his family into the grove where Lake City has since been built and here made his log cabin. His nearest trading point was Des Moines, eighty-five miles distant. He was soon joined by John
