catur. W. Westcoat was employed to survey and plat the town and a sale of lots was held in August, 1851. A log court-house was built in October. The first session of court was held in the log cabin of Daniel Moat in May, 1851, at which Judge McKay presided. In 1853 the county-seat was ordered by vote of the people to a more central location, where a town was laid out and named Independence. A new court-house was built of brick; and, by act of the Legislature in 1854, the name of the new county-seat was changed to Leon. A claim had been made by Thomas East and a log cabin built on the ground where Leon stands before it was chosen for the county-seat. The next house was built by Judge S. C. Thompson soon after the town was platted. I. N. Clark opened the first store in September, 1853. The first newspaper in the county was the Leon Pioneer, established in 1855 by P. H. and George Binkley.
DELAWARE COUNTY is the second west of the Mississippi River in the third tier south of the Minnesota line and contains sixteen townships embracing an area of five hundred seventy-six squares miles. It was named for the State of Delaware and was created on the 21st of December, 1837, and at that time attached to Dubuque.
In the summer of 1836, William Bennett, the first settler, made a claim in a grove in the limits of the county and built a log cabin. The place was afterwards known as Eagle Grove. The next summer two brothers named Livingston, Hugh Rose and others, all Scotch, moved from the Red River country and settled in Delaware County at a place which became known as Scotch Grove. Early in 1838 Joel Bailey and John Keeler settled on the banks of the Maquoketa River and opened farms. The place took the name of Bailey’s Ford. The county was organized in August, 1841, by the election of the following officers: W. H. Whiteside, Daniel Brown and William Eads, county commissioners, and Le Roy Jackson, sheriff.
