History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/3/Counties/Delaware
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.
BLUFF OF MAQUOKETA RIVER,
In Delaware County
The county-seat was located at this election and a town laid out by Joel Bailey on the ground chosen on the 5th of April, 1842, which was named Delhi. The following summer Charles H. Hobbs built a log cabin on the town site and for two years he and his family were the only inhabitants of Delhi. A post-office was established and Mrs. Hobbs was the postmistress, keeping the office at her home. In the spring of 1845 John W. Clark, A. K. Eaton, William Phillips, Thomas Norris and Joseph Mitchell came with their families to Delhi. In 1844 the citizens assembled from the various settlements, cut trees, hewed and drew the logs to a high point overlooking Silver Lake and built a court-house eighteen by twenty-four feet in size and two stories high. The first term of court had been held before the court-house was built in September, 1844, at which Judge T. S. Wilson presided. Miss Roxy Brown taught the first school in the court-house in the summer of 1846. The first settlement in the vicinity of Manchester was made in 1850 by a Norwegian who built a cabin and opened a farm. In 1855 the claim was purchased by Allan Love who in company with O. P. Reeves and L. Burrington projected a town. In 1856 it was sold to the Iowa Land Company which resurveyed and platted the town of Manchester. In 1850 the town of Hopkinton was laid out by William Nicholson, on ground which he had taken in 1838. Lenox College was established here in the same year by the Presbyterians. In 1853 the first newspaper was established in the county by Datus E. Coon and named the Delhi Argus. When the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad was extended through the county it ran three miles north of Delhi, which was a fatal blow, as Manchester secured the railroad and eventually the county-seat.