History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/3/Counties/Jasper
JASPER COUNTY lies in the sixth tier west of the Mississippi River and in the fourth north of the Missouri line. It contains twenty townships, embracing an area of seven hundred thirty square miles and was created in January, 1840, from territory formerly included in the original county of Keokuk. It was named for Sergeant William Jasper of the Revolutionary War. Poweshiek, a noted Fox chief, had his principal village in this county on Indian Creek and a smaller one a mile west of Newton.
A portion of the county was opened to settlement in May, 1843, and the remainder in October, 1845. William Highland and family were the first white settlers who, in May, 1843, took a claim in a grove near Monroe. A few months later Adam M. Toole, John Frost and John Vance located in the same vicinity which became known as Tool’s point. In 1845 settlements were made on Clear Creek by Mr. Knitz at Hixon’s Grove by Jacob Bennett and on the site of Newton by Ballinger Adeloytte.
In April, 1846, a county government was organized by the election of the following officers: J. R. Sparks, Manley Gifford and Jacob Bennett, commissioners; J. H. Franklin, clerk; J. W. Swann, treasurer; David Edmundson, sheriff; Seth Hammer, recorder; and W. Fleener, probate judge. The county-seat was located by commissioners in July, 1846, at a central place where a town was laid out and named Newton City. A rude log building was erected for a court-house in which Judge Joseph Williams of Muscatine held the first term of court. The first store in the county was opened at Tool’s Point by Daniel Hiskey in 1851. The first school was taught by William E. Smith at Elk Creek settlement in the winter of 1848.
In 1850 commissioners chosen by the General Assembly to select a site for the permanent Capital of the State decided on the tract of prairie four miles northwest of Toole’s Point. A sale of lots was held but the State refused to make it the Capital and the plat was eventually vacated and used for farms. Monroe was laid out at Toole’s Point by David Hiskey in 1856 and has grown into a flourishing town. Prairie City was platted in 1856 by James Elliott and was first named Elliott. Kellogg, which was first called Jasper City, was laid out in September, 1865, by Enos Blair and A. W. Adair. Colfax, on the Skunk River, was named for Schuyler Colfax, Vice-President of the United States, and has long been famous for its mineral springs. The Newton Free Press was a weekly newspaper established in the 1859 by the Campbell brothers. The main line of the Rock Island Railroad runs from east to west, while the Keokuk division runs through the western part of the county.