History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/William A. Scott
WILLIAM A. SCOTT was born in Crawford County, Indiana, December 18, 1818. When Fort Des Moines was established at the Raccoon Forks in 1843, Mr. Scott came with the troops, having contracted to furnish provisions for the garrison. He remained at the fort three years and when the Indians were removed to Kansas he accompanied them to their reservation as Indian trader. When the public lands in the vicinity of Des Moines came into market, Mr. Scott returned and entered five hundred acres on the east side of the river including most of the ground upon which East Des Moines has been built. He erected his log cabin where the city gas works stand near East Market street and established a ferry across the Raccoon River near its mouth. He built the first bridge across the Des Moines River and laid out the city of East Des Moines on his farm. Mr. Scott was active in securing the removal of the Capital from Iowa City and in procuring the location of the State House on the east side of the river. In order to comply with the requirement of the State to furnish a Capitol building and grounds free of expense, Mr. Scott donated most of the land upon which the permanent State House stands, the “Governor's Square” and other ground amounting to fifteen acres. He then became one of a company which erected the first State House at a cost of nearly $40,000. In the accomplishment of these enterprises Mr. Scott had encumbered his real estate to raise the large sums of money required. In 1857 came the most disastrous financial depression of the century; banks and thousands of business houses went down in widespread ruin. Good money disappeared from circulation and real estate could not be sold. Generous, public spirited “Alex. Scott” was caught in the flood-tide of ruin with his vast holding of real estate mortgaged and no income to tide him over. He started for the Pike's Peak gold field with the desperate hope that fortune would favor him and enable him to gave his property. But he was stricken with fatal sickness and died in a tent on the plains, June 23, 1859.