In 1853 they built the first church in Council Bluffs. The Rock Island Railroad was completed to Council Bluffs in May, 1869.
POWESHIEK COUNTY was created on the 17th of February, 1843, and named for a chief of the Sac Indians. The name signified “Roused Bear.” This county is in the fifth tier west of the Mississippi River, in the fourth north of the Missouri State line, is twenty-four miles square and contains five hundred eighty-two square miles.
Richard B. Ogden was the first white settler, taking a claim in Union township in the spring of 1843. Daniel and Joseph W. Satchell and Richard Cheeseman settled near him the same year. In 1844 Mahlon Woodward, Thomas Rigdon and others arrived. William English settled on Mill Creek in 1845 where he built the first sawmill in the county. Martin Snyder, in 1846, took a claim adjoining the land upon which Montezuma stands. Henry Zook settled in a grove on Bear Creek in 1845 and in 1846 John J. Talbott with his wife, seven sons and six daughters came from Ohio, locating in a grove which took the name of the family and which was near where Brooklyn stands. Talbott entered the first tract of land in the county in 1851 and became the first postmaster. The survey of public lands was completed in 1847. The first school was taught in the winter of 1847-8 by Stephen Moore in a log cabin in Union township. In 1847 the first mail route was established from Iowa City to Fort Des Moines, running through Poweshiek County, over which the mail was carried on horseback.
The county was organized in April, 1848, by the election of the following officers: Richard B. Ogden, Martin Snyder and Jacob Yeager, commissioners; Stephen Moore, clerk; Isaac G. Wilson, treasurer, and William English, sheriff. The county-seat was located at Montezuma where land was entered by the county and platted
