Osman Tuttle

TUTTLE

Posted By: Pat Sheldon (email)
Date: 1/27/2009 at 00:09:20

History of Benton Co. IA Lewis Pub. co.,1910/11 I:376

Osman Tuttle, Founder of Norway

The village which is incorporated, was not platted until two years after the Chicago and Northwestern railroad had reached that part of the county. In 1859 Osman Tuttle, a farmer and a Norwegian by birth, located on section 17, Florence township, and although then in his sixty-second year accomplished much in the founding of the present village. He appears to have been a man of some property when he became a resident of Benton county. Mr. Tuttle first came to America in 1836, returned to Norway in 1855; again became a resident of the United States in 1856 and located on Section 17, adjoining the present site of the village to the north.

Eventually Mr. Tuttle owned a square mile of land near his original purchase, and in the spring of 1863 donated eleven acres to the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Company for depot and right-of way, on condition that the new town should bear the name of his native country. Then, as now, the name of the township was Florence. The railroad acceded to Mr. Tuttle's offer, and in June, 1863, the county surveyor, P.P. Smith, laid out the new town north of the tracks on the northeast quarter of the northwest quarter of section 20, and it was duly recorded in the following month as Norway. Its proprietor helped to build the first school house in town. Both he and his wife were earnest members of the Lutheran church, whose establishment in the southeastern part of the county owes much to their labors.

In the course of a few years after the platting of the town, the inhabitants, secured a change of name to conform to that of the township; but although the post office was Florence, the railroad company stood by its contract with Mr. Tuttle and kept Norway upon the depot sign; and thus it is today.