The Early Government of Cass County

Before there were any settlers in this part of Iowa, the area now known as Cass County was included in Des Moines County of the Michigan Territory. Michigan Territory at the time included all of present day Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and land to the north and west. Almost all of this land was unsettled and only partially explored. Des Moines County included all land west of the Mississippi south of a line drawn due west of Rock Island to the Missouri River, and Dubuque County was comprised of all lands north of this artificial line. Michigan became a state in 1836, and the Territory of Wisconsin was created out of the land not admitted ot the Union; the territorial capital was at Burlington. On September 9, 1836 the census showed that Des Moines County numbered 6, 257 citizens and that Dubuque County included 4,275 inhabitants, or a total of 10, 531 people in the present states of Iowa and Minnesota. The territory of Iowa was established on July 3, 1838, and the territorial capital was placed at Iowa City. At the time, the lands open to white settlement included only a fifty mile wide strip along the Mississippi to which the Indians had surrendered their claims. However, the Indians were gradually pushed out of most of Iowa in the following ten-year period, to be replaced by settlers who opened the land to cultivation and the founding of towns and cities. Southwest Iowa remained largely unsettled until the mass migration of the Mormon refugees in 1846. The Mormon Trail passed through what is now Cass County and the Missouri River Valley was the staging ground and departure point from which the Mormons began their long and arduous journey across the plains to their Promised Land in Utah. Because of the sudden influx of civilization in southwestern Iowa, the Iowa legislature included the entire region in the new Pottawattamie County, which was established in 1847. Townships were organized and the county seat placed at Council Bluffs, the main Mormon settlement and the point from which the wagon trains were ferried across the Missouri River. As the Mormons moved west and the country in eastern Pottawattamie County was becoming attractive to permanent non-Mormon settlers, Cass Township was organized in the fall of 1851; it comprised all of present Cass County. In the first Cass Township elections held in the fall of 1851 at Cold Spring, there were 15 votes cast, including 14 Whig and one Democratic ballot cast by A. J. Milschlagel, of whom there is an article in the anecdotes chapter. With the founding of the town of Iranistan and the steady growth of population in Cass Township, the Iowa legislature established the County of Cass on December 6, 1852. The County seat was located at the new town of Lewis in the following year. As the new county became settled by pioneers, new townships were set off from the original CassTownship - Pymosa prior to 1856, Turkey Grove in 1856, Edna before 1857, Brighton and Lura (each organized April 4, 1858), and Breckinridge in October, 1858. These were the original seven townships of Cass County, but their boundaries were irregular and did not by any means conform with the present township lines. After the County seat was moved to Atlantic in 1869, the county was reorganized into the sixteen townships existing today; most of the townships were redrawn and some of the township names disappeared altogether.

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Transcribed from "The First Century, A History of Marne, Iowa 1875 - 1975", published in 1975, Marne, Iowa: The Marne Centennial Historical Committee, pp. 2-3. Transcribed (2015) by Cheryl Siebrass and contributed September, 2019.