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SMALL FORGOTTEN TOWNS IN CASS
[AND, MONTGOMERY] COUNTY
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There are at least 9 small towns in Cass County [Iowa] that have been all but forgotten. These include Berea, Norway Center, Sharon, Rorbeck, Reno, Indiantown, Grove City, Lorah, and Dewey.
Lyman and GRANT are still in existence, but have few business places.
The town of Lorah had the same name as its founder,
Judge S. L. Lorah, who supposedly owned 1,000 acres of land. When the Audubon branch of the Rock Island Railroad passed through his land, he laid out the town of Lorah.
The plat had 11 blocks, three northbound and three southbound trains ran daily. In the early l900's there were two grocery stores, an implement store, lumber yard, two grain elevators, two blacksmith shops, a post office and bank.
The Lorah P.O. was established in 1880. Isaac Jansen was the first postmaster. It was in connection with the general store and was discontinued in 1936.
According to the town lot deed record of Cass County, lots one and two in block two were deeded by Alice Ross and her husband, George, to the trustees of the First Presbyterian Church of Atlantic to be used for a Presbyterian Church. This property was deeded with clear title to the First Presbyterian Church of Lorah in 1906. Later on the Methodist congregation met in the building until 1920. Later, Gypsies and other strangers started coming in and using the building. Vic Hansen, a blacksmith in Lorah, purchased the building and made it into a shop.
In 1933 the building was torn down and the lumber was hauled to Atlantic where some of it was used for the Dennis Nursing Home.
In 1960 one of the two elevators was moved to Exira and in 1966 the other elevator was cut into two sections, loaded on railroad flat cars with two large cranes and moved to Atlantic. The sections were then pieced together and erected on a base near the Atlantic Depot.
During the 40's, Lorah was the hub of community entertainment with its weekly showing of free movies. In 1941 the general store burned to the ground, and from that time on Lorah slowly dwindled becoming just a resident city.
Grove City (1856) was surveyed and laid out and grew rapidly. A post office was established in 1857 along with a number of stores, a hotel, schools and a church. The railway came through in 1868 but no station was made there.
The first man hanged in the county was Mike Kelley who killed a man named Tom Curran in a saloon. A mob took Kelley from the town constable and hanged him in a locust tree near Grove City.
From 1875-1878, S.W. Wilson and Company of Grove City was the largest wholesale nursery supply house in the United States, with the exception of New York City.
Grenville M. Dodge made the survey for the railroad from Des Moines to Council Bluffs. The original survey went through Exira, west to Harlan, Minden and on to Council Bluffs. Grove City was then an enterprising place and its citizens put up strong efforts to change the route to one more direct, which would use Grove City as a stopping point.
Then Franklin Whitney, with the help of Banker Allen of Des Moines had a better idea. They sought to establish a new town, have the railroad come through and use it for the stopping place in the area.
Believing that the area was about equal distance from the two oceans, they flipped a coin to determine the name for their new town and Atlantic won. They gave the railroad 160 acres of land, a location for the depot and bypassed Grove City.
The town of Dewey wasn't really a town, it was more of a social area where in 1956 two ladies drove cars to their neighbors' homes, and picked the ladies up to go to a "come as you are" breakfast. From this beginning, the Dewey Neighbors Club was formed.
Reno, in Edna Township was plated in 1876 by
Edward PORTER.
The Post Office was established in 1853 with Jacob Steen as the first postmaster. Mail was carried on horseback. The post office was later moved to Newlon's Grove. There were merchandise stores, blacksmiths, physicians, drugstore, and a flour mill. School was held in a log cabin. With the railroad going to Cumberland, Reno faded away. All that remained was the church, which was built in 1891.
The first post office in Union Township was established in March 1858. When it was first made a township in 1854, it was called Lura.
In 1858 it was renamed Breckinridge. The post office was moved and named Whitneyville, now known as Cumberland.
The first settler in Union Township was Peter Hedges who in the fall of 1850 came from Illinois and took up a claim on Seven Mile Creek known as Hickory Grove.
Five Mile Grove received its name because it was five miles from the Big Grove, a large grove of trees from which Indians and early settlers measured distance and location in Pymosa Township.
The town of Lyman was named after Joseph Lyman, who was serving the southwest district of Iowa at that time as a congressman in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.
The first white settlers that came to Brighton Township had to have lumber to build homes and outbuildings so they built in the groves along the streams, therefore the settlements took the names of the groves.
Eight Mile Grove was the area where the first settler and his bride established a claim in 1851.
When the Indian's title to the lands in Western Iowa (of which Cass County is a part) became extinct by Government treaties in 1864 there was not a white person in Cass County.
When Iowa-with a population of 9,758-became a state in 1864, not one of them belonged in
Cass County or in any of the 13 counties that comprised the Congressional District.
The Indian inhabitants of the county were of the Pottawattamie tribe. They were quite numerous and had encampments all over the county.
Their principal village was Indiantown, about one and a half miles west of where Lewis is now located, and the first store in western Iowa was at Trader's Point on the Missouri River. Between 1851-1854 it grew to be quite a village and had a number of stores, saloons and two good hotels.
Lewis was started in 1853 and was made the county seat. The population and buildings of Iranistan were all moved to Lewis.
*The small town of Grant [which, in actuality, appears to be located in MONTEGOMERY COUNTY] is in the planning for a quasquicentennial, and the two main buildings in town are a post office and the large Methodist Church. According to their history book published some time ago, the early records of the post office were destroyed by fire in 1915.
A government post office was established in 1854 at Sciola and a mail contractor carried the mail in saddlebags on horseback throughout Montegomery County "Star Route" was the name applied to postal routes by hack over which the mail cannot be carried by railroad or steamboat.
Thomas Donoho was the first post master and the office was in his house. He died in 1868 and his wife held that position for 20 years.
In 1858 Donoho registered the plat of the town of MILFORD -- unaware there was another post office with the same name. The law says there may not be two post offices by the same name in the same state so the name GRANT was chosen.
There was an old contract between a government representative and J. M. Sadler of Grant, signed in 1887 for transporting the mail by hack from Elliott to Grant six times a week at $265 a year.
Requirements were that he was to leave Grant daily, except Sunday, at 7 a.m. arrive at Elliott at 9 a.m. leave Elliott at 2 p.m. and arrive at Grant by 4 p.m.
They were to forfeit the pay of the trip if it was not run, and if there wasn't a good excuse for this failure, then an amount up to three times the pay of the trip was forfeited also.
Another requirement was to carry the mail in a safe and secure manner, and be protected from the weather. When rural free delivery was established out of Elliott, the Grant hack was discontinued.
A rural route out of Grant was started in 1904. Under party patronage, the postmaster was either a Democrat or a Republican depending on the administration.
Today, the Post Office at Grant is an attractive gray building trimmed in red, with the zip code, 50847. It is handicapped accessible.
[end]
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Excerpt from:
TOWN OF MILFORD
1881 History of Montgomery County, Iowa
....
Grant Post Office:
The name of the town is Milford, but the name of the post office is Grant, and it has a daily mail from Elliott, nine miles distant, which is the nearest railroad station.
As there is [also] a Grant township in another part of Montgomery county; and, the post office of Grant in the town of Milford, in Douglas township, it makes an awkward confusion of names hard to keep track of..."
[end of excerpt]
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SOURCES:
* Atlantic News Telegraph: "Small forgotten towns in Cass County" :
http://atlanticnewstelegraph.com/articles/2004/04/12/news/features/feasmalltowns.txt
* ALSO SEE: Town of Milford
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamontgo/1881-milford.htm
* Montgomery County, Iowa GenWeb Project
[KEYWORD FOR THIS SEARCH: Grant]
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamontgo/
* ALSO SEE: Montgomery County Iowa Biographical Sketches
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamontgo/bios/biodougl.htm
* ALSO SEE: Montgomery County Iowa Biographical Sketches
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamontgo/bios/biogrant.htm
* ALSO SEE: Douglas Township, Montgomery County, Iowa History and Photo Album
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamontgo/histories/cavalcade/douglaspg6.htm
* ALSO SEE: Cemetery Center
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamontgo/cemeterycenter.htm
* ALSO SEE: Montgomery County Plat Maps
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamontgo/maps1/mapimages.htm
* ALSO SEE: Table of Contents Montgomery County, Iowa Plat Book
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamontgo/maps1/contents.htm
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