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Kinyon Digital Library

History of Adair
County, Iowa,
and its People.  1915.

Volume 1.

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CHAPTER XX

EUREKA TOWNSHIP

Eureka Township embraces congressional township 76, range 33, and is one of the latest settled civil divisions of the county.  The population in the year 1873 was but sixty-eight.  The township has an abundance of good streams, chief among them being the Middle Nodaway River, Nine Mile Creek and the several affluents of each.  The Middle Nodaway enters the township on the north line of the northwest quarter of section 6 and flowing at first southerly through sections 6, 7, 18, and 19, changes its course to a southeasterly one and crosses sections 29, 32, and 33, making its exit on the south line of the latter.  Nine Mile Creek passes through sections 1, 11, 12, 13, 14, 22, 23, 27 and 34.  There never has been very much natural timber within the boundaries of the county.

FIRST SETTLEMENTS

The first men to settle in what is now Eureka Township were Henry and Nicholas Henning.  They came in 1860.  They purchased the land on section 31 in 1857, but did not move on to it until the first stated year, although they improved and cultivated it.  They were natives of Germany.  These brothers started the first brick yard in the county in 1858.  This was then in Washington Township.  The next year they followed the same line of business in Jackson Township.  For many years they were the only settlers in the township and in 1867-68-69, when others began to come in they came so rapidly that it is hard to learn the proper sequence of their arrival.  Among the more prominent ones at the time were:  Darwin M. Schenck,  Marx Hell,  Christian and David Eshelman,  Fred H. Cears,  Charles E. Schenck,  Andrew J. Kingery,  Albert Hadley, John J. Stinman,  Ferdinand A. J. Warner,  E. M. Smith,  Lewis Daniels.

ORGANIZATION

In the summer of 1870 the township was set off from Jackson, of which it had formed a part.  The name, it is said, was suggested by J. W. Stinman, on account of finding some indications of coal within its borders.  The first officers were as follows:  James Tippin,  G. W. Snyder, Sr., and Orlando Howe, trustees;  John J. Stinman, clerk;  B. F. Jones, justice;  John Snyder, constable;  Fred H. Cears, assessor;  Henry Henning, road supervisor.

ITEMS

The Henning brothers, as before stated, broke the first ground in the township.  They planted the first corn in 1859 and sowed the first wheat in 1860.  They set out the first orchard in 1869.  Henry Henning erected the first frame house in the township on section 31 in 1860.

A round log house was constructed on section 33 by Miniture Jones in the summer of 1856.  This was the first house in the township.

The first marriage of a resident of this township was that of Nicholas Henning to Eliza Little on February 15, 1868.  The ceremony was performed by Judge N. S. Taylor at Fontanelle.

The first to be married after the township had been organized were Fred H. Cears and Emma Trowbridge.  Rev. F. A. Goodrich spoke the words of union on March 10, 1872.

The first deaths were those of two brothers, named Imus, about Christmas, 1859, who were frozen to death.

The first religious services were held at the old Jones schoolhouse by Reverends Peet and Thomas about 1859.  The former was a Congregationalist and the latter was a Methodist.

Eureka Cemetery was surveyed in the fall of 1878 and originally contained about three acres of ground.  It is located upon the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of section 22.  Nancy Daniels was the first to be interred, having been buried a few days previous to the survey.

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