MARION TOWNSHIP

“…1836.

In that year the government survey was made in the township by Captain Parks, of Michigan, who was employed as a government surveyor for twenty years or more, and the settlers soon afterward obtained their titles to the lands they had selected. Another pioneer was Lindsey Ware, who selected and cleared a farm in the Clay Grove Settlement. His daughter,- Anna, was married to Zedekiah Cleveland in the winter of 1836-—the first wedding ever solemnized within the limits of what is now Marion Township.

The first store was opened at Clay Grove by a man named Harlan; the first school was taught by a man named Turner, in a log cabin on the farm of George Taylor, in the summer of 1839; the first death was that of Lindsey Ware’s wife, in August, 1838. Her body was buried upon her husband’s farm, but some thirty years later was removed to a cemetery.”

Reference Data:

Story of Lee County, Iowa, Vol. 1, by Nelson Commins Roberts and Samule V. Moorehead, 1914, pages 101-2