Dayton,
Oakfield, Louisville
At the time the commissioners located the county
seat at Dayton, they visited a little settlement called Viola,
which is now the town of Exira. It was the extreme northern outpost
of civilization, with no prospect of further extension in that
direction. They decided that Dayton was more favorably located.
In the following year (1856) it was evident that Dayton would
never become a town, so a petition was submitted to the county
judge for the removal of the county seat to Exira. The prayer
of the petitioners was granted and the election was held at the
house of John S. Jenkins on April 7, 1856, but the proposition
was defeated. In April 1861, it was again brought before the people
and this time it carried and the county seat was moved to Exira.
Nathaniel Hamlin's lifetime
ambition was to establish the county seat. His first attempt at
Audubon City was a failure, but he was not one to give up easily.
He was very much opposed to Exira being the county seat and made
several attempts to have it moved to other places. On June 6,
1862, a petition was presented to the supervisors for the removal
of the county seat to Oakfield, which was denied. In 1866, another
attempt was made to move the county seat to Louisville. It failed
for lack of signers on the petition.
Exira
Chosen as County Seat
On September 1, 1871, the Board of Supervisors appropriated $6,948 for the erection of a courthouse at Exira. It was to be built in the Park and plans were drawn and bricks bought from Charles Van Gorder, who operated the brick kilns at that time. The bricks were made and heaped in piles in the park preparatory to erecting a building, but the supervisors were enjoined from building the court house because by that time the fight to move the county seat to Old Hamlin had started.
During the years of 1872-73 a fierce, hot fight raged in the county over the efforts to remove the county seat from Exira to Old Hamlin. Natty Hamlin decided to try once more to establish the county seat so with the help of Messrs. Seevers, Donald and Thompson, they formed the"Hamlin Town Company" and platted a town in Section one and two in Hamlin Township. It was located about 2 miles east of the present town of Hamlin. Prospects looked bright for the new town as there was a great deal of opposition to Exira from Hamlin's forces on Troublesome and from Oakfield who had just been defeated in a like proposition. But the promoters forgot one thing-they forgot to record or execute the plat.
Petitions for the removal recirculated to all parts of the county and remonstrances were circulated by the Exira people. People from all factions were out canvassing for signers, on foot, horseback and in carriages. It was a lively time and with them every voter in the county was interviewed, some of them many times. Credit slips were used on which the signer declared whether he was for or against the petition. It bore the date, day, hour and minute it was signed. There was no law governing such a situation and the ruling was that the last signing indicated the preference of the signer, thus it was important to have the exact time of signing.
During the last 24 hours of the contest, messengers of both parties were running all night, in all directions, seeking the latest signatures to the slips. Some people had no preference and signed for both sides.
After an all night session of vote gathering, the ballots were counted and the petitioners were found to be in the lead. H. F. Andrews, a young lawyer who had actively boosted the Exira motion, then executed a with masterstroke in politics. He objected that there should be an election called as there was no assurance that there was such a place as Hamlin, Iowa, as no such place had been recorded. The supervisors agreed that this was true, and the county seat remained at Exira.
The opposition quickly rectified their mistake and had the town plat recorded. In 1873 the fight continued with renewed vigor and another petition was presented to the supervisors asking for an order to submit the question to an election. An election was called and electioneering began in earnest.
The Hamlin Town Company offered great inducements to gain the county seat. Not to be outdone, a group of substantial Exira citizens agreed to be bonded to the sum of $5,000, to furnish to the county, free of expense, a good substantial building to be used as a courthouse. This agreement was to be in effect as long as Exira remained a county seat. The men signing the bond were : Charles Van Gorder, John Bush, P. I. Whitted, J. A. Hallock, and Abram Campbell. The giving and the acceptance of this bond undoubtedly helped to swing the election in Exira's favor as times were hard and the settlers were having a hard enough time trying to make a living without having higher taxes.
When the election was held, the proposition to change the county seat was defeated by a handsome majority, greatly to the disappointment of the Hamlin faction. The contest caused bitterness, and old grudges were harbored which flamed up again in the county seat fight between Audubon and Exira.
In 1874, the Exira Hall Company was incorporated and sold enough stock to erect a building to be used for a courthouse. The ground floor housed the county offices and the main hall upstairs was the court room. The county occupied the building until 1879 when the county seat was moved to Audubon.
This building is now owned by the Knights of Pythias Lodge who use the second floor for their large rooms and the ground floor houses the Uptown Cafe. [Now Exira's"Courthouse Museum."] At one time this part of the building was used as an opera house with a seating capacity of nearly 400 and entertainment was furnished by troupes of show people who traveled through the country presenting plays, vaudeville acts, medicine shows, and so on. Dances were held there, also. The chairs were stacked upon the stage to clear the floor for the old-fashioned" hoe-down." The first silent movies were shown in this building. The K. P. Hall is one of the historic buildings of the town.
For six years peace reigned
over the county, but it was only a lull before the storm, for
in 1879 one of the hottest battles of all times raged in the county.
Back of it all was the Railroad Company with two men, Ethelbert
Freeman and Captain Stuart as chief instigators. Many new settlers
had come into the county since 1873. The Danes had made large
settlements in Oakfield and Sharon Townships. In the northern
part of the county there was an influx of what was known as"
homesteaders."
The government had given the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad
Company 163,000 acres of land in the county for the purpose of
constructing a railroad across the state. They had to meet certain
requirements which were: the survey of the proposed route, the
selection of their lands and the building of the road. The survey
was made by Granville Dodge of Council Bluffs and passed through
the present site of the town of Exira. The company failed to meet
the requirements and claimed to have gone into bankruptcy so the
C.R.I.& P. Railroad bought them out.
Franklin Whitney owned the land on which Atlantic was built. He was a friend of a Des Moines businessman who was influential in building the railroads across the state. It was through the efforts of this friend that a new survey was made putting the road miles south of Exira.
About 1870 a lawyer named Straight located at Exira. It was his opinion that the railroad company had forfeited its rights to the land since the road was built 20 miles from the land originally granted to the company. The idea caught like wildfire and hundreds of people rushed to the county to secure the unoccupied railroad land. They settled on this land the same as if it were government land where no grants had been given. About 150 settlers located in the northern part of a county, claiming"squatter's rights." Homesteads were quickly established, many building sod houses as there was little timber in the northern part of the county.
Government officers were ordered to eject the unfortunate squatters and all but a dozen moved out, but these refused to go and violent measures were resorted to, such as setting the possessions out in the road and pulling down the houses and other improvements. The homestead movement had brought a large number of people to the north part of the county and naturally increased the interest in the new town of Audubon.
In 1878 the Rock Island Railroad built a branch line from Atlantic and founded the town of Audubon. Settlers poured in from the start and Audubon was a busy town that summer. The railroad built the courthouse there and employed a large number of workmen. Stuart and Son, the leading grain dealer of the county and a very wealthy man, employed many more workers to build elevators at Audubon and Exira as well as buildings on the many farms. People in Audubon and farmers in the north part of the county found employment for all the men they could use and accommodate. It was reported that men could obtain free board and lodging there for 60 days before the county seat election. The new faces were seen in the north part of a county and in Audubon, few of them were seen after the election, it is said.
Emerson Campbell, at that time editor of the Audubon Advocate, had been forced out of Exira a year before and was employed for the purpose of fighting Exira. He was hungry for revenge and spared no words, even profane, in pouring out his wrath on his succeeding editors at Exira. The newspaper campaign became so degrading that Campbell's partner, B. F. Thacker, bought Campbell's interest in the paper and conducted it in a more respectable manner.
The Railroad Company built the Court House at Audubon before the election was held and offered it to the county free for five years providing the county seat was moved there. At the election the contest was decided by a vote of 841 in favor of removal and 620 against.
The day the county records were moved to Audubon, the railroad furnished a special train and a large number of Audubon businessmen road to Exira to assist in the removal. There were no casualties except slight damage to a little short man who, in preparation for the exciting event, had imbibed too freely and was in a hilarious mood. He returned to Audubon with a black eye that he had collected at Exira and mounting a keg in front of a saloon, he announced to the world, "The child is born and its name is Audubon."
The article above was taken from the book 100 Years in Exira: 1857-1957, pages 27-31.