February 10, 1846 – Nine townships in Johnson County, Iowa are incorporated – including Washington Township, home to the Boller family beginning in 1853.

As Iowa became a state in 1846, 40-acre parcels were being sold at low prices to adventurous young men and women back east who wanted to start a new life. My Boller family bought eight parcels (320 acres) of rich farmland in Washington Township of Johnson County, Iowa, and by 1853 had begun a new adventure on land that is still being farmed by Bollers today.

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February 9, 1934 – Iowa Historian – Professor Benjamin F. Shambaugh (above left) – is scheduled to be the featured speaker on Professor A. Craig Baird’s first edition of his WSUI radio show – Forensic Forum.

In 1925, Speech Professor A. Craig Baird came to Iowa City and continued a tradition he had started at Bates College in Maine – taking his debate teams overseas to compete with Oxford University students in England. Over the next 45 years, Baird built the modern debate program at Iowa, wrote and/or edited over 36 books on public speaking, and became known world-wide as “The Father of International Debate.”

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Meet Lulu Johnson – Johnson County’s New Namesake. A graduate of SUI – BA in 1929 and a Masters in History (1930) – Johnson went on to distinguish herself as the second African-American woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in History, and the first to receive a Doctorate of any kind in Iowa! In June 2021, Johnson County, Iowa did something that rarely happens – they officially changed their eponyn, removing a racist slave-holding southerner in favor of this amazing African-American Iowa farm girl who spent her life teaching us things we all need to know.

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