In 1839.

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Our Iowa Heritage

1839 – F. M. Irish – Iowa City Pioneer.

F.M. Irish became one of the important movers and shakers in early Iowa City history. Some records indicate that he was present on May 1, 1839 at John Gilbert’s Trading House when Chauncey Swan and John Ronalds started their “official” search for Iowa Territory’s new capital city. Other records show him as the man who built the Lean Back Hall which housed the many men who came to Iowa City in the fall of 1839 to purchase land. F.M. also built his own cabin on land north and east of the city, a cabin that eventually served as the temporary court house for Johnson County (1839-1842).

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In 1938.

Posted on August 20, 2021 by Our Iowa Heritage

It’s Iowa State Fair Time…and it’s time to celebrate Iowa’s Territorial 100th Anniversary! 1838-1938.

The Iowa State Fair was the site for the First Day of Issue of the Iowa Territorial Centennial USPS stamp on August 24, 1938. The stamp featured Iowa’s first capitol building (Old Capitol) in Iowa City.

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In 1839.

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Our Iowa Heritage

Judge Charles T. Mason, first Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, politician, and businessman.

One of Mason’s most prominent decisions was the 1839 case focusing on a black man named Ralph (Rafe Nelson) who was living and working at the Dubuque Mines. Apparently his Missouri master (Missouri was a slave-state), Jordan J. Montgomery, released Ralph in 1834 to come to Iowa in exchange for a promise of payment of $550 to buy his freedom. According to Montgomery, Ralph never paid him the $550, so the Missouri farmer insisted that Ralph be returned, back into his possession as a slave.

The case opened in Burlington in July 1839, with John V. Berry of Dubuque and another attorney representing the slave owner, Montgomery. Ralph’s attorney was the young David Rorer, a man destined to become one of the leading figures of the Iowa bar.

In a huge decision that truly bolstered the abolitionist movement, Judge Mason, along with his fellow judges Joseph Williams and Thomas S. Wilson, ruled that under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, slavery in Iowa Territory was “forever prohibited.” Mason wrote, “The master who, subsequently to that Act, permits his slave to become a resident here (Iowa), cannot, afterwards, exercise any acts of ownership over him within this territory.”