Over the last 175+ years, the good people of Johnson County, Iowa have established many remembrance “stones” – memorials placed here and there with the hope that when you and I see them, we will stop and remember the person, event, or story that lies behind the monument we’re looking at.
In Iowa City’s City Park, there’s a stone (see pic above) with an attached bronze tablet that was placed in the park by the Pilgrim Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in 1939. The stone commemorates the 100th anniversary of one of Chauncey Swan’s most memorable decisions.
Swan was a Dubuque statesmen chosen by the Iowa Territorial Legislature in 1839 to lead a three-man commission assigned to secure land where Iowa’s new territorial capital city – Iowa City – would be built. In May, 1839, Swan and handful of others canoed up the Iowa River, about two miles north of John Gilbert’s trading post, and chose a beautiful piece of land overlooking the Iowa River
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