May 22, 1850 – The Iowa (City) Republican reports that Iowa Secretary of State – J.H. Bonney – has found the perfect stone in “Braddock’s field” to be used as Iowa’s contribution to the building of the Washington Monument.
The nation’s best-known memorial to the first president of the United States is located in the city that bears his name. Today, at 555 feet tall, the Washington Monument National Memorial towers over the nation’s capital. On July 4, 1848, an elaborate cornerstone-laying ceremony took place, attended by President James K. Polk and other dignitaries, among whom were Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, both members of the House of Representatives and future presidents themselves. Soon after the ceremony, the Washington National Monument Society invited all of the existing states (thirty at the time), major cities, and other patriotic societies around the country to contribute memorial marble stones to help build the monument. The society required that the stones be durable, quarried in the United States, and of the appropriate size necessary for construction. Which brings us to Iowa’s Secretary of State – J.H. Bonney in 1850.
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