A New London Story

Author’s Note: I know one will find this hard to believe, but sometimes there is a slow news week at the Journal. Some weeks Virginia and I have almost more than we can get written and other weeks, we have very little. So since I like nothing better than New London history, I thought I’d fill the slow weeks with various New London stories. I hope you enjoy!

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This week the spotlight will be on the founding of what we lovingly refer to as New London.

This land has always been. But Iowa and New London specifically are not so old. Our history started with $15 million. President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 from France. The massive land purchase included Iowa.

In 1804, Lewis and Clark were sent out to see just what had been purchased. Zebulon Pike and a twenty-men expedition went up the Mississippi from St. Louis to Minnesota. He found the expansive prairie land unremarkable. He believed that its cultivation would be a waste of time and recommended that it be left for the Indians. Boy was he wrong!

The government ignored his advice about putting a fort at the site of Burlington’s Crapo Park. Instead Fort Madison was chosen. The fort’s main job was to protect the Mississippi Valley from British fur traders. It was the first permanent U.S. military fortification on the Upper Mississippi. It was also the site of Chief Black Hawk's first battle against U.S. troops; the only real War of 1812 battle fought west of the Mississippi. The fort was burned and abandoned in 1813 after a siege.

When the War of 1812 broke out, the Indians had sided with the British. The British plan for Iowa was to keep it as a game park for the Indians. It would be a buffer zone to halt the westward movement of Americans and guarantee British fur trade. The result of the war found the Indians on the wrong side of history.

The Indians signed a peace treaty with the Americans in 1816. A treaty with Chief Black Hawk signed on Sept. 2, 1832, kept white settlers out of Iowa until June 1, 1833. But by 1851, Indian occupation of the land was essentially over.

Henry County was formed on Dec. 7, 1836 under the jurisdiction of the Wisconsin Territory, and became a part of Iowa Territory when it was formed on July 4, 1838. It was named for General Henry Dodge. He was a Democrat member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate from Wisconsin, the 4th Territorial Governor of Wisconsin, and a veteran of the Black Hawk War. On Dec. 28, 1846, Iowa became a state with its present boundaries.

Abraham C. Dover came from Illinois in the fall of 1833. He built a cabin on the southwest corner of the town park approximately where Thunder Productions is now located.

In a history of New London written by Hiram Allen in 1911, he referred to Dover whom he remembered from his youth as “an old Indian fighter” who would “fight at the drop of a hat.” Allen noted that he was a hero to the boys of New London.

Within a year, Dover’s brother Solomon followed him to the area. Others came and soon Abraham conceived the idea of laying out a town.

By 1837, Dover and Benjamin Mathews had laid out the village and Abraham Dover was appointed Justice of the Peace. By 1838, the village had taken hold. Thomas Hedge opened a store, the Methodist Church moved to town, and a post office was opened. President James Polk named John H. Kincaid as the first postmaster on July 5, 1838. New London had the county’s second post office after Mt. Pleasant.

Hedge’s store was a regular visiting place for the Sac and Fox tribe, and Chief Keokuk and Black Hawk were frequent traders until the establishment of a trading-post at Agency City.

The town continued to grow, now having a doctor, a wagon maker, a sawmill, a druggist, a newspaper, and schoolteacher.

Dover had been in existence for three years when Jonathan Jackson King and his wife Louise bought eight acres of land plus the town site from Dover in 1840. He hired a surveyor to survey and plat the town.

It was at this time the name was changed to New London. No reason was given, but the assumption is that King, English by birth, was honoring his homeland.

The 1840 plat showed the present park and a system of streets. Many building sites were sold at this time. Mr. King generously gave the ground for the city park that continues today.

A recognizable name to current New Londoners is Burge. Jacob Burge and his wife Rachel, and their four children (later eight) arrived in New London in April or May of 1835. He became a large landowner and bequeathed some of his original homestead for Burge Cemetery.

Another early settler was John Lee. Born in Ohio in 1797, he arrived in Henry County, Iowa in November 1836 with his family. He made a claim on unsurveyed land in what became the New London Township. He built a cabin, raised 12 children, and lived in New London the rest of his life. His cabin was the first two- story building in the county.

The first birth of a white child was Solomon Dover’s son William who would die in the Civil War. The first death was Henry Blanchard and the first marriage was Samuel Holland and Minerva Walker. The first schoolteacher was Jonathan Roberts.

New London was organized as an independent school district in 1857. The first public school house was completed in 1859. The brick structure cost $4500 and Noah Cook was the its first teacher. The first lodge was the Masonic Lodge and it opened Feb. 3, 1851 with 75 members.

In 1861, New London was incorporated with a population of 300 people. The first Mayor was Benjamin Mathews who had helped Dover lay out the original village. The Recorder was James Piper; and the Trustees were Hugh Gilmore, James Cramer, W.D. Walker, Thomas Brestor, and William Allen.

By 1890, the population had grown to 580. In 1920, New London boasted 1400 inhabitants. A little book put out at the time called New London —Iowa — Illustrated summed up our history, “Since the first awakening, its moral, intellectual, and material progress has ever been accelerating in its speed, thus giving our citizens every assurance that the future will bring greater and greater undreamed results.”

In simpler terms, there is still a general agreement among its 1900+ citizens that New London is still a great place to call home.