First houses, first store, the mills on Potato Creek

1837–1880s

The town's first things cluster in 1837: the first house, the first store, and the gristmill. Chapman: "soon after its location James Downey built a house; the same year four other houses were built." The first store was Daniel Antrim's, opened in 1837 — Chapman carries its succession whole: Antrim "did business one year, then sold his stock to E. S. Reynolds, and in 1840 he sold to A. P. Richardson, who kept the store till about 1845, when James Harvey purchased the stock and started a general store." The National Register nomination compresses the same course differently — the store ran until 1867 and was "the only significant commercial enterprise in town until after the Civil War" — and both tellings stand. The gristmill was built in 1837, and Hiram Bean and Alonzo Hill built a sawmill in 1839, "not far from where the present grist-mill stands." The mills stood on Potato Creek, which a later newspaper history says "powered more mills than any other [stream] in the county," the North Liberty gristmill being the creek's only gristmill and the rest sawmills. Who built the 1837 gristmill, the record does not agree: Chapman and the nomination name no builder, and a 1991 newspaper column names George Waldsmith. Daniel R. McKenzie came from New York state in 1852 and obtained control of the mills; in 1874 he partnered with Henry Bowen, who had arrived in 1868; the mills took steam power by the mid-1880s, and gristmill and sawmill both closed within a few years after the millpond was drained. The remaining firsts: a school-house in the township in 1838 — Chapman puts the log building "one-half mile south of the village," near the later Dunkard church site, Howard simply "the usual first log school-house was erected in 1838" — and a school-house in the town itself in 1840 (the nomination's "first school 1840" is the town building); the town cemetery in 1842; the Methodist church organized in 1851, the township's first church, built in the town during the pastorate of a minister Chapman spells Badley and Howard Bradley, replaced by a finer church in 1878; and a post office in operation since 1847.