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Constitution and Records
of the Claim Association of
Johnson County, Iowa.

by Benjamin F. Shambaugh (1894)

  
 

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Constitution and Records

of the

Claim Association of Johnson County

Iowa.

 

with
Introduction and Notes

 by

Benjamin F. Shambaugh, A.M.
Wharton School Fellow, University of Pennsylvania

 

Published by
The State Historical Society of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
1894

 

Republican Printing Company,
Printers and Binders,
205 Washington Street,
Iowa City, Iowa.

 


 

PREFACE

While preparing a monograph on "Iowa City" (published by the Iowa State Historical Society, in 1893), my interest was aroused in an old manuscript, which at that time I had occasion to refer to under the title of "The Constitution and Records of the Claim Association of Johnson County." (note: Iowa Historical Record, Vol. IX. No. 1, p. 44.) 

This manuscript, which may be found and consulted in the Library of the Iowa State Historical Society, is still in a fairly good state of preservation, although some of its pages are badly torn and many more soiled and faded. Uncovered and loosely held together by a coarse thread, the whole consists of about one hundred and seventy-seven pages of closely written matter. The size of a page is about seven by thirteen inches. The paper is plain, moderately heavy and, with the exception of faint pencil lines here and there, unruled. The handwriting throughout is uniform and distinct, and undoubtedly the work of Mr. Samuel H. McCrory, the clerk of the Association.

The contents of the manuscript fall naturally under the following heads: I. Constitution and Laws; II. Minutes of the Meetings of the Association; III. Recorded Claims; IV. Recorded Quit Claim Deeds or Transfers of Claims. The constitution occupies a little more than six full pages in the original; while the signatures of members, a list of two hundred and eight-two, are spread over four pages. In this publication I have placed the minutes of the meetings immediately after the constitution and laws. But this is not their position in the manuscript. On the contrary, they occupy in the original six pages between pages twenty-one and twenty-two of that part of the manuscript devoted to the record of quit claim deeds. I cannot, however, believe this to be their first or true position; but that, being detached, they were subsequently pasted in this unnatural place. The descriptions of claims, covering fifty-nine pages, come next after the minutes of the meetings. The remainder, considerable over one half of the entire manuscript, is devoted to the record of quit claim deeds.

In editing the Constitution and Records of the Claim Association of Johnson County, I have made a strictly literal interpretation of the original manuscript. That is to say, I have made no reasonable allowances for unconscious errors, but have edited the manuscript literally, retaining, as far as the change from pen to type would allow, sentences, words, capitals, punctuation, and marks, just as they appear in the manuscript. At the same time I am satisfied that many of the errors are due rather to the haste and carelessness of the recorder than to his ignorance.

For helpful suggestions in the preparation of this publication, and in my study of claim associations in general, I am grateful to Professor Isaac A. Loos of the State University of Iowa.

B. F. S.

June 1st, 1894.

 

 

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