Iowa History Timeline: Text Version
B.C.E. = Before Common Era
C.E. = Common Era
C.E. = Common Era
- 1860:
Iowa Event
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Tornado Strikes Camanche
- 1860:
Iowa Event
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Iowa's population: 674,913
- 1860s:
U.S. Event
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Railroads Move Cattle to Market
By the 1860s railroads were used to transport cattle to markets where they were processed by meatpacking plants. Farmers sometimes drove the cattle by foot from the farms to the nearest railraod.
Find out how railroads changed life in Iowa. - 1860s:
Iowa Event
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Wild Elk Disappear
Elk were hunted for food and skins--and for sport. By the 1860s elk were no longer in Iowa.
Find out more about Iowa's wildlife. - 1861:
Iowa Event
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Annie Turner Wittenmyer organizes Soldiers Aid Society
Annie Turner Wittenmyer from Keokuk was a noted leader for improvement of the conditions in Civil War hospitals. She led the fight for better food and better nursing care. For her service she was recognized by President Abraham Lincoln and by General Ulysses S. Grant.
Find out more about Iowa and the Civil War. - 1861:
Iowa Event
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Iowa's Response to the Civil War
Iowa's response to the outbreak of war between the states, called the Civil War, was an outpouring of enlistments in the army supported by financial contributions and by production of tremendous quantities of food to supply the Union armies. 75,000 Iowans served in the Civil War and 13,000 died.
Find out more about Iowa and the Civil War. - 1861-1865:
Iowa Event
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Civil War Changes Lives
When the Civil War started, many Iowa men marched off to war leaving the care of farms and livestock to women.
Find out more about Iowa and the Civil War. - 1861-65:
U.S. Event
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Civil War
The Civil War was fought between the Union (North) and the Confederacy (South). In 1861 seven southern states seceded from the Union. They formed the Confederate States of America. One reason for the fighting was the issue of slavery. By the end of the war 360,000 Union soldiers had died, and 260,000 Confederate soldiers were dead.
Find out more about Iowa and the Civil War. - 1862:
U.S. Event
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Agricultural Colleges Formed
Congress passed the Morrill Land Grant College Act which gave government lands to the states to help support agricultural colleges.
Find out about higher education in Iowa. - 1862:
U.S. Event
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The Homestead Act Is Passed
- 1862:
Iowa Event
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Samuel Freeman Miller appointed to U.S. Supreme Court
Samuel Freeman Miller of Keokuk was the only Iowan ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. He served from 1862 until his death in 1890 and was noted as a leading Constitutional scholar and interpreter, and also for the number of dissenting opinions he offered. His home in Keokuk is now operated as a museum.
Find out more about Iowa government. - 1862:
Iowa Event
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Homestead Act becomes law
The Homestead Act was a federal law that allowed people to settle on unsold land, improve it, construct buildings on it and receive the land free after a five year residency. Much of Iowa was surveyed and sold prior to this law, but some land in north central and northwest Iowa was eligible for homesteading.
Find out more about Iowa's path to statehood. - 1862:
U.S. Event
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Pacific Railway Act of 1862 Passed
The Pacific Railway Act gave land grants to railroad companies to build railroads across North America.
Find out about railroad building in Iowa. - 1862:
U.S. Event
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Native Americans Lose Iowa Land
By 1862, all the land in Iowa that the Native American tribes once owned was the property of the United States government.
Find out more about Indian removal in Iowa. - 1863:
Iowa Event
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Iowan Writes Popular Poem
John Luckey McCreery from Delaware County in Iowa wrote a poem--There Is No Death--that became wildly popular throughout the country.
Find out more about Iowa literature. - 1863:
Iowa Event
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State Dental Society Formed
The Iowa State Dental Society, now called the Iowa Dental Association, was formed so dentists could meet to discuss new techniques and products.
Find out more about medicine in Iowa. - 1864 or 1865:
Iowa Event
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George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver was born. He was a former slave who became one of the country's most famous scientists.
Find out more about George Washington Carver. - 1864:
Iowa Event
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William Stone becomes governor
- 1865:
Iowa Event
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Iowan Appointed Secretary of the Interior
James Harlan of Mount Pleasant was the first Iowan to serve in a president's cabinet. He was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln and also served briefly under President Andrew Johnson. He then reclaimed his former senate seat. Harlan's daughter, Mary, married Robert Todd Lincoln, the only surviving child of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. The Harlan home in Mount Pleasant is now preserved as a museum.
Find out more about Iowa government. - 1865:
Iowa Event
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Effects of the Civil War in Iowa
The effects of the Civil War included many deaths, injuries and diseases. It also brought about the supremacy of the Republican Party in Iowa politics for the next several decades, through the efforts of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a veterans' organization of soldiers who had fought in the Civil War. The Women's Relief Corps, the women's auxiliary, was also a potent political and social force in Iowa for many decades. As a result of the Civil War, Iowa farming became much more commercially oriented, less subsistence, and the outlook of Iowans became less provincial, more a part of the national scene.
Find out more about Iowa and the Civil War. - 1865:
U.S. Event
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President Abraham Lincoln Is Assassinated
On April 14, 1865 President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. He died the next day.
Read more about Lincoln, Iowa and the Civil War - 1865:
U.S. Event
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Baseball Becomes a National Sport
Baseball became the national game after the Civil War. Soldiers in the war learned how to play the game in prison camps or in training. When the war was over they went home to different parts of the nation and took the game and rules with them.
Find out more about baseball in Iowa. - 1865:
U.S. Event
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Ku Klux Klan Founded
After the Civil War ended, some whites formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). They used terror and violence to discourage African Americans and other minorities from exercising their civil rights.
Find out more about the Ku Klux Klan in Iowa. - 1866:
Iowa Event
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Baseball in Iowa
Just a year after the Civil War ended, Iowa starting forming baseball teams. There were teams in Mount Pleasant, Des Moines and Council Bluffs.
Find out more about baseball in Iowa. - 1867:
Iowa Event
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First Iowa Insurance Company
The first insurance company in Iowa was Equitable Life Insurance Company of Iowa started by Frederick Hubbell.
Find out more about the insurance industry in Iowa. - 1867:
U.S. Event
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The Grange Established
The Grange started out as a social group for farm families. It became a source of education about new farming methods and later a political group.
- 1867:
U.S. Event
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Barbed Wire Patented
The invention of barbed wire made it possible for farmers to mark off their land and to keep their livestock from roaming.
Find out about advances in technology on Iowa farms. - 1868:
Iowa Event
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Patrons of Husbandry Organize First Grange in Iowa
The Patrons of Husbandry, commonly known as the Grange, was an organization devoted to improving the educational and social lives of farmers. Because of the economic distress on farms following the Civil War, the group came to have economic and political activities as well. The railroad reform laws in Iowa were erroneously referred to as "Grange Laws," and the Grange did fight for the rights of farmers versus the power of the railroads and the elevators. Much of their political program was adopted by the Populist political party later in the century.
Find out more about agriculture in Iowa. - 1868:
U.S. Event
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Steam Tractors
- 1868:
Iowa Event
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Iowa Integrates Public Schools
On September 12, 1867, 12-year-old Susan Clark was denied admission to Muscatine's Second Ward Common School Number 2 because she was black. Her father, Alexander Clark, brought a lawsuit to allow admission of his daughter to the public schools in Muscatine. In 1868 the Iowa Supreme Court held that "separate" was not "equal" and ordered Susan Clark, an African-American, admitted to the public schools. This effectively integrated Iowa's schools 96 years before the federal court decision, Brown vs. the Board of Education in Topeka, did the same thing on a national scale. Alexander Clark, Jr. was the first black graduate of the College of Law at the University of Iowa. Alexander Clark, Sr. was the second one.
Find out more about Alexander Clark's fight for equal rights. - 1868:
Iowa Event
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Iowa Ratifies 13th Amendment
Iowa supported the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution. In general Iowa supported the abolition of slavery, the making of former slaves as citizens, and the legalizing of the right to vote of former slaves. It is worth noting that all of these changes only involved men. Women were not allow to vote until 1920.
Find out more about laws and African-American Iowans. - 1868:
Iowa Event
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Merrill Becomes Governor
- 1868:
Iowa Event
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Refrigerated Railcars Used
The invention of refrigerated railcars allowed Iowa products to be shipped around the country without spoiling.
Find out more about Iowa industry. - 1868:
Iowa Event
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Iowa State Agricultural College Opens
The opening of Iowa State Agricultural College brought "book farming" to Iowans.
Find out more about the science and technology of agriculture. - 1869:
U.S. Event
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Knights of Labor Founded
The Knights of Labor, a workers union, was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Find out more about labor unions in Iowa. - 1869:
Iowa Event
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Iowa Board of Immigration Created
The Iowa Board of Immigration published booklets in several languages (English, German, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish) to encourage European immigration to Iowa. Agents went to Europe, particularly to northern and western Europe and distributed these in Germany, Netherlands and in Scandinavian countries. European immigration to Iowa burgeoned during the last two decades of the 19th century.
Find out more about immigration in Iowa. - 1869:
Iowa Event
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Woman Suffrage Convention Held in Mount Pleasant
In the spring of 1870 Quaker activist Joseph A. Dugdale issued a call for a state convention to organize the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association in Mount Pleasant. Dugdale was a nationally-known anti-slavery activist. After the Civil War he turned his energies to the woman's suffrage movement. The convention was a major event in southeast Iowa. About 1,200 people attended. Speakers included Amelia Bloomer and Annie Savery.
Find out about civil rights in Iowa. - 1869:
Iowa Event
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First Classes Held at Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm at Ames
The agricultural college at Ames led the way in what was called "scientific farming" or "book farming," and farmers were made more aware of the need to conserve the topsoil, to improve the quality of grain crops and livestock, and to accept the help of scientists and other experts to bring about more prosperity in rural areas.
Find out more about "Book Farming" in Iowa. - 1869:
U.S. Event
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Transcontinental Railroad Completed
The first transcontinental railroad was completed when the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific met in Promontory Point, Utah.
- 1869:
U.S. Event
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National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) Formed
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