Julien's Journal November 2015 (Volume 40, Number 11) | Page 42

Shades of Dubuque

Sponsored by Trappist Caskets

A Look Into the Past At Center Grove
by Marshall Martin

Marshall Martin was a lawyer for
more than 40 years in a western
state with experience in complex
trials, mining law, and banking. He
is a now a resident of Dubuque and
student of its history.

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rshall Marti

Photos by Ma

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walk in the cemetery at Center
Grove Methodist Church will
take you back to the early history of the Dubuque area and a
unique group of English men and women
who settled in Dubuque before the Civil
War. The church is on the south side of
Dodge St. sitting alone on a hill surrounded
by restaurants, motels, and commercial establishments. A scholarly history of the old
town of Center Grove, the church, and their
connections to the Civil War by Jeffrey J.
Meyer appeared in the May 2012 issue of
Julien’s Journal. The Meyer article points
out that the Yorkshire men settled Center
Grove starting in 1833. The migration continued into the 1850s. Rich lead deposits in
the area were the attraction.
The period of 1830 to 1850 was a turbulent
time. Dubuque was part of the frontier. In
the Treaty of St. Louis of 1804, the Sauk,
Meskwaki (Fox), and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Native American tribes sold a vast
tract of land east of the Mississippi from

40  ❖  Julien’s Journal ❖ November 2015

northern Missouri to southern Wisconsin
to the United States for settlement by nonNative Americans. Although the lead mines
of Dubuque were west of the river and
outside the ceded land, in 1831 lead miners
crossed and tried to mine in the lands not
open to them. The various Native American
tribes drove them out.
Blackhawk, a tribal leader of the Sauk,
contested the Treaty in 1832 when he was
told to vacate his home settlement in the
St. Louis Treaty lands. His Sauk tribesmen
and members of other tribes engaged in a
four-month war, which ended in his capture. The brief war is notable for some of
its participants: Abraham Lincoln, Winfield
Scott, Jefferson Davis, and Zachary Taylor.
As part of the peace treaty, the Sauk,
Ho-Chunk, and Meskwaki entered into
the Blackhawk Purchase of 1833, which
opened the Dubuque area for settlement
by non-Native Americans. The Purchase
also gave the U.S. a vast new territory
west of the Mississippi. The lead mines of

Dubuque were now open for exploitation.
The Yorkshire miners came.
An example of the migration from Yorkshire
to Iowa is illustrated by the story of William
Daykin taken from an unpublished family
history. He was born in 1816 in Gunnerside,
Yorkshire’s lead mining district. He specialized in timbering, one of the skilled mining
crafts of the day. He moved to Dubuque in
1845 and built a log cabin near the location
of the Center Grove church. Daykin mined
lead at Catfish Creek near Center Grove.
He joined the Gold Rush in 1849 and returned to Center Grove in 1850 carrying
small specimens of