THE CONVENTION RIOT AT BENSON GROVE, IOWA, IN 1876 By Laurence M. Larson In January, 1851, the legislature of Iowa was debating a proposal to create fifty new counties in the northern and western parts of the state, where only five years before the Potawatomi and various other Indian tribes had been in actual and undisputed possession. It is possible that here and there one might have discovered the home of a white man in this great area, but on the whole the fifty new counties were a vast tract of wild prairie, unoccupied and unsurveyed . One of these new counties was Winnebago, a rectangular area lying approximately halfway between the eastern and the western boundaries of the state and touching the Minnesota line on the north. In 1851 there was not a single inhabitant in the Winnebago district, and none settled there before 1855, when Thomas Bearse built a log cabin in the wooded country about three-fourths of a mile east of the hills that were to be Forest City. Later in the same year several other homes were erected, nearly all in the broad woodland that covered the southeastern part of the county. More settlers went in during the years that followed. These early pioneers were nearly all native Americans: young, courageous, and enterprising men and women who had traveled in leisurely fashion across the land from homes that might be as far distant as Virginia or Vermont. In 1856, the second year of settlement, a few Norwegian families found homes in the northeastern part of the county, in what was later to be organized as Norway Township.1 1 Colbum [Kolbein?] Larson, Henrik Larson, Hans Knudson, and Lewis [Lars?] Nelson are said to have come in 1856. History of Winnebago County 122 AN IOWA CONVENTION RIOT 123 This was the beginning of an important movement which was, in time, to extend into every part of the county. For ten years, however, Norwegian interest in the section remained of little consequence. In 1860 the census credited Winnebago County with 168 inhabitants; by 1865 the number had risen, but only to a meager 298. Nearly all those who were counted, moreover, were of native American stock. After the close of the Civil War, however, Norwegian settlers began to arrive in steadily growing numbers; the census of 1870 showed a population of 1,562. Americans were still going into the county, but the majority of those who went in during these five years bore Norwegian names. In the late sixties a colony of Swedes was formed in the woods northeast of the site of Forest City. A few Germans had gone into the county and the Irish were not entirely wanting. These elements were small and feeble, however, compared with the robust Norwegian settlements. At the close of the nineteenth century the population of Winnebago County must have been at least four-fifths Norwegian. Among the earliest settlers was Robert Clark, who came to Winnebago in 1856. He had strength, ambition, and foresight, and he soon rose to first place in the little pioneer community. Perceiving that the high ground which lay on the edge of the woodland and west of Lime Creek had possibilities as a town site, he secured the land and platted the village of Forest City. When the county was organized in 1857, the new town became the county seat, a distinction which to this day it has retained. Forest City was and long continued to be the center of the native American strength and influence in the new community . For twenty years the settlement in and about the county seat controlled the public administration. "From the settlement of the county" in 1856 "a majority of and Hancock County, Iowa, a Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress, and Achievement, 1:122 (Chicago, 1917). 124 STUDIES AND RECORDS the settlers expected to make their living by holding township and county offices, or by hunting, trapping, or trading with the neighbors."2 It was therefore generally believed, at least among the foreign born, that the native element had organized to control offices and other political patronage in the county. That there was such an organization is quite likely...