Chapter 9 cont. WRITTEN BY CAPTAIN W. L. CLARK Benjamin W. Clark was born in Wyth county, Virginia, and came to Black Hawk's Purchase in June, 1833, where he took up claims and bought others two and one-fourth miles in length on the Mississippi river, above and below where the town of Buffalo is now situated.  He built a log cabin at the lower end of W. L. Clark's present property, one near where the Dorman store and postoffice now stands, one at what is now the upper end of town and one on the river bank above where the public highway crosses the Rock Island railroad, on the Dodge farm, all embracing what are now the W. L. Clark, Springmeir, Kautz, Zerker, Erie Dodge, Henry Alford, and the south part of the Harsch, Stickleberger and Dodge farms, or about 2,000 acres.  In the spring of 1833 he planted corn, potatoes and a vegetable garden where Buffalo now stands.  These were the first crops in the county.  His nearest neighbor north, on the river, was at Dubuque, 135 miles.  The nearest one south was at Flint Hills, now Burlington (Shacacon, the Indian name), ninety miles distant, and not a house to the Pacific coast. The spot chosen by him was one of the most beautiful on the great river between St. Louis and St. Paul.  Here were low lying hills, set well back from the river and covered with a fine growth of valuable timber, with building stone and coal cropping out of the sides of many of the creeks, fine sulphur springs of clear, delicious, healthful water, and besides all these natural advantages that of being on a direct line between Monmouth, Illinois, forty miles south, and Dubuque by airline seventy-four miles north to the lead mines.  The river here had beautiful pebble, rocky shores, and here he established Clark's ferry, which, after emigration set in, became the most noted in the Black Hawk Purchase.  It was the only ferry between Burlington and Dubuque; in other words, we were the first.  Here it was the first house was built, the first ferry established, the first plowing done, the first crop planted, the first brickyard, the first blacksmith shop, where the mill-irons for the Green grist mill at Rochester, also the irons for the Whittlesy mill, both in  Cedar county, were made; the first town between Flint Hill and Dubuque, the first barn, thirty by forty feet, now standing, the first coal mine opened, and the first white child born, David H. Clark, April 21, 1834; the second in schools - for Pleasant Valley was the first there.  We were first and foremost in everything else, for we were here first and went to work with a will.  The first girl born here was Harriet Mounts (Fridley) on September 2, 1835. During the winter of 1833-34, Captain Benjamin W. Clark had several men making rails to fence four of his farms on the river. Debbie Clough G-erischer G-erischer Family Web Site http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/ Assistant CC, Iowa Gen Web, Scott County http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/ List Manager for: IASCOTT-L * G-erischer-L * D-encker-L Fitzpatirck-L * V-lerebome-L * Huntington-L * Otis-L * Algar-L EIGS-L * Pickens-L * McNab-L * Patris-L - Rankin-L