Guthrie County IA Archives Biographies.....Tracy, William M. 1820 - 1881
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com December 6, 2007, 12:00 am

Author: Elbert Wright Weeks (1932)

[photo] CAPT. WILLIAM TRACY

WILLIAM TRACY.

   William Tracy was the Abraham who came up out of the town of Caldwell, Noble
county, Ohio, with the vision of projecting a town in the "Western Wilds" of
Iowa and acquiring thereunto, or making it, a county seat. He found E. B. Newton
at, or near, Morrisburg, a stage station in the southeast part of Guthrie
county. Thomas Seely was teaching school in or about Bear Grove in the county
and joined in the enterprise.

   Tracy and Newton, one spring morning in 1853, while standing about where the
old soldiers' monument is, with the sun at their backs, beheld the valley of the
South Coon river as it extended into the northwest, in their front, and to the
southeast, and the valley of Bear Grove to the south, bearing west. The timber
along these streams and on the hills northwest was enough to satisfy their
timber instincts.

   The rich, level bottom lands were just suited for streets, alleys and
commercial lots; the rolling hills for homes; the spring in the hollow above the
Al Wilkins home could be used for city purposes; and the unlimited stretch of
prairies in every direction gave plenty of room. Where they stood would be the
court house square. Newton knew they were standing in the center of the county.
They agreed upon the location.

   Tracy was to locate certain land warrants covering about nine hundred acres,
as contiguous and advantageous to the project as possible. Newton was to enter
the timber lands to the northwest a mile' away, which he did, naming it
"Newton's Grove," and the project was on. It will appear that Guthrie Center,
Iowa, was located not by commissioners, nor by the hand of law, but by nature
acting by and through her special agents, men who dreamed dreams and saw visions.

   In March, 1859, a petition asking that the question of removing the county
seat from Panora to the new town of Guthrie Center was presented to the board of
supervisors, who ordered the question submitted to the voters of the county. It
was voted on in April, 1859, and the movement was defeated. On the second of
April, 1860, it was again voted upon and the project carried by nineteen
majority, and the county capital came over the hills -to the new town.

   In 1861 Panora began taking steps for the return of the county seat. It did
not reach a vote until April, 1862, and the town of Panora won by a majority of
seventy-seven. Back over the hills the county capital went, a welcome pilgrim to
Panora and the unoccupied court house.

   The civil war paralyzed home affairs and forced an armistice of the county
seat warfare, and the sixth and seventh decades closed with the capital of the
county peacefully abiding at Panora, and further controversy over the same will
come within the limits of the eight decades, hereinafter.

   Tracy was versatile, aggressive, faithful and earnest. He was a blacksmith,
lawyer, miller, farmer, soldier and editor. He was not a failure in any of these
pursuits. He had an attractive personality; he was a natural leader; his mind
dwelt upon and suggested large things. He was rather aristocratic, both in his
conduct and thought. His mind was on a high scale, but withal humane and
agreeable. He carried with him an air of confidence and admiration. "Small
wonder" that the conservative Newton and the shrewd and far-seeing Seely were
drawn to him and entered into his scheme of a new central county seat for
Guthrie county. He was a captain in the civil war.

   William M. Tracy, born in Belmont county, Ohio, February 2, 1820, died at
Guthrie Center, Iowa, June 16, 1881.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

A RECORD
History
Biography
Memory

Pioneer Times and Peoples

GUTHRIE CENTER I0WA

By ELBERT WRIGHT WEEKS
1932


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