History Happenings: Iowa’s Linn County name originates with Missouri senator

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Plenty of places in Linn County are named for people who have been important to the community over time. Bever Park, Ellis Park and Greene Square are all examples. Grant Wood, Erskine and Viola Gibson elementary schools in Cedar Rapids also reflect this impulse to honor folks by naming something substantial after them. We suspect you could name many more.

We were thinking about this practice when it occurred to us that neither of us knew for whom Linn County was named.

That gap in our knowledge was quickly rectified by a visit to the county’s website, where you can find this bit of information: “Linn County is located in East Central Iowa and is the second most populous county in the state. Originally home to the Sac, Fox, and Winnebago tribes, the first settlers in the area arrived in 1836. In 1839, the area was named Linn County in recognition of Lewis Fields Linn, a Missouri senator and strong proponent of Western expansion and development.”

Digging deeper on Lewis F. Linn

OK, so now we had a name, but we also had a question: Why would an area in Iowa be named for a Missouri senator? One reason might be because Iowa didn’t have any senators whose names could be borrowed at the time the county was named. Iowa would not become a state until Dec. 28, 1846.

But that logistical answer doesn’t do much to reveal why Linn was worthy of the honor. So we dug a little deeper. “The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress” had some information to add about Sen. Linn’s background, including that he was born in 1796 near Louisville, Ky.; served as a very young surgeon during the War of 1812; and finished his medical studies in 1816 in Philadelphia. After becoming a doctor, he helped combat two cholera epidemics in the Missouri territory.

His political career began in 1827, when he joined the Missouri Senate. In 1833, he was appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill a vacancy after the previous senator died. As the “Biographical Directory” details, he then was “reelected in 1836 and again in 1842 and served from October 25, 1833, until his death in Saint Genevieve, Mo., on October 3, 1843.”

We also learned that Linn was a slaveholder, which may be of a piece with his enthusiasm for Western expansion — a project often justified under the banner of “Manifest Destiny,” which Southern elites hoped might expand their system of human enslavement. But making that connection still wouldn’t tell us why Linn County, Iowa --located in a free state that is not to the west of Missouri -- would be named after the senator. It seems unlikely that Sen. Linn ever even set foot in Linn County, Iowa.

Other Linn counties across U.S.

Ultimately, the answer may simply be that Lewis F. Linn was the kind of fellow who gets places named after him. In addition to Linn County, Iowa, there are counties named for him in Kansas, Missouri (the one that makes the most sense) and Oregon. Four towns, two in Missouri (Linneus and Linn) and two in Oregon (West Linn and Linnton), also were named in his honor. That meager list doesn’t rival, say, George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette or Abraham Lincoln as a source of place names. Still, Linn’s list is better than most of us will do.

A case could probably be made that Linn County’s namesake is somewhat random at best and quite problematic at worst. Still, it has been the name of this place since well before the Civil War. We have built this place over time and created our own legacy in a place named for a senator from Missouri.

Jessica Cline is a Leadership & Character Scholar at Wake Forest University. Her dad, Rob Cline, is not a scholar of any kind. They write this monthly column for The History Center. Comments: HistoricalClines@gmail.com