150 years ago

DEC. 31. 1875

Marion Centre is the county seat at the junction of the Cottonwood River and Muddy Creek, surrounded by a magnificent and fertile body of valley and upland. The town itself is substantial and impresses strangers at once with the idea of permanency and comfort.

Some of the citizens of this place have lived here a dozen years or more, and from this fact, the town is called “old.” But these settlers were here many years before the port was designated with the title of “town.”

Marion Centre was incorporated as a city of the third class in August, 1875.

It has a hotel and public boarding house, two banks, four church organizations, one fine church edifice, a $15,000 school building with three good teachers employed therein nine months of every year, a courthouse, two drug stores, one hardware store, one saddlery shop, one livery stable, one shoemaker’s shop, two blacksmith shops, one millinery establishment, one flouring mill, two coal dealers, one lumber yard, one lime factory near town, one sorghum factory, one cheese factory, one book and stationery establishment, one furniture store, two meat markets, one printing show, two saloons (we regret to say), four real estate firms, six lawyers, five doctors, six dry goods and grocery stores, Atheneum, Odd Fellow, Masonic, Good Templar, Grange, and other societies, etc.

December is ended, and scarcely a day has been cold enough to require a fire for comfort.

The girls are just now very earnestly suggesting new year watch meetings. We suspect they all want to be the first in taking advantage of leap year. Young men, don’t be deceived by ’em!

Some hardened sinner stole a fine buffalo robe from Rev. Brook’s buggy while that divine was preaching recently at Halstead. The thief will not need that robe in the next world.