photo by Photo courtesy Freeborn County Historical Museum

One of the few significant remnants of the former Albert Lea High School building is this statuary based on Albert Miller Lea. It was created in the early 1940s and located in the hallway near the auditorium. Lea is depicted in the 1835 dress uniform of the U.S. Army Dragoons. The device he’s holding in his hands is a compass. When the building was demolished, this portion was carefully removed and is now being stored at the Freeborn County Historical Museum.

Looking Back: Exploring Albert Miller Lea’s Iowa connections

Staff

Published Saturday, September 20, 2008

Note: This is the second of two parts.

Despite his name association with a large lake, township, city, high school and various business and civic activities in Minnesota, Albert Lea spent much more time in what’s now Iowa during the early part of his life. In fact, he was only in Minnesota during July and early August 1835, and again in June 1879 when he visited the locality named Albert Lea.

Lea’s first connection with a frontier area then known as the Iowa District of Wisconsin Territory came in the spring of 1835. At that time he was a 1831 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and assigned as a lieutenant in the army’s elite Dragoons Regiment. The Dragoons were the equivalent of a light infantry unit that rode horses.

His duty station that spring was Fort Des Moines. However, this new military post was then in a different location and near the place where the Des Moines River joins the Mississippi River and close to the present city of Keokuk, Iowa. (In later years Fort Des Moines was relocated to the south side of Iowa’s capital city and deactivated shortly after World War II.)

On June 7, 1835, the Dragoons started off on their assigned exploring and surveying trip. The unit consisted of 160 soldiers from three companies, five four-mule teams pulling wagons loaded with supplies, and some cattle to be used for future meals. Commanding this unit was Lt. Col. Stephan W. Kearney.

The Dragoons rode to the northwest along the Des Moines and Skunk Rivers to the Stratford, Iowa, area, then went to the northeast to a point near Lime Springs, Iowa, where the entry was made into Minnesota at the end of June. Their furthest north point was reached near Wabasha and Winona. The rest of the exploration route across the high grass prairie, woods, and wetlands across south Minnesota very loosely followed the present route of Interstate 35 past Albert Lea at the end of July 1835. Near a locality named Imogene just to the east of Fairmont the Dragoons went back into what’s now Iowa near Armstrong. Then the route was based loosely on the Des Moines River past what’s now Emmetsburg, Fort Dodge, Iowa’s capital city, and back to Fort Des Moines.

This march by the Dragoons totaled 1,100 miles and resulted in the naming of many places like Fox Lake (now Albert Lea Lake), Lake Chapeau, and Boone (the city), Boone County, and the Boone River in Iowa. (Nathan Boone was a captain in this unit of the Dragoons and the youngest son of famous frontiersman Daniel Boone.)

After making this trip, Lea wrote a summary report for Lt. Col. Kearney. In 1836 he converted this report with a few added details into a booklet with the title of “Notes on the Wisconsin Territory; Particularly With Reference to the Iowa District or Black Hawk Purchase.”

Lea did not create the name of Iowa for the part of the nation that became a territory in 1838 and a state in 1846. However, he has been fully credited for giving emphasis to this name by the Iowa Historical Society. Benjamin F. Shambaugh, superintendent of the Iowa Historical Society in 1935 wrote, “It may be said that his was the book that gave Iowa its name.”

For several years after leaving the army Lea lived in the area along the Mississippi River and became involved in promoting of land sales to new settlers among other activities. In fact, some of this was land he personally owned.

In May 1836 Lea married Ellen Shoemaker of Baltimore, Md., and they later had a son, Edward. (This son died during the Battle of Galveston Bay, Texas, on Jan. 1, 1863, during the Civil War.)

To honor his wife, Lea laid out a townsite named Ellenborough along the Mississippi River near what’s now Muscatine, Iowa. This land sales and town promotion project failed in part because of his wife’s poor health and he lost the title to his property. In fact, Ellen Lea died in 1840 and their son was raised by relatives.

Lea’s involvement with Iowa before he moved to Tennessee and later Texas was to have two more aspects.

In 1838, just after Iowa became a territory, a controversy developed regarding the area’s southern border. Iowa’s western border was based on the Missouri and Big Sioux Rivers, the eastern border became the Mississippi River, and the northern border with Minnesota was clearly defied. There was a real problem regarding the line between the Territory of Iowa and the State of Missouri.

President Martin Van Buren asked that this border dispute be resolved with a three member commission. One person would represent Iowa, another person would represent Missouri, and the president appointed Lea to be the non-partisan chairman.

Lea established the present border between the two states as being a straight line between the Missouri River at a point two miles south of Hamburg, Iowa, straight east to the Des Moines River two miles south of Farmington, Iowa. At this point the border is based on the Des Moines River southeast to its junction with the Mississippi River at Keokuk. Thus, the southern part of Lee County, the city of Keokuk and three small towns are now a part of Iowa.

The second aspect of Lea’s involvement with a part of Iowa is based on Lee County.

There was an indication that this county in the southeast portion of Iowa was to be named Lea. This was based on Lea’s association with the area during part of his military service and for making it a part of Iowa. Yet, the name ended up being Lee on the maps. Some thought it was named for Robert E. Lee, a captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who was then stationed at the Mississippi River rapids near Keokuk. However, the county was actually named for Charles Lee of New York who was a major landowner in this corner of Iowa.

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