Kennedy, John:

$5,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

IOWA CITY DIRECTORY AND ADVERTISER, FOR 1857. A rare copy of the first Iowa City directory of residents, compiled by John Kennedy, who sent a questionnaire to all male inhabitants (or heads of families) of the city asking them their occupation and where they lived, and used the results of the questionnaire to compile this alphabetic directory of Iowa City residents. Issued eleven years after statehood and during the year that the capital of Iowa moved from Iowa City to Des Moines, the directory contains not only the alphabetic list of residents, but also the Iowa City Charter, its amendments, a list of the city officers (elected in April of 1856), a brief history of the city, and a listing of public buildings, churches and a description of school facilities. The first thirty-four pages is taken up with advertisements for Iowa City businesses, with a business directory (and an index for the advertising businesses) following the preface. The businesses include hotels, bankers, ready-made clothing retailers for men and women, lumber yards, grocers, dry good stores, livery stables, druggists, realtors, gun dealers, attorneys, builders, ambrotypists, railways, and the stage office. This important directory of Iowa City published the year the capital moved to Des Moines is not found either in the marketplace or institutionally, and OCLC locates no physical copies. There are no copies in the auction records for the last half century."First directory and first history of this city" -

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