ing crews meant entire neighborhood groups and no one could leave the others at such a time.

Norfolk had the highest vote but it lacked the magical three-fifths of the votes cast and so the county seat remained at Madison. Another attempt to move the county seat back to Norfolk was made about 1913 or 1914. The contest was between Norfolk and Madison only with Madison winning the election. There was too much country and village animosity against the county metropolis at the time.

Judging from the context of this story, like Topsy in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Battle Creek just "growed." No, it did not "just grow." It would be difficult to name all the good people who lent leadership in building our town.

The first settlement which might have become the townsite of Battle Creek, occurred in 1870 or 1871 and was located two miles south and one mile west of the present townsite. John Tiedgen and the party of Missourians who came in 1869, including the Tiedgen family, Herman Hogrefe, John Lucht and Henry Woste. Perhaps not in the same party, but coming from Missouri also, were the Eyl family (August and his four sons — Theodore, Herman, Henry, and Fritz), and Heinrich Tomhagen. All took homesteads in the general area.

F. J. Hale, who had taken a homestead in Schoolcraft Precinct in 1868, came "down the creek" to establish a trading post one-fourth mile east of the present Herbert Bierman home. L. D. (White) Barnes started a blacksmith shop and a small school house was built in which the first church service in the community was held.

It is reported that on occasion, the Indians could buy whiskey at the Hale trading post. Fritz, or as we knew him, Fred Eyl, was a teenage boy herding cattle on the prairie near what is now the Louis Barry home. He had seen the Indians going to the settlement and later upon leaving, had heard them whopping it up. They had evidently scared the clerk into letting them have some "fire water." Fred hid in the tall grass, fearing that he might be molested by the Indians.

It was in the school house built in the settlement that Rev. Jacob Dellinger, a Baptist clergyman, held the first church service in May, 1872. Only a few weeks later, the first Lutheran service was held there. In this service a number of Battle Creek's first Lutheran born babies were baptised. These included Mary Lucht, who is still living and is a patient at the Lutheran Community Hospital Annex in Norfolk. Mary was born February 14, 1871. Another included in the baptismal service was Dora Tiedgen who later married Fred Brechler. It is said that Dora was the first white baby born on the Battle Creek, born October 11th, 1870. One cannot forget that the baby girl born to Mr. and Mrs. Ketterman in the winter of 1867-68, five miles south of the Tiedgen homestead must have been the "first." Another first

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