Talk:Rockingham Township, Scott County, Iowa

History

(Moving the History section over to the Talk side for now. I have been looking at it and looking at it, and not really liking how opinionated and insubstantial it feels.— Preceding unsigned comment added by ErikVKing (talk • contribs) 22:27, 9 October 2012)

"In the 1830s, two towns sprang to life on the Iowa bank of the Mississippi River. The village of Rockingham was settled in 1835 across from the mouth of the Rock River [before Iowa was even the state we know today: the area was still part of the Territory of Michigan, (1805–1837)]. The village seemed ideally located — except for the inconvenient fact that flooding turned the town into an island every year. In spite of its wet location, the village had one hundred residents by the summer of 1836, twice as many as its neighbor, Davenport. The town of Davenport grew very slowly after its founding by Antoine LeClaire, using a contentious—and corrupt—victory over Rockingham for the county seat to solidify its future. In the first round of voting, Davenporters helped their cause by importing lead miners from Dubuque and paying them ten barrels of whiskey to vote. After two more controversial and equally corrupt elections, Davenport won the county seat and Antoine LeClaire donated land and $3,000 to build the first courthouse. Davenport annexed Rockingham a short time later."

References

Comments

• Another GoogleBooks page.

• Just found another site to look into.

• I need to contact them to see if they will let me use this, but the Davenport Public Library has a rather informative blog here.

• I was looking at the Blue Grass Township, Scott County, Iowa page and liked some of the setup they had, so I am going to copy/paste their entire layout into a Word document, and as I add information referring to Rockingham I will add information from it to the main page.

References

Geography

I want to add coordinates located in the information below to the page so that people can look at a map containing those coordinates to get a better idea of where the Township used to be. I have the coordinates for one portion (the non-Post Office link) but have been trying to put another box in to show where the Post Office was located (according to the GNIS). Any pointers?— Preceding unsigned comment added by ErikVKing (talk • contribs) 00:46, 9 October 2012

If you have one coordinate that should establish where the Township used to be, but there is a bigger issue. You used an image from Yahoo Maps and that image appears to be under Yahoo's copyright. It looks like the image will be deleted from Wikipedia because it has insufficient information on its copyright status, see File:Rockingham Township, Iowa on an overlay of Davenport, IA on Yahoo! Maps.JPG. Shearonink (talk) 02:19, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Information from: Feature Detail Report for: Rockingham (historical)

Sorry for the late response Shearonink. Yeah, I had hoped that I could find some way to get permission from Yahoo! Maps to use that file before it was taken down, but with all of the legal jargon I couldn't decipher it fast enough. I have an image up now that's even better, and I hope I can get an image like the one I had up again in the future. --ErikVKing (talk) 23:43, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

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Feature Detail Report for: Rockingham Post Office (historical)

(deleted unecessary information, kept links) --ErikVKing (talk) 00:01, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

References

Pages to reference in the future

http://www.iowa.gov/pages/search?q=Rockingham — Preceding unsigned comment added by ErikVKing (talk • contribs) 00:52, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Help me make this page better and more organized!!

I have a lot of information, but I want to put it on the page in a way that people will want to read it and will want to learn more about the subject at hand. Any help with better referencing, better write-ups, more facts, etc. will be welcomed with open arms!

Someone help me out: I think I have been working on this page too long, and I keep questioning my own facts as I have them on the Article...

I keep questioning if Rockingham was a Township and/or a village and/or a city/town.

Was the Township anexed, or the village/town/city?

I swear I read somewhere that in or near 1840 the Township was caught up in more than the dilemma between themselves and Davenport over the County Seat position. It seems that Muscatine (then Bloomington) ended up taking what was then Rockingham Township...:

"So, where are these ‘missing’ townships? Muscatine County has them." "The two men struck a deal, and Muscatine County ‘took’ a nice square piece out of the riverfront land originally meant for Scott County." "Buffalo ended up stuck in the lower corner of Scott" (see the reference here )

• Does this mean that Rockingham ended up being lumped in with Buffalo? Or does it mean nothing at all?

Thanks!ErikVKing (talk) 22:22, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I am not sure what your question is here. You just need to source all your statements from published reliable sources. Also, remember to sign each of your posts with four tildes Shearonink (talk) 02:19, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Moving the beginning descriptor line over, line by line as it now stands, to remove and perhaps re-evaluate, the non-sourced information that originally sparked my interest in this topic. I'm moving it line by line and editing the main page so that I can keep the original web reference, and possibly add this back to the main page once the information has been substantiated: Rockingham Township is a former village in Scott County, Iowa, United States that was first settled in 1835, and was annexed by Davenport sometime after 1930 (a census was taken as late as this ). ErikVKing22:38, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I have removed the Notable People section, even though that isn't what it was called. What the style guide calls for is a title of Notable people or Notable Residents. A notables list in an article (be it a settlement or a school) should only have people who pass the Wikipedia notability guidelines for an article to be created about them. Altho said article is not strictly required, if you have to do enough research to create it, why wouldn't you? The grouping of notable people should either be a narrative or a list, with a wikilink to the article about the subject and a short description (a few words) of their notability. The one reference for Ebeneezer Cook would not be enough to sustain an article on him. I also removed a fragment in the bit about the post office, because it didn't make any sense. I rewrote the bit about the 1930 census, so it doesn't appear that the actual annexation was in question, but simply the date. The two sections of the History part seem to largely duplicate each other, so some clean up is in order there I think. Feel free to add any dialouge you want to this discussion. I only want to help.Gtwfan52 (talk) 01:34, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Ebenezer was notable for the fact that he helped, according to the information I gathered, to plot the Township itself. Understandably it seems Wiki may not see him as a Notable Person, so some research must be in order if I want to re-add that section, but he is still notable to Rockingham Township, to Scott County, and to Iowa. Thanks for all the help, and hopefully with the Teahouse and some patience I will get these pages worked out. --ErikVKing (talk) 02:25, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, You seem to have stumbled across the stumbling point. What the city article (WP:USCITY) require for notable people sections is notability in the world, not the community being written about. You could work some things about him into history and use the reference you have for that.Gtwfan52 (talk) 03:08, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

References