CARROLL COUNTY Was to have been organized in March of the present year. The present population of the county is but about 150. Water-power, timber lands, and the best of prairie soil, with inexhaustible beds of building-stone, coal, and iron, are some of the inducements Carroll County holds out to new-comers. As yet no towns are laid out, not even the county-seat, and the active, intelligent, and ambitious immigrant will find inducements for settling in recently-organized counties which do not exist in older ones. Though water-power is afforded by several streams in various parts of the county, there is not a mill or manufactory yet erected, and the nearest mill is at Panora, Guthrie County, 27 miles distant. What an opening for a saw and grist-mill! Wheat, corn, and rye in abundance. Of churches and schools in Carroll we could obtain no information, and presume that they, like the county, are unorganized. (Iowa As It Is in 1855; A Gazetteer for Citizens..., 1855)
CARROLL COUNTY Is situated in the western interior of the State, in the third tier east from the Missouri River. It is bounded on the north by Sac and Calhoun Counties, east by Greene, south by Guthrie and Audubon and on the west by Crawford, and is twenty-four miles square. This county is well watered by the branches of Raccoon River, flowing usually in a south-easterly direction to the Mississippi. The western portion is drained by branches of the Boyer and Nishnabotany rivers, flowing to the Missouri.
The surface of this county is principally prairie, with soil of excellent quality. It is generally level, with some rolling lands in the southern portion. There are some fine bodies of timber in the south-east and north-east portions of this county, as well as good water-power for manufacturing purposes.
CARROLLTON, the county seat, is in the south-eastern part of the county, forty-five miles west of Boonsboro, the present terminus of the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River R. R., and seventy-five miles north-west of DesMoines. It contains three churches, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal, and one lodge of Masons; also, one flour mill, two saw-mills and two general stores. The soil of the surrounding country is well adapted to the different cereals and to stock growing. Population 45; of township, 300.
Coon Rapids and Jasper are post offices in this county. (Hair's Iowa State Gazetteer..., 1865)