Isaac Galland
He is best known for selling large tracts of land around Commerce, Illinois, to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1839.
"[4] Although little is known of his teenage life before his marriage at 18, according to family tradition, he left Marietta to study at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, when he was thirteen;[citation needed] some sources indicate that he left home to search for gold in Mexico, was seized by the Spanish government, and spent one year in a Santa Fe prison[2] for "suspicion of evil design.
[5] He established the settlement of Nashville on the west bank of the Mississippi River in what is now Lee County, Iowa, where he practiced medicine and founded a trading post.
[3] He promoted Nashville as a future commercial center and when families joined the settlement, Galland hired a teacher and built a log house founding the first school in a what would become Iowa Territory.
[2] In 1832, before the beginning of the Black Hawk War, Galland moved himself and his children back across the river to Fort Edwards at present day Warsaw, Illinois.
[2] Galland served as a colonel during the war, and at age 41, married (for a fourth and last time) on April 25, 1833, Elizabeth Wilcox.
[3] He lived with his family "in a large, two-story house" and while there, self-published five issues of the periodical Chronicles of the North American Savage.
[2] He sold the town and 19,000 acres of land in the Half-Breed Tract of Iowa to Joseph Smith, leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, after the forced expulsion of its members from Missouri.
Galland also sold Smith many acres on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, in what was called the Military tract.
He served missions to New Jersey and Pennsylvania and traveled east with Hyrum Smith to raise money to construct the Nauvoo Temple.
[5] He then published Dr. Galland's Reply to Various Falsehoods, Misstatements, and Misrepresentations Concerning the LDS's Reproach called Mormons in July 1841.
