Liberty and Dudley Jeremiah "Uncle Jerry" Church was an early settler in Iowa, who arrived in
Fort Des Moines in the summer of 1845. He laid out a new town in
Polk County, just north of the border with Warren, in the winter of 1845 that he named Dudley. This was his second attempt at platting the town, the first attempt he had named Liberty and abandoned because the place that he had chosen turned out to be school land. The tale goes that he staked his claim of Dudley at midnight on 1845-10-11 by the light of some burning Native American dwellings that he had set on fire. Church's plans for Dudley were ambitious; he wanted it to rival Des Moines, ran a ferry to the location himself, and even invited the territorial commissioners to consider it as a candidate for county seat of Polk County. But the town did not last very long, as it was destroyed by the
Flood of 1851, the commissioners having earlier noted in their rejection of it for county seat that it was located on low ground.
Carlisle So Church, who also founded
Brooklyn, Iowa alongside T. K. Brooks and William Lamb (a town that he put forward as a contender for the state capital), set out on his third attempt at a town in Polk, which he named Carlisle and laid out in 1851 with David Moore. This was also located in Polk, south-west of the former Dudley, but the county borders were changed in 1852, which relocated it to the southern half of Allen Township, which was split in two in order to restore a so-called "stolen strip" in the north of Warren County. Church himself had been the first merchant in Dudley, but the first merchant in its replacement was Abraham Shoemaker, previously a businessman in Dudley. Other firsts were Robert Nicholson, first mayor; Albert Petrie, the first child born there; William Buxton who built the first flour mill there; Jackson Shoemaker and Ellen Compton, the first couple to be married there; and Elias Compton, the first person to die there (in 1851). It is named after
Carlisle, Pennsylvania and was incorporated in May 1870. The town experienced growth in 1871 when the railroad was built through it, with the town's primary business area, until that time located at the top of a hill, moving down to the valley where the railway line was located, leaving the hill as a primarily residential area, with homes and churches. Buxton's flour mill company was the Carlisle Flouring Mills, incorporated in 1854 with Buxton as chairman and John Leas as company secretary and treasurer. Other officers were Carlisle citizens A. B. Shoemaker, Daniel Moore, James Mount, Thomas Obriety, a Dr. Ward, Hugh Marshman, and Edwin Oaks. The actual mill, a 4 storey building housing two runs of
burrs, was completed in June 1856, at a cost of . Robert Nicholson bought it in 1863, and proceeded in 1874 to extend it lengthwise so that it could house five runs of burrs and two purifiers, driven by a engine. By this point it had cost . Carlisle's first schoolhouse was built in 1853 and the building itself lasted through at least 1879, although by that time it had become merely a private home. Daniel Moore built it at a cost of . The school itself closed some time in 1869 or 1870 when a 2 storey school house had been constructed to replace it, which was extended in 1879. "Uncle Jerry" Church lived in Carlisle until his death in November 1874. By 1879 the town had a population of around 500, four churches (Methodist, Baptist, Christian, and United Bretheren), two general stores, three groceries, three drug stores, four physicians, a blacksmith, a wagon maker, a mechanic, a grain dealer, a hotel, a pottery, a brick yard, a meat market, a tin, hardware, & cabinet shop, and a shoe shop. Its postmaster was Will R. Randleman, and its justices were J. F. Stivers (also a notary public) and J. E. McClintic. ==Geography==