The Legislature of Iowa, which had previously named two of the counties of the State after Emmet and Davis, named two others after Mitchel and Smith O’Brien, subsequent to 1848. Mitchel County is in the northern part of Iowa, bordering on Minnesota. Its area is 480 square miles and in 1900 the population was 15,000.1
1 As of the 2020 census, Mitchell County’s population has shrank to 10,565.