Did you know the town of Bondurant is named after Alexander Conley Bondurant, who was the area's first settler in 1857?

He was born on September 1, 1829, in Sangamon, Illinois. He married Margaret Marilla Brooks on October 27, 1861, in Polk County, Iowa. They were the parents of at least 4 sons and 6 daughters. He died on September 18,1899, in Bondurant, Iowa at the age of 70, and was buried in the Bondurant cemetery.

Alexander joined the tide of emigration from Illinois to Iowa, and in 1857, came to Polk County and made a claim to three hundred and twenty acres in the southwest corner of Franklin Township. 

Soon after his arrival, he organized a church at a schoolhouse near where Altoona now is, and there worshipped until the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad was built to Altoona, when a church building was erected there, and his church abandoned the schoolhouse. He gave the church society forty acres of ground, the proceeds from which provided a good fund to meet expenses of the church.

In 1892, when the Chicago Great Western Railway was built, a station was located on Bondurant's land. In 1893, it was platted, and he offered a town lot to those who would take it and build, or open a business on it. The first one was occupied as a store in the lower story. The upper one was used for religious worship.

Mr. Bondurant was an active promoter of educational affairs, and while his church was provided with a temporary meeting place, he must have schools, and in 1885, the first was opened, with thirty-five scholars.

He donated the ground for a church building, and withdrew from the Altoona church and organized a new one at Bondurant, with Reverend J. B. Vawter as its first pastor. To aid the church, he offered the use of thirty acres of land, which, each Spring, was planted with corn, cultivated and gathered by members of the church. The first crop yielded twelve hundred bushels, and was a substantial aid in defraying church expenses. The membership was nineteen.

In addition to the proffer to those opening business houses, he offered free sites for manufacturing industries, which resulted in the rapid growth and prosperity of the town. Churches of other denominations than the Christian, stores, shops, factories, grain elevators, hotels, a bank, and newspaper followed, and the town is now one of the best on the line of the Chicago Great Western Road in the state.

Mr. Bondurant was public spirited and a liberal supporter of all good works. He gave five hundred dollars to Drake University when it needed the money, the amount to be derived from the rental of fifty acres of land, which he set apart for that purpose. He was a generous friend of the poor and helpless. He carried out in his daily life the resolve of his early manhood, that his possession was but a trust to be used in every worthy enterprise which would advance the best interests of the community in which he lived, and it can be truly said that Polk County is better for his having lived.