The land on which Iowa City stands was still wilderness when it was chosen and surveyed in 1839 as the capital of the Territory of Iowa. Governor Lucas laid the cornerstone of the new capitol on July 4, 1840, and after the Legislative Assembly first met in a frame building in 1841, it moved the next year into the new stone capitol. Iowa City served as capital for sixteen years, hosting five sessions of the Legislative Assembly, six sessions of the General Assembly, meetings of the Territorial and State Supreme Courts, and Constitutional Conventions in 1844, 1846, and 1857. The State University was established there in 1847, though its first classes did not open until 1855, and the State Historical Society of Iowa was established there by law in 1857. That same constitution moved the capital to Des Moines, leaving the University and Historical Society in Iowa City. In 1857, about 1,300 Mormon converts from Europe, many supported by the Perpetual Emigration Fund Company, arrived at the railroad end-of-track in Iowa City with their money exhausted. Brigham Young directed that they continue on foot with handcarts or wheelbarrows, and they camped at what is now Coralville while their handcarts were completed. The first company, numbering 226, left Coralville on June 7 and moved through Homestead, Marengo, Newton, Des Moines, Adel, and Dalmanutha before joining the Mormon Trail of 1846 at Lewis and crossing the Missouri River north of Council Bluffs. Two more companies followed closely and all three reached Salt Lake City safely before cold weather, while the fourth and fifth handcart companies endured severe hardship and death before reaching their destination in present-day Utah.