Annals of Iowa

W

Unless otherwise noted, biographies submitted by Dick Barton. 

STEPHEN WHICHER

by George Meason Whicher

Stephen Whicher, a lawyer of Muscatine, was one of the early settlers of Iowa, one of the ablest members of the territorial bar and a man of much influence at the formative period of the State. His life was unmarked by any extraordinary events or by any of those vicissitudes of fortune which would serve to point a sermon or adorn a history. As is not infrequently the case, the man was greater than his deeds; the impression which he made upon his contemporaries was much deeper than can be accounted for by any of his recorded acts or words. With that shrewd humor and nice sense of the fitness of things, which were among his marked qualities, he would himself be the first to depredate an attempt to make him the subject of a formal biography. Yet his life was so characteristically American, and shows so clearly some of the forces which guided the development of the West in the first half of this century, that some account of it may not be devoid of interest, especially to those who care for the annals of early Iowa.

I.

The majority of Whichers and Whittiers now living in America are the descendants of one Thomas Whittier, a Quaker lad, who came from Southampton, England, in 1638, as the "servant," or apprentice, of John Rolfe. He settled eventually at Haverhill, Mass., where he built the homestead afterward noted as the birth-place of his famous descendant, John Greenleaf Whittier. Nine children survived him, and they in turn left large families known as Whittiers, Whitchers, Whityears - not to mention other phonetic vagaries framed by rural New England lips. Cheap land was, of course, the great boon which the wilderness bestowed upon the early settlers, and the Whittiers were not slower than their neighbors to push forward, in search of farms, to the frontier along the north shore, and back into the valleys of southern New Hampshire. Plain country folks for the most part, their names rarely appear in the short and simple annals of the sparsely settled towns; their lives seemingly were as simple, quiet, and industrious as befitted their Quaker ancestor. The necessities of pioneer life, however, must have led them gradually to abandon some of his peculiar tenets. Thomas had refused even the office of constable, which his fellow-townsmen had offered to confer upon him. But the New Hampshire Revolutionary Rolls contain the names of more than one Whittier who, at his country's call, forsook (if he had ever known) the doctrine of non-resistance.

The conquest of Canada by England in the middle of the eighteenth century opened up a new field for restless New England enterprise. The upper valley of the Connecticut, long the pathway of marauding bands of French and Indians, was thrown open for settlement, and soon the rich intervales of the Green Mountains were filled with immigrants, land- hungry and eager to build their homes even in this debatable territory - debatable, for both New York on the west and New Hampshire on the east claimed the land by virtue of old grants. Many a stirring tale is told of the struggles of these two authorities and the hardy pioneers, who were quite ready to defy either or both, and who finally solved the difficulty by setting up a state of their own. About the year 1780 the little valley of Rochester, in the heart of the Green Mountains, was reached by this advancing tide of settlers. At that date a few enterprising woodsmen from the lower valley of the White River made their way thither to found a new town, and there, some twelve years later, appeared one Stephen Whitcher, said to have been born in Haverhill or Salem in 1772.

A pioneer community notoriously cares little about the previous history of its members. Strong hands and stout hearts are worth more than Norman blood in subduing the wilderness and fighting the Indians; it is reserved for a less strenuous period to be curious about the past. And a man's own interest in his ancestors usually awakes only when his age of reflection begins - when he realizes that, whether for good or for ill, his character and career have been more profoundly affected by his ancestry than youth ever imagines. Stephen Whicher, Jr., the subject of this sketch, visited Vermont and Massachusetts in 1854, and seems to have made some attempt to trace his father's ancestry. He visited the poet Whittier, and there was some mutual recognition of "cousin-ship." Friends of Stephen Whicher even fancied that there was a personal resemblance between the two men. "He was a witty and cultured man," wrote the poet of his visitor some time afterwards, * (* Recollections of Mrs. M. L. Whitcher.) but neither then nor since has the relationship (which must be remote in any case) been definitely traced.

Stephen Whitcher, the elder, whoever his father may have been, was well enough approved at Rochester to marry into one of the leading families there. The Emersons were then, and have been ever since, prominent in local affairs, and they come from a stock in which the best New England traditions of piety, vigor, and intelligence have been faithfully preserved. Daniel Emerson (1753-1821) was the great-great-grandson of the Rev. Joseph Emerson (1620-1679), from whom were descended Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others of the name widely known as ministers, scholars, and men of affairs. In 1782 "Daniel Emerson with his family, consisting of his wife and four children, moved into town. Some stakes were driven into the ground, and a shanty built, in which they lived. During the season, the family, through fear of the Indians, used frequently to leave the shanty at night, and taking such articles as they could for a covering, hide themselves in the woods at the foot of the hill in the rear of the house, and spend the night sleeping in the open air." * (* Williams' History of Rochester, Vt. ) Esther, a daughter of Daniel Emerson, and Stephen Whitcher, Sr., were married April 10, 1796, and settled on a small farm near the homestead of the bride's father. And there, probably is a log cabin on the site of the house shown in the accompanying illustration, Stephen, the second of their fifteen children, was born May 4, 1798.

II.

Boyhood on a New England mountain farm has never been described as a luxurious existence, and at the frontier one hundred years ago, it would be characterized by the boy himself as "considerable of a chore." The first great perils of the wilderness - hostile Indians and starvation - were no longer to be feared. But to clear the land of the dense timber and the encumbering stones, to wring a living from the soil itself, as one must in these isolated settlements, were no easy tasks. Hard work, and much of it, was the lot of the settler and his family, and only the sturdiest frames and most resolute of characters could survive, much less prosper, in such circumstances. Once cleared the soil yielded abundantly; but a market for surplus products could be reached only by a long and toilsome journey. Wheat was sometimes hauled in wagons across the mountains to the thriving town of Albany. maple sugar, then as now, was manufactured in considerable quantities for sale, and every farmer's boy, no doubt, had some pelts to show for his skill in hunting and trapping. A standard article for barter at the trader's store was potash, leached from the ashes of the woods that were burned when the fields were cleared. But for the most part little came to the farmer that he did not produce from his own land; his life was not only strenuous, but also very limited in its opportunities. Two elements in the New England character have helped save these remote and far from wealthy townships from the mental and moral stagnation which, in other lands, has too frequently overtaken communities existing under similar circumstances: one, the Puritan piety, and the other, the carefully cherished tradition as to the value of an education. Happily for Stephen Whicher both of these were among the strongest influences under which his boyhood was passed. His mother possessed a sturdy nature and deep religious convictions, the true daughter of a line of deacons and faithful church members. Years afterwards a grandchild wrote of her: "She was truly the mother in our home, and obeyed by us all, from father down. She was a staunch Presbyterian; I have the Bible and hymnbook which she kept under the pillow. She always prayed three times a day, going off by herself and putting her little black silk shoulder shawl over her head. Often I have, as a child, slipped in clinging to her dress to hear her. A grand, beautiful, sturdy Christian character." * (* Recollections of Mrs. H. E. Hovey.) As might be expected, this piety was deeply impressed upon the nature of her children. At least two of her sons became clergymen, one of them at length following the lead of Newman into the Catholic church; and all her children showed some traces of that religious fervor which is now too often slighted as old- fashioned Puritanism, but which so frequently kindled into effective life the best qualities of heart and brain alike. To the end of his life Stephen Whicher was a deeply religious man. The language of the Bible came naturally to his lips and pen; in his private correspondence and public speeches he adopts its phrases with all the unconsciousness of long familiarity. While living at Dayton, Ohio, he became an elder in the Presbyterian church. At Muscatine, for some reason unknown, he did not join his wife in becoming a "charter member" of the Congregational church; but he constantly attended its service, aided in the support of its pastor, + (+ The homestead of Dr. A. B. Robbins, for over forty years the pastor of this church, was built on ground donated by Mr. Whicher.) and was always deeply interested in its welfare. To the last he maintained the institution of family prayers. "No difference what there might be to attend to in business or anything else," wrote one of his sons, "THAT was never omitted within my memory."

In vital influence one must rank next to New England piety the Puritan reverence for learning. Where and when Stephen Whicher acquired his education is not known; a few weeks of training at the district school in the winter, and work on the farm for the rest of the year, made up the usual curriculum of most country lads; and it is not probable that in his youth he enjoyed anything more. The first school was provided for at Rochester in the year 1790. "At this early age of the history of the town, when it would seem that it required all their efforts to overcome the various obstacles in their path, incident to subduing the forest and rearing and providing a home for themselves and those dependent upon them, we find them voluntarily taxing themselves double the amount for schooling the children of the town, that was required to defray all other town expenses." * (* Williams' History of Rochester, Vt. ) By 1810 there were eight school districts. The site of one of the schoolhouses was on the banks of the White River, a few rods from the Whicher home, and here, beyond doubt, Stephen and his brothers and sisters, were instructed in the district-school fashion which is too familiar to need description. However limited such a schooling may have been, its opportunities were at least faithfully used. In the minor subjects of education - penmanship, spelling, grammar - Mr. Whicher's attainments were such as might shame many a college graduate of our more ambitious age. More than this, he had acquired a genuine respect for learning and a zeal in its pursuit, which stood him in good stead for the rest of his life. He was a constant reader, and no doubt made use of the free library opened at Rochester as early as 1801. One who remembers him in his later life describes him as "having always a book in his hand," and his writings show a fairly extensive acquaintance with history and literature. It is now known that he was ever able to attend college, as did one or two of his younger brothers. But, as will be seen, he sought opportunities for advanced study in his young manhood, and apparently they were not earned without some privation. "I should be much pleased," he wrote to a complaining school-boy, "that your food was better adapted to your accustomed indulgence and to your taste. But in this there is much in habit. The food of New England college boys is not so good as yours is. Most of them live on bean soup. I used to think myself fortunate when, instead of bean soup with coarse rye and corn bread, I could get milk and porridge. Healthful food is the main thing to be secured. All else is governed by habit."

In after years Mr. Whicher not infrequently expressed his regret that he had not been able to acquire a better education, and felt that he was seriously handicapped in his profession because of this lack of early advantages. Each of his own sons was in turn encouraged and aided (often at the cost of serious inconvenience) to acquire some part at least of that liberal education which their father coveted for them, the more eagerly, no doubt, because he had been deprived of it. Like many men who had missed a college training, he was somewhat inclined to over-estimate the profit, or at least the pleasure, to be derived from it. "I hope," he wrote to a discouraged college student, "that you will fine your studies easier after you have become a little more accustomed to them. All Greek scholars unite in testifying to their pleasure in the study of that language after a few preliminary difficulties are surmounted!"

It may be doubted whether the ordinary course of Hellenic studies would have produced a higher type of culture than he achieved by his naturally alert mind, and quick appreciation of all that is excellent in literature and life. On most men whom he met he produced the impression - as in the case of the poet Whittier - of a refined and cultivated man. Probably no one with whom he came in contact ever noticed that lack of a college training which he so keenly deplored.

III.

Piety and a zeal for sound learning may aid one to bear poverty cheerfully, but they do not make it easier to support large family on a New England farm; much less do they suppress the Yankee instinct to better one's condition. About 1812 Stephen Whicher, Sr., traded his Rochester farm for one in the township of Royalton, near the village of Bethel, and removed his family thither. His son "Steve" is still vaguely recollected by an elderly lady who has lived ever since on an adjoining farm; he worked for her father as the "hired man," and she had afterwards heard that he had "done well" in Iowa.

But this change of residence apparently did not secure what was desired. Then, as for long years afterwards, the prospect of cheap and fertile lands in the West lured the dissatisfied and the enterprising from their homes in the older communities. Land companies were organized to exploit the new country, and a steady stream of emigrants poured from the New England States along the great road through the valley of the Mohawk to the new states beyond. To bring the products of the prairies to the coast, the Erie Canal, one of the first great public works undertaken in America, was constructed, and prosperity seemed within the reach of all who had the courage to seek it. It could not have been an easy journey from the Connecticut to the shores of Lake Erie in those ante-railroad days; but about 1818 Stephen Whicher and his household made the toilsome march and settled on a farm near Westfield, Chautauqua county, New York.

It is possible that Stephen, the son, and his elder brother Jason had preceded the rest of the family; they were now entering upon young manhood and must make a place for themselves in the world. For a century and more the lines of trade and travel, which now run west along the southern shore of Lake Erie, had turned to the south through the valley of the French Creek and the Alleghany River, and for fifty years the Ohio had been the artery through which the life blood of the nation had streamed toward the distant West. On its banks had mingled the two great currents of immigration - one the hardy Scotch-Irish from beyond the mountain-passes of Virginia and Pennsylvania, the other a stream setting southward from the hills of New England and New York. To "take timber down the river" had long been the ready way for a young man to begin his career, and by this method, apparently, the elder Whicher boys soon found their way to the thriving river settlements of Kentucky and Indiana. Where Stephen first settled is not known; probably, like most pioneers, he tried more than one place before finding a fixed residence. For a while he studied medicine, and for a while (being a genuine Yankee) he taught school; but at length he decided on the law as his profession. His first instructor is said to have been Amos Lane, a prominent lawyer of Lawrenceberg, Indiana, and in 1820 h was admitted to the bar by the judge of the Circuit court at Wayne county. A short trial of his chosen profession seems to have convinced him that he stood in need of further training, and so in the autumn of 1822 he went to the Law School of Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky.

This institution - now merged in the Kentucky University - was the first institution for higher learning incorporated west of the Alleghany Mountains. It had had a quarter century of rather troubled existence, but at this time was at the zenith of its fame and usefulness. Doctor Horace Holley, a well known Unitarian clergyman of Boston, had recently become president, and under his influence it rapidly increased in numbers and reputation. Lexington, moreover, was the home of Henry clay, then one of the most conspicuous figures in national affairs and soon to be candidate for the presidency of the United States. The town had been founded nearly fifty years before, and still retained some part of that cosmopolitan air which the historian ascribes to it at its foundation, when one might have seen "Puritans from New England; cavaliers from Virginia; Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania; mild-eyed trappers and bargemen from the French hamlets of Cascaskia and Cohokia; wood- choppers; scouts; surveyors; swaggering adventurers; land-lawyers; colonial burgesses - all these mingled and jostled, plotted and bartered, in the shops, in the streets, under the trees." * (* James Lane Allen in The Choir Invisible. His hero, John Grey, is said to have been drawn from one McKinney, a school-teacher whom Robert Patterson induced to come to Kentucky; but his description might have been intended as a portrait of Stephen Whicher: "A young fellow of powerful build, lean, muscular - one who, having thus far won in the battle of life, has a fiercer longing for larger conflict, and whose entire character rests on the noiseless conviction that he is a man and a gentleman.") Cincinnati had long since begun to supplant it as a center of trade, but few other places in the growing West could pretend to as much political and social importance.

At Transylvania University Mr. Whicher attended President Holley's lectures on the "Philosophy of Mind," and followed the course of instruction at the Law School. In February, 1823, he was graduated in a class that numbered seventeen, among them several who afterwards attained distinction in state or national politics. Simeon H. Anderson and Aylette Buckner, who became members of Congress; Elijah Hise, who was member of Congress and United States Minister to Guatemala; Charles S. Morehead, who was elected governor of Kentucky, and Thomas B. Munroe, a leading jurist and judge. Another member of the class was the eldest son of the statesman, Theodore Wythe Clay, whose melancholy fate was yet undreamed of. Owing possibly to his intimacy with this class-mate, Mr. Whicher was privileged to continue his studies in Henry Clay's law office, though the senior partner himself was not his instructor. later in this same year he returned to Indiana, settling at the river town of Vevay; and in November he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the State.

The social life of Lexington was, no doubt, most attractive to the eager and ambitious young man with all his New England hunger for the best in civilization and culture. "I must live among the Southrons," he wrote many years afterwards, when weary of the crudeness and meanness of a frontier post where "babbling politicians from the northern and middle states" seemed to over-run the country. But another tie was soon to connect him with the little Kentucky city, the Athens of the West. At Vevay Mr. Whicher became engaged to Miss M. E. Venable, whose father, Dr. Samuel Venable, had been a resident of Lexington, and whose mother, Margaret Patterson, was the daughter of one of its founders. Colonel Robert Patterson was among those dauntless pioneers who had followed Boone and Logan over the Wilderness Road into Kentucky at the time of the Revolution, and, in defiance of hostile Indians and the no less hostile British, had built their homes in the Dark and Bloody Land - a name that must have seemed indeed appropriate to those whose toils and privations and wounds saved it for the infant nation. Robert Patterson * (* For interesting anecdotes regarding him, see Roosevelt's Winning of the West II, 204-5.) helped build the stockaded fort on the site named for the first battle of the Revolution, and there in 1786 was born his fourth child, afterwards Mrs. Venable. The Pattersons removed later to the vicinity of Dayton, Ohio; on their "Rubicon Farm," still owned by descendants, Stephen Whicher and Mary Venable were married July 20, 1826. They went to Vevay, where Mr. Whicher continued his law practice and gave instruction to private pupils. In 1828, with their infant son, they returned to Dayton and for a while made their home on a farm which was a part of the Patterson estate; but a short time afterwards they took up their residence in the town itself.

IV.

Of the next ten years of their life little record has been preserved. Men, like nations, are not least happy, however, in periods which afford no material for their biographers. More or less Mr. Whicher engaged in other business, as a young lawyer in a country town must needs do. An entry in his private account book shows that the variety rather than the extent of his business had begun to burden him: "I have now been doing business in this place about one year, and have attempted hitherto to keep my accounts in a ledger without any auxiliary book, but I fine many inconveniences resulting from the practice;" and succeeding entries and other memoranda show how varied were the interests which occupied his attention. In politics he had become a strong Whig; if contact with the Clays had not made him such, his acquaintance with the Harrisons at North Bend had completed the work. An oration of his, preserved from this period, recalls an almost forgotten phase of American politics. It was delivered at New Carlisle, Ohio, in 1831, at a Masonic gathering, and shows that the speaker was greatly interested in the prevailing agitation against that society. In no unimpassioned phrase he proclaims the purity of its principles and the loftiness of its aims, protesting vigorously against the charge that the Masons had procured the kidnapping of Morgan, an event then still fresh in men's memory. This Anti-Masonic excitement, as students of American history will remember, did not die out until after the presidential election of 1832, when William Wirt, the candidate of the party, received the electoral vote of Mr. Whicher's native state, Vermont. At the time of his oration the conflict was at its height. Mr. Whicher, it may be added here, retained his interest in Masonry until his death. On this subject his old friend, Hon. T. S. Parvin, writes: "When we organized Iowa Lodge No. 2 of Free- Masons at Bloomington, I took a very active part. It was organized in February, 1841, and Mr. Whicher then made himself known to me as a Mason; but for some personal reasons, which he gave me, he did not become a member. Two or three years later we organized a Chapter of R. A. M., which is a grade higher, and of this chapter he became a member. He attended the meetings of our chapter somewhat regularly; occasionally the meetings of the lodge; so that I know he retained his interest in Masonry even, as I believe, up to the period of his death."

In 1838 Mr. Whicher had arrived at the age of forty years. By constant study and unwearying diligence he had attained a fair degree of eminence in his profession; he was enjoying a sufficient income and his abilities were known and respected in a much wider circle than the community in which he lived. His own social qualities and his fortunate marriage had surrounded him with friends and kinsmen who were eager to advance his interests and to whom he was bound by many ties. Four children - three sons and one daughter - were now in his household, and it was the thought of their future, the hope of acquiring wealth for their sakes, that weighed most with him in deciding upon another change of residence. And again it was the still newer West, with its cheaper and more fertile lands, that seemed to promise a rapid prosperity. The territory of Iowa had just been separated from Wisconsin, though a treaty made with the Sac and Fox Indians had thrown the western bank of the Mississippi open to settlement as early as 1833. Even before this later date squatters had ventured to settle on lands across the stream, at the risk of having their cabins burned down and their families and belongings forcibly transported to the eastern shore by the United States soldiers. By 1838, however, settlements had been made at Burlington, Bloomington, Davenport, and points further north, and the surrounding land was rapidly partitioned among the immigrants even before it had been legally surveyed and offered for sale by the United States. Some of these river towns were evidently destined to become places of considerable importance commercially and politically. In the autumn of this year Mr. Whicher determined to investigate their prospects with a view to removal to the most promising. Taking a light wagon and a couple of horses he started overland on the long journey. His letters written while absent on this tour are full of graphic details, and (with omission of purely personal matters) some of them are presented here.

V.

"On the Prairie in Illinois, 23 Sep., 1838.

"You can have no idea of the appearance of a prairie by reading - they must be seen and felt before one can realize their appearance. I will begin where I left you at Covington, ( Ind. ), from which place I sent you my journal by private conveyance. I crossed the Wabash in a ferry-boat; it was about three times as wide as Main street, Dayton, and from one to two feet deep, as smooth as a mirror and as clear as crystal. Landing on the west shore I stopped to eat wild grapes; they were not much better than our wood-grapes, but were about twice as large. A ride of twenty miles brought me to Danville, Ill., where is a land office and some three or four hundred inhabitants. I dined and then took a north-western direction toward Ottawa; my general course was up the Vermillion, branch of the Wabash. I must go back a little; after crossing the Wabash I entered a prairie called Mound Prairie, because its sides throughout its whole extent are elevated about twenty feet above the surrounding level. The eye on a clear day will reach over an extent of eight or fifteen miles, when the vision will be bounded by a well defined line of elevated green foliage, known here as 'timber;' above and beyond that is the sky. A breeze, as delightful as can be imagined of Paradise, brings the odors of a thousand sweets. The rose will give but a faint idea of the richness of the perfume. Away in the distance can be seen as it were a dot, which proves on approach to be a rider on horseback. Three or four of these riders at different points will seem to animate the whole scene. A fox, a wolf, or a deer springs from the grass before one, and bounds away, starting a flock of wild geese here, a flock of cranes there, which drag their ponderous bodies high on elastic wings, secure from danger from below, and filling the sir with their harsh music; while ever and anon the prairie hen springs on whirring wing and sails away, skimming the tops of grass and flowers until lost in the distance. Nor are the minor and sweeter songsters of the valleys less numerous than in the fields of the more eastern sections. The field-lark, the ground bird, the yellowhammer, etc., etc., add their offering to the animated scene. The prairie hen is about the size of a half-grown domestic hen, with the general appearance of our quail. The first one I saw sprang from the path just below me into a small tussock or tuft of grass. I sprang from my horse, threw my whip-lash around the grass which partially hid it from my view, and I had it secured in my hand in a moment. I carried it some miles, but its struggles to escape induced me to ring its neck. I left it at a tavern, where it will no doubt be cooked by the time I return.

"Well, I departed from Danville through a wilderness of prairie called the Grand Prairie of Illinois. It is of almost illimitable extent and gives rise to the principal rivers of the state. Its outline is irregular, like the map of Greece, and it is half the length of the state - from forty-five to fifty miles wide. The traveler in crossing touches along from one point of timber to another where a cabin or two is erected and a small patch cultivated. Such heavy growth of corn I never saw anywhere. The ears are of most perfect fullness; husky-white, while the leaf and stock are perfectly green. The tobacco stands in the fields untouched by frost. The cattle and hogs are fat and healthy. Every cabin is a house of entertainment. In passing from one of these points to another I got belated. I took the open prairie and rode until late at night. The horse refused to follow the trail and it was so dark I could not see it. The horse wandered and I lost my course, and could not see the face of my compass. I searched for fire-flies for light, but was unfortunate in this. It rained hard, like an equinoctial storm as it was. I turned my horse loose and lay down to sleep. Towards morning it turned very cold. Then, farewell sleep. There was not a dry thread on me, and having eaten nothing that might be called food for more than forty-eight hours, I was anything but comfortable. It was not until broad daylight that I could fine my course.

"The whole country between here and Danville, eighty miles, is sickly, and is being deserted. The people are panic-stricken. Pontiac, the county seat of Livingston county, is wholly deserted. I shall leave here tomorrow for the mouth of the Vermillion, where is the starved rock, La Salle, Ottawa, the great canal, the great railroad, and the great prospect for commercial wealth."

" Ottawa, 26 Sep.

"The land sales in this country come on in the middle of November. Money is very scarce. One hundred per cent per annum can be got for any amount from $100 up to hundreds of thousands. I shall go hence to Prairie du Chien to try to sell my horses. My health is good."

"Prairie du Chien, 7 Oct., 1838.

"I have already told you that this is a pretty, a beautiful, a charming and a delightful country. What should I say more? How much more could I say? I will only add that these impressions of its beauty continue. I am now at the uppermost point on the Mississippi that is inhabited by civilized citizens. All above this are savages, and a floating population of whites scarcely distinguishable from them. Five thousand visitors are here from different parts of the Union. Such is the demand for articles of Indian manufacture that everything that could be carried is gone. I cannot get anything lighter than a canoe. I have traveled a thousand miles, (sic). Susan and Lady Jackson (his horses) are pretty much morn down. I am offered two hundred dollars for them and shall probably take it, if I cannot get more, and buy a Comanchee pony of Gov. Dodge. By-the-way, I called on Gen. Jones and Gov. Dodge, and was treated with polite attention. I shall go directly from here to the mouth of the Rock river, thence to Burlington by way of Bloomington, and then straight home. Shall leave here for down the river to-morrow morning in the steam-boat Ariel."

" Bloomington, Iowa T., Oct. 18, 1838.

"I got on board the steam-boat Ariel at Prairie du Chien, went up the Mississippi half a day to Painted Rock, returned and came down about two hundred miles to the upper rapids, where the boat stuck fast of the rocks, where she now lies. I have about fifteen bushels of Galena potatoes aboard which I intended for our own use. The boat will lie there until the water rises. After waiting several days for the boat I bought a canoe and arrived here last night (forty miles) about 9 o'clock, in the midst of the severest snow storm that ever happened here at this season of the year. To-day it rains hard; the waters will soon rise. This is a splendid country. Great changes in regard to the pecuniary concerns of the people and the prospects of this Territory have taken place within the last week. Any amount of funds two weeks ago (I mean hundreds of thousands) might have been disposed of at one hundred per cent per annum. Now a company is here from Pennsylvania with about two millions, and is making contracts of loan at twenty-five per cent. You cannot easily imagine the change in the appearance of the occupants of the lands, from despondency to cheerfulness. Nearly a million and a half of acres of land will be sold in this Territory at the ensuing land sales.

"The town plot ( Bloomington ) was divided into 16 shares and sold for a sum equal to about three dollars a lot. I have no doubt but they will average $300 in less than five years. It will undoubtedly be a town of great importance in trade, and will probably be the seat of government. I have seen many people here whom I have known in other countries. Many substantial farmers are settled here, and I have seen some families of high polish from the city of New York and some others from other cities. I have heard much of the honey and wild game of this country, but have seen very little. To-day I had a wild turkey for dinner; honey was on the table; ducks this morning for breakfast. Some venison is promised for tea. A very fine doe is just now brought in ( Four o'clock p. m.) is very fat. 'Tis said there are plenty of elk and some buffalo about fifty miles west of this. Three baboons were discovered about four hundred miles north-west of here the past summer. Affidavits of the fact are made by some army officers whose veracity is not doubted. It was while cutting a military road from Ft. Snelling to Ft. Calhoun."

" Burlington, Iowa T., Oct. 20, 1838.

"The most favorable offer which I have had was made at Bloomington. It was that I should reside there, pay into a common fund an amount of about twelve hundred dollars, and receive an interest in the town lots equal to one-sixteenth of the whole. This would be about sixty in lots; a mill site (i.e. one-sixteenth), the best in the country; about ten acres of out-lots; and one-sixteenth of a stone quarry in town yielding stone similar in texture to the Portsmouth free-stone of which window- caps and sills are made in Dayton; the color, however, is nearly white, and it is of greater strength than the Portsmouth stone. Bloomington, aside from its prospect of being the seat of government for Iowa Territory, will be an important place for trade. There are now not a dozen houses in the place; there may be two dozen cabins; not a lawyer in the place, nor a preacher in the neighborhood. I asked a woman why they had no preaching. She said that chickens were scarce; that when the poultry yards became well supplied there would be no scarcity of preachers! The day is not far distant however, (perhaps five years), when Bloomington will equal Dayton in wealth and population. Its moral condition will depend much upon the influence of its first settlers. A good preacher, who could live here without levying contributions upon the people, would be the most powerful engine to make this town what it should be. I have seen Gov. Lucas. He is very popular here and will do nothing to destroy it."

"Steamboat Ariel Again, Off Burlington, Iowa T., Oct. 29, 1838.

"I have a couple of bloody stories to tell which will illustrate in some degree the state of society here. A Mrs. Atwood, with an infant child, arrived at the Governor's quarters a day or two ago on her way from the interior of the Territory to her friends in Vermont. She represented to the Governor some facts (accompanied with proof) as follows: Some months ago one of the Sac Indians was killed by a white man named Ross, who immediately escaped. The friends of the deceased Indian sought revenge and determined to take blood of equal value. Atwood had been at work for the United States Government on Indian land, and while returning to his home was killed. His body was found some days afterward with the head tomahawked, one arm cut off, and his body partially eaten by wolves. Atwood was a Methodist preacher and has left a widow with one child in very indigent circumstances. She sat at table this morning at breakfast in the Burlington house. Mrs. Lockwood, the hostess, passed around the table and collected forty-one dollars for the relief of the widow; the Ariel gives her a passage to Bloomington. The Governor was pleased to place her under my protection to that place. Governor Lucas will institute an investigation, and demand the Indian murderer of his tribe.

"After delivering Mrs. Atwood on board the Ariel, I returned to the house for my baggage; walking up the street, I locked arms with Mr. Van Antwerp (receiver of the land office here). We heard the report of fire- arms, and at the same moment a ball passed apparently between our heads. He ran like an affrighted deer about ten rods, when he stopped, turned, and called to me to follow him, but I stood my ground to witness the

battle. The first I saw was a man running toward me without a hat, with a broken head, and an empty pistol; his name was Rorer. He asked me for a loaded pistol; I hadn't the article about me. On inquiry it turned out that Rorer had made a speech to the people while candidate for Congress, to which Jacobs, the District Attorney, took exception and demanded at apology. Rorer refused to give one, whereupon Jacobs caned Rorer in the street. Rorer, as he reeled under the blows, fired a pistol, and as soon as he could recover his feet, ran up the street in the direction I was walking; when Jacobs fired his pistol whose ball whispered me so closely. Jacobs received Rorer's ball through the body. He will probably die to-morrow..... All of this occurred in the most public part of the city of Burlington. The death of Atwood occurred about twelve miles west of Bloomington.

"While waiting for your letter I am going to procure a topographical survey of the country between the Cedar River and the Mississippi River at Bloomington. I am of the opinion that the Cedar River may be brought across, shortening its distance to the Mississippi about forty miles, and creating a fall of more than a hundred feet by a cut of ten miles. I shall see. It is probable that twelve or fifteen thousand feet per minute may be brought across.

"30th Oct.

"Arrived at Bloomington; but little prospect of examination or survey - no instruments are to be hound here. This town looks much better since I returned from Burlington than before I went down. I am much pleased with my purchase; the prospect is flattering for good society. If my only object was to make money fast I should go farther north."

" Bloomington, 14 Nov., 1838.

"Messrs. Lowe and Douglass arrived here about a week ago. They were both in good health and spirits, and have both made purchases here. In the purchases I have made I cannot get lots enough together, on a street that pleases me, for a building spot, and have been a week trying to make such exchanges and arrangements as will give me half a block (say a quarter of any acre) in one place on a principal street.

"The Mississippi is filled with floating ice; neither steamboats or other boats can run with safety. The Iowa River is impassable for the same reason. I can not afford to risk much of my neck in making an attempt to leave here. The land sales commence (at Burlington) in less than a week, by which time I hope we can go down, and if the Ohio is navigable, two of us will go immediately home; the other one will stay until after the sales, which will be about the first week in December. Douglass has lent some of his money to the county at fifty per cent; he might have had a hundred by asking it. I could lend thousands of dollars at a hundred per cent if I had it at the land sales."

Money is often scarce on the frontier, but no doubt part of this abnormal scarcity was caused by the lingering effects of the great panic of 1837. This feverish speculation in land and town lots, the hardships of travel by boat or stage, and all the details of the crude, wild, reckless frontier life, make a characteristic picture, but one which those of a later generation will find it hard to associate with the peaceful shores of the Mississippi.

VI.

In the spring of 1839 Mr. Whicher embarked at Cincinnati with his family, a year's provisions, and a frame house ready for erection. On April 4th he arrived at the settlement of Bloomington, which since 1849 has been known by the name of Muscatine, apparently the Indian name of the remarkable prairie island which lies immediately below it. * (* See essay by I. B. Richman in John Brown Among the Quakers, pp. 63-75.) The settlement had been organized in the preceding February as a town of the second class, and had a population of seventy-one, chiefly men. But its greatness and prosperity were already assured - in the belief of its inhabitants. The American who has not at least once in his life "grown up with the country" - who has not fervently believed in the future growth of his own infant community and expected it to become the "seat of government," to the speedy enrichment of himself and his fellow- townsmen - who has not fed fat on hope and then eaten the bitter bread of slow disillusion - has missed one of the most unique and typical phases of our national history.

Mr. Whicher had invested in town lots (there is still a Whicher's Addition on the maps of Muscatine), and on one of the bold bluffs overlooking the river, at the end of what became the main street of the town, he proceeded to erect the house he had brought from Ohio. Everything was complete, and timber, door and window frames were so numbered that any carpenter could put them together without difficulty. "The farming-timbers were cut and hewn from the trees growing within the city limits. It was built with an old-fashioned hip-roof and the gable ends were finished with battlements. It was an old castle in every sense of the word. Mr. Whicher had his roof and the battlements removed in 1849, robbing it of its feudal appearance." * (* J. P. Walton's Reminiscences.)

Old settlers long remembered the unique house-warming which was here

celebrated. "In the spring of 1839 Stephen Whicher, Esq., made a large social party at his house at which were about twenty Indians * (* Probably on their way north to Rock Island for their annuities.) with their squaws - in calico breeches, round-abouts, and moccasins ornamented with beads and trinkets. The Indian men were dressed for the party also with faces painted and gay blankets, with war trophies on, jewels in their ears and noses, brass bands on their arms, long ornamented pipes, weasel and skunk-skin tobacco pouches, war-clubs with feathers attached to them, bears' claws and tusks, buck-skin breeches and waumises highly ornamented. All the elite of the town were present, ladies and gentlemen, young and middle-aged (we had no old folks then). George Lucas was there, Ralph P. Lowe, Esq., and his wife, Matthew Mathews and his daughter, H. Mathews and wife and two daughters, M. Couch and wife - a social and jolly company, indeed. The center of the large room was cleared and an Indian war-dance introduced. They lacked music, and Mrs. Whicher brought out some tin pans, and the fire-shovel and tongs with a few sticks made the music." * (* Suel Foster, quoted by J. P. Walton.) The wild howls of the warriors, joined to the rest of the noise, ere too much for the nerves of the white women present, and a scene of confusion ensued. When the Indians at length subsided, they insisted that the whites, and especially the "white squaws," should dance in their fashion, and this brilliant occasion, as the narrator calls it, closed to the familiar strains of a back-woods violin.

The Whicher homestead was later the scene of many less unconventional festivities. "In this picturesque home Mr. and Mrs. Whicher dispensed a hospitality known in that earlier period the whole length of the valley and in all the West for the wit and cheer of its board and fireside. The host was a gentleman of the old school and his genial hearth was witness to the most interesting society and assemblies of this new country." * (* George Van Horne in Muscatine paper, 1880.) Here at different times were entertained General A. C. Dodge of Burlington, General George W. Jones of Dubuque, Henry W. Starr of Burlington, Thomas H. Benton, Jr., General J. C. Breckenridge of Burlington and later of Kentucky, Professor David Dale Owen from Scotland, Judge Geo. G. Greene of Cedar Rapids, and General R. C. Schenck of Ohio, the last an intimate friend of the host. There was, of course, a wide circle of friends in the vicinity who were no less hospitably welcomed. Mr. Whicher was a man of some reserve of manner; he was grave and dignified in deportment and preferred that his associates should in general show themselves animated by the same high ideals of conduct which he imposed upon himself. These traits, joined to his power of sarcastic speech, sometimes produced the impression that he was a man who cared little for social intercourse and still less for forming friendships. But this was a mistake, as those knew who once became intimate with him. He was fond of company - of good company, at least - and on fit occasion could be merry with the merriest. His power of telling a story was very great, and when in the proper mood he could entertain a company "quite cleverly," as one of his hearers phrased it. A frontier settlement is given to hospitality, and no one in Bloomington was more eager to discharge its duties and enjoy its privileges than the owner of what happened to be the largest house in the town. With very little alteration this house is still standing (1900) and occupied as a residence; it is supposed that few, if any, homes in Iowa can rival it in antiquity, as antiquity must be counted in the West. Here for the next seventeen years - the last of his life - Mr. Whicher made his home, and at this house, with its ample garden and old- fashioned orchard, occupied and amused the scanty leisure which his engrossing professional work and his frequent journeys left him.

Socially, Muscatine amply fulfilled the hopes of the first settlers of Bloomington; but the promised prosperity was slow in coming. Iowa City became the capital of the new Territory and the seat of the territorial courts. Davenport of the north and Burlington on the south throve more rapidly on the commerce of the river; and when at last the railroads from the east turned the main trade channels at right angles to their old course, Muscatine failed to secure a place on the direct highway of traffic, and lagged behind still more conspicuously. It was many years before the value of land rose above the price paid by the first settlers, who had borrowed money at fifty and one hundred per cent to develop the wilderness.

VII.

In November, 1838, the first session of the Supreme Court of Iowa was held at Burlington with Chief Justice Charles Mason of Burlington presiding, and Joseph Williams of Bloomington, and Thomas S. Wilson of Dubuque associate judges. * (* The Early Bar of Iowa by Theodore S. Parvin, LL. D.) Twenty attorneys were admitted to practice at that term, and among them was Mr. Whicher, then on his way back to Ohio after his tour of inspection. From this time forward to the day of his death he was one of the most conspicuous members of the bar, and enjoyed a constantly growing practice in the United States District Courts, as well as in the Supreme and District Courts of the Territory (or State). It would be rash for a layman to attempt to determine the rank of a member of the bar; but it seems clear from the testimony of his fellow lawyers that Mr. Whicher's wide experience in his profession, joined to his native ability and learning, secured for him at the outset a position of no little eminence. Mr. Henry O'Conner, long a resident of Muscatine and afterwards Attorney General of Iowa, writes of him as follows: "There were beside him at that bar S. c. Hastings, J. Scott Richman, Wm. G. Woodward, Jacob Butler; and here also lived Joseph Williams, among the first and one of the best Supreme Judges that Iowa has ever had. Of this group Whicher was confessedly the finest and profoundest lawyer; indeed, except in a few notable cases, the equal of any and the master of most of the Iowa lawyers."

"Stephen Whicher, Lawyer," was the reading on his sign board, and his devotion to his profession and his care in the preparation of his cases were not infrequently commented upon by his associates. "He was one who practiced law all his life and engaged in no other profession." "Law was his bread and butter and to that profession he give the whole of his energies." "He conducted a law-suit, in those days of free and easy and perhaps loose practice, with more care than any lawyer I then knew." And it would be easy to adduce other testimony of the same kind. Mr. J. Scott Richman, one of the earliest settlers at Bloomington, writes still more in detail of Mr. Whicher's characteristics as a lawyer:

"He had few books and seldom consulted them. He was a fine elementary lawyer, being well grounded in the principles of the law, and made his application of it to new cases by a system of analogy, concluding what the law must be in a new case from what it was known to be in established cases. And he was generally right. His addresses before a jury could not be called eloquent, but they were always interesting, and it was often remarked that he made a better speech when he had a bad case than when he had a good one. He had great faith in himself, and was generally regarded as a sound and successful lawyer in any cause in which he became interested."

A lawyer's life, whatever it may be now, was not altogether a life of ease in pioneer days. Letters of the time abound in references to the hardships and the weariness of travel by stage or sleigh, and the absences from home to attend the sittings of various courts were frequent and long continued. In November, 1852, Mr. Whicher writes: "This is the first time I have been seen about the house much since the beginning of November, 1848;" and he proceeds to state with much humor the ills which resulted from his continual absences. The slow journeying by land and the monotonous rides up or down the river; the enforced stay at hotels in county seats or state capital; the free and easy life of small and new communities, all gave ample opportunities for men to take each other's measure, and to develop a cordial admiration, or the reverse, for various qualities of heart or mind. Among those whom Mr. Whicher met thus in the intimacies of pioneer life was S. C. Hastings, who afterwards became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Iowa and later Chief Justice of California. They "rode the circuit" together and became warm friends, though usually pitted against each other in the course of business. Many years afterwards Judge Hastings spoke in the highest terms of admiration of his old friend Stephen Whicher, saying in substance, that "he was a talented and eminent lawyer, the peer of nay in Iowa. He was remarkable as a special pleader and was an acknowledged leader at the bar; a man of rugged honesty and integrity; upright and steadfast in his devotion to duty. Being a man of strong determination and character, he had his emotional nature under complete control, though naturally nervous and sensitive. He had been a deep and thorough student and possessed mental faculties of a high order. His knowledge of law was wide in its scope, and his opinions were always quoted with confidence."

Busy as he was with his on profession Mr. Whicher was always ready to serve the community in any way within his power. In the first year of his residence in the Territory (1839) he found an opportunity of service in connection with the so-called Missouri War. An unfortunate dispute regarding jurisdiction over some lands near the mouth of the Des Moines River threatened to bring the authorities of the State of Missouri and the territorial government of Iowa into armed conflict. Early in October of that year Governor Lucas of Iowa had written to the secretary of state at Washington that it seemed impossible to avoid being drawn into a controversy. But shortly afterwards the affair assumed a still more threatening aspect. At the request of the governor, apparently, Mr. Whicher went to the scene of the difficulty, investigated the condition of affairs, and reported that troops had been mustered in by the State of Missouri and were on their way north to the disputed district. On the basis of this report a new communication was dispatched to Washington by Governor Lucas, asking for instructions at once. * (* Annals of Iowa, July, 1870, page 283.) Through the further efforts of Mr. Whicher and others whose advice was for peace, this threatened bloodshed was averted. It was agreed to leave the dispute to the arbitration of the national government, and, after some years of delay, the Supreme Court rendered a decision confirming the right of Iowa to the territory in question. A question which has long engaged the attention of the citizens of Iowa and for which no satisfactory solution has yet been found, is the question of regulating the sale of liquor. Many years after Mr. Whicher's death a grandson went as a student to the college town of Grinnell. He well remembers the warm welcome given him by the genial citizen for whom the town was named, Hon. J. B. Grinnell, "because your grandfather framed the first temperance statute for the State of Iowa." As Mr. Whicher never was a member of the legislature, his help was probably sought in this case because of his well known interest in the cause of temperance reform, a movement which seemed to him one of the most important and far-reaching which has been discussed in his lifetime. There is still preserved an address which he delivered at the anniversary of a temperance society in which he clearly shows how greatly he had been impressed by the recent revival of interest in this subject, a revival which, as he remarks, had "repealed the laws of social intercourse, obliterated the accustomed marks of hospitality, and changed and conquered the daily habits of mankind." A chance reference in one of his letters shows plainly how great the change has been since the days of his own youth. "Mr. Robbins," he wrote in January, 1853, "was installed as the stated pastor of the Congregational church here a few evenings ago. The night was beautiful, and the whole ceremony went off in good New England style, only no ball was had by the young people on the occasion, and the ministers had no phlip - a favorite New England winter drink made of beer, sugar, rum, and hot iron!" The cause of temperance had, indeed, made great progress, but much remained to be done, and to this, as to all other efforts to improve the moral and intellectual condition of the State, Mr. Whicher gave a generous and hearty support.

Mr. Whicher's success in his profession and the recognition of his worth by his fellow-citizens were quite sufficient to gratify a reasonable ambition. For political honor, which is so generally considered the fit reward of success at the bar, or at least its natural accompaniment, he did not greatly care. As far as known he never was a candidate for an elective office but once. He ran on the Whig ticket for senator for the district composed of the counties of Muscatine and Johnson. "I was a Democrat in all those years," wrote Mr. Parvin, "and therefore politically opposed to him. I remember having stumped Muscatine county against him. While a very able lawyer and a sound reasoner he had no trait of character in common with the mass of people. He was in no sense one of them; while not an aristocrat, he had yet high notions of the dignity of man and could not bring himself down to the level of the mass of voters. I was therefore able to take him at a disadvantage, and the Democratic candidate was successful."

In politics, as had been said, Mr. Whicher was a confirmed Whig, and between 1840 and 1850 the adherents of that party in Iowa had little taste of success in state elections, nor could they expect to be consoled for local weakness by federal patronage. "The whole patronage of a territorial government is in the hands of the President of the United States," Mr. Whicher wrote on first coming to Iowa. The Jacksonian doctrine of spoils had been too recently promulgated and too thoroughly applied to leave any doubt as to what might be expected as a reward for any degree of fitness for office not accompanied by political orthodoxy. But in the presidential elections of 1848 the Whigs were successful, and in 1850 on the death of Zachary Taylor the presidency passed to Millard Fillmore, who was not only a Whig, but a Whig from the North. About a month after his inauguration Mr. Whicher was appointed United States District Attorney for the State of Iowa, and held the position until the end of that administration. He discharged the duties of this important office in a manner and with a success which won unqualified approval from the best critics, the members of his own profession. It is hoped that some more detailed account of his official work may yet be compiled, either from the court records or from the memory of the few of his contemporaries now living. It is sufficient to say here that they were busy and, on the whole, happy years, although he had already begun to feel that the strain of his professional life was too great for his strength. "My health," he wrote, "is giving way too rapidly for me longer to remain indifferent to the duty of its protection, and I shall not permit the government wantonly to make drafts upon it." During his term of office he was asked to deliver a course of lectures before the students of a law school in Dubuque. His interest in his profession led him to accept the invitation, despite the added burden of preparation, and in January, 1853, he read six lectures on the History of the Common Law, a subject which his great interest in historical questions had rendered thoroughly congenial to him. "The class paid me the compliment of requesting my portrait. I sat to an artist who assisted Healy in his pictures of eighteen distinguished American statesmen for the King of France. Considering this was at Dubuque where perhaps more than half of the people (!) never had a thought of going to look at Whicher after death, I esteem the compliment higher than if tendered from any other quarter."

The few remaining years of Mr. Whicher's life fell in the stormy political period of the anti-slavery discussion, marked by the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. It was evident that there must be a re-arrangement of political forces, and though it grieved an ardent Whig to see his party disrupted, Mr. Whicher was ready for the new duties which the new occasion brought. Early in 1856 he was at Iowa City on legal business, and there signed the call for the meeting at which the Republican party of the State of Iowa was formed. The paper had been brought to him for his signature while he lay on a sick-bed, and before the meeting was held he had passed away. His constitution, long undermined by hard work, had suddenly and unexpectedly succumbed to an attack of cholera. His death occurred February 13, 1856. His remains were conveyed for interment to the city with whose foundation and early history he had been so closely identified. The members of the Muscatine bar assembled at the tidings of his death and unanimously expressed their sorrow at the "great loss to the community in which he had lived and acted since its organization; by the death of Stephen Whicher the legal profession has lost one of its oldest, most learned, and most gifted members, whose professional acts from the time of the first establishment of judicial procedure in Iowa to that of his death, had resulted in honor to himself and benefit to the profession and to the public." To be born in poverty, to acquire an education by self-denial, to rise in one's chosen profession by hard labor, to win the love and respect of one's fellow-citizens, to have some part in serving the State, to leave an honorable name to one's children: these are not the elements of which one may construct a romance. But such, happily, has been the outline of a typical American career. It is such lives which "constitute the State," and form the broad and stable basis on which our commonwealth has been built.

JEROME M. WHITE died at Latona, state of Washington, Feb. 7, 1903. He served as captain of Co. E, in the Northern Border Brigade,, having enlisted at Sioux City, Sept. 27, 1862. After the civil war he removed to Atchison, Kas., where he engaged in business for some years, finally migrating to Latona, where he served as postmaster several years. He was especially well known in Masonic circles, where he won the high esteem of his associates. His portrait was published in The Annals (Vol. V, No. 7, p. 522), as one of the illustrations of Capt. W. H. Ingham's well remembered history of that organization.

JIM WHITE

"Unwritten History of Bloomington (Now Muscatine ) in Early Days"

Read by J. P. Walton Before the Muscatine Academy of Science, March 6, 1882.

... A fourth hotel was started in the spring of 1841 by T. S. Battelle. It was called the American House. This was the leading hotel in the place for a long time... Here the first attempt was made to return a fugitive slave to slavery.

We are indebted to Mrs. S. E. Hughes and Mr. Alex Clark for most of the following particulars. A young colored boy, Jim White, belonged to Dr. Merry, who then lived on a farm about thirteen miles up the river. When Dr. Merry moved from St. Louis to Iowa he left this boy with his daughter, Mrs. Hughes, at St. Louis. Jim was hired on a steamboat on the lower Mississippi and was to have his freedom in two years. But he got into a fracas with the steward of the boat and got his head badly hurt, so he was sent North to Dr. Merry for treatment. He soon became so impudent that the doctor ordered him off the farm. Jim concluded he did not like country life and simply followed out the doctor's order. He left "Massa Merry" and came to town and commenced working at the hotel for Mr. James Borland, the proprietor at this time. The Merry family concluded that if Jim did not want to stay with the doctor he had better go to St. Louis, where he could be made available. Accordingly an officer from St. Louis was sent after Jim. He found him at the hotel and attempted to arrest him without judge or jury. Perhaps he would have succeeded if the proprietor, Mr. Borland, had not interfered. He disarmed the detective of his pistols by main force. In the mean time the boy took shelter with Mr. Clark, who had the St. Louis man arrested for kidnapping. One of our old citizens who is still residing here, Mr. Fred Phelps, went his security. The Merry family had the boy arrested according to law by one of our officers. He was arraigned before D. C. Cloud, then a justice of the peace, with Stephen Whicher and R. P. Lowe for the prosecution and Jacob Butler, W. G. Woodward and J. S. Richman for the defense. The trial was held and the boy released on the ground that Dr. Merry had brought, or permitted the boy to come within the bounds of a free State, and which act freed the boy from all liability to be returned. This was before the noted Dred Scott decision. The boy was not safe, as the leading southern sympathizers were determined to take him without law. While the excitement was still high, an old fellow named Michael Greene went to Uncle Ben Mathews and Aunt Nellie, his mother, and said he was going to Chicago with a team and that he would take the boy with him. This was reported to Mr. Clark, who now had the boy snugly stowed away in his garret. It was arranged that Greene was to cross the river before night and go out to the third bridge and wait for the boy, who was to cross in a skiff as soon as it was dark. Mr. Clark, although not so old as he is now, was too smart to be gulled by such an old villain as Greene, he having known something of his previous record. Clark started as it was dark in company with the boy and two other persons to cross the river in a skiff. When out on the river so far as not to be noticed from the shore, they quietly let the skiff float down the river. They soon heard three different boats crossing above them. They quietly went home and went to bed. The parties in the other three boats spent the night in the bottom on the other side of the river looking through the woods after Jim, whom Mr. Clark had stowed away for the night. In the morning Greene returned without going to Chicago. After waiting for two or three days the St. Louis man concluded he could not get Jim by stealth, so he went to Dubuque to obtain a warrant from a United States Judge for his arrest. It was generally understood that the U. s. Courts were intensely pro-slavery at this time and that Jim would stand a poor chance there. This pleased the pro-slavery side immensely, so much so they could not keep it secret. When the man got back from Dubuque, which occupied three or four days, Jim was arrested a second time. A writ of habeas corpus was obtained from Hon. S. C. Hastings, then acting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of this State, who released him. Jim stayed around Bloomington, and joined the colored Methodist Church.

Lieut. CHARLES WICKWARE, who recently died at Webster City , was a heroic soldier of the Army of the Potomac . He entered as a private in the 6th Vermont Infantry, near the beginning of the war. He was shot through the body at the battle of Savage Station, and lay all night on the battle field, falling into the hands of the enemy. He was taken to Libby prison, but soon after exchanged, and under skillful treatment at the hospital in Philadelphia , finally recovered so far as to be able to rejoin his regiment in the field. In the terrible battles in the Wilderness he lost an arm. He was promoted to Lieutenant in a colored regiment and served gallantly to the close of the war. He settled at Webster City in 1868, and held many important offices in the city, county and district, serving with the utmost fidelity. He was an active and honored member of the Grand Army of the Republic from the time of its organization to the day of his death.

Judge WILLIAM G. WOODWARD

by Judge W. F. Brannan

Judge Woodward was one of the earliest pioneer lawyers who came to Muscatine for the purpose of making it a permanent home for himself and family. He came in 1839. The pursuit of health was the inducing cause that impelled him to abandon his home, friends and business in Boston, and the hope that his strength and vigor could be regained in a new territory of the far northwest, of which but little was known in the New England states at that time, and which had been opened for white settlement only five years before, and then only in a narrow strip west of the Mississippi, the rest of the territory being Indian reservations.

He was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1808, and graduated with high honors at Dartmouth college. He then applied himself closely to the study of the law, and after a rigid examination was admitted to the bar.

He had a full cousin, Benjamin R. Curtis, who was a little more than a year younger than himself and who while yet a youth, gave promise of intellectual gifts of a remarkably high order. He too studied law, and on his admission to the bar, he and Woodward who were strongly attached to each other, entered into a partnership, and concluded to open an office in Boston, which they did. They were young, had at first few acquaintances in Boston, and had to quietly bear the probation incident to beginners in practice, in a community where they were practically unknown. Opportunity came to them sooner than they expected when they could be heard in a trial at court. The client was poor, but the questions at issue were of importance, and the opposing counsel had the advantage of long experience. The case was tried to the court without a jury. Curtis made the opening argument, and the judge who presided listened with great interest, as did some lawyers who were present, at a speech coming from one who looked like a beardless youth. It had the eloquent language of the accomplished scholar, and every proposition presented was fortified with appropriate authorities, with the skill and force of the studied logician. He opponent who had anticipated an easy victory over his youthful looking antagonist, was not chagrined at his defeat, when the judge announced his conclusion. He extended his hand to Curtis, saying, "Young man, you seem to be all brain," and the judge, when he came down from his seat, said to Curtis, "You have great ability for one of your age; don't become vain."

The wonderful capacity of young Curtis spread among the lawyers. He was not only treated with marked respect by them, but some of them had retainers sent to the new firm for assistance in the trial of important and difficult. The reputation of the law firm of Woodward & Curtis grew rapidly, with gratifying results to its members. Clients came to them from the wealthy merchants, in cases involving large amounts, and from other sources.

Mr. Woodward now, in 1838, took to himself a wife, Miss Arabella Brooks, to whom he had for some time been affianced. She was an accomplished young lady who was held in general esteem for the high and graceful womanly qualities that adorned her character, and made her a favorite with all who knew her.

Mr. Woodward had been enjoying excellent health until about a year after his marriage, when an insidious disease, not uncommon in that climate, began to manifest itself, as he feared. His father had fallen a victim to consumption at a comparatively early age, and such had been the fate of many near and dear relatives. He at once consulted an eminent physician, who after a careful examination, confirmed his fears. He told Woodward that the disease was yet in its incipient stage and that it could be arrested and its progress changed only by a change of climate, and that this climatic change should be made without delay. He had to turn his back upon the prosperity that shed its bright colors for the future, and the high rank in his profession which his firm was rapidly attaining. He felt that all these considerations must give way to a sense of duty which he owed to the wife he had recently married. She concurred with him that his health was an object of the highest concern. He wrote at once to Mr. Brownell, whose wife was a sister to Mrs. Woodward, and who for years had been, and was still a resident of Iowa. He sent a prompt answer that the climate of Iowa was redolent with health; that the strong heavy damps of the Atlantic coast, that bred fatal disease, had no existence in Iowa. He spoke in the highest terms of the fertility of the soil, with its gentle undulating surface, and of the picturesque scenery.

On the receipt of Mr. Brownell's letter, he and his wife at once started for Iowa, and on reaching Keokuk, where Mr. Brownell was then living, stopped with him, and by his advice rode up to Muscatine (then known as Bloomington) and concluded to make that his home. He bought a choice lot of the river front and built a house in which he lived the rest of his days.

He found the town with a small population and modest houses but of "great expectations." There were young lawyers, some of whom remained while others sought more productive pastures. The emoluments of the lawyers were such as to enforce rigid economy. But Mr. Woodward found what he most needed, a pure and health-giving atmosphere, and a conquest over the threatened disease. He jogged along quietly like the rest of the lawyers. He did not, however, remain unknown and unappreciated.

The first session of the legislature of the State paid a high and worthy compliment to Mr. Woodward. It passed an act creating a commission to consist of three to frame a complete code of laws for the new State. It was conceded that peculiar ability and fitness should be made the test in selecting the members of this commission. The democrats controlled both legislative branches. Charles Mason, of Burlington, who had been Chief Justice of the territory for years, William G. Woodward, and Stephen Hempstead, of Dubuque, an eminent lawyer, constituted the commission. Mason and Hempstead were democrats and Woodward was a whig. Hempstead was elected the second Governor of the State. The work required time and study, great care for its labors, and when completed was reported to, examined by, and met the approval of the legislature.

Mr. Woodward was chosen to prepare the marginal notes, arrange in proper divisions, index and superintend its publication. When published it was called the Code of 1851.

The legislature was named the General Assembly in the constitution under which Iowa was admitted as a State, and the power was conferred upon it of electing the judges of the supreme court. The democratic party, which had hitherto dominated the politics of the Territory and State, had lost its supremacy in 1854, and its opponents came into power. The terms of the three supreme judges, all democrats, were about to expire, and the legislature in the month of January, 1855, convened as one body, and on the vote for chief justice, George G. Wright received 53 votes and Mr. Woodward 51 votes, and Judge Wright having received the larger vote, became chief justice and Woodward associate supreme judge. The vote for the third judge was split among a number of candidates and it took a week or more to secure an election. judge Wright told me, at the funeral of Judge Grant at Davenport, that at his first election to the supreme bench, he was present, that he expected Judge Woodward would be elected chief justice, and he was greatly surprised at his own election to that position, and further, that he never knew how it happened.

Judge Woodward served six years on the supreme bench. He had his share of the opinions to write. Those he wrote were drawn in scholarly language, bore ample evidence of the care he bestowed incoming to just conclusions, and the clearness with which they were expressed.

In 1861 he was elected to the State senate from Muscatine county, but resigned in 1863 to accept the more lucrative position of clerk of the Circuit Court of the United States. He died on the 24th of February, 1871. Death had robbed him of his excellent wife on the 31st of March of the preceding year.

I never heard Judge Woodward deliver a speech in or out of court. I came to Iowa a few months after he had been placed on the bench. He had a case then pending in the district court in which he took great interest. His position as one of the judges of the supreme court precluded him from taking a part in the trial, and Judge Grant, of Davenport, was retained as counsel in the case. I was called into the case, not so much to aid in the case, but to keep watch over it. I was present at their conferences, but was simply a listener, although I noted all that was said. Judge Woodward's face always wore an expression that invited cordiality, and a polished but gentle manner that made no distinction between individuals. He had a quiet dignity that won respect without anything like assumption to mar it.

He had always been a great reader and his mind was stored with useful information. In social life, he had fine conversational powers and could readily interest an intelligent company on topics relating to science, history or physics, and even politics. Visitors at his home always met with a pleasant reception, and no efforts were spared for rational enjoyment.

Judge J. Scott Richman commenced his law practice in Muscatine the same year that Woodward did, in 1839, and they were much together. He tells me that Woodward had a high sense of the professional ethics that should govern a lawyer, and that he could not be persuaded to bring a suit unless he had good reason to believe that it would be successful, and that he would not seek to win a case by unfair means. He also says that Woodward was a smooth, easy talker, improving with time, and that his arguments showed earnest research for the law applicable to the case. If there was material conflict in the testimony, he sought to discover where the truth lay, by mild means and not by abuse. Judge Richman further states that Mr. Woodward from the beginning, by his courteous deportment, was treated with a degree of deference that was seldom accorded to any of his legal brethren.

The strong attachment that existed between Woodward and young Curtis, and the fact that they united as partners in the legal profession, and the wonderful talents that were developed in Curtis at an early age, have been referred to. It may not amiss to trace the career of Curtis

after the partnership ceased and more than a thousand miles lay between them. Woodward was conscious of the lofty professional heights that could be scaled by Curtis. It is more than likely that a correspondence was had between them. Woodward learned that Curtis, instead of moving forward by degrees, leaped forward by bounds, and before he was thirty stood in the foremost ranks of his profession, the equal of the ablest. He applied himself closely to his profession and an enormous amount of business came to him. He was a decided whig, but he mingled but little in politics. On the death of Judge Woodbury a vacancy was created in the Supreme Court of the United States, and the vacant seat was offered to him. It required a great deal of persuasion to induce him to accept the appointment, and President Fillmore in 1851, signed his commission. The office was not to his taste, and in 1857 he resigned and resumed practice. He was on the supreme bench when the celebrated Dred Scott case was before the Supreme Court. The dissenting opinion of Judge Curtis was widely read and warmly commended. In 1868 he was one of the counsel that defended President Johnson when his impeachment was sought on certain charges filed and presented against him by the House of Representatives. The speech of Judge Curtis had an effect that doubtless contributed to defeat the impeachment of President Johnson,, and Johnson was allowed to fill out the few months of his term.

A negro was in 1848 arrested in Muscatine as a fugitive slave, on a warrant issued by D. C. Cloud, who was justice of the peace. His owner lived in St. Louis, Missouri. He was not at the trial and the case was dismissed. J. Scott Richman and W. G. Woodward appeared for the negro. An appeal was taken, but nothing was done with it. The negro was discharged as a free man. The feeling in the community was naturally very strong for the negro. It was, I believe, the second and last case where the fugitive slave law was declared inoperative in Iowa.

Of Judge Woodward it may be truly said that his disposition was mild, incapable of intended offense, either in word or manner, and conciliatory to the last degree.

JOHN WRAGG

After a long period of intense suffering from wasting disease, Mr. John Wragg died at his residence in Waukee, Polk county, on the 4th of September, 1896. He was born in Berks county, Pennsylvania, in 1831, and had reached the age of sixty-five. He first settled in Clayton county in 1854, but in 1865 removed to his late residence, where he spent the remainder of his life. Mr. Wragg came to be widely known in Iowa as one of our most intelligent and enterprising nurserymen and horticulturists. At the meetings of the State Horticultural Society he was one of the most constant attendants and one of the most influential members. In his writings, as in his conversations, and more than all in the example which he set before the world, few Iowa men have ever accomplished so much in inspiring a love for fruits and flowers. He was one who saw

"tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything - "

a man of wide and varied intelligence, always enterprising and progressive, a ready writer, a true and abiding friend, a kind-hearted and genial Christian gentleman.

JUDGE GEORGE G. WRIGHT

[(s3 v4) 483-493:]

By Hon. B. F. Gue

(NB: Benjamin F. Gue was born in New Baltimore, Greene county, New York, December 25, 1828. His mother was of English and his father of French Huguenot descent. The family removed to Farmington, Ontario county, where he passed his childhood and youth. He was educated in the common schools and at Canandaigua Academy. He came west in 1852, settling on a farm in Liberty township, Scott county. He was a delegate in the first Republican State convention which was held at Iowa City in February, 1856. He served two terms in the Iowa House of Representatives (1858- '60), and four years (1862-'66) in the State Senate. Removing to Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1864, he engaged for some years in journalism, and was elected Lieutenant Governor. President Grant appointed him Pension Agent at Des Moines, and he was reappointed by President Hayes. He now (1900) resides in Des Moines.)

(NB: The following article has been extracted from a paper read by the writer at the reunion of the Pioneer Law Makers' Association of Iowa, held at Des Moines on the 10th day of February, 1898. a paragraph has been added to include a mention of Mrs. Wright who died on the 27th of June, 1897.)

George G. Wright is a name which for half a century had been familiar to the public in our state, and for forty years has been as widely known, and as intimately associated with Iowa progress and its current history, as any in her long roll of honored public officials. All the mature years of a long and busy life were passed in this, the land of his choice. His father, John Wright, died at Bloomington, Indiana, in 1825, when his son George G. was but five years of age. At sixteen he was admitted into the State University, and graduated in 1839. His oldest brother, Joseph A. Wright, was then a rising young lawyer, located at Rockville, where George entered his office, and began his law studies. His brother was elected to congress four years later, serving three terms, was governor of the state two terms, and afterwards minister to Prussia.

George was admitted to the bar in 1840, and in September of that year he started for the new territory of Iowa. It was a long trip down the Wabash and Ohio rivers, and up the Mississippi by steamboat, and across the wild prairie by stage coach, to the new frontier town of Keosauqua, which had been platted three years before. A few log houses had been erected, and it had just been made the county seat of Van Buren county. But one term of court had been held in the little log village, and it was a most unpromising place in which to make a living by law practice. But at twenty a young man is full of hope and enthusiasm, and this "Hoosier" youth could see in the not distant future visions of fame and fortune awaiting the studious, energetic law student, who was willing to work and wait. From the start young Wright won friends by his genial manners, his cordial ways, his hopeful disposition and studious habits. Two years after his arrival he was nominated by the whigs for prosecuting attorney, and elected.

Joseph A. Wright, the older brother, was a staunch democrat, but George G. was a whig, and also took an active interest in politics. In 1848 he was nominated by his party for State Senator, and elected for the term of four years. He soon won recognition as an able legislator, and was in 1850 made a member of the joint committee on the revision of the laws of the State which resulted in the code of 1851.

Judge Robert Sloan, of Keosauqua, an old friend and neighbor of Judge Wright, thus speaks of the lawyers he met in legal conflicts as a young man just entering upon the practice of his profession in 1841:

"At this first of the courts where his name appears as transacting legal business there were present: Hugh T. Reid, R. Humphreys, Alfred Rich, J. W. Woods, Oliver Wild, I. N. Lewis, S. W. Somers, David Rorer, James W. Grimes, H. W. Starr and J. C. Hall. Judge Wright had six cases at this term, and from this time the record shows that his business rapidly increased, and during the next few years James B. Howell, J. C. Knapp and Augustus C. Hall were added to the bar.

"My object in giving the names of those who practiced in the Van Buren district court is to show the men with whom he was associated and against whom he had to contend when he entered the practice. James W. Grimes, J. C. Hall, David Rorer, Henry W. Starr, N. H. Starr, J. W. Woods, and Hugh T. Reid, had quite an extensive practice there until Iowa was admitted to the Union, and the mention of the above names is only necessary for any one to observe that they were among the ablest lawyers Iowa ever produced. When we remember the age of the Judge, and the rapid growth of his practice, it is evident that he developed very early the qualities which afterwards so distinguished him as a jurist and advocate."

In the fall of 1850 he was nominated by the whigs of the first congressional district, which then embraced the south half of the State, for representative. Bernhart Henn was the democratic candidate, and as the district had a clear democratic majority he was elected.

In 1853, when Gen. George W. Jones was re-elected to the United States senate, George g. Wright received the votes of the whig members of the general assembly, though he was but 33 years of age. Young as he was, he had become the acknowledged leader of his party in the State. In 1855, when but 35 years of age, he was elected one of the supreme judges, and for fifteen years served the State in that position with marked ability. Among his associates on the bench during this period were Judges W. G. Woodward, N. W. Isbell, L. D. Stockton, Caleb Baldwin, Ralph P. Lowe, John F. Dillon and C. C. Cole, all of whom were jurists of distinguished ability.

It will be generally conceded that during the period from 1855 to 1870 the highest judicial tribunal of Iowa was called upon to settle the most important legal contentions that have ever been brought before our State supreme court.

The code of 1851 presented many legal problems then unsettled by the court of last resort; the new constitution of 1857 embraced many radical changes in our organic law; the creation of a board of education with legislative powers; the acts of the seventh general assembly, the first under the new constitution; the new code of civil and criminal procedure of 1860, the remodeling of our judiciary system; the numerous complicated questions arising out of the various land grants; the new banking system; the beginning of the era of great corporations for railroad building, and other purposes - all of these problems affecting the interests of the people and the State, came before the supreme court in various phases during this period of Judge Wright's long term of service. How ably and equitably the conflicting contentions were settled by this tribunal, is a matter of history that reflects the highest honor upon the eminent judges who were members of that court in this formative period of Iowa jurisprudence.

In 1870 one of the notable senatorial contests in the ranks of the republican party took place. William B. Allison, a young member of congress from the Dubuque district, who was serving his fourth term as representative, and had won a high reputation, was brought out as a candidate from northern Iowa for the United States senate. From the time the republican party had come into control of the State in 1856, the United States senators chosen by it had all been residents of the south half of the State. In the approaching election of a successor to James W. Grimes, a powerful combination was made by leading republicans of northern Iowa to secure the new senator in that section, and William B. Allison was chosen as their candidate. But the friends of Judge Wright, from all portions of the State, were urging his election as a suitable successor to Grimes. The contest became very warm throughout the entire State. Allison's supporters had a formidable advantage in location, and used it with great effect. A majority of his support came from the north half of the State. But as the contest progressed, the wide acquaintance and great personal popularity of Judge Wright was found to be making serious inroads upon northern Iowa, in spite of the eloquent appeals of Allison's supporters to stand firm for northern representation in the senate. But nothing could check the enthusiasm of the hosts of friends of Judge Wright, who flocked to the capital from all parts of the State, as the legislature convened, to work for the election of their old-time friend. The pressure became irresistible, and when the caucus convened Judge Wright was nominated on the first formal ballot. There was probably not another man in Iowa who could have won the nomination over William B. Allison, who has for a long time been the acknowledged leader of the United States senate. It was not the work of politicians, but the unbounded personal popularity, based upon his exalted public services, his commanding ability, and his stern integrity, that placed George G. Wright in the senate.

During the six years' term he won a high position in that body, serving on the committees on judiciary, finance, revision of the laws, claims, civil service, and retrenchment. He declined a re-election, preferring to return to the work of his chosen profession, for which he always had an abiding love.

This ended his official public services, which had been almost continuous for a period of thirty years. In the practice of his profession he had been first a member of the law firm of Knapp & Wright, in Keosauqua. Joseph C. Knapp was an eminent lawyer, who became United States district attorney, and afterwards a district judge. Henry Clay Caldwell, who later became a member of the firm, was a representative in the legislature of 1860; colonel of the Third Iowa cavalry in the war of the rebellion; was appointed by President Lincoln United States district judge, and has for a long time been an eminent judge of the United States circuit court of appeals. Before the close of his term in the senate, Judge Wright became a member of the law firm of Wright, Gatch & Wright, the latter his eldest son, Thomas S. Colonel C. H. Gatch was for two terms a prominent member of the state senate.

In 1881 the firm was composed of Judge Wright, T. S. Wright, A. B. Cummins, and Carroll Wright. In 1887 he finally retired from practice in his profession, having served two years as president of the American Bar association. In 1865 Judge Wright removed from his old home at Keosauqua and settled with his family in Des Moines. In the fall of that year, with Judge C. C. Cole, he established the first law school west of the Mississippi river. After the first year Prof. w. g. Hammond accepted a position with them, giving his entire time to instruction in the school. In 1868 the law school was removed to Iowa City, and by action of the regents became the law department of the State University, Judges Wright and Cole becoming law lecturers of the department.

Up to the last year of his life, Judge Wright took a deep interest in the University, and especially in the law department, which he had helped to establish. His lectures to the students were filled with wholesome advice, wise counsel, and sound enunciation of the fundamental principles of the science. His last lecture given before the law department was in June, 1896, and in it he refers with deep feeling, in eloquent and pathetic words, to the work of the pioneer lawmakers, who had in early times been his associates in laying the foundations of our State and its institutions. His closing sentences were as follows:

"Our State may challenge any other for the economy of its administration, the ability and wisdom shown in the conduct of public affairs. If we look to those framing our constitution, making and revising our laws, and administering justice in our courts, we shall see how large a responsibility has rested upon our pioneers. No class of men have been more devoted to their State; none more faithful to their obligations; none more proud of its history and position, civil and military, in the great federal family. I love to think of the old guard, the steady march of the old column. I look over our constitution and statutes and there see the impress of their minds. I look abroad at our schools, our colleges and public institutions, and find in them noble monuments of their liberality and public spirit. I inquire for the master spirits who passed through the early days and trials of frontier life, and find the old guard ever in the van doing their whole duty. Those gone, and many of them living, animated by hope or depressed by care, often weighed down by sickness, or old age, or business depression, have performed a noble part in building here a happy, prosperous and free State, with institutions unexcelled, and a name which challenges the admiration of men everywhere."

Soon after I was requested to prepare this paper, I wrote my old friend, Judge John F. Dillon, who was long associated with Judge Wright on the supreme bench, to send me his opinion of our departed president as a lawyer and a judge. The following is his reply:

" New York, February 4, 1898.

Hon. B. F. Gue, Des Moines, Iowa:

"My Dear Governor: - I have the pleasure to acknowledge receipt of your valued favor of January 30th. I comply with your special request to give you in a page my views concerning my old friend and former associate, the late Chief Justice George g. Wright.

"I esteem it one of the felicities of my professional career that I was associated for six years with Judge Wright on the supreme court bench of the State of Iowa. It is scarcely necessary for me to express my opinion of his learning as a lawyer, and his merits as a judge. No difference of opinion on this subject, so far as I know, ever existed among the bar and the people of Iowa. The verdict of the bar on this subject, is that, take him all in all, he had no equal among the State's chief justices or judges in her judicial history. Some of them may have had, in special and exceptional lines, superior gifts, or superior learning, but as I have just said, take him all in all, he easily stands conspicuous and foremost. To those who served on the bench with him, and to the bar who practiced during the period of his long connection with the court, the reasons for this are not difficult to find. I may refer to some of them briefly and without elaboration.

"First among these reasons may be mentioned his zeal and conscientiousness in the performance of his official duties. As chief justice he was always present; and, having control of the deliberations of the court, would never consent to adjourn any term until every case which had been argued or submitted was considered. The period of my association with him was when there was no rule requiring the records and arguments to be printed. They were mostly in writing. Judge Wright was a rapid and most excellent reader; and his invariable habit during our consultations, in all cases submitted, was, first to take up the argument of the appellant; read it; next the argument of the appellee; then any reply, referring to the record whenever necessary; then to insist on a full discussion and a vote. I believe I may safely affirm that no case was decided during these six years that I was on the bench without this 'formula' having been complied with. No case was assigned, previous to full consideration among the judges, for examination and an opinion by a single judge. I verily believe that the admitted excellence of the judgments of the supreme court of Iowa during the period of Judge Wright's incumbency of the office of chief justice, is due to the course of procedure above mentioned.

"Another characteristic of Judge Wright was his intimate knowledge and memory of the legislation and course of decisions in the State. He was a living digest of these decisions. He carried in his memory every important case that had ever been decided, and thus kept the lines of judicial decision consistent.

"As a presiding officer he was without an equal. He had remarkable executive ability. He presided with dignity; maintained the utmost decorum in his court, and yet no member of the bar, I believe, ever felt that he was exacting, oppressive, or that he in any way encroached upon their legitimate rights and privileges. He had almost in perfection what I may call the 'judicial temperament.' He showed absolute impartiality, had great patience of research, and above all, a level- headed judgment, and strong, sure-footed common sense. Combining these merits and qualities with ample learning in his profession, it is no marvel that the bar of Iowa hold him and his memory in such deserved honor. I am very truly yours,

John F. Dillon."

Such an estimate from one of the most eminent jurists and judges Iowa has ever produced, who has since his removal from our State won national fame in the profession, must forever fix the place Judge Wright will occupy in Iowa history.

It is as a judge of our highest court, that his fame will be most enduring.

In an address delivered at Iowa City, in February, 1896, Judge James H. Rothrock, late of the State supreme court, spoke as follows of Judge Wright:

"The practice and administration of law, was really his life work. His other public work was temporary. It requires the closest application, earnest study, and untiring efforts of the lifetime of most men, to become distinguished lawyers. But Judge Wright was an exception to that rule. He was a man of diversified acquirements. Some men succeed at the bar who cannot acquire distinction upon the bench. Others who fail as trial lawyers, may become acceptable, and even great jurists. Judge Wright, in all the varied pursuits of life, as lawyer, judge, statesman, or in business affairs, was eminently successful. He was a master workman in every calling or position to which he devoted his attention. The young man of today who is in course of preparation for the bar, has the aid of law schools and access to vast law libraries. Judge Wright had none of these advantages. I do not think it extravagant to say, that there are now in the State, private law libraries which contain more volumes, than were to be found in all the Territory of Iowa, when Judge Wright made his beginning in the profession in 1840. In those days, more reliance was placed on the reasoning faculties, the power to analyze, and apply the law by logical lines of thought, and the application of principles underlying the issues involved in the controversy, than to resort to current opinions of others contained in text books and reports. I have sometimes thought, that while it was more difficult then than now, to rise to distinction at the bar, yet when eminence was once attained, it was far greater than in this generation. The pioneers in the law, were those who laid the foundations of the structure. The present jurisprudence of the country rests upon that groundwork.

"George G. Wright did not grow old or antiquated in the law. He was fully abreast with the profession, when he was seventy years of age."

Three years after his admission to the bar, on the 19th of October, 1843, George G. Wright was united in marriage with Miss Hannah Mary Dibble, daughter of Hon. Thomas and Ruth Gates Dibble. Hannah M. was born in Saratoga county, New York, August 15, 1820, and lived there until she was seventeen years of age. Her father was a man of marked ability, and had been a member of the New York legislature. In 1837 he removed with his family to Van Buren county, then in the Territory of Wisconsin, settling on a farm near Keosauqua. He soon became a man of influence in that new country, and in 1846, when a convention was called to frame a constitution for the new State of Iowa, Mr. Dibble was chosen a member, and helped formulate the constitution under which it was admitted into the Union. Mrs. Wright inherited the intellectual endowments of her father, was n independent thinker, forming her own opinions of new problems presented, after intelligent investigation. She was conscientiously loyal to her own convictions of right and duty as she saw them, regardless of popular opinion. She was a noble and helpful companion for a husband who was destined to hold some of the most exalted official positions in the State and Nation; a companionship which remained unbroken for more than fifty-two years. Mrs. Wright was a woman of broad philanthropy, ever sympathetic and helpful. In war times, she was an active worker for the health and comfort of the soldiers. She was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Women, and President of the Board of Managers of the Women's Christian Home at Des Moines. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Wright made her home with her daughter, Lucia, (Mrs. E. H. Stone) in Sioux City, where she died on the 27th of June, 1897.

During his busy life, while professional and public duties were crowding upon him, Judge Wright took a deep interest in the industrial development of the State. In 1860, he was elected president of the State Agricultural Society, serving for four years, and always thereafter was one of the most influential and trusted advisers of its officers and managers. In 1879 he was elected a director in the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad company, a position which he held the remainder of his life.

After retiring from the practice of his profession, he was chosen president of the Polk County Savings bank, also president of the Security Loan & Trust Company, which position he held at the time of his death. For nearly six years he was the honored president of the Iowa Pioneer Lawmakers' Association, and I am confident that of all the honors that came to him during his long and busy life, this brought him the most unalloyed enjoyment. Here every member was an old acquaintance and friend. These reunions brought together his political associates, opponents and companions of youthful conflicts, defeats and triumphs. All the animosities of partisan combats have long been buried in the lapse of years. The surviving actors in the fierce and bitter political rivalry of pioneer times, here meet as long separated members of one family, and clasp hands in friendship as they look upon the whitening hair and wrinkled brows from which youthful vigor and enthusiasm have departed. Bur passing years never cast a shadow of gloom over the sunny face of our last president. His cheerful greeting, his irrepressible fund of anecdote and wit, and happy rejoinders, were contagious and always enlivened our sessions. He could call every member by name, and knew every one's record in the past, his mental calibre and his peculiarities. He was one of the founders of the association and never missed a session. When the shadows of life's evening were gathering around him, his thoughts wandered toward the companions of pioneer days.

The last letter that his hand inscribed was addressed to an officer of this association, relating to the approaching session, then but a few weeks away, in which he felt a deep interest. But before it assembled he had 'passed over the river.'

His home life was an ideal one. The sunshine that his presence carried into every group of which he was a part, was never obscured by passing shadows. The wife and mother, the children and grandchildren, were always cheered by his kindly greeting and the household was brightened by his coming. His friends and neighbors were sure of a cordial welcome. His pure, upright life was an inspiration to the young, and was the pride of his children. Three of his sons inherited the rare legal endowments of their father, and attained eminence in the profession before reaching middle life. Our great State has reared and developed many talented, useful and noble men and women. Their achievements have shed lustre upon its fair name. Among those who in early days wisely laid the foundation for the giant structure that has arisen like magic in a period of sixty years from a wild plain, the home of the Indian and buffalo, prominent and honored among its architects and builders will always stand the name of George G. Wright.

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[(s3 v10) 250-256:]

PROMINENT MEN OF EARLY IOWA
By Edward H. Stiles. -----

George G. Wright and Joseph C Knapp

I join these men because they were very near to each other and associated as law partners for many years. Judge Wright was one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Iowa during most of the time I was its reporter, and from this and other associations, I came to know him intimately. He died in 1896. For more than half a century his name had been a familiar one and intimately associated with the progress and current history of the State. The mature years of his long and busy life were devoted to its interests with a purpose as steadfast as it was heroic. He was not only one of the most widely known men of the commonwealth, but one of the most popular. He had been a favorite with the people throughout his entire career. The causes for this general popularity lay in his intrinsic character and make-up. In appearance and bearing, he was very attractive. He walked with a limp, owing to a defective limb, but notwithstanding, his figure was good, his face classical, his countenance always beaming with good will. He loved the pioneers, the old settlers, and they were always at ease with each other.

He delighted in the narration of early events; his memory was extraordinary and he was able to recognize and never failed to greet any man with whom he had had the least acquaintance. This faculty greatly facilitated the renewal and continuance of his early acquaintances. He frequently delivered addresses to and about men of the early period, and especially those related to Van Buren County. As instances, he delivered one before the Library Association of Keosauqua in 1856, and another before the Pioneer Law Maker's Association of Van Buren County in 1872, in the course of which he went into the minutest details respecting the early settlements and settlers in that county, giving the names of the different pioneers, the dates of their coming, just where they settled, their course of life, and in many cases the names and dates of birth of their children. These narrations, like all his others along that line, were interspersed with incidents and anecdotes which were interesting to know.

He had reflected deeply and comprehensively on the affairs of the world and was an excellent judge of human nature. He was so full of pleasantry and good nature that I do not believe anyone ever engaged in a conversation of any length with him without being told some apropos anecdote or incident that would provoke a smile and give a pleasant impression.

It will be readily appreciated that these combined qualities made him greatly beloved by the people, and they were always ready to rally to his support. There was no office within their gift that he could not have obtained for the asking. Indeed, he did receive at their hands the highest honors of the State. For fifteen years he was a judge, and a portion of the time Chief Justice of its Supreme Court; then its United States Senator. In respect to the latter position, he had a most formidable rival in the person of William B. Allison, who for so many years subsequently represented Iowa in the United States Senate with a distinction which rivaled that of any of his compeers in that body. The only objection I had to Judge Wright was the character of his handwriting, which was the most difficult chirography that I have ever beheld. In digesting his opinions, while preparing my head notes, I had often great difficulty in ascertaining what he had written. These opinions too were written in his best and most legible style and were not quite so bad as some of his more hastily prepared productions. He sent me many years ago for my use in this work, quite a lot of hastily written memoranda, which after repeated efforts to decipher, I gave up as impossible.

As a summary of his personal traits: In public affairs he was extremely cautious; he was not a bold and aggressive leader of men; his popularity was wholly due to other sources; his good humor and cheerfulness were perennial; his attractive person, his still more attractive, finely lineated face, carried a ray of sunshine that enlivened all surroundings.

His manner was urbane and graceful, and "on his unembarrassed forehead, nature had written 'Gentleman.'" He was in short one of the most lovable of men; he drew everybody to him. As for myself, my affectionate veneration was such that I dedicated to him my "Digest of Supreme Court Decisions," published in the early seventies; and on the occasion of his death made a plea for a statue to his memory in a communication addressed to and published in the Iowa State Register of January 22, 1896.

As a Judge, he has had few equals and no superiors in the history of the Supreme Court of the State. His numerous decisions constitute one of the principal bases of its jurisprudence and will serve to perpetuate his judicial fame throughout all its future period. When I became reporter, his associates on the bench were John F. Dillon, Ralph P. Lowe, and Chester C. Cole, and it was this rare judicial array that principally contributed in giving to the Supreme Court of Iowa the distinction throughout the entire country of being one of the very strongest in the land, and it goes without saying, none was more conspicuous than Judge Wright. He possessed those four qualities which Socrates declares to be the requisites of a judge: To hear courteously; to answer wisely; to consider soberly; and to decide impartially. His published opinions are models of unaffected wisdom and force. With no attempt at learned display, they grasp with all the force of reason the naked points of controversy and trenchantly carry them to lucid conclusions.

Nothing that I can say of him as a judge would furnish as reliable an estimate as that contained in the following letter of that great lawyer and judge, John F. Dillon, to the Pioneer Law Makers' Association, read at its reunion of 1898:

"I esteem it one of the felicities of my professional career that I was associated for six years with Judge Wright on the Supreme Court bench of the State of Iowa. It is scarcely necessary for me to express my opinion of his learning as a lawyer, and his merits as a judge. No difference of opinion on this subject, so far as I know, ever existed among the bar and the people of Iowa. The verdict of the bar on this subject is that, take him all in all, he had no equal among the state's chief justices of judges in her judicial history. Some of them may have had, in special and exceptional lines, superior gifts, or superior learning, but as I have just said, take him all in all, he easily stands conspicuous and foremost. To those who served on the bench with him, and to the bar who practiced during the period of his long connection with the court, the reasons for this are not difficult to find. I may refer to some of them briefly and without elaboration.

"First among these reasons may be mentioned his zeal and conscientiousness in the performance of his official duties. As chief justice he was always present; and, having control of the deliberations of the Court, would never consent to adjourn any term until every case which had been argued or submitted was considered. The period of my association with him was when there was no rule requiring the records and arguments to be printed. They were mostly in writing. Judge Wright was a rapid and most excellent reader; and his invariable habit during our consultations, in all cases submitted, was, first to take up the argument of the appellant; read it; next the argument of the appellee; then any reply, referring to the record whenever necessary; then to insist on a full discussion and a vote. I believe I may safely affirm that no case was decided during these six years that I was on the bench without this 'formula' having been complied with. No case was assigned, previous to full consideration among the judges, for examination and an opinion by a single judge. I verily believe that the admitted excellence of the judgments of the judgments of the Supreme Court of Iowa during the period of Judge Wright's incumbency of the office of Chief Justice, is due to the course of procedure above mentioned.

"Another characteristic of Judge Wright was his intimate knowledge and memory of the legislation and course of decisions in the State. He was a living digest of these decisions. He carried in his memory every important case that had ever been decided, and thus kept the lines of judicial decision consistent.

"As a presiding officer he was without any equal. He had remarkable executive ability. He presided with dignity; maintained the utmost decorum in his court, and yet no member of the bar, I believe, ever felt that he was exacting, oppressive, or that he in any way encroached upon their legitimate rights and privileges. He had almost in perfection what I may call the 'judicial temperament.' He showed absolute impartiality, had great patience of research, and above all, a level- headed judgment, and strong, sure-footed common sense. Combining these merits and qualities with ample learning in his profession, it is no marvel that the bar of Iowa hold him and his memory in such deserved honor."

His miscellaneous reading had not been wide; his acquaintance with English or classic literature slight. None of his compositions are adorned with decorative drapery. I do not think that in any of his writings can be found the employment of Latin or other foreign phrases, save in those terms and expressions which have been preserved in the law; but they are none the less forceful, and often traced in elevated lines.

His notions concerning the judicial office were of the highest order. Perfect independence of the judiciary was his ideal, and when a portion of the press joined in a denunciation of the judges, one of whom was Judge James G. Day, who united in the opinion of the Supreme Court declaring what was known as the prohibition amendment to the Constitution void, it made him indignant, though he was not then on the bench. Stirred with this feeling, he wrote me a letter, which clearly reveals his views in that direction. The letter and my response follow:

" Des Moines, May 2, 1883.

Dear Stiles: As you value the independence of the judiciary, the integrity of courts and the good name of the State, I hope you will stand as a wall of fire against this most iniquitous clamor that four judges should be outraged and disgraced because they had the 'courage of their convictions.' I do not care about the case, nor the decision, nor how it was decided, but I do care, when it is proposed to appeal from the Court to State Conventions and town meetings. I know your views must be in accord with mine on this subject, and I only write that it may be made the more certain that Wapello County be truly represented. I do not propose that Judge Day shall go down before this unjust whirlwind.

Your friend ever,
GEORGE G. WRIGHT."

" Ottumwa, May 3, 1883.

Dear Judge: Yours relating to Judge Day is received. I cordially endorse its sentiment. To allow the slaughter of Judge Day for performing a duty in accordance with his conscience as a judge and which to have shrunk from would have been moral cowardice, will never do. In my judgment the clamor that certain newspapers have made against, and the opprobrium they have sought to throw upon the judiciary of our State, has done more to corrupt the political morals of our people than anything that has occurred in my time. I propose to stand by Judge Day, and I believe that is the general sentiment here."

Judge Wright was born in Bloomington, Indiana, March 24, 1820, and graduated from the State University in 1839. He studied law with his brother, Joseph A. Wright, who was at one time governor of Indiana, and afterwards United States Minister to Germany. He was admitted to the bar in 1840 and during that year came to and commenced the practice of his profession in Keosauqua. In 1844, he formed a partnership with J. C. Knapp, under the firm name of Wright & Knapp, which continued till his removal to Des Moines in 1865. In 1847 he became prosecuting attorney for Van Buren County; in 1848 he was elected to the State Senate and served in that capacity two terms; in the fall of 1850, he was nominated by the Whigs of that district for Congress, but it had a clear Democratic majority and his opponent, Bernhart Henn, was elected.

In 1853, when General George W. Jones was re-elected to the United States Senate, Wright was nominated against him by the Whig caucus and received the vote of the Whig members of the General Assembly. He was then but thirty-three years of age. In 1855 he was elected as one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the State and served until 1859, but declined a renomination. In the following summer, 1860, however, he was appointed by Governor Kirkwood to fill the vacancy on that bench, occasioned by the death of Judge Stockton. At the end of that term, he was re-elected for a term of six years from the first of January, 1866. In January, 1870, he was elected to the United States Senate for a full term commencing March 4, 1871, in consequence of which he resigned his place on the bench. In the Senate he served on the important committees of judiciary, finance, claims, the revision of the laws and on civil service and retrenchment. In the performance of these duties, he won a high position in that distinguished body, but at the end of the term, absolutely declined a re-election. Among other duties, he was elected in 1860 president of the State Agricultural Society and served five years in that capacity.

While in Keosauqua, Henry C. Caldwell, afterwards the distinguished United States judge, was added to the firm of Knapp & Wright. While in Des Moines at the close of his term in the Senate, Judge Wright became a member of the firm of Wright, Gatch & Wright, composed of himself, Colonel C. H. Gatch, and his son Thomas S. Wright. In 1881, the firm was composed of Judge Wright, his sons Thomas S. and Carroll Wright, and A. B. Cummins, afterward governor and United States senator.

In the fall of 1865, after he had removed to Des Moines, he, with Judge C. C. Cole, established the first law school west of the Mississippi River. After the first year, Prof. W. G. Hammond, afterward Chancellor of the Law Department of the Washington University of St. Louis, accepted a position with them, giving his entire time to the school. In 1868 the law school was removed to Iowa City, and became the Law Department of the State University, Judges Wright and Cole becoming law lecturers of the department. He took great interest in this work. His last lecture before the department was in June, 1896, and in it he referred with pathetic eloquence to his co-workers of the past, who had been his associates in laying the foundations of the State. In 1879 he was elected a director in the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Company.

The State is not only indebted to him for wise decisions moulding its jurisprudence, but for introducing into its early laws beneficent measures that have been enduring. He prepared and introduced both the bills which passed into laws, abolishing imprisonment for debt, and the creation of homestead exemption.

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GEORGE GROVER WRIGHT was born in Bloomington, Indiana, March 24, 1820. He died in Des Moines, Iowa, January 11, 1896. He graduated from the Indiana State University in 1839, and read law with his brother, Governor Joseph A. Wright. He was admitted to the bar in 1840, and the same year commenced the practice in Keosauqua, Iowa. He was prosecuting attorney for Van Buren county, state senator two terms, chief justice in 1855 and on the supreme bench for fifteen years. He removed to Des Moines in 1865, became United States senator in 1870 and served six years.

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THE WRITINGS OF JUDGE GEORGE G. WRIGHT.

IV.

([Heretofore we have presented some unconnected sketches by the late Hon. George g. Wright. Herewith begins a series arranged by Judge Wright at the instance of Hon. Charles Aldrich, Curator and founder of the Historical Department of Iowa. - Editor.])

Hon. Charles Aldrich,

Dear Sir: You have more than once expressed a wish that I would as time allowed note down some of my recollections of the men and times in Iowa's early history. The fact you state, not to be denied, in explanation of the wish, is that those who were active in those scenes are fast passing away, and you are kind enough to suggest that some "jottings" by me might assist in the good work in which you are engaged for and under the direction of the State, and aid in some future history of Iowa. I comply with your request, promising you herein nothing more than such notes and memories (some, not all) as can be recalled and noted in the midst of many business cares.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

I settled in Keosauqua, Van Buren county, November 14, 1840. Graduated at Indiana State University, 1839 - read law with my brother, Gov. Joseph A. Wright, at Rockville in that State. Was born in Bloomington, Indiana, March 24, 1820, and admitted to the bar before I was of age. Was prosecuting attorney for Van Buren county in 1845.

[I was] elected to the State Senate in 1848 - my competitor being Hon. Thomas Dibble (my father-in-law), who was a Democrat, and nominated by his party without his wish the week before [I was.] I was nominated against my protest, but the same afternoon went with Mrs. Wright to his home twelve miles in the country. I told him the circumstances and submitted to his wish if I should run. Old pioneer as he was, he said, "Yes, yourself a Whig - I, a Democrat - neither want the place, but we owe it to our parties to make the race. It is not I against you but Democracy against Whiggism." So we made the race with the result stated, and our relations were not in the least disturbed.

[I was] candidate for congress in 1850 - defeated by Hon. Bernhart Henn by about 500 (Democratic majority in district over 1,200). Was elected Chief Justice of Iowa, January, 1855 - served until January, 1860. Declined re-election - was appointed to succeed Hon. L. D. Stockton, deceased, in June, 1860 - served by re-election until September, 1870. Was elected to U. S. Senate in January, 1870, took my seat March 4, 1871 - served for six years, declining a re-election.

[I] returned to the practice of the law - continued therein until 1882, when I took the presidency of the Polk County Savings Bank and Security Loan & Trust Company. [I am] still in that work. Was president of the State Agricultural Society for five years, commencing in 1860 - also president American Bar Association, 1887-8 - organized the Iowa School of Law at Des Moines in connection with Judge C. C. Cole in 1865 (afterwards W. g. Hammond was connected with us) and continued it for three years, when, on request of the regents of the State University we united with that institution - saved the Law Department, and save the six years when in the Senate, have for each year, almost, been a lecturer or teacher therein.

Was married in 1843 (October 19th) to Mary H. Dibble, who, born in New York, settled in Van Buren county in 1839. Her father, Hon. Thomas Dibble, had been a member of the New York legislature and was a member of the second Constitutional Convention in Iowa, 1846.

(And of him, I should not be pardoned if I did not say a word more. He was a pioneer, and of the very highest, influential and useful type. Of good education - a constant reader, as his farm duties permitted - far more than the average farmer - one of the best thinkers I ever knew - clear, logical mind - never tied to old things because they were old, and yet not rejecting because they were old - he was a leader in thought and in investigation whether on political, religious or economic questions. He was not esteemed orthodox in his views, as the world goes, and yet no purer, [more] honest, thoroughly religious man in word or deed ever lived in the State. His word was gold, his advice always inspired by the best motives and his conduct such as friends and family could always refer to with admiration and pride. Was an old-time, old- fashioned Democrat, and yet was liberal in his judgment of others, always preferring to attribute good rather than bad motives to his antagonists and all people. Was always helpful to the poor and needy. His home was the resting place and favorite resort of the leading men of our State - to those of all parties and faiths alike. One of those strong, leading (not brilliant, big-talking and pertinacious) minds, found in the early communities which had so much to do in shaping its policies, building up its schools and best interests and who leave their impress years and years after they are gone. He lived to a good old age (87) respected by all, dying mourned by all.)

But to continue. To us have been born seven children, five sons and two daughters; six living, Thomas S., Craig L., Mary D. (Peavey), Carroll C., Lucia H. (Stone), and George G.; one deceased, the youngest, William R., born in 1865 and died in December, 1875. All married but George G.

This of my life, and perhaps too much.

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EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

Judge George G. Wright

Last June there was held at Keosauqua memorial services in remembrance of the late Judge Robert Sloan. Just previous to that occasion the Curator of this department received from Hon. William W. Baldwin, a distinguished former citizen of Keosauqua who was to take part in the services, an inquiry as to when Judge George G. Wright, who was perhaps Keosauqua's most prominent lawyer at the time Judge Sloan was beginning the study of law, was "first elected or appointed to the Supreme Court." In preparing to answer the question it was discovered that from the sources at hand there is not in any one place such a detailed biography of Judge Wright as would satisfy a student or investigator. Judge Wright was one of the most prominent and popular men in the history of the state. The inadequate collection of facts relating to his life form a poor commentary on the work done in the newspapers, journals, encyclopedias, biographies, and other writings of the state. We therefore assembled in brief space the salient features of this notable life from the following authorities:

E. H. Stiles's Recollections and Sketches.
Annals of Iowa, biographical sketch by B. F. Gue.
Official Register of Iowa.
Census of Iowa, 1895.
Journal of the House, Fifth General Assembly, 1855.
Keosauqua Republican of January 23, 1896, quoted from the Des Moines Capital.
History of Van Buren County.
Memorial exercises of Supreme Court held February 8, 1896.
House Journal, page 11, 1896, containing joint memorial resolution.
Executive Journal of Iowa in Public Archives Division of Historical Department of Iowa.
Journal of Senate and House, Thirteenth General Assembly, 1870.
Files of Ottumwa Courier, January, 1870.
Congressional directories of the Forty-second, Forty-third, and Forty-fourth congresses.

Care was taken to verify the facts so far as possible.

In connection with this study it was found that under the old constitution, from 1846 to 1857, the General Assembly elected the judges of the Supreme Court in the same way that it elected United States senators, a historical fact almost unknown to the people of today.

We append the sketch prepared:

GEORGE G. WRIGHT

George Grover Wright was born in Bloomington, Indiana, March 24, 1820, and died in Des Moines, Iowa, January 11, 1896. His parents were John Wright and Rachel (Seaman) Wright. He entered the Indiana state University at Bloomington in 1836 and was graduated in 1839. He then began the study of law with his brother, Hon. Joseph a. Wright, at Rockville, Indiana, was admitted to the bar in 1840 and in September of that year removed to Keosauqua, Iowa, coming by way of the Wabash, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers, and began the practice of law. In 1844 he formed a partnership with J. C. Knapp, the firm being Wright & Knapp. H. C. Caldwell studied law with the firm and for a time was associated with them as Wright, Knapp & Caldwell. In 1846 Wright was appointed by the court prosecuting attorney for Van Buren County and served two years. In 1848 he was elected senator and served in the Second and Third general assemblies. In 1850 he was a member of the joint committee on the revision of the laws of the state which resulted in the Code of 1851. In 1850 he was nominated by the Whigs of the First District for Congress, but was defeated by Bernhart Henn, the district being strongly Democratic. In 1853 when George W. Jones was re-elected to the United States Senate, Mr. Wright received the votes of the Whig members of the General Assembly for that position. On January 5, 1855, he was elected by the joint convention of the General Assembly as chief justice of the Supreme Court for the term of six years, receiving 53 votes to 45 for Edward Johnston of Lee County, and 1 for H. W. Starr. He served as chief justice until the reorganization of the court after the adoption of the new constitution. At that time, or in the election of 1859, he declined to be a candidate. (It is thought that Judge Wright modestly withdrew from being a candidate at that time in order that the retiring one-term governor, Ralph P. Lowe, could have a place on the ticket, and not bunch the three judges in one corner of the state.) The three who were elected at that election were Ralph P. Lowe of Lee County, Lacon D. Stockton of Des Moines County, and Caleb Baldwin of Pottawattamie County. Lowe drew the two-year term and became chief justice. Baldwin drew the four-year term and Stockton the six-year term. On June 9, 1860, Stockton died and ten days thereafter Governor Kirkwood wrote the following letter to Judge Wright:

Des Moines, Iowa, June 19, 1860.

Hon. Geo. G. Wright.

Dear Sir:

The death of Judge Stockton has made a vacancy on the bench of the Supreme Court which the exigency of the public service requires shall be promptly filled.

I have this day signed and deposited with the secretary of state a commission appointing you to fill that vacancy and I hereby notify you of that fact, with the earnest request that you will accept the appointment.

Your determination to decline an election last year was a subject of deep regret to the bar and people of our state, and I shall feel much gratified if I can distinguish my administration by inducing you to return to a position the duties of which you discharge with so much advantage to the state and honor to yourself.

Very respectfully,
Samuel J. Kirkwood

Judge Wright accepted the appointment, qualified on June 26, and was elected by the people November 6, 1860, for the remainder of the term. On October 10, 1865, he was re-elected for a term of six years commencing January 1, 1866.

In 1860 Judge Wright was elected president of the State Agricultural Society and served four years.

In 1865 he and C. C. Cole established the Iowa Law School at Des Moines. In 1868 it was removed to Iowa City and became the Law Department of the State University of Iowa. The Iowa Law School later was revived at Des Moines and became the Law Department of Drake University.

The Republican caucus of the members of the Thirteenth General Assembly on January 13, 1870, nominated him for United States senator, the informal ballot being George G. Wright 63, William B. Allison 39, Samuel Merrill 24, Samuel J. Kirkwood 1. The formal ballot was Wright 66, Allison 47, Merrill 13, Kirkwood 1. On January 18 the General Assembly elected Justice Wright United States senator by the following vote: George G. Wright 125 votes, Thomas W. Clagget 19 votes. On the following March 4 he thus became United States senator and served six years. There he served on the Judiciary, Finance, Revision of the Laws, Claims, Civil Service and Retrenchment, and Revolutionary Claims committees, rendering excellent service, but he declined being a candidate for re-election, preferring to return to the practice of his profession.

He joined his son, Thomas S. Wright, and C. H. Gatch in the firm of Wright, Gatch & Wright in the practice of law in Des Moines. In 1879 he was elected a director in the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Company, a position which he held the remainder of his life. In 1881 he joined the law firm composed of himself, Thomas S. Wright, A. B. Cummins, and Carroll Wright, under the style of Wright, Cummins & Wright. In 1887 he retired from the practice. He was then chosen president of Polk County Savings Bank, and later, president of the Security Loan & Trust Company, which position he held at the time of his death. For many years he was a lecturer in the Law Department of the State University, and for six years he was president of the Iowa Pioneer Lawmaker's Association.