The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume, Part 117

Author: American biographical publishing company, pub
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Chicago, New York, American biographical publishing company
Number of Pages: 954

USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 117

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The subject of this brief memoir received his academic education at Denmark, Lee county ; at- tended the Wesleyan University at Mount Pleasant, lowa, one year, and graduated at the University of the same name at Delaware, Ohio, in 1859, receiving the degree of A.M. He located in Centerville in 1859, and was principal of the graded school. A few years later he was county superintendent of schools one year.

Mr. Walden entered the Union army in May, 1861, !

and served throughout the war. At the close of the war Captain Walden purchased "The Citizen " newspaper, at Centerville, and built it up, making it a first-class paper, and selling out in November, 1874. On the 21st of June, 1877, he started " The Tribune." having in three or four months a voluntary subscrip- tion of fourteen hundred names. Meantime, while a journalist, Captain Walden has served the state in various positions of trust and honor. He was a member of the lower house of the general assembly in the session of 1866; was a member of the senate in the session of 1868; was the presiding officer of that body in 1870; and was a member of the forty- second congress from the old fourth district, serving on the committees on patents and Mississippi levees.

Captain Walden is a trustee of the Wesleyan Uni- versity at Mount Pleasant, and delivered the annual lecture before the students of that institution in June, 1877.

He was married in October, 1861, to Miss Fran- ces A. Holt, of Centerville.

WILLIAM S. LAMBERT, M. D., ALBIA.

W ILLIAM SPERRY LAMBERT, son of Isaac and Nancy Sperry Lambert, and the leading surgeon in Monroe county, lowa, dates his birth in Lawrence county, Ohio, on the 4th of January, 1836. His father is yet living, his residence being Davis county, Iowa, and his age eighty-seven. The Lam- berts and Sperrys are both Virginia families. The paternal great-grandfather of William was a soldier in 1775-82; his father in 1812-15.

Isaac Lambert moved from Ohio to Van Buren |

county, Iowa, in 1844, and there the son was en- gaged in farming until sixteen years of age, when he commenced attending school, continuing for three years, most of the time at a select school in Troy, Davis county, to which county his father removed in 1852.

Young Lambert read medicine at first with Dr. D. A. Hurst, of Bloomfield, Davis county, then with Dr. D. L. McGugin, of Keokuk. He graduated from the medical college at Keokuk in February, 1859;

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practiced for a time at Iconium, Appanoose county, and in February, 1862, moved to Monroe county.

On the 22d of October, 1862. Dr. Lambert was commissioned assistant surgeon of the 6th Iowa In- fantry ; served in that position until November, 1864, when he was appointed surgeon of the same regi- ment, and thus remained until the war closed, being the last man of the regiment mustered out.

On leaving the service Dr. Lambert located at Lancaster, Missouri; remained there until October, 1867, when he returned to Albia, which has since been his home and the scene of his eminent success in business. He makes a specialty of surgery, prof- iting by his discipline in the army, and he has an extensive practice. He is surgeon for the Chicago,

Burlington and Quincy Railway Company, and is well known far up and down this road. He has the confidence of the people wherever known ; is blessed with a vigorous mind and a disposition to feed it.

Dr. Lambert always votes the republican ticket, and is as active in politics as his extensive practice will permit him to be. He is a Royal Arch Mason.

In June, 1857, Miss Olive J. Benge, of Bloomfield, Iowa, was joined in wedlock with Dr. Lambert, and the fruit of their union has been seven children, all living but two.

Dr. Lambert is a member of the Monroe County Medical Society, of the Des Moines Valley Medical Association, and of the State Medical Society, and has an excellent standing in the fraternity.

HON. GEORGE G. WRIGHT,

DES MOINES.

G EORGE GROVER WRIGHT, late United States senator, was the son of John Wright, a mechanic, and Rachel Seaman, and was born in Bloomington, Indiana, on the 24th of March, 1820. The progenitor of the family in this country was a native of Wales, and among the early settlers in Pennsylvania. The Seamens were from England.

George G. was educated at the State University, located in his native town, graduating in 1839. He read law with an elder brother, the late Hon. Joseph A. Wright, once governor of Indiana, and subse- quently minister to Berlin, where he died in 1867.

The subject of this sketch was admitted to the bar in 1840, and in November of the same year located at Keosauqua, Van Buren county, Iowa, where he commenced legal practice and continued it until his removal to Des Moines, on the 20th of October, 1865. While law has been the profession of Sen- ator Wright, and while he is now of the firm of Wright, Gatch and Wright, he has had but little time for practice for the last twenty years or more, for he has been almost constantly in the service of the state in some capacity, in the legislature, on the bench or in the upper house of congress. In 1847 he was prosecuting attorney for Van Buren county ; the next year he was elected to the state senate, and served two terms, becoming the leader of that body on the whig side. In 1853, when General George W. Jones was elected United States senator, the democrats of the state and the legislature being in

the majority, Mr. Wright received the vote of his party for that office. In the winter of 1854-5 he was elected chief-justice of Iowa. In 1859, when the supreme judges were elected under the new con- stitution, he refused to run for the office. In the summer of the next year, however, on the death of Judge Stockton, Governor Kirkwood appointed Judge Wright to fill the vacancy, and at the next general election the people sanctioned the gover- nor's choice, Judge Wright filling out the unexpired term of Judge Stockton, which ended on the 31st of December, 1865. In the autumn previous the peo- ple had reëlected Judge Wright for a term of six years ending on the 31st of December, 1871. He left the bench on the 1st of September, 1870, to oc- cupy the office of United States senator, to which he was elected by the general assembly on the 18th of January, 1870. During the six years that he was in congress he was on the committees on finance, judiciary, claims, revision of the laws, and on civil service and retrenchment. Part of this time he was chairman of the committee on claims. While in the senate he was an indefatigable worker, looking at all times to the best interests of the state and of his country.

Senator Wright declined to be a candidate for re- election to the United States senate, much to the regret of many thousand personal friends.

As may be inferred from what we have already written, Senator Wright was originally a whig.

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Against his protest his party ran him for the lower house of congress in 1850, in a strong democratic district, where the best he could do, and what he did do, was to reduce the usual majority. He aided in forming the republican party in Iowa, and it is to his influence and that of a few other candid, con- scientious and eloquent speakers, that the party owes, in a great measure, its strength in the state.

But while Senator Wright has been largely identi- fied with the politics of Iowa for the last thirty years, he has done much good service to the state in other respects. From 1860 to 1865 he was president of the State Agricultural Society, and worked zealously for the widening and strengthening of its influence. His annual addresses delivered during those years showed that he had given no inconsiderable atten- tion to other subjects besides law and politics.

In the autumn of 1865 he and Judge C. C. Cole organized, at Des Moines, the Iowa Law School, which, three years later, was removed to Iowa City and made a branch of the State University. In educational matters generally he has taken a lively interest; has done valuable work at sundry times on the local school board, and is president of the board of trustees of Simpson Centenary College, a Meth- odist institution located at Indianola, Warren county.

He has long been connected with the Methodist Episcopal church, and is one of its leading laymen in Iowa. No man in the state, of any denomina-

tion, has a higher moral and religious standing. He is a christian statesman of the noblest type.

Superior natural abilities, extensive legal learning and a broad and liberal culture, combined with rare practical sagacity, have concurred to make him prominent among the foremost lawyers and jurists of the country. A ready and comprehensive grasp of cases, with the quick discrimination and rapid analysis with which he at once separates and seizes upon the vital and material points, enable him as a lawyer almost intuitively to comprehend the merits and demerits of every cause or question presented to him. As a judge, with unswerving integrity and unyielding firmness, he invariably cut his way to what seemed the very right of a case, regardless alike of specious technicalities on the one hand and false sentimentalism on the other, detecting at a glance all chicanery and artifice, and quietly brush- ing away all sophistries and fallacious reasonings.

The wife of Senator Wright he found in Iowa : Miss Mary H. Dibble, of Van Buren county, daugh- ter of Judge Thomas Dibble, formerly of New York. They were married on the 19th of October, 1843, and have had seven children, six of them yet living. Thomas is married, and is one of his father's law partners ; Craig also has a wife, and is an attorney in Sioux City, Iowa; Mary is the wife of Frank H. Peavy, of Sioux City; the other three, Carroll, Lucia H. and George G., are single.

HON. JAMES H. ROTHROCK,

TIPTON.

JAMES HARVEY ROTHROCK, now on the supreme bench of Iowa, is a native of Millroy, Pennsylvania, and was born on the Ist of June, 1829. He is a son of Joseph Rothrock, a tanner and farmer, and Sarah Mckinney. The Rothrocks were Hugue- nots, driven to Holland and came thence to the United States in the early part of the colonial period. The maternal great-grandfather of James H. was a captain during the revolutionary war. Joseph Roth- rock moved to Adams county, Ohio, when his son was about nine years old, and there the latter was reared on a farm and in a tan-yard. He fitted for college at Felicity, Ohio; entered Franklin College, New Athens, and left at the commencement of the junior year; read law with E. P. Evans, of West Union, Ohio, and was admitted to the bar at Colum-

bus in February, 1853. He practiced six years in Greenfield, Highland county, and one year at Hills- boro, in the same county, and in July, 1860, settled in Tipton, Iowa. Here, after two years' practice, he enlisted in his country's service, going into the army in August, 1862, as lieutenant-colonel of the 35th Iowa Infantry. At the end of one year, owing to disability, he was obliged to resign. Returning to Tipton, he resumed practice and continued it until January, 1867, when he went on the bench in the eighth judicial district. He was reëlected twice, and during his third term, in February, 1876, he was ap- pointed to the supreme bench in pursuance of an act of the legislature increasing the number of judges of the supreme court. He was elected by the people in the autumn of the same year. As a jurist he is re-

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markable for his strong common sense and practical ideas. Probably no man has a nicer discrimination between right and wrong. His experience for ten years as nisi prius judge was an excellent preparatory school for the supreme bench. His decisions made while a district judge were the result of a clear head and a cool judgment, and were rarely reversed.

While a resident of Ohio, in 1855, Judge Roth- rock was elected prosecuting attorney for Highland county, and served one term. He was a member of the lower house of the general assembly of Iowa in the regular session of 1862 and the war session of the same year, enlisting at the close of the latter session. Although a new man in the state in 1861, when he was nominated for member of the legislature, that nomination was made by acclamation. He had stumped the county in the autumn before, the farm- ers had become acquainted with him and he was their first choice. He proved to be a wise and effi- cient legislator.

The father of Judge Rothrock, a Presbyterian

elder for many years, and a man of strong religious and humane feelings, was an abolitionist and a Bir- ney man in 1844. Living in southern Ohio, he had many opportunities to aid bondmen to escape, and was always prompt to lend them a helping hand. The son imbibed his father's political sentiments, and in more than a hundred instances aided fugi- tives in their flight from the cruel taskmaster. Judge Rothrock voted the abolition ticket till the great party of freedom arose and finally, with Abraham Lincoln for a banner bearer, overthrew the slave power.

On the 18th of October, 1855, Miss A. L. Foote, of Granville, Ohio, was married to Judge Rothrock, and has borne him three children, all yet living.

Judge Rothrock has long had a passion for agri- cultural pursuits, and regards it as a noble occupa- tion to improve land. He has a small farm adjoining the city of Tipton, and two large farms farther west, in Sac county. Financially, he has been moderately successful.

HON. JOHN F. DILLON, DAVENPORT.

JOHN F. DILLON, judge of the United States circuit courts for the eighth judicial circuit, was born in Washington county, New York, on the 25th of December, 1831. His father was Thomas Dillon. His paternal and maternal grandfathers were each born in Ireland, and emigrated to this country at an early age and settled in the State of New York, from whence his father immigrated to Iowa.

In 1838, when he was little over seven years old, his parents removed from Herkimer county, New York, to Davenport, in the then territory of Iowa, in which city he has resided constantly ever since. He commenced the study of medicine at seventeen years of age, under the direction of Egbert S. Barrows, M. D., then the leading physician of Davenport. He attended two courses of medical lectures at the Keokuk Medical College, and graduated at the age of twenty-one years. He entered upon the practice of his profession, but finding, after a trial of a few months, that it did not accord with his tastes, he commenced reading law in the office where his sign as a physician was displayed. He was licensed as an attorney in Scott county, Iowa, in 1852, and at once commenced the practice of his new profession. This

year he was elected prosecuting attorney for Scott county.

In 1858, when twenty-seven years of age, he was elected by a majority greatly exceeding the majority of his party as the republican candidate for judge of the seventh judicial district of Iowa, a district then composed of the four populous counties of Scott, Muscatine, Jackson and Clinton. The first work he did after his election was the giving of a close, crit- ical study to all the then reported decisions of the supreme court of the state. This resulted in the preparation of his first legal work, "A Digest of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of Iowa." In 1862 he was reëlected without any opposition, the bar of the district, without distinction of party, uniting in a request to him to continue in the office. During the year following his second election he was nominated by the republican party of his state for one of the judges of the supreme court, and was elected for a term of six years, taking his seat on the Ist of Janu- ary, 1863. In 1869 he was unanimously renominated and reëlected for another term of six years without any considerable opposition, but before he qualified under his second election, and while still holding the

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office of chief justice of the supreme court, he was nominated by the President and confirmed by the senate as circuit judge of the United States for the eighth judicial circuit, embracing the states of Min- nesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and Ar- kansas, and recently, also, the newly admitted State of Colorado.

During the time he was on the supreme bench of the state he commenced collecting data for a work on " Municipal Corporations," and having become bound to the publishers to prepare the treatise, he was compelled to write it out after his accession to the federal bench. The work had an extraordinary sale. The first edition of twenty-five hundred copies, published in the year 1872, was exhausted in a few months, and the second edition, expanded into two volumes, is already nearly gone. The royalty to Judge Dillon on the two editions was the sum of ten thousand dollars. A third edition is already called for, which is an abundant proof of its undiminished popularity.

In 1872, seeing the necessity for the publication of a first-class law journal in the valley of the Mis- sissippi, he was instrumental in setting on foot the publication of the "Central Law Journal," himself sketching out the plan and for a time contributing much of the material. Having given it a fair start, and being unable longer to give it supervision, he

committed the management of it to its present ed- itor, Seymour D. Thompson, Esq., of Saint Louis.

He has held thirteen terms of court every year for the last six years in seven judicial districts and six states. In addition to his other labors he has edited and published three volumes of "Circuit Court Re- ports," mostly his own opinions.

Judge Dillon's opinions on the supreme bench of the state may be found in the twelve volumes of "Iowa Reports," from the fifteenth to the twenty- eighth volumes. During this period the judges adopted and rigidly maintained the habit of consult- ing thoroughly upon every case before the opinion was written. These consultations extended to an agreement upon the facts of the case, upon the judg- ment to be rendered, and upon the grounds on which the judgment should be placed. This system of vol- untarily enforced discipline could not fail to be pro- ductive of important results, and the decisions of the supreme court of Iowa naturally acquired a high standing throughout the Union and carried with them at home the additional weight which attaches to the understanding that an opinion of the court was not merely the opinion of a single judge.

On the foth of November, 1853, Judge Dillon married Miss Anna, daughter of the Hon. Hiram Price, for many years member of congress for the second district of Iowa.

JAMES HAWLEY,

OTTUMWA.

JAMES HAWLEY, the subject of this sketch, was born on the 4th of June, 1803, at Albany, New York, where he spent his early years and received a good common-school education.

When thirty years old he engaged in the mercan- tile business at Red Creek, Wayne county, New York, where for five years he successfully carried on the trade, and then removed to Lyons, in the same county. In 1839 he was elected by the whigs to the office of county clerk. This office he held for three years, when failing health demanded a change of climate, and he removed to Chillicothe, Ohio, where he again entered the dry-goods business. After a highly successful business career in the latter city he was induced by some friends to locate in Wash- ington county, Kentucky, where he again commenced business, but, not meeting with the success antici-

pated, he, in 1848, started west on an exploring tour to look up a point for a business location. He decided on Ottumwa, Iowa, as the most favorable place he visited, and thither he removed and com- menced business in a small frame building. His success was such that the second year of his stay there he erected the first two-story brick building in the Des Moines valley. On the arrival of his family in Ottumwa, Mr. Hawley, not having a home ready, was induced to move into and take charge of the first hotel in the city. In the latter enterprise, as well as in his mercantile pursuits, he was favored of for- tune, conducting both hotel and store for several years with marked success.

Mr. Hawley was, through life, a republican ; was twice elected mayor of Ottumwa, and was president of the First National Bank for about eighteen months.

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On the 20th of September, 1831, Mr. Hawley was united in wedlock to Miss Juliet Jones, of New York, by whom he had three children, two sons and a daughter. The eldest son is now dead.

The following extract from a paper published at his old home in Lyons, New York, gives an account of his death, and also the estimation in which he was held by his fellow-men :

COUNCIL CHAMBER, OTTUMWA. IOWA. Octoher 26, 1872.

At a special meeting of council. held on Saturday evening. the 6th of October the following resolutions were introduced hy the special commit- tee. Messrs. Ballingall. Blake and Inskeep, appointed at the last meeting of council to furnish resolutions on occasion of the death of James Haw- ley. Mr. Ballingall took occasion to make some appropriate remarks con- cerning the life and character of the deceased, after which the resolutions were adopted by the unanimous vote of the council :

WHEREAS, Intelligence has reached our city that our fellow-townsman, James Hawley. died at Salt Lake City on the 21st, therefore,

Resolved, By the council of the city of Ottumwa, that in the sudden death of our esteemed fellow-citizen and former mayor, James Hawley. the city has lost one of its most enterprising and honored citizens, who for twenty-five years past has been prominently identified with its histury and best interests ; that while mayor of the city he discharged his duty faithfully and well. and, whether acting in official or private capacity, was ever actuated by the highest considerations of justice, honor and truth.

Resolved, That for ourselves, and in behalf of the people of the city, we tender to the family and friends of the deceased our sympathy in their severe and sudden bereavement, and mingle our sorrow with theirs.

Resolved, That these resolutions be spread upon the records of the city, and that a copy be furnished the family of the deceased and also to the several city papers. W. L. ORR. Mayor.

Attest :

G. F. FOSTER, City Clerk.

The subject of the foregoing resolutions was for some time a popular merchant at Red Creek, in this county.

Thirty-three years ago he was elected by the whigs of this county to the office of clerk of the county, the duties of which he discharged with ability for the term of three years. He was a candidate for reelection, but failed for the reason that the democratic party was in the majority in the county. He ran considerably ahead of his ticket, and was defeated by less than a hundred majority. After closing his business here, and about the year 1844, he moved to the State of Ohio, afterward to Kentucky, and finally, in the year 1848, he look up his residence at Ottumwa, in the State of Iowa, where he spent the remainder of his life. Ottumwa, now a city of some seven thousand inhabitants, was then a mere hamlet. Here he at first pursued the business of a hotel- keeper and a merchant, and later that of a merchant only, in all which he was quite successful. He was for some time president of the First National Bank of Ottumwa, and re- tired from business a few years since.

Mr. Hawley was not a man of ponderous intellect, but possessed what was more valuable, a well balanced mind. Ile was a persevering, attentive, well judging, honest busi- ness man, and of course was successful. He was an intelli- gent, high-minded, liberal, patriotic citizen. In his deport- ment he was dignified, modest, pleasant and kind. In his domestic relations he was all that a husband and father should be, and enjoyed the affections of wife and children as such husbands and fathers are entitled to. He leaves a widow, two sons, a daughter and several grandchildren to mourn his departure. He died on the 21st of October last, at Salt Lake City. while on his way with his wife and eld- est son to California to spend the winter. His funeral was attended at Ottumwa, on the 30th of October, by a large concourse of people. Few have died leaving a purer name or a larger circle of friends.

THOMAS C. McCALL,

NEVADA.

T HOMAS CLIFTON McCALL, for more than thirty years a resident of Iowa, is of revolu- tionary stock, both grandsires participating in that war. His father was wounded in the second war with England, in the battle of McQnaggy, about the time of Hall's surrender. Thomas C. was a son of Samuel W. McCall and Ann Clifton, residing in Twin township, Ross county, Ohio, at the time of the son's birth, on the 4th of September, 1827. His father was a farmer, in rather delicate health, and was in office much of the time, being sheriff of Ross county some time and a justice of the peace many years. Abont 1836 the family moved to Canton, Fulton county, Illinois, where the subject of this notice had solid experience in agriculture, being obliged to work very hard.

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The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume, Part 117

Author: American biographical publishing company, pub Publication date: 1878 Publisher: Chicago, New York, American biographical publishing company Number of Pages: 954

Author: American biographical publishing company, pub
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Chicago, New York, American biographical publishing company
Number of Pages: 954