Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 4.djvu/208

  for President. At the beginning of the Rebellion Mr. Gatch raised a company for the Thirty-third Ohio Infantry of which he was commissioned captain. He participated in several battles and was promoted to lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. He removed to Iowa in 1866, entering upon the practice of law. In 1885 he was elected to the Iowa Senate, where he served eight years. He was the author of many important laws among which was the one founding the Historical Department of Iowa and a general law promoting the organization of public libraries in towns and cities. He was the author of a history of the Des Moines River Land Grant and the legislation and litigation following, published in the Annals of Iowa. He died at his home on the 1st of July, 1897. JOHN H. GEAR, tenth Governor of Iowa, was born at Ithaca, New York, on the 7th of April, 1825. He had no educational advantages in his youth but acquired, unaided, his knowledge of books. The country about Ithaca was at that time a wilderness and the father and mother lived in a rude log cabin, surrounded by Onondaga Indians. In 1836 the family removed to Galena, Illinois, then a frontier post in the Indian country, where lead mining was the principal attraction and business. Two years later the father, having been appointed chaplain in the regular army, took his family to Fort Snelling, a frontier military post in the wilds of Minnesota. Always on the extreme frontier, enduring hardships and privations, amid the rudest surroundings, the son grew to nineteen years of age with none of the advantages of civilization, but with the lessons of economy and self-reliance fully learned. In the fall of 1843, young Gear descended the Mississippi River and on the 25th of September landed at the new town of Burlington on the Iowa side which was ever after his home. Here for the first time the young man worked for himself, first on a farm, then as clerk in a store. In 1845 he secured a position in a store and at the end of five years was made a partner and five years later was able to purchase the store. In 1863 Mr. Gear was chosen mayor of the city and in 1871 was elected by the Republicans to the House of the Fourteenth General Assembly. He was reëlected at the close of his first term and nominated by the Republicans of the House of Representatives for Speaker. The members were equally divided politically and for two weeks neither were able to elect, but on the one hundred forty-fourth ballot Mr. Gear was elected. He was an able and eminently fair presiding officer, was reëlected and again chosen Speaker. In 1877 he was nominated for Governor of the State by the Republicans and elected. He at once brought to the service of the State that executive ability which had led him to success in every undertaking of his self-reliant life. He made himself thoroughly familiar with every department and public institution of the State, suggesting numerous reforms in the methods of conducting business. At the close of his term he was reëlected by an increased majority. In 1886 he