Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 4.djvu/226

 in 1838 removed to Davenport, settling on a farm near the little village. In 1841 he was chosen to represent Scott County in the Legislative Assembly. In 1844 he was elected a delegate to the first Constitutional Convention and took an active part in framing the Constitution, which was rejected. In 1846 he was a member of the second convention and was the author of the “bill of rights” in that instrument under which Iowa became a State. In 1847 he was elected judge of the District Court, serving five years. In 1852 he was again elected to the Legislature and chosen Speaker of the House. When a young man he began to acquire a law library and continued to add to it through mature life until he had secured the largest and best selected collection of law books in the West. He became one of the great lawyers of the country and was employed in some of the most important land and bond cases in the West. In one railroad case he won for his clients a million dollars and received for his services $100,000. In politics he was a life-long Democrat. JULIUS K. GRAVES was born in Keene, New Hampshire, September 29, 1837. He received a common school education and at the age of seventeen came to Iowa, becoming a resident of Dubuque in 1854. He secured a position as cashier in a bank and in 1858 had risen to the head of the prosperous banking house of J. K. Graves & Co. It became a branch of the Iowa State Bank, with Mr. Graves as manager. He engaged largely in other business enterprises among which was railroad building. He was one of the loyal capitalists who in the beginning of the Rebellion volunteered to raise the money required by Governor Kirkwood to equip and pay the first volunteers put into the field. He was one of the active promoters of the Dubuque & Sioux City Railroad. He was a radical Republican, living in a strong Democratic county but when a candidate for the State Senate in 1881 he overcame an adverse majority of nearly 3,000 and was elected. He died at Dubuque on the 9th of December, 1898. GEORGE GREENE was a native of England, having been born in Staffordshire on the 15th of April, 1817. His father came to America when the son was but two years old, locating in western New York. George Greene received a good education and studied law in Buffalo. In the spring of 1838 he went to the new Territory of Iowa, first stopping in Davenport, where he made the acquaintance of Professor D. J. Owen, who was engaged in making a geological survey of Iowa and Wisconsin. After working on the survey for six months he taught school at Ivanhoe, Linn County. He was admitted to the bar in 1840 and began to practice law in Marion. The same year he was elected a member of the Council of the Third Legislative Assembly, serving two sessions. In 1845 Mr. Greene removed to Dubuque and soon after became editor of the Miners' Express, which he conducted about three years. In 1847 he was appointed by the