Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 4.djvu/291

 public schools. He also attended the rotate Agricultural College, afterward entering the Law Department of the State University where he graduated in 1874. He removed to Butler County in 1880, settling at Greene, where he engaged in the practice of law. He was chosen secretary of the State Senate in the winter of 1882 and reëlected in 1884. At the Republican State Convention of 1884 he was nominated for Secretary of State and elected, serving by successive elections for three terms. In 1893 he was nominated by the Republican State Convention for Governor. For four years the Democratic party had secured the chief executive in the election of Governor Boies. The campaign was conducted with great vigor on both sides and resulted in the election of Frank D. Jackson by a plurality of more than 32,000. Governor Jackson served but one term, declining to be a candidate for reëlection. BERRYMAN JENNINGS, Iowa's first school-master, was born in Kentucky in 1807. Nothing is known of his boyhood or early education. In 1826 he removed to Commerce, a small town in Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi River which became famous as the Mormon city of Nauvoo. There was a settlement on the west side of the river in the “Half Breed” tract where Dr. Isaac Galland, an educated man, lived with his family, where the town of Nashville stands. It was here in 1830 that Berryman Jennings, then a young man, opened a school in a log cabin. Very little is known of this first school more than that it was small and that among its pupils were Washington Galland (who was afterwards a member of the Legislature), his sisters and Captain J. W. Campbell. Mr. Jennings later studied medicine with Dr. Galland and at one time was a merchant in Burlington. In 1847 he joined an emigrant train and made the journey to Oregon by wagon. He settled in Oregon City, built a steamboat on the Columbia River and engaged in trade with San Francisco. He was a member of the Oregon Legislature and also served as Register of the United States Land Office. He died on the 22d of December, 1888. EDWARD JOHNSTON was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1815. He studied law, was admitted to the bar and in 1837 went west, stopping at Burlington, then in Wisconsin Territory. He was one of the clerks of the Legislature and at the session of 1837-8 was elected one of the commissioners to take testimony in the legal controversy over the titles to the “Half Breed” lands in Lee County. Soon after he located at Fort Madison and was employed as counsel by the St. Louis claimants to these lands to secure a division, which resulted in a decree of title. In 1839 he was elected to the House of the Second Legislative Assembly of the new Territory of Iowa and was chosen Speaker, serving at the regular and special sessions. He was elected a member of the Council of the Third Legislative Assembly and served through the Fourth also. As a lawyer