Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 4.djvu/369

 of the college farm and secretary of the board of trustees. In 1865 he was appointed by President Lincoln, United States Marshal for Iowa. In 1871 he was reappointed for four years by President Grant. He was instrumental in 1865 in securing the location of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Cedar Falls and was one of ten citizens to purchase forty acres of land on which the home was located. In 1864 he was a delegate to the National Republican Convention which renominated President Lincoln and was one of the committee sent to Washington to notify the President of his nomination. Mr. Melendy was for five years president of the State Agricultural Society and also served as vice-president, marshal and treasurer. He was chairman of the Republican State Central Committee in the Grant campaign of 1868 and was a delegate to the Chicago National Republican Convention which nominated Grant and Colfax. He was a member of the board of trustees of the State Agricultural College for fourteen years and one of the most influential promoters of that institution. In 1866 he was a member of the committee to visit and examine into the working and plans of the various Agricultural Colleges of the country, report a plan for organization, and select suitable persons for president and members of the faculty. In 1879 Mr. Melendy was appointed agent for the Quartermaster's Department of the United States to adjust claims arising out of the war and served in Tennessee until 1886. After his return to Cedar Falls his old neighbors insisted on making him mayor of the city which had been his home for nearly half a century. He died on the 18th of October, 1901.  NATHANIEL A. MERRILL was born in Copenhagen, Lewis County, New York, in 1829. He was reared on a farm, attending the common schools winters and assisting in the work of the farm during summers. He taught several terms and then studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1855 and the following spring removed to Iowa, locating at De Witt, then the county-seat of Clinton. He soon acquired a good practice but when the Civil War began he raised a company and entered the service as captain of Company D, Twenty-sixth Regiment of Infantry. He was severely wounded at the Battle of Arkansas Post. Mr. Merrill was mayor of De Witt two years, was a Democratic member of the House of the Fourteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-sixth General Assemblies and a member of the Senate of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth General Assemblies. He took a prominent part in the revision of the Code of 1873. Mr. Merrill was a commissioner of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home and president of the First National Bank of De Witt for several years. He died at his home in De Witt on the 31st of December, 1898.  SAMUEL MERRILL, seventh Governor of the State, was born in Oxford County in the State of Maine on the 7th of August, 1822. He 