Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 4.djvu/510

 Mr. Thorington was appointed by the Governor agent for the State at Washington to secure title to the swamp lands embraced in the grant. In 1872 he was appointed by President Grant United States Consul to Aspinwall, where he served ten years. It has often been remarked that our State never sent a Representative to Congress who accomplished so much in a single term as this first Republican member from Iowa, died June 12, 1889, at Santa Fe in New Mexico. RODNEY W. TIRRILL was a native of New Hampshire, born at Colebrook, December 22, 1835. To a public school education was added a course in Wisconsin University, after which he studied law, and as he was to enter upon practice the Civil War began and Mr. Tirrill enlisted in Company F, Twelfth Iowa Infantry. He was in the battles of Fort Donelson and Shiloh, and at the latter was so severely wounded that he was obliged to leave the service. After his recovery he was elected superintendent of schools in Delaware County and in 1879 was elected on the Republican ticket to the State Senate, serving in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth General Assemblies. He was the author of a bill requiring packages of oleomargarine to be plainly labeled as such, and in the face of powerful opposition secured its passage. It is believed that this was the first law of the kind enacted in the United States. Senator Tirrill served on many important committees and exercised a large degree of influence on the legislation of the two sessions during his term. In 1898 Mr. Tirrill was Department Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic of Iowa. GEORGE M. TITUS is a native of Cayuga County, New York, where he was born May 19, 1855. His education was acquired in the public schools of New York and Michigan, concluding with a course at the Wilton (Iowa) Collegiate Institute. At the age of sixteen he began teaching school in Michigan. Removing to Cedar County, Iowa, he began the study of law in 1876 and was admitted to the bar in 1880, since which time he has been engaged in practice at Muscatine. He was elected to the State Senate in 1897 on the Republican ticket for the district of Muscatine and Louisa counties, serving in the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth General Assemblies. He was the author of an amendment to the Constitution of the State providing for biennial, instead of annual elections. The “Titus Amendment” received the approval of two successive General Assemblies and was adopted by the people at the election by the largest majority given, any measure ever submitted to a vote of the citizens of the State. But in a case taken to the Supreme Court a decision was rendered holding it void on the ground that the clerk of the House failed to spread it upon the journal in the form required by law. The same amendment was again adopted by the Twenty-ninth General Assembly and will be brought