Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/398



OLLIVER, JONATHAN PRENTISS, son of a Methodist minister in western Virginia; graduate of West Virginia university, school teacher, lawyer in Fort Dodge, Iowa, 1878-89; representative from Iowa in the fifty-first-fifty-sixth Congresses, 1889-1900; United States senator from Iowa since August, 1900; was born on a farm near King wood, Preston county, Virginia, February 6, 1858. His father, the Reverend James J. Dolliver, son of Captain Henry DolHver of Salem, Massachusetts, was a Methodist preacher. His mother, Eliza J. (Brown) Dolliver, was the daughter of Robert and Anna Hawthorne Brown of King wood, Virginia. He was brought up on his grandfather's farm. He entered the preparatory department of West Virginia university at Morgantown. His father had removed to a home near Morgantown, and the boy walked the two and one-half miles to and from the college each day. He was admitted to the class of 1875, graduating with honors, A.B., 1875; A.M., 1878; and devoted himself to teaching school in De Kalb county, Illinois, and to the study of law. He was admitted to the bar at Fort Dodge, Iowa, in March, 1878, and practised in that city 1878-88.

In 1888 he was elected a Republican representative to the fifty-first Congress from the tenth district of Iowa by a plurality of 5,368 votes, and was placed on the committees on Naval Affairs and War Claims. He was reelected to the fifty-second Congress in 1890 by a plurality of 1,311 votes, was continued on the same committees, and was also placed on the committee on the Columbian exposition. He was reelected in 1892 to the fifty-third Congress by a plurality of 4,974 votes, and was a member of the committee on Naval Affairs and of Expenditures in the State Department. He was reelected in 1894 to the fifty-fourth Congress by a majority of 14,357, and to the fifty-fifth Congress in 1896 by a plurality of 10,968, and to the fifty-sixth Congress in 1898 by a plurality of 7,303, and he was a member of the committee on Ways and Means, and chairman of the committee on Expenditures in the Department of Justice. He resigned his seat