Senator Addison Oliver View All Years

ADDISON OLIVER.

MR. PRESIDENT—Your committee appointed to draft suitable resolutions on the life and public service of the Honorable Addison Oliver, who was an honored member of the Senate of Iowa, beg leave to report the following memorial:

Addison Oliver, a member of the Senate of Iowa in the Eleventh and Twelfth General Assemblies, died at his home in Onawa, Monona county, July 7th, 1912, when nearly seventy-nine years of age.

Mr. Oliver was a native of the county of Washington, Pennsylvania, where he was born July 21, 1833, and in which county he was graduated from Washington and Jefferson college at the early age of seventeen. His first adventure into business of any kind was in teaching school in the state of Arkansas, where he taught two years. Returning to his native state Mr. Oliver entered upon the study of law in the office of William Montgomery, a member of Congress, and was admitted to the bar in 1857. Coming west shortly afterwards, he made his home at the then frontier town of Onawa, in 1858. He became a member of the county board of supervisors in 1861. In 1863 he was elected a representative of the counties of Monona, Crawford and Sac to the Tenth General Assembly. Two years later he was elected to the Senate from the counties of Monona, Woodbury and thirteen others, including in the list two yet unorganized; the district being then practically all of the northwestern part of the state. In the session of 1866 he was a member of the committees of Ways and Means, Railroads and Public Buildings. In 1868 he was chairman of the committee on Constitutional Amendments and a member of the Committees on Railroads and Incorporations. The first named committee was of the more importance at that session because of the fact that that General Assembly sent to the people the first amendment to the present constitution, that providing for universal manhood suffrage. The railroad committee was also more than ordinarily important because at that session several land-grants had been forfeited because of the failure of the grantees to build the roads for which the grants were made. Senator Oliver struggled when the bills disposing of the lands were under consideration to keep the lines of the roads within the limits of the original grants, but ineffectually.

The Twelfth General Assembly created the office of circuit judge and the circuit courts. At the election following the session of that body, Senator Oliver was elected judge of the first circuit of the fourth judicial district. Ten organized counties then furnished extensive travel for the new judge while also he, together with District Judge Henry Ford and Circuit Judge James M. Snyder, held the short lived appellate tribunal known as the “General Term” for the fourth judicial district. In 1872, the circuits having been reduced in number one half and only one judge being elected in each judicial district, Judge Oliver was elected to the larger field, having nineteen counties, about one-fifth of the state territorially to travel over. Two years of this experience terminated Judge Oliver’s judicial labors as he was then elected to the Forty-fourth Congress from the ninth district. After four years of service, he declined another candidacy although it was understood that both republicans and greenbackers wished him to remain in Congress. Broad and exacting as must have been the duties devolving upon Judge Oliver, there seems to be universal attestation to the value of his public service. Judge Oliver was a delegate to the Baltimore convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln for president the second time.

After his retirement Judge Oliver devoted himself to business and became one of the most extensive farmers in western Iowa and used his wealth for furthering worthy public enterprises, the little city that was his home for half a century having a public library and manual training building, through his generosity.

Before coming to Iowa young Judge Oliver was united in marriage with Miss Hannah Towne, a schoolmate from earliest date. To the union were born ten children of whom one, John F., is now district judge of the fourth judicial district, which district is a part of the original territory over which his father presided.

In the death of Judge Addison Oliver the state loses one of its pioneer law makers and worthy judges and an able representative in the Congress of the United States whose memory it is an honor to the Senate of Iowa to commemorate and it is with a feeling of the great loss to the Senate of this State and realizing the great loss to his community and to his family,

Therefore, be it resolved, that these resolutions be spread upon the Journal of the Senate and that an attested copy be prepared and sent to the family by the secretary of the Senate.

E. L. CROW,

E. P. FARR,

ELI C. PERKINS,

Committee.