Senator Wickliffe A. Cotton View All Years

WICKLIFFE A. COTTON.

MR. PRESIDENT—Your committee appointed to draft resolutions in memory of the life and services of Senator Wickliffe A. Cotton, has the honor to submit the following report:

Wickliffe A. Cotton, who was a member of this body from 1882 to 1886, died at Dewitt very suddenly on Tuesday, March 19, 1912, aged sixty-nine. He was a native of the state of Ohio, where, at Austintown, he was born February 2, 1843. The next year the family removed to Iowa, settling in Clinton county. There he grew to manhood. He was duly admitted to the bar, and practiced his profession there during the remaining years of his life.

In 1881 he was elected a member of the Senate. In the Nineteenth General Assembly he was placed on the committees of Judiciary, Appropriations, Elections and Penitentiary, and was made chairman of the committee that has control of the state library. Two measures he introduced were placed in the statutes, one providing an annual salary for an assistant librarian, and the other authorizing the sale of indemnity swamp lands, which the counties had come into possession of because of swamp lands sold by the general land office. In the Twentieth General Assembly Senator Cotton was chairman of the committee on Elections, and a member of the committee on Appropriations, and several other committees.

Retiring from the Senate, he continued to be interested in public affairs, but from that time on, held no public office. He was active and prominent in the Masonic order. His church membership was of long standing, and continued till the last. His funeral was attended by great numbers of people, coming from different parts of the county which had been his home for more than sixty years. He is represented as being of the highest type of American citizenship. While firm in his convictions, he was a broad-minded liberal man among his fellows. He had a gentleness of manner that made friends of those with whom he came in contact.

Senator Cotton’s wife preceded him in death some two years. One of their two children survives—Mrs. Clelle Culbertson, of Massillon, Ohio. A brother, Aylett Rains Cotton, survived him a few months. He was a member of the constitutional convention; the last survivor but one of that body. He was also Speaker of the House in 1870. He died October 30, 1912, at San Francisco, California, where his home had been for many years.

Resolved, That the foregoing be spread on the Journal of the Senate, and that copies of these resolutions be transmitted to the family and near kindred of the departed jurist, as the Senate’s tribute to the worth of a man who did well his part in the fields he entered, not the least of which was his work as a legislator of the state that was his home from infancy.

JOHN L. WILSON,

FREDERIC LARRABEE,

JOHN I. CLARKSON,

Committee.

The resolutions were adopted unanimously by a rising vote.