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Permanent LinkSenator Benjamin McCoy View All Years
BENJAMIN MCCOY
Senator Caldwell, from a special committee, offered the following report and moved its adoption:
MR. PRESIDENT—Your committee appointed to prepare resolutions commemorating the life, character and public services of Benjamin McCoy, beg leave to submit the following report:
Benjamin McCoy, a member of the Twentieth, Twenty-first, Twentysecond and Twenty-third General Assemblies, was born in Jefferson county, Ind., March 22, 1846. He received his higher education at Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa, and after leaving school was employed for some time as a surveyor and teacher. During the Civil War he served as a private in Company H, Forty-seventh regiment, Iowa infantry.
Judge McCoy was admitted to the bar in 1871, and located at Oskaloosa in 1874. He was a member of the law firm of Bolton, McCoy & McCoy, later of the firm of McCoy & McCoy. While acting as one of the judges of the district court of the sixth district, he was appointed as one of the code commissioners to revise the code, and was· also appointed a railroad commissioner by Governor Frank Jackson, both of which latter positions he declined.
In 1920 he underwent a serious operation in Chicago, from which operation he never fully recovered and he died August 24, 1920, at his home in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
Hon. G. S. Robinson, judge of the state supreme court, who has been quite intimate with him, professionally and politically, for eighteen years, gives the following estimate of Mr. McCoy’s character:
“He is a man of absolute integrity, of fine ability, whose inclinations lead him to seek for and to do justice in·all cases, even though matters of mere form have to be disregarded to attain that end. As a practicing lawyer, judge and legislator, he has attained high rank and achieved distinction. He is an exceedingly companionable gentleman of many excellent personal qualities, who deservedly stands high in the state.”
Whereas, The Honorable Benjamin McCoy, a member of the Twentieth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second and Twenty-third General Assemblies, has been called from this life, therefore,
Be It Resolved, That the Senate has heard with·deep sorrow and regret of his death and that it recognizes the high character of his service to his state and in his death the state has lost a worthy and noble citizen, and,
Be It Resolved, further, that these resolutions be spread upon the journal, that an engrossed copy of the same be sent to the family of the deceased.
W. A. CALDWEI.L,
T. C. CESSNA,
JNO. R. PRICE,
The resolution was adopted unanimously by a rising vote.