Senator Albert C. Hotchkiss View All Years

ALBERT C. HOTCHKISS

MR. PRESIDENT: Your committee, appointed to prepare suitable resolutions commemorating the life, character, and public services of the late Honorable Albert C. Hotchkiss, a former member of the General Assembly of Iowa, begs leave to submit the following:

Albert C. Hotchkiss was born in Binghamton, New York, November 21, 1842, and died in his home in Adel, Iowa, March 4, 1934. Burial was in Oakdale Cemetery, Adel. His parents, William and Sarah (Gilbert) Hotchkiss, were natives of Connecticut. He was reared on a farm and aided in farm work until fourteen years of age, when he became a clerk in a dry goods store, which vocation he followed until his enlistment, in 1862, in Company H, One Hundred Sixty-eighth New York Volunteers, with which company he remained fourteen months, the full term of his enlistment. In September, 1864, he re-enlisted in Company M, First New York Veteran Cavalry, with which he remained at the front until the cessation of hostilities. He was always faithful to his duty, whether on the picket line or the firing line, in camp or on the field of battle.

Following his discharge from the army, and a short visit to Iowa, he entered in the shoemaking business in Binghamton. He was married on September 12, 1867, at Binghamton, to Miss Lucy Fairchild, a native of said place and a daughter of Stephen B. Fairchild. Shortly thereafter, with his bride and his parents, he came to Iowa, settling and remaining for seven years on a farm in Dallas county, near Adel.

His abilities and interest in public matters attracted the public so that in 1873 the Republican party nominated him for clerk of the District Court. He was elected and continued to serve in that position six years. Having become interested in the Dallas County News, published at Adel, in 1879 he purchased an interest in it, and became its editor, a position he continued to hold until his retirement in 1925, making it one of the leading country papers of the state.

He was elected state senator in 1895, and served the seventeenth senatorial district comprising the counties of Dallas, Guthrie, and Audubon in the Twenty-sixth, Twenty-sixth Extra, and Twenty-seventh General Assemblies. He served as postmaster at Adel two terms: from 1889 to 1894 under President Benjamin Harrison, and from 1904 to 1913 under President Theodore Roosevelt.

Unto Mr. and Mrs. Hotchkiss were born a son and two daughters: Louis J., Jessie G., and Nellie, all of whom survive him. Mr. Hotchkiss was a member of the Presbyterian church at Adel from its organization to its disbanding, serving for many years as Elder, Clerk of Sessions, Superintendent of the Sunday School, and teacher of adult classes, and was, with his family, prominently known socially. He was a member of the Hobby Club, the Rotary Club, the Colonel Mills Post, and the G. A. R. He was always kind and loving in his family relations, and fair and just in business matters.

Mr. Hotchkiss was one of a group of Adel citizens active in bringing a railroad to Adel, and had part in settling, through legislation, the question of the location of the county seat of Dallas county. He displayed rare ability as a public speaker, as a newspaper editor, and as a legislator, and was held in high regard in his own community and in the state.

He served well his community, his state, and his nation, and in the passing of Mr. Hotchkiss, Iowa has lost an upright and honored citizen, a man of high ideals in brotherly living and useful citizenship; therefore,

Be It Resolved by the Senate of the Forty-seventh General Assembly in Regular Session: That the Senate by this resolution tenders its sincere sympathy to the surviving members of his family in their sorrow, and that a copy of this resolution be spread upon the Journal of the Senate and that the Secretary of the Senate be directed to forward an enrolled copy to the family of the deceased.

GEO. M. HOPKINS,

ORA E. HUSTED,

I. G. CHRYSTAL,

Committee.

The resolution was unanimously adopted.