Senator William Bell Tallman View All Years

WILLIAM BELL TALMAN

MR. PRESIDENT: Your committee which was appointed to report resolutions commemorating the life, character, and services of the late William Bell Talman, beg leave to submit the following:

William Bell Talman, son of Thomas B. Talman and Frances Gillespie Talman, was born at Point Pleasant, now in West Virginia, January 10, 1848. He died at Osceola, Iowa, October 27, 1926.

He came to Iowa with his parents in 1851. The family with all its worldly possessions floated down the Ohio river to Cairo, Illinois, on a raft of logs and from Cairo the raft was towed up the Mississippi to Keokuk. In 1869 he moved with his parents by covered wagon to Clarke county, where the father made a small payment on a farm and then began to cultivate the land to pay off the mortgage.

William helped his father with the farm work. He worked at the carpenter trade when not needed on the farm, saved his earnings, and attended the Baptist college at Burlington, which was later moved to Des Moines and afterwards merged into Des Moines University. His finances were so meager and his zeal for learning so great that he did his own cooking at college, transported provisions from home to Burlington in a big cart which he made for that purpose, and on one or more occasions walked all the way between his home in Clarke county and Burlington.

He was united in marriage to Emma L. Bestor of Abingdon, Illinois, January 28, 1875, and to this union was born one son.

After teaching school in various parts of Clarke county, he studied law in the office of M. L. Temple, and was admitted to the bar about 1880. He practiced law at Osceola from then to the time of his death.

About 1898 he formed a partnership with L. E. Crist for the practice of law and this partnership continued until 1908.

In 1899 he was elected state senator and represented Clarke and Warren counties in the Iowa state Senate during the Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth General Assemblies.

He affiliated with the democratic party and took an active part in politics, being a delegate to numerous democratic conventions, and was one of the presidential electors who elected President Woodrow Wilson.

He was a member of the Masonic lodge at Osceola for many years and held various offices in the local order there. About a year or two before his death he was invited by the Grand Lodge of Iowa to make application to become a thirty-third degree Mason, but his health was then poor and he declined to accept the invitation.

Now, Therefore, Be It Resolved, By the Senate of the Forty-second General Assembly of Iowa, that in the death of William Bell Talman the state and community where he lived have suffered the loss of an influential and loyal citizen; and,

Be It Further Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be spread upon the Journal of the Senate and that the Secretary be directed to send an engrossed copy thereof to his only son, William B. Talman.

C. B. KERN,

A. G. DOTTS,

H. GUY ROBERTS,

Committee.

The resolution was unanimously adopted by a rising vote.