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Permanent LinkRepresentative Elmer J.C. Bealer View All Years
ELMER J. C. BEALER was born near Bern, Switzerland, May 20, 1845, and died in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, September 11, 1928. He was with his parents, John Ellis and Mary E. Walker Bealer, in their removal to Cleveland, Ohio, when he was but four years old. The family soon removed to Newton Falls, Ohio, and again, to Iowa City, Iowa, in 1856. The father followed stone quarrying, road building and bridge building in Iowa City and in Johnson County, and the son, when only a boy assisted the father. At the age of seventeen he did some contracting on his own account. On June 14, 1862, he enlisted in Company A, Twenty-second Iowa Infantry, and gave arduous service. He was wounded at Cedar Creek October 19, 1864, was promoted to fifth corporal and mustered out at Savannah, Georgia, July 25, 1865. He returned to Iowa City and for several years was associated most of the time with his father in street, road, and bridge building, but in 1878 removed to Cedar Rapids and pursued the same work there, taking and completing large contracts. In 1884 he opened the Cedar Valley Quarry on the Cedar River in Cedar County and developed it into what was said to be the greatest plant in that industry in Iowa. Mr. Bealer was interested in many business enterprises in and about Cedar Rapids, contributing his talent, energy and means to the development of the city. He was elected a director of the Independent School District of Cedar Rapids in 1898, and greatly assisted in his six years’ membership in building and remodeling the school buildings of the district. He was a member of the building committee of Mercy Hospital at the time of its construction. He was elected representative in 1901 and was re-elected, serving in the Twenty-ninth, Thirtieth, and Thirty-first general assemblies. He was the author of the act that provided for the erection of monuments and tablets in the Vicksburg National Military Park to mark the positions of Iowa troops in the siege of Vicksburg. He was commander of the Department of Iowa, Grand Army of the Republic, for the year 1918-19. His last public activity was as a member of the commission for the erection of the magnificent Memorial Building on the Island at Cedar Rapids, but he was called by death the evening before the final dedication.