Senator Howard Spicer Van Alstine View All Years

HOWARD SPICER VAN ALSTINE

MR. PRESIDENT: Your committee, appointed to prepare suitable resolutions commemorating the life, character and public service of the late Honorable Howard Spicer Van Alstine, begs leave to submit the following:

Howard Spicer Van Alstine, banker and legislator, died at the Lutheran Hospital at Fort Dodge, Iowa, August 5, 1945; born at Poplar Grove, Illinois, May 16, 1869, son of Sewell Van Alstine and Ellen Hawley Van Alstine, who came to Iowa in 1870 and settled in Pocahontas county on the virgin prairie two miles northwest of the present town of Gilmore City, where Mr. Van Alstine has lived the most of his life and resided at the time of his demise. A post office was established at the Van Alstine farm home, known as the Blooming Prairie Post Office, and the mother was named postmistress; its operation continued until after 1880 when the railroad was built and the town of Gilmore City established by the elder Van Alstine. The school opened near the farm homestead which he attended and obtained his only formal education in four terms, which he supplemented by reading and study during hours engaged in herding cattle on the prairie. In 1889 he joined with his brother, L. H. Van Alstine, in a partnership establishing the Gilmore Exchange Bank.

In 1896 Mr. Van Alstine married Mary Bertha Beers of Gilmore City, who with two sons and two daughters survive him; one son, Howard Dana Van Alstine, died in 1928. He was one of the three last survivors of the original settlers of Gilmore City. With his brother he was a leader in the movement resulting in the drainage of thousands of acres of Pocahontas county slough bottoms long before the first drainage ditch was established in the county under the provisions of law. The bank extended its financial operations throughout the county and obtained valuable eastern loan connections which were utilized in developing the wild prairie into productive farms. Later in the depth of the depression the shrinkage of deposits from a high of $1,800,000 to $303,000, occasioned the decision of the Van Alstines to close the bank and it was liquidated beginning in October, 1931, the farm loan business being continued.

In addition to his local business Mr. Van Alstine was active in public affairs, his most lasting and important public work being in the Iowa legislature, serving in the Senate, representing Buena Vista, Humboldt and Pocahontas counties, in the Thirty-seventh, Thirty-eighth and Thirty­ninth General Assemblies, as chairman of the code revision committee, chairman of the appropriations and other standing committees. In 1920 he was appointed chairman of the state tax commission, which at that time carried no compensation, and he devoted a large part of his time in securing revision of tax laws and taxation practices; for many years was a member of the National Association of Tax Commissioners, and was a recognized authority on methods of taxation; in 1928 designed and drew the legislation under which the present Iowa State Tax Commission was organized and was offered appointment as its first chairman but declined this honor; served as president of the Iowa Farm Mortgage Bankers’ Association, a member of the board of directors of the Iowa Tax Association and of the Pocahontas County Mutual Insurance Association and president of the Iowa Pioneer Lawmakers Association. While his primary legislative interest was taxation, he was the author of a number of the statutes curative to real estate titles and he was the author of the Chattel Lien Recording Law, both of which have been of very material value to the business men of the state.

His life was devoted to aggressive community and county development, being active in the movements that secured for Gilmore City a gas plant, which was later supplanted with an electric service in 1912, also in the organization and installation of a municipal water works. A Republican and a member of the Knights of Pythias and various Masonic bodies, and during World War I was active in government service. A son, Lieutenant Sewal Van Alstine, is now with the U. S. Armed Forces in the Pacific area.

J. F. MILLER,

DUANE E. DEWEL,

C. V. FINDLAY,

Committee

The resolution was unanimously adopted.