Representative William Stuart View All Years

HONORABLE WILLIAM STUART

MR. SPEAKER: Your committee, appointed to prepare suitable resolutions commemorative of the life, character, and public services of the late Honorable William Stuart, of Emmet county, Iowa, begs leave to submit the following report:

Mr. Stuart was born in Ireland, January 10, 1851, of Scotch-Irish parentage. At the age of six years he immigrated to Canada, with his widowed mother and older brothers and sisters. They settled in the Province of Ontario, on a farm where Mr. Stuart grew to manhood and received his education. In 1864, he went with an older brother to Fulton, Illinois, where he learned the blacksmith trade and there continued in this work for some time. In 1879, he came to Grundy Center, Iowa, where he engaged in wagon making and practiced his trade.

As time progressed he gradually established himself in the retail implement business.

In 1892, Mr. Stuart and B. F. Robinson, a member of the Twenty-ninth, Thirtieth and Thirty-first General Assemblies, migrated to the new town of Armstrong and started a bank. After several years of active banking he sold his interest in the bank so that he could devote most of his time to real estate interests.

He was actively identified with various activities and enterprises in the community and was postmaster during the Taft administration. He served for several years on the board of supervisors of Emmet county. In the fall of 1916, he was elected to the State Legislature from Emmet county and served in the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth General Assemblies.

Mr. Stuart was a member of over sixty years standing in the Masonic Lodge, and was one of the founders and charter members of Emmet Lodge No. 533.

He was a member of the Methodist Church, one of its official board members, and gave of his time and resources unsparingly to the church of his choice.

Mr. Stuart came to Armstrong on the first train that pulled into the station when the new town was established. He watched and aided the town and community develop from a wild prairie of virgin vegetation into a highly cultivated area of farm lands and modern homes. Forty-four years later on March 31, 1936, in his eighty-sixth year, be received his final reward.

Uncle Billy, as he was often called, lived for and loved his community, and was ever untiring in his efforts for its betterment. That the fruits of his labor shall not pass on, his progeny remains a living example of service to mankind and that common cause.

Be It Therefore Resolved, That we the living, following in the footsteps to this common cause tender tribute to the surviving members of his family, and

Be It Further Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be spread upon the Journal of the House, and that the Chief Clerk be instructed to send an enrolled copy to the family of the deceased.

LEHMAN C. J. ROVN,

A. H. AVERY,

FRED J. RITCHIE,

Committee.

Unanimously adopted, April 12, 1939.