Representative Delos Arnold View All Years

DELOS ARNOLD.

MR PRESIDENT—Your committee, appointed to prepare resolutions commemorating the life, character and public service of the Hon. Delos Arnold of Marshall County, late a member of this Senate, beg leave to submit the following report:

Delos Arnold was born in Chenango County, New York, July 21, 1830. He died at Pasadena, California, August 31, 1909.

He was educated in the common schools of his native state and graduated from the Albany Law School in 1853 and came to Iowa in the fall of the same year and settled in Marshall County. On the day of his arrival he was appointed Prosecuting Attorney of his county, continuing in office four years.

In 1856 he was elected to the House of the Sixth General Assembly from the district formed of the counties of Benton, Marshall and Tama. He was again elected to the Legislature in 1869 and served in the House in 1870 from Marshall County, being chairman of the committee on banking. In 1876 he was elected to the Senate and served during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth sessions. As chairman of the committee on penitentiaries, he introduced the bill which became a law providing for the disposing of the labor of convicts. In his last session he became chairman of the committee on appropriations.

During his service in the Legislature he procured the passage of the first act for establishing weather service in Iowa.

Mr. Arnold was one of the leading spirits in the building of the State House at Des Moines, and was on the committee auditing the expenditures of the funds in the erection of the State House as a member of the Board of Capitol Commissioners. The Capitol building is a monument to the memory of Delos Arnold and his co-workers on the Board of Capitol Commissioners, and today stands as a fitting tribute to the high character of the men who composed that commission. In the long debate leading up to the building of the Capitol of Iowa and the formation of the commission to take charge of its affairs, Delos Arnold’s hand was the guiding hand; and through all the laborious days of the existence of that commission his one thought was that Iowa should have an abiding home in its Capitol and should have a monument to the integrity of its builders; and, after more than thirty-five years, it stands a monument without criticism, and the acts of the present Assembly approve of the wisdom of its builders.

Delos Arnold also served the state as a regent to the State University. He was appointed by President Lincoln Assessor of Internal Revenue in what was the Sixth Congressional District, and continued in that office for four years.

In 1886 Mr. Arnold removed to Pasadena, California, in which city he made his home for the remaining days of his life. He was a member of the school board of his city for fifteen years. He was a lover of nature, and spent many days in collecting specimens of natural history, gathering together from all parts of the world rare specimens of the life of the past ages. His collection of natural history specimens he presented to the University of California. These are believed to be the finest collection of fossils, shells and corals ever gathered together in the state of California.

Upon the death of Mr. Arnold his body was brought to Marshalltown and buried in the cemetery with his children, who had died in infancy.

Mr. Arnold married Miss Hannah H. Mercer November 28, 1855, at Marietta. She was of the Order of Friends, and was from Columbia County, Ohio. They had six children, three of whom died in infancy.

The active years of the life of Delos Arnold were spent in the service of the state of Iowa, and but few men of the pioneer days of Iowa did more than Mr. Arnold to place the state upon a high plane of moral integrity and honesty in public affairs and to establish its institutions, both for the caring of the unfortunate and the student bodies of Iowa in the advance positions in his day. He gave his best thought to the state University of Iowa during all the years that he was a member of its Board of Regents, and the institution grew strong and became an honor to the great state.

As a business man Mr. Arnold was successful far beyond the average man of his day in Iowa, and few citizens of his state have been more successful than he. In his death California lost one of her distinguished adopted sons and Iowa lost a faithful servant who had served the state for many years while a resident of the Prairie State, and it is with regret that we have to present to this Assembly this announcement of his death and present these memorial resolutions. Therefore be it

Resolved, That in the death of Delos Arnold the state and county in which he resided lose a worthy and upright citizen, an honorable man, and we hereby extend to the bereaved family and friends our sincere sympathy; and be it further

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be printed in the Journal of the Senate and that the Secretary of the Senate be directed to forward an engrossed copy to the family of the deceased.

W. H. ARNEY,

S. W. DEWOLF,

FREDERIC LARRABEE.

Committee.