Representative Jerome Southwick Woodward View All Years
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Jerome Southwick Woodward
Buchanan County
Born at Middlebury, Schoharie county, New York, on the 5th of February, 1830. The father of Jerome, who was a farmer, but accustomed to teach school in the winters, moved to Tunbridge, Orange county, Vermont, when the son was seven years old. The lad worked on the farm and attended school until he was fifteen, when he fitted for college at Kimball Union Academy, Meriden, New Hampshire, but never entered. Mr. Woodward came to the west in 1850, and taught school and read law in Janesville, Wisconsin, for three years. He was admitted to the bar in Rock county in 1853, and removed to Independence, Buchanan county, Iowa, in September of the same year, his entire capital consisting of six law books and twelve and a half cents. He has practiced law, most of the time alone, for twenty-three years, rarely turning aside from legal pursuits, even for a few months. The very few offices he has held he was strongly urged to accept. When he settled in Iowa there was a prosecuting attorney in every county, instead of one, as now, for each judicial district, and Mr. Woodward held that office for Buchanan county the second year that he was in the state. In the autumn of 1857 he was elected to the lower house of the general assembly, and took a prominent part in its discussions and more solid work. He was a delegate to the national convention which re-nominated Mr. Lincoln in 1864. He has been solicited to accept the nomination for different offices, but has firmly withheld his consent. His tastes are for the legal profession, and in that he is second to no man in the district. Mr. Woodward is an Odd-Fellow, but has never aspired to position in the order. He is a member of no church, but has a preference for the Universalist doctrine. He was a Whig, then a republican. On the 6th of December, 1855, he was united in marriage to Miss Caroline A. Morse, of Independence.
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