Representative Charles Cummins Horton View All Years

CHARLES CUMMINS HORTON was born at Goshen, Orange County, New York, January 13, 1839, and died at his home in Marshalltown, Iowa, April 21, 1916. He came with his parents to Muscatine, Iowa, in 1848. In 1850 they removed to a farm two miles from town. He attended country school, but in 1857 he returned to New York state and entered Delaware Collegiate Institute, from which he was graduated in 1859. He enlisted at Muscatine in July, 1861, as a private in Company A, Second Iowa Cavalry. He was commissioned second lieutenant in August and first lieutenant in November, 1861. In June, 1862, he was promoted to captain, in September, 1863, to major, and in September, 1864, to lieutenant-colonel of his regiment. He was mustered out in September, 1865. He was the last commander of his regiment. His military career was active and he exhibited capacity as a commander. After the war he went to Alabama and engaged in coal mining, but it proving unprofitable, he returned to Iowa in 1866 and began farming, specializing in small fruits and fine stock, especially horses. Later, for several years he was in the abstract business in Muscatine with John Kemble. He served as a trustee of the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home at Davenport, served as a special agent of the United States Land Office, and for fifteen years was a special examiner for the United States Pension Bureau. In 1873 he was elected representative from Muscatine County, served in the Fifteenth General Assembly, and was returned to the Sixteenth. He introduced the bill creating the Institution for the Feeble-Minded at Glenwood. He was a prominent candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress in the Second District in 1880, when Major Farwell was nominated on the one hundred and twenty-fifth ballot. He was made commandant of the Iowa Soldiers’ Home at Marshalltown in November, 1897, and was reappointed at the end of each four-year term, resigning April 4, 1916, because of failing health. He gave the Home a very efficient administration, and was popular with the inmates and the public.