History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/Maturin L. Fisher
MATURIN L. FISHER was born in Danville, Vermont, on the 10th of June, 1807. He was a graduate of Brown University and studied law, but never practiced. He was the Democratic candidate for Congress in the Worcester District of Massachusetts in 1836. In 1849 he removed to Iowa, settling on a farm in Clayton County, making that his permanent home. In 1852 he was elected to the State Senate from a district embracing fifteen counties of northeastern Iowa. Two years later he was elected President of the Senate of the Fifth General Assembly and presided over the joint convention which first elected James Harlan to the United States Senate. At the extra session of 1856 Mr. Fisher was chosen President of the Senate by a unanimous vote. In April, 1857, he was elected Superintendent of Public Instruction on the Democratic ticket, although the Republicans had carried the State at the preceding August election by more than 7,000 majority. Mr. Fisher was elected one of the trustees of the Mount Pleasant Insane Asylum in 1860 and served as president of the board until 1872. In 1801 he was appointed to act with the State Treasurer to negotiate the sale of State bonds for the War and Defense Fund. In 1863 Mr. Fisher was nominated for Governor by the Democratic State Convention but declined. He was one of the commissioners who superintended the erection of the Hospital for the Insane at Independence and the State House at Des Moines and was universally esteemed as one of the most useful public men of Iowa. He died on the 5th of February, 1879.