THOMAS MITCHELL was born in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, March 3, 1816. He was reared on a farm and had but a common school education. In 1840 he came to Iowa and first made his home in Jefferson County but in 1844 came to Fort Des Moines and obtained permission of Captain Allen, its commander, to build a log cabin on Camp Creek for the entertainment of travelers. It was the first public house in the upper Des Moines valley. The country was then occupied by the Indians and the Fox chief, Poweshiek had a village on the Skunk River where Colfax stands, which was the home of more than a thousand members of that tribe. Mr. Mitchell was a warm friend of the chief. In 1857 he was elected to the House of the first General Assembly which convened at Des Moines. In 1867 he founded the town of Mitchellville and a few years later secured the location at that place of a Universalist Seminary. In 1873 Mr. Mitchell was elected to the State Senate, serving four years. He was a radical abolitionist, kept a station on the “Underground Railroad” and was always ready to entertain John Brown with his escaping slaves on their way to freedom in Canada and convey them to the next station. Mr. Mitchell was a man of broad and liberal views, large benevolence and great public spirit. He was of the best type of the pioneers who laid the foundation for the future greatness of the State. He died on the 14th of July, 1894.
WILLIAM O. MITCHELL is a native of Iowa, born in Van Buren County, April 4, 1846. At the age of sixteen he enlisted in Company C, Thirteenth Iowa Volunteers, serving three years. During that time he was eight months a prisoner confined in the Andersonville stockade, Salisbury and Florence prisons, from the last of which escaped. During his term of service he participated in the Vicksburg campaign and many other engagements. After the close of the war he graduated at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, and began the study of law, being admitted to the bar in 1872. He located at Corning in Adams County and in addition to practicing law became largely engaged in farming. He has done probably more than any other one man to call public attention to the famous “Blue Grass Region” of southern Iowa as a stock country. He was in 1891 elected Representative in the House of the Twenty-fourth General Assembly and had the unusual honor of being chosen Speaker the first term of his legislative service. He was reëlected to the Twenty-fifth General Assembly, serving as a chairman of the committee of ways and means. In 1895 he was elected to the Senate, serving in the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh General Assemblies and at the extra session.
SAMUEL A. MOORE, pioneer legislator and soldier, was born at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, December 16, 1821. He was educated in the log cabins of Dearborn and Bartholomew counties, and at eight years of age became an apprentice in a printing office where he remained four years.
