History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/Nathaniel A. Merrill
NATHANIEL A. MERRILL was born in Copenhagen, Lewis County, New York, in 1829. He was reared on a farm, attending the common schools winters and assisting in the work of the farm during summers. He taught several terms and then studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1855 and the following spring removed to Iowa, locating at De Witt, then the county-seat of Clinton. He soon acquired a good practice but when the Civil War began he raised a company and entered the service as captain of Company D, Twenty-sixth Regiment of Infantry. He was severely wounded at the Battle of Arkansas Post. Mr. Merrill was mayor of De Witt two years, was a Democratic member of the House of the Fourteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-sixth General Assemblies and a member of the Senate of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth General Assemblies. He took a prominent part in the revision of the Code of 1873. Mr. Merrill was a commissioner of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home and president of the First National Bank of De Witt for several years. He died at his home in De Witt on the 31st of December, 1898.