In 1870 Colonel Scott was appointed Assessor of Internal Revenue, holding the office until it was discontinued. He has been intimately associated with the industrial progress of the State for more than a quarter of a century and has been president of the State Agricultural Society, of the State Road Improvement Association, the Improved Stock Breeders' Association and delegate to the National Agricultural Congress. He was for many years an able contributor to agricultural journals. In 1885 he was again elected to the State Senate where he was the author of the bill to establish a State Board of Control for the various public institutions. He has several times come within a few votes of the nomination for Congress in Republican conventions. Colonel Scott is the author of several books. In 1849 he published a narrative of the imprisonment of himself and companions during the Mexican War. In 1895 he published a “Genealogy of Hugh Scott” and his descendants, and the “Story of the Thirty-second Iowa Volunteers.” In 1896 Colonel Scott was elected president of the “Pioneer Lawmakers' Association.”
WILLIAM A. SCOTT was born in Crawford County, Indiana, December 18, 1818. When Fort Des Moines was established at the Raccoon Forks in 1843, Mr. Scott came with the troops, having contracted to furnish provisions for the garrison. He remained at the fort three years and when the Indians were removed to Kansas he accompanied them to their reservation as Indian trader. When the public lands in the vicinity of Des Moines came into market, Mr. Scott returned and entered five hundred acres on the east side of the river including most of the ground upon which East Des Moines has been built. He erected his log cabin where the city gas works stand near East Market street and established a ferry across the Raccoon River near its mouth. He built the first bridge across the Des Moines River and laid out the city of East Des Moines on his farm. Mr. Scott was active in securing the removal of the Capital from Iowa City and in procuring the location of the State House on the east side of the river. In order to comply with the requirement of the State to furnish a Capitol building and grounds free of expense, Mr. Scott donated most of the land upon which the permanent State House stands, the “Governor's Square” and other ground amounting to fifteen acres. He then became one of a company which erected the first State House at a cost of nearly $40,000. In the accomplishment of these enterprises Mr. Scott had encumbered his real estate to raise the large sums of money required. In 1857 came the most disastrous financial depression of the century; banks and thousands of business houses went down in widespread ruin. Good money disappeared from circulation and real estate could not be sold. Generous, public spirited “Alex. Scott” was caught in the flood-tide of ruin with his vast holding of real estate mortgaged and no income to tide him over. He started for the Pike's Peak gold field
