Purchase” in 1836, locating at Bentonsport, in Van Buren County. Here the son assisted in the work of the farm, attending the public school in the winter. He began to read law at the early age of thirteen and in 1847 walked to Keosauqua and procured a place in the law office of Wright and Knapp. After a few years he became a partner in the firm and when twenty-four was elected prosecuting attorney. In 1859 he was elected to the House of the Eighth General Assembly and was appointed chairman of the judiciary committee. When the Civil War began he was commissioned major of the Third Cavalry and reached the rank of colonel in 1804. In June of that year he was appointed by President Lincoln Judge of the United States District Court for Arkansas. He served in that position until 1891 when he was appointed Judge of the United States Circuit Court for the District of Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado. He has rendered many important and far-reaching decisions affecting the rights of the common people and especially protecting laborers from oppression of powerful corporations. In his official capacity he is above the influence which wealth and power too often combine to accomplish selfish purposes.
TIMOTHY J. CALDWELL, pioneer physician, was born in North Carolina, in 1839, growing to manhood on a farm and acquiring his early education in the common schools of his native State. In 1853 he removed to Iowa, settling at Redfield in Dallas County, and three years later began the study of medicine. Later he entered the Medical College at Keokuk, from which he was graduated in the class of 1861. He located at Adel where he began to practice medicine. In 1864 he was appointed surgeon of the Twenty-third Iowa Volunteer Infantry, serving until the close of the war. He then spent a year in study at Philadelphia and another in Bellevue Hospital in New York. In 1891 he took post-graduate work in New York and gave one winter to study at New Orleans. He has served as president of the State Medical Society of Iowa. In politics Dr. Caldwell is a Republican and in 1881 was elected Representative in the Nineteenth General Assembly. At the close of his term he was elected to the Senate from the District composed of the counties of Audubon, Guthrie and Dallas, where he served by reëlection in the Twentieth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second and Twenty-third General Assemblies. Dr. Caldwell was president of the company which built the railroad from Waukee to Adel and has always been interested in the growth of his home town.
AMBROSE A. CALL, one of the earliest pioneers of Kossuth County, was born in Huron County, Ohio, June 9, 1833. He was educated in the common schools of Indiana and left home at the age of fifteen. In the spring of 1854 he came to Iowa, journeying from Iowa City over the wild
