Capt. W. A. Warren(1812-1884)
WARREN
Posted By: Anne Hermann (email)
Date: 5/22/2008 at 16:51:00
Maquoketa Excelsior
March 1, 1884THE LATE CAPTAIN W. A. WARREN
Obituary.We quote from the Bellevue Leader the following concerning Capt. W. A. Warren, whose death was briefly announced by the Excelsior last week. We are also indebted to Major Evans for the above likeness of the captain:
“Capt. Warren, according to his own story, was born in Fayette county, Kentucky, August 23, 1812, where his boyhood days were passed. In 1826 he went to Callaway county, Missouri, where he resided until 1831, when he enlisted for the Black Hawk war, and came to Galena with his command, where he was mustered out of service in the winter of 1833. He then engaged in merchandising and mining for a time; then sold out and accepted a clerkship under General Taylor at the then pioneer military post of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. From there he removed to Dubuque, and then to Bellevue in 1836, where he continued to reside until his death.
He was appointed Sheriff of Jackson county by the Governor of the territory in 1839, and held the office seven years. On the first day of April, 1840, Sheriff Warren and Col. Cox led a sheriff’s posse in an attack on Brown and his bandits, who were defeated and driven from the town after a sanguinary struggle in which several of the combatants on both sides were killed and wounded. In 1849 he hanged Jackson, the only culprit ever executed in this county according to law. It was about this time, too, that he filled the office of sergeant at arms during one session of the territorial legislature, which then assembled in Burlington.
In 1857 he was elected as member of the constitutional convention, and served with distinction in that body of able men. In 1862 he was appointed a post quartermaster in the army, and for a time acted as chief quartermaster of the army of the Tennessee. During his term of office he disbursed over seventy millions of dollars for the government, and controlled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government property and supplies. At one time his enemies thought to get him out of the army. They preferred charges against him and had him arrested and court marshaled, but the court acquitted him. He was honorably discharged from the army in September, 1865, receiving a receipt in full from the government.
Soon after his return home from the army he was elected a member of the Board of Supervisors in this county. In 1870 the city council of Bellevue sent him to Des Moines, with several others of our prominent citizens to obtain a land grant to aid in the building of the Chicago, Clinton & Dubuque railroad. The project succeeded, the land grant was obtained, and the road built. He held the office of justice of the peace for nearly thirty years, was mayor of the city several times, and filled at different times all the township and city offices. He was twice a presidential elector, and a member of the convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln at Chicago in 1860. He cast his first ballots in that convention for Edward Bates, of Missouri, but finally dropped Bates and voted for Lincoln. He attended nearly all the whig and republican state conventions ever held in Iowa, and was an acknowledged leader of the republican party in the state ever since its organization in 1855. When Grimes canvassed the state for governor in 1856 Warren accompanied him, and traveled all over the state with him in a buggy, sometimes making speeches for that able man, when he was sick or indisposed. He supported both Grimes and Harlan for the senate and both gentlemen owed much to his efforts in their behalf, and both were his warm personal friends.”
Capt. Warren fell on an icy sidewalk some weeks before his death, and never recovered from the shock. He was married three times, and leaves a widow and three children. He was buried as he requested without pomp or parade by the Grand Army Post. By his request he was laid to rest on his left side, because he had bad dreams when he slept on his back.
As a citizen Capt. Warren was patriotic and public spirited. An ardent Republican, he delighted in taking a hand in the game of practical politics, and was remarkably shrewd and “far-seeing, though singularly devoid of ambition for himself, preferring apparently the interests of his friends above his own.
As a man he was brave, generous and kind. Prosperity did not unduly uplift him, and adversity, which was a constant guest during the later years of his life, could not cast him down. Cheerful, keen of observation, with a tenacious memory, and the faculty of graphically relating what he saw and heard, he was an interesting person to meet. He was benevolent to a fault, and had the large love for his fellows that distinguished Ben Adhem, whose name “led all the rest.”
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