This gentleman, the second Governor of the State, was born at New London, Connecticut, October 1, 1812, and lived in that State until the spring of 1828, when his father’s family came West and settled on a farm a few miles from St. Louis, Missouri. Here he remained until 1830, when he entered as clerk in a commission house in Galena, Illinois, and during the Black Hawk war he was an officer in an artillery company organized for the protection of that place.

     At the close of the war he entered as a student of the Illinois College at Jacksonville, Illinois, remaining about two years, leaving to commence the study of law which he finished under Charles S. Hempstead, Esq., then a prominent lawyer at Galena. In 1836 he was admitted to practice his profession in the courts of the Territory of Wisconsin, then embracing Iowa, and in the same year located in Dubuque, being the first lawyer who practiced in that place. At the organization of the Territorial Legislature in 1838 he was elected to represent the northern portion of the Territory in the Legislative Council, of which he was chairman of the committee on judiciary, one of the important committees of the Council. At the second session of that body he was elected president thereof, was again elected a member of the Council in 1845, which was held in Iowa City, and was again president of the same. In 1844 he was elected one of the delegates to the first constitutional convention of the State of Iowa, and was chairman of the committee on incorporations. In 1848, in connection with Hon. Charles Mason and W. G. Woodward, he was appointed commissioner by the Legislature to revise the laws of the State of Iowa, and which revision, with a few amendments, was adopted as the code of Iowa in 1851. In 1850 he was elected Governor of the State of Iowa, receiving 13,486 votes, against 11,403 for James L. Thompson, 575 for William P. Clarke, and 11 scattering.

     The vote was canvassed on the 4th of December, and a committee was appointed to inform the Governor elect that the two Houses of the Legislature were ready to receive him in joint convention, in order that he might receive the oath prescribed by the Constitution. After receiving formal notification, Governor Hempstead, accompanied by Governor Briggs, the judges of the Supreme Court and the officers of State, entered the hall of the House, and having been duly announced, the Governor elect delivered his inaugural message, after which the oath was administered by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

     This session of the Legislature passed a number of important acts which were approved by Governor Hempstead, and formed fifty-two new counties, most of them having the same names and boundaries to-day. These new counties were: Adair, Union, Adams, Cass, Montgomery, Mills, Pottawatomie, Bremer, Butler, Grundy, Hardin, Franklin, Wright, Risley, Yell, Greene, Guthrie, Carroll, Fox, Sac, Crawford, Shelby, Harrison, Monona, Ida, Waukau, Humboldt, Pocahontas, Buena Vista, Fayette, Cherokee, Plymouth, Allamakee, Chickasaw, Floyd, Cerro Gordo, Hancock, Kossuth, Palo Alto, Clay, O’Brien, Sioux, Howard, Mitchell, Worth, Winnebago, Winneshiek, Bancroft, Emmett, Dickinson, Osceola and Buncombe. The last-named county was so called under peculiar circumstances. The Legislature was composed of a large majority favoring stringent corporation laws, and the liability of individual stockholders for corporate debts. This sentiment, on account of the agitation of railroad enterprises then beginning, brought a large number of prominent men to the capital. To have an effect upon the Legislature, they organized a “lobby legislature,” in which these questions were ably discussed. They elected as Governor Verplank Van Antwerp, who delivered to this self-constituted body a lengthy message, in which he sharply criticized the regular general assembly. Some of the members of the latter were in the habit of making long and useless speeches, much to the hindrance of business. To these he especially referred, charging them with speaking “for buncombe,” and recommended that as their lasting memorial, a county should be called by that name. This suggestion was readily seized upon by the Legislature, and the county of “Buncombe” was created with few dissenting voices. By act of the General Assembly approved September 11, 1862, the name was changed to “Lyon,” in honor of General Nathaniel Lyon, who was killed in the civil war.

     Governor Hempstead’s message to the fourth General Assembly, December, 1852, stated, among other things, that the population of the State was by the federal census 192,214, and that the State census showed an increase for one year of 37,786. He also stated that the resources of the State for the coming two years would be sufficient to cancel all that part of the funded debt which was payable at its option.

     By 1854 the State had fully recovered from the depression produced by the bad season of 1851, and in 1854 and 1855 the immigration from the East was unprecedented. For miles and miles, day after day, the prairies of Illinois were lined with cattle and wagons, pushing on toward Iowa. At Peoria, one gentleman said that during a single month, 1743 wagons passed through that place, all for Iowa. The Burlington Telegraph said “Twenty thousand immigrants have passed through the city within the last thirty days, and they are still crossing the Mississippi at the rate of 600 a day.”

     Governor Hempstead’s term expired in the latter part of 1854, and he returned to Dubuque, where the following year he was elected county judge. This position he held twelve years, and in 1867 he retired on account of impaired health. He lived, however, till February 16, 1883, when at his home in Dubuque he closed his record on earth. He was a useful and active man, and deserves a prominent place in the esteem of Iowans.

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