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Bographies Beginning with the Letter V

 

History of Iowa
Vol IV
1903

WILLIAM VANDEVER was born in Baltimore, Maryland, March 31, 1817. He was educated in the schools of Philadelphia. In 1839 he went to Rock Island where he engaged in surveying public lands. For several years he was editor of the Northwestern Advertiser. In 1851 he removed to Dubuque and was employed in the office of the Surveyor-General. He afterwards became a partner of Ben M. Samuels in the practice of law. In 1856 he was a delegate to the convention which organized the Republican party of Iowa. In 1858 he was nominated for Representative in Congress in the Second District and elected over his former law partner, B. M. Samuels. He was reelected in 1860 but resigned his seat in 1861 to enter the military service and was appointed colonel of the Ninth Iowa Infantry. Mr. Vandever commanded a brigade at the Battle of Pea Ridge and won promotion to Brigadier-General. He served through the war with distinction in the armies of Grant and Sherman and was brevetted Major-General. Some years after the close of the war he removed to California where he was again elected to Congress. He died on the 23d of July, 1893.

FRANCIS VARGA, a Hungarian noble and patriot of the Revolution of 1849, was for more than fifty years a resident and citizen of Iowa. When the Hungarian procisional government under Louis Kossuth was established Mr. Varga and Judge Advocate-General, serving until that government was overthrown by the combined armies of Austria and Russia. Then he with other patriots came to America and forty of them under the lead of Louis Ujhazy, a distinguished officer under Kossuth, came to Iowa and founded a colony in Decatur County which was named New Buda. Other Hungarian patriots who were compelled to leave their own country joined the colony and became citizens of Iowa. Here Mr. Varga and his companions made their permanent home and took a deep interest in the freedom of a republican government which welcomed them as citizens. When the Civil War came they were a unit in support of the Government which wiped out the blot of slavery. Mr. Varga and many of the Hungarian patriots joined the Union army and again fought for freedom. He held many official positions in his new home and was a great admirer of the American Government. He had been admitted to the bar in Hungary in 1840 and practiced his profession for sixty-one years. He died at Leon on the 5th of April, 1902.