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William B. Allison

    With a broad and breezy style of statemanship that at once stamps him as a product of the great West, Senator Allison, of Iowa, must be enrolled among those eminent Americans whose abilities have forced them into prominence from the obscurity of the farm.
 
     His early years were spent on the farm at Perry, Wayne County, Ohio, where he was born March 2, 1829.  He was educated at Allegheny College, Pennsylvania, and at the Western Reserve College, Ohio, after which he took up the study of law, and practiced his profession in Ohio until 1857.  He then went to Dubuque, Iowa, which city has since been his home.  He was a delegate to the Chicago convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1860, and in the following year became a member of the staff of the governor of Iowa, in which capacity he rendered valuable service in raising troops and organizing volunteer regiments for the war.  In 1862 Mr. Allison was elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress as a Republican, and was re-elected to the three succeeding Congresses, serving continuously as a member of that body from December 7, 1863, until March 3, 1871.  In 1873 he was elected United States Senator to succeed James Harlan, and he has been three times re-elected.  His present term of service will expire in 1897.  Senator Allison has long been recognized as one of the strongest men in the Republican party, a natural leader and organizer, combining the shrewdness of the politician with the broad- minded patriotism of the statesman, and with personal influence second to that of no man in Washington.
He has been a prominent candidate for the presidential nomination in more than one Republican convention.

~Famous American Men and Women, A Complete Portrait Gallery of Celebrated People Whose Names are Prominent in the Annals of the Times, edited by Stanley Waterloo & John W. Kanson, Jr., 1895;  bio. pg 16, photo pg 17

~transcribed by Sharyl Ferrall for Dubuque County IAGenWeb, May 2010 

 

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