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CHAPMAN, William Williams, a Delegate from the Territory of Iowa;
born in Clarksburg, Marion County, Va. (now West Virginia), August 11, 1808;
attended the common schools;
studied law while serving as clerk of the court;
was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Middleton;
was one of the first settlers in Burlington, Iowa (then Michigan Territory), in 1835;
prosecuting attorney of Michigan Territory in 1836;
first district attorney when Wisconsin Territory was organized in July 1836;
after the Territory of Iowa was granted representation he was elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Congresses and served from September 10, 1838, to October 27, 1840, when his term expired by law;
moved to Agency City, an Indian village, in Wapello County, Iowa, in 1843;
elected from that county as a delegate to the first constitutional convention in Iowa City in 1844;
started across the plains to become a pioneer of Oregon in 1847;
went to California in 1848;
returned to Oregon;
member of the Oregon house of representatives;
was one of the founders of the Oregonian, the first newspaper established in the Territory;
surveyor general in 1858;
died in Portland, Oreg., on October 18, 1892;
interment in the Lone Fir Cemetery.
Bibliography
Colton, Kenneth E. W.W. Chapman, Delegate to Congress from Iowa Territory. Annals of Iowa 3rd Series, 21 (April 1938): 283-95.
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