Stiles S.
Carpenter was the Clerk of the First District Court of the County, organized
at Bloomfield on the twenty-third day of September, 1844, being appointed as
such by Judge Charles Mason. He took a prominent part in the organization of the
County and its early affairs. He was, perhaps, the first lawyer in that part of
the Territory, having come there at a very early day. He was the first
prosecuting attorney of the County after its organization, in 1844. Captain
Hosea B. Horn, speaking of him in his series of articles touching the early
history of Davis County, appearing in the 1864 old Annals of Iowa, says of him:
At the time of the organization of the county,
Stiles S. Carpenter, Esq., held the office of Clerk of the District Court of our
county, by appointment of Honorable Charles Mason and under the law of the
Territory had considerable to do with setting the machinery of the new county in
motion. The persons elected at the first election received their certificates
and were sworn and regularly inducted in office by him. He was from Vermont, a
gentleman of public spirit and private enterprise. He was a colonel of the Iowa
militia in early days and held the office of District Clerk from the settlement
of the county until after the adoption of the State Constitution, and then
refused a nomination tendered him by a Democratic county convention for the
Clerkship and accepted that of Prosecuting Attorney. To this latter office he
was triumphantly elected over his shrewd
competitor, Powers Richey, a very prominent citizen of our county in the days of
"Jimmer." The Colonel removed to Texas in 1857, where he died soon
afterwards.
The little town of Stiles
or Stilesville, as it was called, was named after him. As the result of an
inquiry made many years ago, I was informed that his mother was a Stiles,
belonging to a branch of my own family.
By
EDWARD H. STILES
DES MOINES
THE HOMESTEAD PUBLISHING CO.
1916
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