American politician (1854?1927)
Solomon Francis Prouty
(January 17, 1854 – July 16, 1927) was an academic, lawyer and politician, serving as a one-term state legislator,
Iowa trial court
judge, and a two-term
Republican
U.S. Representative
from
Iowa's 7th congressional district
.
Life
[
edit
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Born in
Delaware, Ohio
in 1854, Prouty was taken as an infant by his father when he moved to
Marion County, Iowa
, in 1855, a few years after the last of
Indian Removal
. There he attended newly founded local public schools. He went to state colleges:
Central College
(then known as the Central University of Iowa) in
Pella, Iowa
from 1870 to 1873;
Simpson College
in
Indianola, Iowa
from 1873 to 1875; and graduated from Central College in 1877.
Prouty taught for several years, serving as a professor of
Latin
at Central College from 1878 to 1882.
[1]
He entered politics, joining the Republican Party. In 1879, he was elected to one two-year term in the
Iowa House of Representatives
, serving in 1880 and 1881.
He later studied law, was
admitted to the bar
in 1882, and commenced practice in Pella. He moved to the state capital of
Des Moines
, in 1891 and practiced law there. He served as a judge of the district court in 1899.
Wanting to participate in national politics, Prouty ran for election to Congress from Iowa in 1902, 1904, and 1908,, but was defeated each time. But in 1910, Prouty won the Republican nomination for the U.S. House for Iowa's 7th congressional district, and defeated his opponents in the November general election. He was re-elected two years later to his second (and last) term. In all, he served in the
Sixty-second
and
Sixty-third
Congresses, from March 4, 1911 to March 3, 1915.
Prouty decided against running again in 1914 and was not a candidate for nomination. Because of his initial ambivalence about running for a third term, political cartoonist
"Ding" Darling
caricatured him in several front-page cartoons in the
Des Moines Register and Leader
.
[2]
He resumed the practice of law for more than another decade. Prouty also served as trustee of the Central College. He died in
Des Moines, Iowa
on July 16, 1927. He was interred in Glendale Cemetery.
References
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edit
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This article incorporates
public domain material
from the
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress