NOTES AND COMMENT

Ex-Governor Horace Boies celebrated his eighty-sixth birthday on December 7, 1913.

The twenty-fourth annual meeting of the Iowa Library Association was held at Sioux City, October 14-16, 1913.

The fifteenth annual meeting of the Iowa State Conference of Charities and Correction was held at Sioux City, November 16-18, 1913. The principal speakers were Dean Walter T. Sumner and Dr. Graham Taylor.

The Seventh National Conference on State and Local Taxation was held October 23-25, at Buffalo, New York.

Miss Julia Robinson, formerly Librarian for the State Institutions under the Board of Control of Iowa, has been chosen Secretary of the Iowa Library Commission to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Miss Alice S. Tyler.

The Pioneer Club of Des Moines is making an effort to secure the erection of a memorial to William Alexander Scott, who built and paid for the first State-house at Des Moines, and who donated to the State a portion of the ground on which the present capitol building stands.

A bronze statue of Chief Keokuk of the Sac and Fox Indians was unveiled at Keokuk, Iowa, on October 22, 1913.

The centennial anniversary of the birth of Samuel J. Kirkwood was observed in the Memorial Hall at Marion, Iowa, on December 20, 1913, by the Robert Mitchell Post of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Woman's Relief Corps.

A memorial meeting in honor of the late John F. Lacey was held at the court house in Ottumwa on October 25, 1913.

John A. Nash, a prominent citizen of Audubon, Iowa, died on October 28, 1913. Mr. Nash was born at Des Moines in 1854, when that place was a mere village. His father was Rev. John Nash, a pioneer Baptist minister at Des Moines and later president of Des Moines College.

The fifty-ninth annual meeting of the Iowa Teachers' Association was held November 6-8, 1913, at Des Moines.

The Iowa Society of the Sons of the Revolution has renewed its annual offer of medals to the students in the high schools and colleges of Iowa who excel in the study of American history.

The Louisa County Bar Association held a memorial meeting on October 27, 1913, in memory of the late Charles A. Carpenter.

Dr. John E. Brindley has been appointed head of the Department of Applied Economics and Social Science at the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. Charles B. Williams and George H. Von Tungeln have been appointed as Assistant Professors in the same department.

A movement is on foot at Sioux City to erect a monument to the Sioux chieftain, War Eagle, whose remains are buried on a bluff near the city. The owner of the land has offered to donate the ground, and it now remains to secure the necessary funds for the monument.

The annual meetings of the American Political Science Associa tion and the American Association for Labor Legislation were held at Washington, D. C., during the holidays.

On January 5, 1914, occurred the death of James Childers at Des Moines, Iowa. Mr. Childers was born near Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1824 and took part in the uprising twenty years later which resulted in the driving of the Mormons out of that region. He was a veteran of both the Mexican War and the Civil War, and was one of the earliest settlers of Bloomfield, Iowa, to which place his father moved just before the Mexican War.

A collection of Indian arrow heads and scalping knives has been presented to the public library at Fairfield, Iowa. These relics were found near Fairfield during the past summer when a piece of timber land was being cleared and plowed for the first time. It is probable that additional discoveries will be made in the same locality.

The cities of Dayton and Springfield, Ohio, have recently adopted the city manager plan of municipal government. Much interest is being manifested in this plan throughout the country and it is probable that before another year it will be in operation in a large number of cities and towns.

A statue of Samuel J. Kirkwood, the War Governor of Iowa, has been recently installed in Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Washington, D. C. The statue, which is in bronze, is the work of Vinnie Ream Hoxie of Iowa City. Each State is entitled to place two statues in Statuary Hall, the other Iowa statue being that of James Harlan.

On October 3, 1913, occurred the death of Mrs. W. A. Wilson of Waterloo, who was one of the pioneers of north central Iowa. She came to this State in 1854, at which time, it is said, there was only one small shack on the site of the present city of Waterloo. Her husband, who died in 1899, took a prominent part in furnishing aid to the settlers at the time of the Spirit Lake Massacre.

On September 25, 1913, at a place two miles west of Lanham, Nebraska, there was unveiled a monument to mark the Oregon Trail on the Kansas-Nebraska State line. The monument was erected through the joint efforts and contributions of the Oregon Trail Memorial Association, the State of Nebraska, the people of Washington County, Kansas, and of Gage and Jefferson counties, Nebraska, and the Elizabeth Montague Chapter of D. A. R. of Beatrice, Nebraska.

The cause of history in the State of Kentucky in particular and in the entire Mississippi Valley in general suffered a distinct loss in the death of Colonel Reuben T. Durrett, which occurred on Sep

tember 16, 1913. Colonel Durrett was the founder of the Filson Club and he collected a notable library of materials on western American history-a collection which is now in the possession of the University of Chicago. The State Historical Society of Iowa profited by the generous assistance rendered by Colonel Durrett to Dr. Parish when he was preparing the biography of Robert Lucas.

IRVIN S. PEPPER

Irvin S. Pepper was born on a farm in Davis County, Iowa, on June 10, 1876. He graduated from the Southern Iowa Normal at Bloomfield and afterwards taught school for a time. Later he became secretary to Congressman Martin J. Wade, and while serving in this capacity he studied law, graduating from the Law School of George Washington University at Washington, D. C., in 1905. Returning to Iowa he was twice elected Prosecuting Attorney of Muscatine County, and it was in 1910 that he was elected Representative from the Second Congressional District of Iowa, a position to which he was reëlected two years later. Congressman Pepper died at Clinton, Iowa, on December 22, 1913.

REUBEN GOLD THWAITES

Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites was born in Massachusetts in 1853. In 1876 he removed to Madison, Wisconsin, where he took up journalistic work. Ten years later he was chosen as Secretary and Superintendent of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, a position which he held with great distinction until his death on October 22, 1913.

For his services in the field of history Dr. Thwaites will be held in grateful remembrance, not only in Wisconsin, but in the entire upper Mississippi Valley. Perhaps no other one man has done so much, as author and editor, to build up the literature of western American history. Dr. Thwaites was the author of several wellknown books dealing with various phases of Mississippi Valley history; while the volumes which he has edited are very numerous, including The Jesuit Relations (73 volumes), Early Western Travels (33 volumes), The Original Journals of Lewis and Clark (7 vol

umes), The Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin since 1888, and many others.

On two occasions Dr. Thwaites delivered addresses before the State Historical Society of Iowa: once in May, 1905, when he spoke on The Significance of the Lewis and Clark Expedition; and again in March, 1907, at which time his subject was The Romance of Mississippi Valley History. He was always generous in his counsel and encouragement, and this Society often benefited by his hearty coöperation and good will. In his death the cause of history in the Middle West has suffered a great loss.