William W. Chapman
William Williams Chapman ( born August 11, 1808 in Clarksburg, Virginia, † October 18, 1892 in Portland, Oregon ) was an American politician. Between 1838 and 1840 he represented the Iowa Territory as a delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Career
William Chapman was born in 1808 in Clarksburg in what is now West Virginia. He attended the common schools. After a subsequent study of law and qualifying as a lawyer, he began to practice in his new profession in Middleton ( Virginia). In 1835 he moved to what was then Michigan Territory. He was one of the first settlers in Burlington, now part of Iowa. In 1836 he was a prosecutor in Michigan and then in Wisconsin Territory.
Politically, Chapman was a member of the Democratic Party. When the new Iowa Territory was granted a Congress representative, Chapman became the first delegate of the new territory in the Congress in Washington DC selected. This mandate he held from 10 September 1838 to 27 October 1840. In Congress, he was like all the delegates not to vote. Due to the legal requirements of its territory his term ended in October 1840 and not at the end of term of the Congress on March 3, 1841. His mandate fell on 28 October 1840 Augustus C. Dodge.
1843 Chapman moved into the Wapello County, Iowa Territory. In 1844 he was a delegate to the first Constitutional Convention for Iowa, which was held in Iowa City. 1847 Chapman left Iowa; he first moved to Oregon in 1848 to California, where then broke out the gold rush. Later he returned to Portland, Oregon, where he worked as a lawyer. In 1849 he was a deputy in the Territorial House of Representatives. He also helped build the infrastructure of the city of Portland and the Oregonian, he founded the first newspaper in the Oregon Territory. In 1853, Chapman moved to Fort Umpqua in Southern Oregon. There he ran a ranch livestock. But he kept his law office in Portland. During the so-called Rogue River War (1855-1856), a local Indian War, Chapman was lieutenant colonel of militia. In 1857 he moved to Eugene. Between 1857 and 1861 he was director of land surveying in his field. During this time, Oregon in 1859 an official state of the United States.
Following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President Chapman resigned from his post, as he stood in opposition to the new federal government and the Republican Party. In the following years he lived again in Portland, where he worked as a lawyer and railway expansion promoted. In 1868 he was elected to the House of Representatives from Oregon. There he made for a government grant of $ 30,000 to purchase and operate a steam ship that was used in the mouth of the Columbia River as a pilot boat to increase vessel traffic and thus the trade in this region. William Chapman died on October 18, 1892 in Portland. He was married in 1832 to Margaret Ingraham, with whom he had seven children.