History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/Lewis Todhunter
LEWIS TODHUNTER was born in Fayette County, Ohio, April 6, 1817. He received his education at the public schools of Ohio and Indiana. Late in life he studied law and was admitted to the bar of Ohio. In 1850 he removed to Warren County, Iowa, making his permanent home in Indianola, where he continued to practice law. He served the county several terms as auditor, treasurer and prosecuting attorney, but his most distinguished public work was as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1857, which framed the present Constitution of the State. He was also one of the founders of the Republican party of Iowa, having been previously a Free Soil Whig. The reform with which Mr. Todhunter was most closely identified was the suppression of intemperance. His labor in this cause began in 1840 upon the organization of the Washington Society and he has been a member of nearly all of the temperance organizations of Iowa. He was chairman of the committee which framed the bill which became known as the Clark law. He several times canvassed the State in behalf of the cause of prohibition and his name is imperishably associated with the history of the temperance movement for more than sixty years. Although exempt by age from military service during the Civil War, he tendered his services and was appointed quartermaster of the Forty-eighth Iowa Infantry in 1804, with the rank of captain, and was attached to the command of General Ord. After Mr. Todhunter retired from practice in 1890 he wrote a history of the Iowa temperance legislation. He died at Indianola, January 29, 1902.