Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography

Thousands of short American lives — soldiers, inventors, preachers, governors, novelists — each given a paragraph: born where, did what, and why anyone remembered.

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Adams, Austin

lawyer, jurist, was born May 24, 1826, in Andover, Vt. life is interwoven with the educational history of Vermont and Iowa. Eight generations before him his grandfathers without a break have been presidents of educational institutions where they lived.

He graduated from Dartmouth college, and from Harvard Law school. He was a prominent educator; president of the public school board of Dubuque, Iowa; regent of the state university of Iowa; a successful lawyer and law lecturer; and judge of the supreme court of Iowa for twelve years. When chief justice he admitted the first woman to practice before the supreme court; and always insisted that the true wife and mother should enter fully into the intellectual life of her life companion. He was a man of rare literary attainments, and left a volume of poems. He died in October, 1890.

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