Cyrus Leland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cyrus Leland Sr. (September 9, 1810 – June 4, 1890) was a lawyer from Sauk City, Wisconsin and Troy, Kansas who served a single one-year term in the Wisconsin State Assembly representing Sauk County as a Democrat;[1] and served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Leland was born September 9, 1810, in Grafton, Massachusetts, son of Cyrus and Betsy (Kimball) Leland. He studied at Leicester Academy and Amherst before his freshman year at Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1832. He read the law in the Worcester law firm of former governor John Davis and future governor Emory Washburn, and moved to Peoria, Illinois, where he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law. In 1835 he was appointed a justice of the peace, and married Sarah Ann Howard.[2]
In the summer of 1839, Leland and Sarah moved to Prairie du Sac in the Wisconsin Territory with their daughter, farming and conducting mercantile business. In 1843 he built a sawmill in the nearby Town of Honey Creek, around which a settlement coalesced which was dubbed Leland, Wisconsin in his honor. (It would continue to exist into the 21st century.) After two years, the family moved to Sauk City,[3] where he would resume a legal practice.
Public office in Wisconsin
In 1840, he served as postmaster in Prairie du Sac. When Sauk County had its first election in 1844, Leland was elected as a school commissioner (equivalent to a school board member) and as a justice of the peace.[4][5] In 1848, he was elected to the Assembly from Sauk County for the 1849 session (2nd Wisconsin Legislature), to succeed Delando Pratt (a fellow Democrat). When he took office in the Assembly in January 1849, he was reported as being 38 years old, from Massachusetts, and having been in Wisconsin nine years.[6]
In the spring of 1849 he was elected town clerk of the newly created Township of Prairie du Sac.[7] He was succeeded in the Assembly by Caleb Crosswell (another Democrat). In November 1850, he became a county supervisor and chaired the county board.[8] During this time he also served as paymaster and colonel in the state militia.