Shepherd Leffler

Leffler was born on his grandfather's plantation, "Sylvia's Plain," in Washington County, Pennsylvania, near Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia). He attended private schools and was graduated from Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania, and from the law department of Jefferson College (now Washington & Jefferson College), in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1833. He was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Wheeling.

In 1835 he moved to what is now Burlington, Iowa (then a part of Michigan Territory, the next year a part of Wisconsin Territory, and the next year the initial capital of Iowa Territory). He served as member of the Iowa Territory's House of Representatives in 1839 and 1841, and on its Territorial Council from 1841 to 1843 and again in 1845.

He was the brother of Virginia Congressman Isaac Leffler.

As statehood approached, he served as the permanent president of the Iowa constitutional convention in 1844, and a member in the second convention in 1846. Upon the admission of Iowa as a state on December 28, 1846, he was elected as a Democrat to serve as one of two at-large Congressmen for the last two months of the Twenty-ninth Congress. He had also been elected to represent Iowa's 2nd congressional district in the Thirtieth Congress from 1847 to early 1849. In 1848, he defeated Whig (and future Republican) candidate Timothy Davis, then served in the Thirty-first Congress. He served as chairman of the Committee on Invalid Pensions in the Thirty-first Congress. In all, he served in Congress from December 28, 1846, to March 3, 1851.