My Genealogy Hound

JOHNSTONE, EDWARD; this distinguished citizen of Keokuk was born in Westmoreland Co., Penn., July 4, 1815, where he received an education that fitted him for the study of law, which he practiced in Greensburg, that county; at the age of 22, he was admitted to the bar, and “started West to grow up with the country;” he first settled at Mineral Point, Wis., where he remained until the fall of that year, when he went to Burlington and served as clerk in the Territorial Legislature; during that session he was appointed one of three commissioners to collect testimony relating to the titles to the half-breed lands; the discharge of this duty called him to settle at Montrose, in the spring of 1838, where he remained until January, 1839, then removed to Fort Madison, after the law was repealed, under which he was appointed. Mr. Johnstone and Gen. H. T. Reid were employed by the St. Louis Land Company, who had been speculating in half-breed titles, to institute proceedings to secure a division of the lands under the partition laws of the Territory, which resulted in the Decree Title, under which the titles to the lands are now held; in 1839, Mr. Johnstone was elected to the Legislature, and was chosen to preside over the deliberations of the House, and, in 1840, was elected to the Council. When James K. Polk succeeded to the Presidency, was appointed United States Attorney for the Judicial District of Iowa; in 1851, when the Board of County Commissioners was abolished, he was elected to be County Judge of Lee Co., and made the most efficient guardian of the interests of the taxpayers to whom the management of the public affairs of the county were ever entrusted. He was elected to the Constitutional Convention on the ticket with Col. Wm. Patterson, and took a prominent part in the deliberations of that body; in 1868, he removed to Keokuk to become Cashier of the Keokuk Savings Bank, a position which he is still filling to the satisfaction of the patrons of that bank. In all the relations of life, public or private, Judge Johnstone has but few, if any, superiors; he is a public-spirited, enterprising citizen, and one whose honesty and fidelity to public and private trusts is unimpeachable; he is an excellent scholar, a close reader and deep thinker; is eminently qualified by nature and education to be a leader in the affairs of State and nation. Judge Johnstone married in April, 1849, in St. Louis Co., Mo., Miss Elizabeth V. Richards; has had four children.