Henry DODGE, Congress, WI (1782-1867)

DODGE, Henry, (half-brother of Lewis Fields Linn, father of Augustus Caesar Dodge), a Delegate and a Senator from Wisconsin; born in Vincennes, Ind., October 12, 1782; received a limited schooling; moved to Missouri in 1796 and settled at Ste. Genevieve; sheriff of Cape Girardeau County in 1808; moved to Galena, Ill., and operated a lead mine; moved to Wisconsin in 1827, then part of Michigan Territory, and settled near the present site of Dodgeville; served in the Black Hawk and other Indian wars; was commissioned major of United States Rangers 1832; left the Army as colonel of the First United States Dragoons 1836; appointed Governor of the Territory of Wisconsin 1836-1841; elected as a Democratic Delegate to the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1841-March 3, 1845); was not a candidate for renomination in 1844, having again accepted the appointment of Governor of the Territory of Wisconsin, and served from 1845 until 1848; upon the admission of Wisconsin as a State into the Union in 1848 was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate; reelected in 1851 and served from June 8, 1848, to March 3, 1857; chairman, Committee on Commerce (Thirty-fourth Congress); declined the appointment of Governor of Washington Territory by President Franklin Pierce in 1857; retired to private life; died in Burlington, Des Moines County, Iowa, June 19, 1867; interment in Aspen Grove Cemetery.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Clark, James I. Henry Dodge, Frontiersman. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1957; Pelzer, Louis. Henry Dodge. Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1911.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present