ENGLE, Paul H.

ENGLE, Paul H. (Chester, Delaware County, PA, 1808--St. Louis, MO, Feb. 7, 1844) Engle, an attorney, moved to Dubuque in 1836 when the region was part of the Michigan Territory. An election was held to establish a territorial legislature and select a congressional delegate. The Iowa District, the portion of the Wisconsin Territory west of the MISSISSIPPI RIVER, sent twelve delegates.

Engle, although he had only been in the county for five months, was elected as one of Dubuque County's five representatives to the first Legislative Assembly. In the fall of 1836, he was elected Speaker for the 1st session of the legislature. (1) He was also appointed Colonel of the territorial militia by Governor Henry Dodge. As a member of the Assembly, he was part of a commission which made the selection and purchase of the collection for the first library of the Wisconsin Territory, funded by a $5,000 appropriation from Congress. (2) After the separation of Iowa from Wisconsin, the library, located in Iowa, became the property of the Iowa Territory.

Engle's Dubuque delegation had been elected on a platform of pursuing a capitol near Dubuque, on the western bank of the Mississippi River, and attempting to forestall a division of the territory. They were unsuccessful when the Des Moines delegation broke with them and secured a temporary capitol at Burlington. After the failure of their initial platform, Engle was one of the delegates to the 1837 Burlington Convention which laid out recommendations for a new Iowa Territory composed of the western half of the Wisconsin Territory. In June of 1838, the Iowa Territory was officially established by Congress as a separate entity from the Wisconsin Territory.

Just days after separation, Engle announced he would run for delegate to the 26th United States Congress to succeed his friend George Wallace JONES, who had been elected the representative of the Wisconsin Territory for the previous congress. Engle was aided by allies of Jones in the local press, which accused his main Democratic rival, William W. Chapman, of being unsupportive of the Democratic agenda in Washington, D.C.

Engel was seen as a strong favorite to win the election that summer, but his campaign was halted by an incident in August, when he nearly drowned in the Wapsipinicon River. His life was saved, but he was sick from the incident and unable to campaign for the final weeks before the election, held on September 10, 1838. He ultimately fell 36 votes short of Chapman.

Engle left the Iowa Territory for Missouri, settling in St. Louis. In July of 1839, he was one of the co-signers on a letter of support for Missouri's Democratic U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton In 1841, he was appointed Judge of Common Pleas for St. Louis County by Governor Thomas Reynolds. In 1843, Engel along with other "northern" Democrats supportive of Benton and former President Martin Van Buren started a partisan newspaper, the St. Louis Standard to advocate their politics. (3)

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Source:

1. Oldt, Franklin T., ed. (1911). History of Dubuque County, Iowa. Chicago: Goodspeed Historical Association. pp. 251, 323–326, 448.

2. Heg, J. E. (ed.) / The Blue Book of the State of Wisconsin,p. 458 (1882)

3. "Famous People From Dubuque," Wikipedia, Online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_H._Engle