HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
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in 1860, and Albert J. Hopkins in 1884. On April 7, 1869, George S. Bangs, of Aurora, was appointed Assistant Superintendent of the United States Railway Mail Service, and on May 3, 1871, was promoted to General Superintendent of that new and experimental branch of mail distribution. Captain Maurice J. McGrath, also of Aurora, was promoted to succeed Mr. Bangs in the office of Assistant Superintendent, and is still in the postal service, for many years having been Superintendent of Mails in the Chicago Post Office.
Too much credit cannot be given these two men for their persistent and successful efforts to improve this most important branch of the government service. F. A. Eastman, Postmaster at Chicago at the time of the great fire, in a recent newspaper article, speaks of their inestimable assistance amid the perplexities of that appalling catastrophe. He says: "Both came at once to Chicago, instantly called into the city a large number of railway postal cars, and undertook to do in them the distributing that heretofore had been done in the postoffice. From that day to this, the principal part of the distribution of the mails has been in transit on the railway postal cars, and the application of this remedy to an accidental situation resulted in great permanent good." The head of the Postoffice Department at Washington, whose high position has been attained by forty years of efficient service, writes that "Mr. Bang's comprehensive mind grasped all the great possibilities of the railway mail service, and it is safe to assert, that nearly every improvement made since his retirement was thought out by him."
Captain Leverett M. Kelly was appointed by President McKinley, early in his first term, Assistant Commissioner of Pensions, and still holds that important office. About the same time he appointed Arthur M. Beaupre, of Aurora, United States Consul General at Guatemala, and after about three years' service he was transferred to the same office in Bogota, Colombia. In the spring of 1903 he was appointed to the office of United States Minister to Colombia, and very recently, as arbitrator, chosen by Great Britain and Guatemala, adjudicated very satisfactorily disturbing complications of state questions that had arisen between those two countries.
May 4, 1900, President McKinley appointed John A. Russell, of Elgin, United States Attorney-General for our newly acquired Territory of Porto Rico, but paramount duties at home compelled his resignation in December, 1900. Thus we find Kane County men occupying important civil offices under the General Government.
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTIONS.-In the convention which assembled at Springfield in June, 1847, to prepare the first amended Constitution of the State, we find among its members Augustus Adams, Alfred Churchill and Thomas Judd, of Kane County, besides Eben F. Colby and Samuel Drake Lockwood, from other counties, each of whom afterwards became honored and useful residents of this county- the one at Elgin and the other at Batavia, where they resided many years before their deaths. Judge Lockwood was a member of the Supreme Court from January, 1825, until December, 1848, and no Justice was held in higher esteem for purity of character, sound judgment and eminent ability.
In the Constitutional Convention of 1870 Charles Wheaton was the member from Kane County. Major Woodbury M. Taylor was elected Clerk of the Supreme Court in June, 1867, for the Central Grand Division, and served until his death some years later. Henry E. Hunt, of Dundee, served as a member of the State Board of Equalization from 1876 to 1880, and Dr. Ansel L. Clark, late Surgeon of the One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Illinois Infantry, was for a long term of years, a member and Secretary of the State Board of Health. Besides his extensive practice in the county, he was an incorporator of the Bennett Medical College at Chicago, and for many years has been its president.
MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.-Kane County first appears upon the journal of the Senate and House of Representatives at Springfield on the 5th day of December, 1842, at the opening of the session of the Legislature when Ira Minard was sworn in as Senator, and Henry Madden as Representative of the District composed of Boone, DeKalb, Kane, McHenry and Kendall Counties. After this date the Senators resident in Kane County were: 1844-46 -Ira Minard, St. Charles; 1846-48-Gen. Elijah Wilcox, Elgin; 1848-55-William B. Plato, Geneva; 1855-63-Augustus Adams, Elgin; 1863-71-Edward R. Allen, Aurora; 1871-73- James W. Eddy, Batavia; 1873-77-Eugene Can-
