Edward Holcomb Stiles, lawyer and legal author, was
born October 8, 1836, in Granby, Connecticut, of an Anglo-Saxon
ancestry that has been traced back to the time of the Conquest.
Before the war Judge Stiles, a young man just
beginning his career, located at Ottumwa, Ia. He was twenty
years old when he landed there by stage in 1856. The following
year he was admitted to the bar, and formed a partnership with his
preceptor, Colonel S. W. Summers, of Ottumwa. In 1864 he was
elected to the Iowa Legislature and the following year to the State
Senate, resigning his seat there to accept the position of reporter of
decisions of the Iowa Supreme Court. In 1883 Mr. Stiles was the
Republican candidate for Congress in his district. As a
law-writer and compiler, Mr. Stiles has an established reputation.
In 1886 Mr. Stiles moved to Kansas City, and
in 1892 was appointed Master of Chancery of the United States Circuit
Court for the Western District of Missouri, a position he still holds.
Mr. Stiles was married September 19, 1861, to
Miss Emma M. Vernon, of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Six
children were born to them, four of whom are living.
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