George Wright was born in Indiana in 1820, but was a leader in the legal area for the state of Iowa. He was a lawyer, Supreme Court justice, law professor, and a United States Senator for the Republican party of Iowa. Throughout his childhood he attended private school to get his education and graduated from Indiana University in 1839.
During the years of 1847 and 1848, he was the prosecuting attorney for Van Buren County. He was also a member of the Iowa Senate for two years. He eventually became a justice on the Supreme Court until 1860 when he took a break for a few months, but returned for the next ten years until September of 1870. Seven of those years, he was the Court’s Head Justice. In 1865, Wright moved to Des Moines. Along with Justice C.C. Cole, Wright established the first law school west of the Mississippi River and it was called the University of Iowa College of Law. From 1865-1871, Wright served as a professor at the school.
In the 1870s, he was elected to a six-year term in the United States Senate. Following the years he served in the Senate, Wright returned to his practice in Des Moines and entered the banking industry, eventually becoming the President of Polk County Savings Bank. In 1887 and 1888, he was named President of the American Bar Association. Wright did a lot of governmental work for the state of Iowa and also for the United States as a whole.
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