James Grant came to Scott county for the sake of his health and settled in Blue Grass township about 1838.  He had already been admitted to the bar and, tiring of the farm, his ambition compelled him to resume the practice of his profession.  He was born in Halifax county, North Carolina, on the 12th of December, 1812.  He entered college at the age of fourteen and graduated at eighteen.  He then taught school in Raleigh three years and in 1834 opened a law office in Chicago.  Soon thereafter he was appointed prosecuting attorney of the sixth district and in 1838 removed to Davenport, settling on a farm near the little village.  In 1841 he was chosen to represent Scott county in the legislative assembly and in 1844 was sent as a delegate to the first constitutional convention and took an active part in framing the constitution which was later rejected.  In 1846 he was a member of the second convention and was the author of the "bill of rights" in that instrument under which Iowa became a state.  In 1847 he was elected judge of the district court, serving five years.  In 1852 he was again elected to the legislature and chosen speaker of the house.  When a young man he began to acquire a law library and continued to add to it through mature life until he had secured the largest and best selected collection of law books in the west.  He became one of the great lawyers of the country and was employed in some of the most important land and bond cases in the west.  In one railroad case he won for his clients $1,000,000 and received for his services $100,000.  In politics he was a life-long democrat.  On the 14th of March, 1891, Judge James Grant died at Oakland, California, and when the news of his death was passed from one to another at his home in Davenport, Iowa, "almost everyone in Davenport," said the Daily Democrat, commenting editorially on his death, "felt that he had lost a personal friend."  He was a fine classical scholar and turned to the classics even in his later years for diversion from business and other affairs.  As a judge on the bench he was noted for his prompt discharge of public business and the broad common sense and equity of his decisions.  As a practitioner, zeal, courage, resourcefulness and a felicitous power of expression were his distinguishing characteristics.  He was a man of strong and tender emotions.  "When the subject was such as to enlist his feelings," says an old member of the Iowa bar, "he was truly eloquent in the highest sense of that expression." At a metting of the Scott county bar, held soon after Judge Grant's death, S. F. Smith, for many years his law partner, paid a glowing tribute to the departed lawyer and jurist. Debbie Clough G-erischer G-erischer Family Web Site http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/ Assistant CC, Iowa Gen Web, Scott County http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/ List Manager for: IASCOTT-L * G-erischer-L * D-encker-L Fitzpatirck-L * V-lerebome-L * Huntington-L * Otis-L * Algar-L EIGS-L * Pickens-L * McNab-L * Patris-L - Rankin-L