Delatus Miles Aspinwall (1810-1888)

Portrait courtesy of www.ancestry.com

   A Vermonter by birth, Delatus Miles Aspinwall resided in several different states during a life that took him from humble beginnings in the Green Mountain state to the halls of the Wisconsin State Assembly. Following his one term in the assembly Aspinwall removed to Adair County, Iowa, dying there in 1888.

   Born in Vermont (sources state either Pawlet or Bennington) on August 9, 1810, Delatus M. Aspinwall was the son of Salmon (1783-1856) and Mary Montague Aspinwall (1784-1850). Aspinwall and his family resided in Vermont until about 1817, whereafter they moved to Jefferson County, New York. Here Delatus would attend the "common schools" as well as engaging in farm work. He would later be employed as a mechanic and in January 1840 married to Ms. Lovina Araminda Bates (1810-1884), with whom he would have ten children: Emma Morrison (1840-1923), Mary (1842-1932), Joel Adonijah (1845-1918), William H. (1845-1916), Ellen (1850-1926), Miles Delatus (1852-1872), David Montague (1855-1917), Ashley (1857-1908), Lovina A. 1859-1934) and Lillian M. (1861-1930).

   Six years following his marriage Aspinwall and his family left New York and established roots in the Jefferson County, Wisconsin town of Farmington. After purchasing "forty acres of government land", Aspinwall began to build his own farm in 1852, and over a decade later was the owner of 255 acres of farmland, devoted to the raising of both cattle and horses.

   Despite having held no previous elected office, Aspinwall won election to the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1856. Representing Jefferson County's 1st district, Aspinwall's one term in the assembly commenced in January 1857, and during that session served on the house committees on Charitable and Religious Societies and Printing.  At the conclusion of his term, Aspinwall returned to Farmington and for several years afterward was an active member of the Jefferson County Agricultural Society, serving as both its Vice-President and as a member of its executive committee. 

  Widowed in February 1884, Delatus Aspinwall moved from Wisconsin to Adair County, Iowa a short while after his wife's death. Settling in the town of Fontenelle, he resided here for the remainder of his life, dying on May 5, 1888. The Aspinwall Geneology of 1901 notes that Delatus had remarried at some point before his death but makes no mention of his second wife's name. His burial occurred at the Fontanelle Cemetery in Fontenelle, Iowa, and, in an unusual tidbit, the gravestone carver lists Aspinwall as having died on his 78th birthday (see link for photograph.) This looks to be an error on the part of the engraver, as all the sources I've found regarding Aspinwall give August 9th as his correct date of birth.

From the Jefferson County, NY Journal, June 12, 1888.