George W. Wakefield — Ohituary. 65 



swamp land grants opened up an extensive field of legal 

 controversy. The young lawyer, Wakefield, was soon 

 deeply engaged in these matters, and there laid the 

 foundation of his knowledge of the public land laws of 

 the United States, which were the foundation of all land 

 titles here. He was without doubt the best informed 

 lawyer in Northwestern Iowa upon matters pertaining 

 to public lands. 



The office of County Auditor had been created by 

 the Iowa Legislature in 1868, and Mr. Wakefield was 

 the first person elected to fill this office in W^oodbury 

 County, Iowa, in the fall of 1869. He held this office 

 two terms, and then continued the practice of law from 

 1874 to 1884, a portion of the time with S. M. Marsh, 

 who was District Attorney for the Fourth Judicial Dis- 

 trict. 



He had been married October 29, 1873, to Kate Pen- 

 dleton, sister of Hon. Isaac Pendleton. In 1884 he was 

 elected Judge of the Circuit Court of the Second Circuit 

 of the Fourth Judicial District of Iowa and upon the 

 abolition of that Court in 1886, he was elected Dis- 

 trict Judge of the Fourth Judicial District of Iowa, 

 which office he held by repeated elections up to the time 

 of his death in March, 1905. He left two children sur- 

 viving him, a son, Albert O. Wakefield, an attorney at 

 Sioux City, and a daughter, Bertha Wakefield. His wife 

 died many years before he did. 



Judge Wakefield was a man of wide culture, and all 

 his life he was investigating science, history, literature 

 and religion. The knowledge thus gained was not a 

 mere accumulation of facts, but material from which he 

 Avas continually evolving fresh conclusions. 



He was never, as an attorney, very much interested 

 in the trial of jury cases, his was not a belligerent nature 

 and wordy controversies were not to his taste, though 

 he was not deficient in that part of the practice. He 

 studied his cases carefully and prepared his pleadings 

 with great skill and clearness, and in this, as in all his 

 literary work, he was exceptionally talented in his writ- 



