Background
Horace Boies was born on December 7, 1827, in a log cabin on a farm in Erie County, New York, United States; the son of Eber Boies and Esther (Henshaw) Boies.
Horace Boies was born on December 7, 1827, in a log cabin on a farm in Erie County, New York, United States; the son of Eber Boies and Esther (Henshaw) Boies.
Horace was educated in the country schools. Later, he studied law in the office of a village attorney.
At the age of 16 and Horace worked for a time as a farmhand in Wisconsin Territory before returning to New York. At the age of 21, he married Adella King. He began the study of law, and, after passing the state bar exam, in 1849, set up a law practice in Hamburg, Germany, a settlement near Buffalo. After his first wife died in 1855, he married Versalia M. Barber in 1858. Meanwhile, he served a single term in the New York legislature, having been elected in 1857 on the Republican ticket. In 1867 the lure of the West attracted him to Waterloo, Iowa, United States, where he continued the practice of law in partnership with H. B. Allen, while accumulating large farm holdings in Black Hawk and Grundy counties.
In 1880 his Iowa political career took off, when he left the Republican Party, because of differences with Republicans on a Republican- backed strict prohibition law. Outspoken on the prohibition question, Boies sharply criticized “as merciless in their severity many of the penalties inflicted by the prohibitory statutes of the state.” Favoring a liquor licensing system, Boies won support from Iowa Democrats, which led to his selection as the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor. His election in 1889 and subsequent reelection two years later marked the first triumph of a Democratic candidate for governor since the political revolution launched by Republicans in the years preceding the Civil War.
As governor, Boies backed the adoption of a local option liquor policy, the consolidation of Iowa’s welfare institutions under a statewide Board of Control, and election reforms. He gave voice to the fledgling Iowa labor union movement by appointing a prominent union leader to head the Iowa Bureau of Labor and by proclaiming the first statewide Labor Day holiday. Much of his legislative program was stifled by a Republicancontrolled legislature, but the Republicans finally modified their stand on prohibition, a move that narrowly thwarted the Democratic governor’s bid for a third term.
Nonetheless, Boies attracted a nationwide following. In 1892 he garnered substantial support at the Democratic National Convention for the presidential and vice-presidential nominations, and was offered, and declined, a cabinet post in the Cleveland administration in 1893. In the run-up to the 1896 Democratic presidential nomination, Boies was second in the balloting before Bryan’s “cross of gold” speech stampeded the Democratic delegates. Then in 1902, at the age of 75, Boies ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee for a congressional seat from Iowa, his last bid for elective office.
Thereafter, Boies retired from public life, withdrew gradually from his private law practice, and, in his last years, spent more time in Long Beach, California, United States, along with many other Iowans attracted to the Golden State. He regularly attended the annual Long Beach Iowa Reunion, serving a term as president of the Iowa Association, and appeared at the reunion on his last public appearance before his death in California at the age of 96.
First Boies was a Whig, then a Republican, and finally a Democrat.
Boies was a member of the Good Templars, a worldwide fraternal society for the promotion of total abstinence.
A man of medium size, Boies walked erect to the end of his long life, he possessed the sturdiness of the pioneers. The dominant expression of his unseamed face was one of human sympathy. Free from ostentation in speech and manner, he was inclined to reticence. While moderate in his opinions, he was courageous in the expression of his convictions. In politics he was not a good mixer, and he shunned publicity. He lived simply and without pretense.
At the age of twenty-one Boies married Adella King. His first wife having died in 1855. In 1858 he married Versalia M. Barber. Horace had four sons, Charlie Boies, Earl Louis Boies, Herbert Barber Boies, Henri Boies, Jessie Boies.