Champion S. Chase
| Champion Spalding Chase | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 20, 1820 Cornish, New Hampshire, U.S. |
| Died | November 3, 1899 Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. |
| Occupation | Mayor of Omaha |
| Spouse(s) | Mary Sophronia Butterfield (1827–1882) |
| Children | Champion Clement Chase (1860–1922) |
| Parent(s) |
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| Relatives |
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Champion Spalding Chase (March 20, 1820 – November 3, 1898) was a Nebraska politician.
Born in Cornish, New Hampshire as the son of Clement Chase (1776–1867) and his second wife, Olive Spalding (1790–1823), who was from Plainfield, NH., he was named after his mother's father, Champion Spalding. He grew up in Cornish and later attended the Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, NH. He started teaching in Cornish as an adolescent during the winter time and moved later in 1840 to continue his teaching in New York.
He went on to teach at an Academy in Amsterdam, New York from 1841–1842. By 1843 he had moved to the County of Otsego to be the vice principal of the West Hartwick Seminary. But he resided in New York until the end of the 1940s and studied law in Buffalo. In 1848 he was admitted to the bar at Canandaigua and then in 1849 he moved to Racine, Wisconsin. In Racine he married Mary Sophronia Butterfield (1827–1882) that same year. They had their only son, Champion Clement Chase, who would eventually become a well-known newspaper publisher in Omaha, after they had been married 15 years.
He got into politics after a few years in Wisconsin and served in the first ever Republican Nation Convention in 1856 as part of the delegation from Wisconsin which nominated John C. Fremont as a candidate for the presidency of the USA. The same year he was elected to the Wisconsin State Senate for two years, during which time he, as chairman of the judiciary committee, supervised the revision for the statutes of the state. He selected as the District Attorney in 1859 for the 2nd judicial district in Wisconsin. In 1862, just two years later, due to the influence of Salmon Portland Chase (1808–1873), who not only just happened to be his famous cousin but also happened to be the Secretary of the Treasury, he was appointed as paymaster in the Union Army.
He served four years in the Union Army starting with the rank of Major of Calvary and during this time he was on special duty in the West and Southwest; was at the sieges of Knoxville, Mobile, and Vicksburg and in the later part of the war he was headquartered at New Orleans for nearly two years and would receive a commission as Lieutenant Colonel from President Andrew Johnson late in 1865. He, at this time, was brevetted or promoted by a commission to a higher rank of lieutenant colonel without an increase of pay and with limited exercise of the higher rank, (often granted as an honor immediately before retirement) for his meritorious services in the Gulf Campaign. In January 1866 he was honorably discharged.
That same year he went to Omaha, Nebraska for the first time just one year before Nebraska was admitted to the Union as the 37th state and upon its admission, he became through election in 1867 the new state's first Attorney-General of the state of Nebraska. Starting in 1869, was appointed a regent of the State University of Nebraska, for six years until 1875. At the same time as these positions, Chase was one of the early incorporators of the Omaha Street Railway Co., which, starting in 1867, came into existence.
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