Jeremiah Dodge

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Jeremiah Edwin Dodge (February 20, 1809 – March 24, 1877) was an American farmer, early Wisconsin settler, and politician. He served three terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing central Grant County in the 1850–51, 1853–54, and 1868–69 sessions. Born in Pleasant Plains, Clinton County, New York, Dodge moved west and became postmaster at Tecumseh, Michigan. He joined a militia during the Black Hawk War, though the conflict ended before his company reached the frontier. In 1835 he moved to what is now Grant County, Wisconsin (then part of the Michigan Territory), buying a homestead in Beetown. He studied law and even traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1842 to study with Joseph Story and Simon Greenleaf at Harvard, but he mostly farmed on his Wisconsin homestead.

Politically, Dodge helped organize a Native American/Know Nothing chapter in Grant County, but he was elected to the Assembly as a Democrat. He was a founder of the Grant County Agricultural Society and the Wisconsin Agricultural Society. He declined the Democratic nomination for a further Assembly term in 1854, and the seat went to a Republican. He unsuccessfully sought other offices over the years, including a run for the state senate in 1857 and for Grant County circuit clerk in 1860. After the Civil War began, he joined the Republican Party.

Dodge was elected to his third and final Assembly term in 1867 as a Republican and declined to run again in 1868. He lived later in Lancaster, Wisconsin, where he died of a stroke in 1877 and was buried in Hillside Cemetery. He married twice: first Roccena Ashley (married 1834; died 1841), then Rachel Matilda Ashley (married 1843–1877). With Rachel he had four children: Roccena Matilda, John Wilber Dodge, John Wilbur Dodge, and Jeremiah Edwin Dodge Jr. Dodge came from a family linked to early Wisconsin leaders and was a cousin of Henry Dodge.