Isaac Atwater

Isaac Atwater (May 3, 1818 – December 22, 1906) was an American lawyer, judge, politician and historian.

Biography Isaac Atwater was born on May 3, 1818 in Homer, New York to Ezra Atwater, a farmer, and Esther Leaming. Both his parents hailed from Connecticut and were of English descent; their ancestors had emigrated from England in about 1748. He was the ninth of eleven children. As a youngster he worked on the family farm and received education in day schools. Ezra Atwater gave most of his farmland to his older sons and expected his younger sons, including Isaac, to become farmers; however, Isaac had intellectual interests from a young age, reportedly did not care about farming and by sixteen had studied Latin, algebra and history extensively. Atwater, whose father could not financially support his higher education, worked as a teacher in order to secure his admission to Yale University in 1840. In his senior year at Yale he was made an editor of the Yale Literary Magazine. He graduated in 1844 in the top quarter of his class. He worked as a teacher at a private school in Macon, Georgia for a year after his graduation in order to pay for an entry to Yale Law School, which he entered in 1845. Atwater graduated in 1847 and thereupon entered the practice of Robert Benner, a fellow Yale alumnus. After being admitted to the New York bar he opened his own practice in Nassau.

In August of 1849 he married Permelia A. Sanborn, who was from Geddes, New York. In 1850 they moved, on account of Atwater's poor health (he had been having symptoms of tuberculosis), to St. Anthony, Minnesota Territory; Atwater purchased a parcel of land there for $800 on credit, which he paid off in two years using the money he earned from his legal business. Atwater opened a new practice alongside John W. North, a former schoolmate of his. He split with North in 1851 and continued his practice alone. He also helped incorporate a business that would build the first bridge between Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Atwater also wrote about the history of Minnesota. In 1892 he edited The History of Minneapolis; his obituary in The Minneapolis Journal noted that "his native ability and scholarly attainments commanded a prominent place in the community".

Isaac and Permelia Atwater House A house in Shakopee, Minnesota that Atwater once purchased became known later on as the Isaac and Permelia Atwater House, although he might not have ever lived in it. The house, which was constructed in the 1850s, is maintained, along with other historical houses in the Minnesota River Valley, by the organisation Murphy's Landing. The house and its garden were the subjects of writings by Permelia Atwater. In 1983 the house, which was once used to house recovering drug addicts, was renovated by several woodworking students of Dakota County Area Vocational Technical Institute, who refinished the wooden components and created new door jambs and windowsills to replace the worn-down ones.

Publications History of the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Part I (1893) History of the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Part II (1893)