Lorenzo D. Lewelling

Lorenzo Dow Lewelling (December 21, 1846 – September 3, 1900) was the 12th governor of Kansas.

He was born in Salem, Iowa. He was the son of William Lewelling, an abolitionist and Quaker minister who died soon after making an impassioned speech in Indiana. After the accidental burning to death of his mother in 1856, he lived with his older sister

Lewelling worked at various jobs until the Civil War broke out in 1861. He enlisted in an Iowa regiment, but since he was underage, he was discharged. He was employed by a bridge-building corps in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Employed by the Freedman's Aid Society in 1865, he taught at a black school at Mexico, Missouri. Following the Civil War, Lewelling graduated from Whittier College in 1868 and became a teacher at the college in Salem, Iowa. He was known as an excellent lecturer and frequently gave public recitals of poetry.

Lewelling became a teacher in the Iowa State Reform School and on April 18, 1870, he married Angelina M. Cook, a teacher, of Red Oak, Indiana. In 1872 he was made superintendent of the girls' department of the state reform school in Iowa, and his wife was appointed matron. Louise Jarecka, daughter