Chase, Champion Spalding, 1820-1898

Champion S. Chase: admitted to New York Bar, 1847; moved to Wisconsin in 1847, and began law practice; in 1862 entered Union Army as paymaster with the rank of major, and was discharged in 1866 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel; in 1867 became Attorney General of Nebraska; in 1874 elected mayor of Omaha and served for seven years.

Champion S. Chase: admitted to New York Bar, 1847; moved to Wisconsin in 1847, and began law practice; in 1862 entered Union Army as paymaster with the rank of major, and was discharged in 1866 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel; in 1867 became Attorney General of Nebraska; in 1874 elected mayor of Omaha and served for seven years.

Champion Spalding Chase was born March 20, 1820, in Cornish, New Hampshire, the son of Clement and Olive (Spalding) Chase. He studied law in Buffalo, New York, and was admitted to the New York Bar in 1847. In that year, Chase moved to the Territory of Wisconsin. He married Mary Sophrina Butterfield, daughter of a prominent lawyer, in 1848, and in the same year opened a law office in Racine, where he remained until entering the Union Army in 1862. Chase also gave public lectures on phrenology and mesmerism.

Chase held a variety of public offices in the ante-bellum years. He served on the Board of Education of Racine from 1853-1857, including two years as president. In 1856, following the breakup of the Whig Party, which he had supported, Chase served as a delegate to the first National Republican Convention in Philadelphia. The same year, he was elected to a two-year term in the Wisconsin State Senate, where he spoke against the further extension of slavery. In 1859, Chase was appointed District Attorney of the First Judicial District.

In 1862, at the recommendation of his cousin, Salmon P. Chase, he was commissioned paymaster in the Union Army with the rank of major. Chase served in the army nearly four years, spending much of that time in the west and south-west. He witnessed the sieges of Knoxville, Mobile, and Vicksburg and for more than two years was stationed in New Orleans. Owing in part, at least, to the influence of William H. Seward, Chase was breveted Lieutenant Colonel by President Andrew Johnson. In January of 1866, he was honorably discharged and in the same year he moved to Omaha in the Territory of Nebraska. The following year, he became the first Attorney General of the new State of Nebraska.

In 1874, Chase was elected mayor of Omaha. He was re-elected in 1875, 1879, and 1883, serving a total of seven years in that office.

During his later years, Chase spent much of his time acting as delegate to various conventions called to consider current public issues. He died about 1898.