Henry G. Struve - Territorial Secretary

Territorial Secretary

Struve was elected to the lower house of the territorial legislature in 1865 and was chairman of the judiciary committee. He was elected to the legislative council in 1867, serving as its president in that session and in those of 1869 and 1870. He was chairman of the committee on ways and means, and in 1869 he secured passage of a law recognizing community property rights of married persons.

He resigned as district attorney upon his election as judge of probate of Clarke County in 1869. Struve moved to Olympia in 1871 and assumed the editorship of the Puget Sound Daily Chronicle. After a promising start, he left newspaper work later in 1871 when President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him secretary of Washington Territory. He held this position to the end of the Grant Administration in 1877. While serving as territorial secretary, Struve was sole attorney for the Northern Pacific Railroad, and remained its chief litigator until the completion of the railroad in 1883.

In 1872 Struve was a delegate to the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia where Grant was renominated. Fraternally, he was active in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and in 1874 served as grand master of the Grand Lodge of Oregon, which then embraced Oregon, Washington and Idaho. In 1876 he was representative from the Grand Lodge of Oregon to the Sovereign Grand Lodge of the order, and in this capacity instituted the Grand Lodge of Washington. Socially, he was a member of the Rainier Club.