Isaac S. Struble

Isaac Sterling Struble (November 3, 1843 – February 17, 1913) was an American politician who was a four-term Republican Representative of Iowa's 11th congressional district. Serving from 1883 to 1891, the Plymouth County resident was a noted congressional opponent of plural marriage in the Utah Territory.

The member of a politically active family, Isaac's six brothers included John T. Struble of Iowa, and George R. Struble, former speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives. He was the granduncle of Bob Struble, Sr. and great-granduncle of Bob Struble, Jr.

Isaac Struble of Le Mars, Iowa, was born near Fredericksburg, Virginia. His great-grandfather, Dietrich Struble of Albig bei Alzey, Germany, had sailed to Philadelphia in 1748, settling outside German Valley, New Jersey (since renamed Long Valley). As a boy, Isaac migrated to Ohio and finally to Iowa, where the family settled on a farm near Iowa City. He was educated in the public schools of Ohio and Iowa.

Struble fought in the Civil War. In August 1862, Struble (then 18) enlisted in Company F of the 22nd Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment, marching in the ranks of the Union Army as a private. When he first donned the uniform of the Union, Isaac stood 5'8" with brown eyes and reddish hair. After he was wounded in the Battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia on October 19, 1864, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He was mustered out of the service on July 25, 1865. In addition to Cedar Creek, his combat experience included the Battle of Port Gibson, the Siege of Vicksburg, and the Battle of Opequon (otherwise known as the Third Battle of Winchester).

In 1866, more than a year after the Civil War, Struble went to St. Louis, Missouri, where he remained about a year as bookkeeper in the wholesale house of J.H. Teasdale & Co., where his uncle was the senior partner. He then moved to Iowa where he attended law school. After admission to the bar he became a practicing attorney in Polo, Illinois in 1870. In 1872, Struble moved to Le Mars, Iowa. Le Mars, in Plymouth County, was then a three-year-old town with a total of some 50 houses. There he and an older brother, James Hammie Struble, set up their law office on Main Street. For the next ten years he applied himself to private legal practice in Le Mars, holding no public office until 1882.

He married Adelaide E. Stone on June 3, 1874.

As a result of the 1880 census, Iowa's delegation in the U.S. House increased from nine to eleven members, causing the 1881 Iowa General Assembly (where George R. Struble was midway through his term as speaker of the House of Representatives) to reapportion the state's nine-district map into an eleven-district map. Plymouth County and much of northwestern Iowa was included in a new Eleventh District. In 1882, Isaac Struble won the Republican nomination to become the Eleventh District's first representative, then won the general election, becoming a member of the Forty-eighth United States Congress. Struble entered the U.S. House as a member of a freshman class so large that it made up a majority of the House membership, something that has never recurred.

During the three subsequent elections (in 1884, 1886, and 1888), Struble won the Republican renomination by acclamation in district nomination conventions then defeated Democratic Party and Greenback Party candidates in the general election. Struble was, according to the New York Times, "exceptionally popular" at the end of his third term. But in 1890, after 43 ballots, the GOP nominating convention gave its nod to the newspaper editor and former state senator, George D. Perkins of Sioux City, who held the seat from 1891 to 1899. In all, Struble served in Congress from March 4, 1883 to March 3, 1891.