Portrait of David Atwood, as a Republican Assemblyman, 1860-1861. Atwood was the publisher of the "Wisconsin State Journal." View the original here. 

David Atwood was born in Bedford, NH in 1815. Atwood was apprenticed to a printing firm in Hamilton, NY at a very young age and eventually became a salesman of the firm's 8-volume compilation of federal and state court decisions, The American Common Law, which he sold throughout the mid-Atlantic states and the Old Northwest.

In 1845 he moved to Stephenson County, Illinois and then to Madison in 1847, when he began working as a compositor and assistant editor of the Express. In partnership with Royal Buck, Atwood purchased the Express in 1848 and changed the name to the Wisconsin Express. Buck and Atwood conducted the newspaper until 1852, when they merged it with the Wisconsin Statesman to form the short-lived Wisconsin Daily Palladium. That same year Atwood founded the Wisconsin State Journal, which, with various partners, he published until his death.

Atwood was a Republican and he served in the state assembly in 1861, was U.S. internal revenue assessor for the 2nd congressional district from 1862 to 1866 and mayor of Madison from 1868 until 1869. In 1870 he was elected to the US House of Representatives to fill the unexpired term of B. F. Hopkins.

Active in business undertakings, he was president of the Madison Mutual Insurance Company and the Madison Gas Light & Coke Company for many years.

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