Isaac Ellmaker Hiester (May 29, 1824 – February 6, 1871) was a nineteenth century American political leader. A member of the Hiester Family political dynasty, he was also descended from the prominent Ellmaker family. The son of William Hiester, he was also a cousin of Hiester Clymer. A century after his death, he was memorialized by American newspapers as a "distinguished Pennsylvania congressman and jurist." Biography Isaac E. Hiester was born in New Holland, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on May 29, 1824. He graduated from Yale University in 1842, and while at college helped to found the Scroll and Key Society. He then studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1845, afterwards practicing in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1848, the Governor of Pennsylvania appointed Hiester as Deputy Attorney General (District Attorney) for Lancaster County; he held the post until 1851. In 1852, he successfully ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives as a Whig. He was defeated for reelection in 1854, and ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat in 1856. Hiester then returned to his law practice. He supported the Union during the American Civil War, was a Delegate to the 1868 Democratic National Convention, and also represented Pennsylvania on the Democratic National Committee. Illness, death, burial and tributes On January 28, 1871, Isaac E. Hiester suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed. Lingering "in a semi-conscious condition, never speaking, but being able to recognize the friends who gathered around his bed in anxious solicitude," he died at his home in Lancaster on February 6, 1871, and was buried at that city's Lancaster Cemetery. Within a day of his death, multiple tributes were written about him by attorneys, elected officials and other civic leaders, and published in local newspapers. More than fifty attorneys also attended the Lancaster Bar Association on February 7, 1871, "the largest of the kind, except that which assembled on the decease of President Buchanan, ever witnessed in Lancaster." Thomas E. Franklin, Esq., formerly Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was the first to speak, noting: "I feel utterly incapable, sir, of performing, properly, the grave duty that I feel pressing upon me. It is a mournful task for me to rise here and announce to you, who knew him so well and esteemed him so highly, the sudden decease of Isaac E. Hiester.... The unexpected blow unnerves and overpowers me.... His was