Joseph Henry Kibbey (4 March 1853-14 June 1924) was the Republican Governor of the Arizona Territory from 7 March 1905 to 1 May 1909, succeeding Alexander Oswald Brodie and preceding Richard Elihu Sloan.
Biography[]
Joseph Henry Kibbey was born in Centerville, Indiana in 1853, and he read law at his father's firm in Richmond before becoming a lawyer in 1875 and becoming city attorney in 1883. He moved to Florence, Arizona Territory in 1888, and he worked as secretary and attorney of the Florence Canal Company, served as an Associate Justice of Arizona Territorial Supreme Court from 1889 to 1893, became a lawyer in Phoenix, served as Phoenix city attorney in 1897, served as Maricopa County Assistant District Attorney in 1898, twice served as Chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party, served as a delegate to the 1904 Republican National Convention, and served as Governor of the Arizona from 1905 to 1909. He opposed the combination of Arizona and New Mexico into a single territory to be admitted as a single state, supported mining interests, called for restrictions on the sale of tobacco and liquor, supported the prohibition of gambling, supported limitations on the hours of operation for saloons, and proposed a ban on women and girls working in saloons. The Democratic-controlled territorial legislature overrode his veto by abolishing the Arizona Rangers, creating a literacy test for all Arizona voters, and allowing territorial schools to segregate Black students. He left office in 1909, and he returned to his legal practice. He supported the Bull Moose Party in 1912 and lost his 1916 bid for the US Senate, and he died in Phoenix in 1924.