Joseph Wilson Fifer (28 October 1840-6 August 1938) was the Republican Governor of Illinois from 14 January 1889 to 10 January 1893, succeeding Richard J. Oglesby and preceding John Peter Altgeld.
Biography[]
Joseph Wilson Fifer was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1840, and he was raised in Danvers, Illinois. He served in the 33rd Illinois Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War and was severely wounded at the Battle of Jackson in 1862, refusing a discharge and spending the rest of the war guarding a prison boat. After the war, he became tax collector for Danvers before becoming city attorney for Bloomington and then state's attorney. Fifer served in the state senate from 1881 to 1888 and as Governor from 1889 to 1893, and he famously pardoned murderer Thomas Neill Cream, who went on to commit four more murders in London. He served as Commissioner of the Interstate Commerce Commission from 1899 to 1905, and he died in 1938; he lived to see his daughter Florence Fifer Bohrer become Illinois' first female state senator in 1924.