Joseph Washington McClurg (22 February 1818-2 December 1900) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-MO 5) from 4 March 1863 to July 1868 (succeeding Thomas L. Price and preceding John Hubler Stover) and Governor of Missouri from 12 January 1869 to 4 January 1871 (succeeding Thomas Clement Fletcher and preceding Benjamin Gratz Brown).
Biography[]
Joseph Washington McClurg was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1818, and he was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He taught school in Louisiana and Mississippi before returning to St. Louis to serve as a sheriff's deputy, and he became a lawyer in 1841; he also opened a store in Hazelwood. In 1850, he opened a miner's store in Georgetown, El Dorado County, California amid the Gold Rush, and he returned to Missouri after two years. He settled in Linn Creek, where he established a supply business, and he served as a Union Army colonel during the American Civil War; while he owned slaves up until the Emancipation Proclamation, he was an avid Unionist. He went on to serve in the US House of Representatives from 1863 to 1868 and as Governor of Missouri from 1869 to 1871, and he served as a Radical Republican opposed to the enfranchisement of Confederate veterans. In 1886, he and his family moved to the Dakota Territory, but the cruel winter of 1886-1887 persuaded the family to return to Missouri. He served as Registrar of Lands in Springfield and died in Lebanon in 1900.