- Leonard J. Farwell
Leonard James Farwell (
January 5 ,1819 ndashApril 11 ,1889 ) was an American politician and the secondgovernor ofWisconsin .Farwell was born in Watertown, New York, and moved to Wisconsin in the 1840s, prior to its statehood. He first settled in Milwaukee and later in Madison, where he owned a great amount of property, and made considerable improvements to the city.
He was elected governor of Wisconsin as a member of the Whig Party and served as governor from 1852 to 1854. On
12 July 1853 , in one of his more notable actions as governor, he signed a law that abolished the death penalty in Wisconsin and replaced it with a penalty oflife imprisonment .In 1857 he ran for alderman in Madison but lost by a close margin. Also that year, Fawell lost his land holdings due to the effects of the
Panic of 1857 .During the 1860s, Farwell worked in
Washington, D.C. as principal examiner in theU.S. Patent Office . He was present atFord's Theatre the day PresidentAbraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, and was the first person to inform then-Vice PresidentAndrew Johnson of the assassination.After seven years in Washington, Farwell moved to Chicago and started a
patent agency, but he fell victim to theGreat Chicago Fire of 1871. He then relocated toGrant City, Missouri where he died.External links
* [http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=view&term_id=2491&keyword=farwell Leonard J. Farwell, Dictionary of Wisconsin History, Wisconsin State Historical Society]
* [http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/wlhba/searchResults.asp?adv=yes&Ln=Farwell&fn=leonard&q=Gov%2E Leonard J. Farwell, Articles, Wisconsin State Historical Society]
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