- Joseph W. McClurg
Joseph Washington McClurg (
February 22 ,1818 ndashDecember 2 ,1900 ) was aGovernor of Missouri in the decade following theAmerican Civil War .Born near
St. Louis, Missouri , McClurg wasorphan ed at seven and raised by grandparents inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania , where his grandfather owned the city's first ironfoundry . Educated at Xenia Academy andOxford College inOhio , he taught school briefly inLouisiana andMississippi in the 1830s before returning to St. Louis to serve as deputy for his uncle,Sheriff Marshall Brotherton. At 19, he studied law and was admitted to the bar inTexas , although he never practiced. In 1841, he returned to Missouri to marry Mary Catherine Johnson. He was involved in lead mining and merchandising and created McClurg's Old Salt Road through rural Missouri to assure a supply of salt for his customers.In 1850, McClurg left Missouri for the
gold rush inCalifornia , where he opened a miner's store in Georgetown (12 miles fromSutton's Mill ). After two years, he returned to Missouri, this time to Linn Creek (now under theLake of the Ozarks ), where he established a thriving business supplying settlers and merchants in Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and theIndian Territory .An avid
abolitionist , he was a delegate to the historicGamble Convention in March 1861, in which Missouri agreed to stay in the Union. During the Civil War, McClurg was acolonel in the Missouri Volunteers until elected to theU.S. House of Representatives in 1862, 1864 and 1866.He resigned his last term to run for Missouri governor as a Radical Republican, a party against the re-enfranchisement of ex-Confederates. He served a two year term and with Radical Republicanism falling from favor, lost his bid for re-election. In 1886, he accompanied his son, Joseph, and his daughter, Fannie along with her six children, to homestead in the
Dakota Territory . It was an entrepreneurial venture made promising on the basis of several years of mild weather; however, the winter of 1886-87 was a famously cruel one that convinced the family to return to Missouri. He was appointed Registrar of Lands at Springfield before returning toLebanon, Missouri , where he died in 1900.References
*CongBio|M000347
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