Fisher, Lucius G.

Born: 1808-08-17 Vermont

Died: 1886-03-05 Beloit, Wisconsin

Born in Derby, Vermont, Lucius G. Fisher was a teacher, sheriff's deputy and sheriff, farmer, real estate investor, salesman and businessman, Whig, state representative, local leader, Congregationalist, and postmaster. At age sixteen, he decided to move West but was delayed by family considerations and worked as a schoolteacher, then as a sheriff's deputy. In 1834, he obtained a sales position that allowed him to travel, but lost the position at the onset of the Panic of 1837. He traveled to Chicago, then into the Wisconsin Territory in search of work and food. He continued traveling throughout Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for some time, working odd jobs, but eventually purchased land in the town of New Albany in the Wisconsin Territory, which he helped rename Beloit. In 1838, his family joined him in Beloit, and they began farming together. He worked the occasional sales job and engaged in real estate speculation and investment before receiving appointment as sheriff of Rock County in 1839. He remained in this position for six years, also working as a road commissioner after the Wisconsin Territory Legislative Assembly appointed him in 1840. In June 1842, he married Caroline Field, with whom he had at least three children. After Caroline died in 1850, he married Rachel Colton in October 1851. Their union produced three daughters. He was one of the original founders and first trustees of Beloit College. Constantly involved in business ventures, he briefly owned a dry goods business and a flour mill but sold his interest after roughly a year. He was on the board of directors of the Beloit and Madison Railroad and worked as a contractor for several other railroads. He was elected to the Wisconsin State Legislature in 1856, but declined reelection in order to attend to his business interests. Soon after, he became an alderman for Beloit, then a county supervisor. By 1860, he owned real estate valued at $91,500 and another $114,500 in personal property. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him postmaster of Beloit. He remained in the position until President Andrew Johnson removed him.

Lucius G. Fisher and Milo M. Quaife, "Pioneer Recollections of Beloit and Southern Wisconsin," The Wisconsin Magazine of History 1 (March 1918), 266, 268-86; Mitchell C. Harrison, Prominent and Progressive Americans: An Encyclopædia of Contemporaneous Biography (New York: New York Tribune, 1902), 1:115; U.S. Newspaper Extractions from the Northeast, 1704-1930 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2014), 968; George Woolworth Colton, A Genealogical Record of the Descendants of Quartermaster George Colton, 1644-1911 (Philadelphia: John Milton Colton, 1912), 222-23; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Beloit, Rock County, WI, 103; Caroline Field Fisher, Lucius G. Fisher, Gravestones, Oakwood Cemetery, Beloit, WI.