Glover, Joseph O.

Born: 1810-04-13 New York

Died: 1891-12-10 Chicago, Illinois

Flourished: 1835 to 1870 Ottawa, Illinois

Joseph O. Glover, attorney, attended high school in Aurora, New York, then read law with a brother. He moved to Illinois in 1835 and settled in Ottawa, where he resumed his legal studies in the office of T. Lyle Dickey. Glover served as justice of the peace and earned admittance to the bar in 1840. He enjoyed a long legal career and founded one of La Salle County’s most prominent law firms in 1840 with Burton C. Cook, who was married to his wife’s sister. After the addition of George C. Campbell to the partnership, the firm became Glover, Cook, & Campbell. Glover ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the Illinois House of Representatives in 1844, but was elected two years later and served one term. Following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act Glover left the Democratic Party and became a Republican. He represented La Salle County at the 1860 Illinois Republican Convention. On the advent of the Civil War, Glover was a vocal supporter of union. In 1869 he was appointed United States attorney for the U.S. Circuit Court of the Northern District of Illinois and subsequently relocated to Chicago. At the time of the 1860 census, Glover owned real estate valued at $30,000 and $15,000 in personal property. He married Jeanette (Janette) Hart in 1837, and the pair had three children. Following the Lincoln-Douglas Debate in Ottawa on August 21, 1858, Abraham Lincoln was a guest in Glover’s home.

The Past and Present of La Salle County, Illinois (Chicago: H. F. Kett, 1877), 265; Elmer Baldwin, History of La Salle County Illinois (Chicago: Rand, McNally, 1877), 221, 245; Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 386, 413; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ottawa, La Salle County, IL, 187; Ottawa Republican-Times (IL), 23 July 1908, 8:2; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ottawa, La Salle County, IL, 550; Wayne C. Temple, “Delegates to the Illinois State Republican Nominating Convention in 1860,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 92 (Autumn 1999), 293; The Chicago Daily Tribune (IL), 11 December 1891, 2:6; The Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), 11 December 1891, 2:4; 12 December 1891, 7:4.