Paddock, Stephen G.

Born: 1828-04-22 New York

Died: 1921-01-21 Princeton, Illinois

Born in Hudson, New York, Stephen G. Paddock moved to Augusta, Georgia with his parents when he was a boy, but relocated to New York, New York, in 1835. He moved to Bureau County, Illinois with his father in 1846, but returned to New York a year later. He worked as a clerk on Wall Street and in a dry goods house before permanently returning to Bureau County in 1853. After establishing a farm, he won election as sheriff in 1854 and as county clerk in 1857 and 1861. In 1854, he also began a stint as school director for Bureau County. He married Margaret Seaman in 1855, and the couple had at least three children together. Although he came from a family of Whigs, Paddock largely stayed out of politics until passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act inspired him to become an active member of the Republican Party. By 1860, he owned $3,500 in real and personal property. He was a friend and associate of Owen Lovejoy and ran a stop on the underground railroad in Princeton, Illinois during the Civil War.

H. C. Bradsby, ed., History of Bureau County, Illinois (Chicago: World, 1885), 611-12; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Princeton, Bureau County, IL, 4; Illinois, U.S., Deaths and Stillbirths Index, 1916-1947, (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2011); Chicago Daily Tribune (IL), 18 December 1953, 71:1; Gravestone, Oakland Cemetery, Princeton, IL.