Post, Joel S.

Born: 1816-04-27 New York

Died: 1886-06-07 Decatur, Illinois

Flourished: 1846 to 1865 Decatur, Illinois

Born in Ontario, New York, Joel S. "Seth" Post was an attorney, military officer, state legislator, and a Democrat. In 1828, he relocated with his father to Washtenaw County in what was then the Michigan Territory. In 1839, he moved to Macon County, Illinois. He began studying law under Judge Charles Emerson in 1840, gained admittance to the bar in 1841, and began practicing law in Decatur, Illinois. In 1846, Post served in the Mexican War as a quartermaster with the rank of captain with the Fourth Regiment of Illinois Volunteers. In 1853, he married Sally Ann Bunn, with whom he had at least three children. During the state elections of 1856, voters elected him to the Illinois Senate, where he served two terms and helped establish Normal University in Normal, Illinois. In 1850 Post owned $500 in real estate. By 1860 he owned $2,000 in real estate and another $300 in personal property.

John W. Smith, History of Macon County, Illinois: From Its Organization to 1876 (Springfield: Rokker's, 1876), 275; John Moses, Illinois: Historical and Statistical(Chicago: Fergus, 1892), 2:998; Isaac H. Elliott, Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 285; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Macon County, IL, 126; DeWitt Courier (Clinton, IL), 19 September 1856, 2:1; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 3, Decatur, Macon County, IL, 63; Illinois Statewide Death Index, Pre-1916, Macon County, 7 June 1886, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Gravestone, Greenwood Cemetery, Decatur, IL.