Sloss, Joseph H.

Born: 1826-10-12 Alabama

Died: 1911-01-27 Memphis, Tennessee

Joseph H. Sloss, lawyer, state legislator, and army officer, was born in Somerville, Alabama, where he was also educated. He studied the law and passed the bar before he turned twenty years old. He commenced practicing law in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1849, Sloss moved to Edwardsville, Illinois. In April 1850, he married Mary Louisa Lusk, with whom he had four children. In 1857, Sloss captained the Madison Guards, a military company formed in Edwardsville, during mob agitation over the murder of Jacob Barth. In 1858, Madison County, Illinois voters elected Sloss, as a Democrat, to the Illinois House of Representatives. Sloss supported Democrat Stephen A. Douglas over Republican Abraham Lincoln in the 1858 race for the U.S. Senate. In 1860, Sloss was practicing law in Madison County and owned real property valued at $8,000 with a personal estate of $2,000.

Upon the commencement of the American Civil War, Sloss returned to Alabama and joined the Confederate calvary in October 1862. By the end of the war he had been promoted to major.

Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 1834; Nashville Tennessean and the Nashville American (TN), 30 January 1911, 10:3; Louis L. Emmerson, ed., Blue Book of the State of Illinois, 1923-1924 (Springfield: Illinois State Journal , 1923), 682; Illinois Senate Journal. 1859. 21st G. A., 30; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Madison County, 2 April 1850, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Madison County, IL, 160; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Ward 1, Tuscumbia, Colbert County, AL, 6; W. T. Norton, ed., Centennial History of Madison County, Illinois, and Its People, 1812 to 1912 (Chicago: Lewis, 1912), 1:77, 237, 289, 365; U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2009); Gravestone, Maple Hill Cemetery, Huntsville, AL.