Warner, John

Born: 1819-07-24 Rockingham County, Virginia

Died: 1905-12-21 Clinton, Illinois

John Warner, physician and businessman, moved with his family to Henry County, Indiana about 1834 and, at age eighteen, was a clerk in a dry goods store in Alexandria, Indiana. After the business failed in 1839, Warner studied medicine with a local physician and taught school. He moved in the spring of 1841 to DeWitt County, Illinois, ultimately settling in Clinton, where he practiced medicine until his 1852 retirement from that profession. Warner thereafter enjoyed a long career in real estate, as a merchant, and as a banker. From 1848 to 1852, he served as clerk of the DeWitt County Circuit Court. Politically, Warner was a Republican, attending the 1856 meeting in Bloomington, Illinois, that formed the state Republican Party, and in 1865 he represented DeWitt County in the Illinois House of Representatives. By 1860, Warner owned $45,000 worth of real estate and personal property valued at $15,000. In April 1861, he volunteered for service in the Civil War, raising a company in DeWitt County and organizing the Forty-First Illinois Regiment, of which he was elected major. Following the Battle of Shiloh, he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel, but resigned in September 1862 due to illness. He married first, Cynthia Ann Gardner in 1840, and following her death married Isabella Robinson in 1874. Two children from each of Warner's marriages survived to adulthood.

The Biographical Record of DeWitt County, Illinois (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1901), 26-29; History of De Witt County, Illinois (Philadelphia: W. R. Brink, 1882), 163; Indiana Marriages through 1850, Henry County, 18 October 1840, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Clinton, DeWitt County, IL, 424; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Clinton, DeWitt County, IL, 567; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 226; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Clinton, DeWitt County, IL, 26; U.S. Census Office, Tenth Census of the United States (1880), Clinton, DeWitt County, IL, 20; The Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), 22 December 1905, 2:1. Illustration courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL.