Joseph G. Cannon

Quill platform ID: p7110.

(May 7, 1836 — November 12, 1926) Joseph Gurney Cannon was an American politician and lawyer. Cannon was born in Guilford, North Carolina in 1836 and moved to Tuscola, Illinois in 1859. He studied law and the Cincinnati Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1858. After moving to Illinois in 1859, Cannon served as the State’s attorney for the twenty-seventh judicial district of Illinois, before being elected as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives in 1872. He served in the House from March 4, 1873 to March 3, 1891. Cannon was not elected to serve in the Fifty-Second Congress in 1890, but was elected to serve again in the Fifty-Third Congress. He further served for the nine succeeding Congresses from 1893 to 1913. During the Fifty-Eighth through Sixty-First Congresses, Cannon was Speaker of the House of Representatives. Again, he lost an election for the Sixty-Third Congress, but was successfully in the election for the Sixty-Fourth Congress. He served for a final time in the House of Representatives from 1915 until he retired from public life in 1923. [Source: “Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774 - Present,” available at https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/C000121]

Member of Illinois Delegation—The Civil Rights Act of 1875.

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