Joseph H. D. Street was born on December 2, 1812, in Henderson County, Kentucky, to Joseph and Eliza Street. His father was an Indian agent. The family moved to Illinois around 1814 and then to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. He attended Illinois College in the early 1830s, and he settled in Cassville, Wisconsin, around 1835. He supported the Whig Party, and he served in the Wisconsin state legislature. He married Emily Burnett, and they had at least five children: Adela, born around 1837; Thomas, born around 1841; Thornton, born around 1846; Mary, born around 1848; and Theodore, born around 1850.

 

They moved to Wapello County, Iowa, around 1846, and he worked as a newspaper editor there. By 1850, he owned $190 of real estate. He reportedly “took an active part in the exciting [presidential] campaign” in 1848, and he served as a candidate for presidential elector in 1852. In the early 1850s, he also served as registrar of the Council Bluffs Land Office. He became the editor of the Ottumwa Union newspaper in February 1860. During the Civil War, however, at least one writer considered him a “Copperhead.”

 

He moved to Gallatin County in the Montana Territory around 1865, and he worked as a lawyer there. His wife died on May 6, 1868, and he married Alice S. Wright on April 24, 1873. By the 1860s, he supported the Democrat Party, and he served on the territory’s Democratic Central Committee. He died in September 1875.

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