Clinton Bowen Fisk was born on December 8, 1828, in York, New York, to Benjamin and Lydia Fisk. The family moved to Coldwater, Michigan, when he was a child, and he enrolled at Michigan Central College (present-day Hillsdale College) in 1844. He worked as a merchant and banker in Coldwater. He married Janette Crippen on February 20, 1850, and they had at least three children: Charles, born around 1852; May, born around 1853; and Clinton, born around 1871. They moved to St. Louis, Missouri, around 1859, and he worked in the insurance industry there.

 

In September 1862, he received a commission as colonel of the 33^rd Missouri Infantry. He was promoted to brigadier general in November 1862, and he served on General George Armstrong Custer’s staff. He spent most of the war in Missouri and Arkansas.

 

After the war, he served as assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau for Kentucky and Tennessee. He helped arrange the site and funding for the Fisk Free Colored School, which later became Fisk University. He returned to St. Louis in the late 1860s and resumed his work as a life insurance agent. By 1870, he owned $25,000 of real estate and $75,000 of personal property. He moved to Shrewsbury, New Jersey, in the 1870s.

 

He worked as a banker and broker, and he employed at least seven domestic servants. He supported the temperance movement, and he was the Prohibition Party’s gubernatorial candidate in 1886. He ran for president on the Prohibition ticket in 1888, and he received almost 250,000 votes nationwide. He died of influenza in New York City on July 9, 1890.

 

Image: Clinton B. Fisk (courtesy Wikicommons)

SOURCES