Home of Joseph W. Fifer

This was the home of Joseph W. Fifer, Republican Governor of Illinois, 1889-1893. Fifer was born in Virginia in 1840 and came to Illinois in 1857. During the Civil War he served in the 33rd Illinois Infantry Regiment. He graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington in 1868 and began to practice law the next year. After being corporation counsel of Bloomington for one year and State's Attorney of McClean County for eight years, he served two terms as State Senator. He moved to these premises in 1893, at the end of his term as Governor, and lived in this red brick house from its completion in 1896 to his death in 1938.