Shelby County Indiana
Newspaper Articles
Cannon
Newspaper Articles
Cannon
 | The Bellingham Herald Bellingham, Washington May 28, 1925 Page 19 column 7 ---------- WHO'S WHO in the Day's News ---------- JOSEPH CANNON ---------- |  |
The other day Joseph Cannon, known nationally and internationally as "Uncle Joe," celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday contentedly and quietly at his home in Danville, Ill.
Uncle Joe, after spending 50 years in congress, retired some two years ago, and when he did the cartoonists of America lost their best briend. With the exception of Theodore Roosevelt there has not been a figure in Washington so easy to caricature. The closecropped white beard and the inevitable black cigar saved cartoonists many hours of toil. The cigar is still Uncle Joe's companion, although he gave it up for a year after retiring. The quality is different, however. He used to smoke stogies in the old days; his dignity requires a fifteen-center now. He finds it goes better with his poker face, which face Uncle Joe often puts to practical use then the boys drop in for a little game.
Joseph Gurney Cannon, as the birth records of Guilford, North Carolin, will attest, was born south of the Mason-Dixon line in 1836. When he was still a small boy his father, who was a country doctor, moved north to Annapolis, [Parke County,] Indiana. Joseph worked as clerk in the grocery store while he was reading law, and then he moved to Shelbyville, Indiana. Later he was admitted to the Illinois Bar and hugn out his shingle at Tuscola, but clients were scarce. Finally he was made State Attorney of the Twenty-Fifth Judicial District of Illinois in 1861 and he held the [sic] 1873, he was elected Representative to the Forty-Third Congress. With the exception of two terms, he held his seat to the time of his retirement. In his early years in congress he was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and from 1903 to 1911 he was Speaker of the House. He received 58 votes for the presidential nomination in the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1908.
Although he will take no active part in politics since he went to Danville, Uncle Joe has plenty to keep him busy. He is a member of the Kiwanis Club and attends the luncheon meetings. He belongs to the Civic Music Association. On Sunday morning he walks to St. James Methodist Church, and Sundays he drives fifty miles to Annapolis to attend the church he knew as a boy.
Contributed by John Addison Ballard
