Thomas Ford

Thomas Ford (December 5, 1800 – November 3, 1850) was a lawyer, judge, author and the eighth Governor of Illinois. The first Illinois governor to be raised in the state, he served from 1842 to 1846 and became known for restoring the state's solvency and reducing geographic sectionalism, as well as for leading the legislature despite his lack of prior political experience. A lifelong Democrat, Ford is also remembered for anti-Mormon sentiments and vacillation which led to the death of Joseph Smith, and the subsequent Illinois Mormon War of 1844-1845. Early and family life Ford was born near Uniontown, Pennsylvania. His twice widowed Irish mother, the former Elizabeth Logue Ford Delaney, took him and his siblings west in 1804, hoping to cross the Mississippi River and homestead on free or cheap land. As they neared St. Louis, she learned about the Louisiana Purchase, and that land was no longer cheap there because it now belonged to the United States. She settled her family in New Design in Monroe County, Illinois instead. His six-year older half-brother, George Forquer, helped raise Thomas, and later served in both houses of the Illinois legislature, as well as appointments as the state's attorney general and secretary of state, but would lose to Whig Joseph Duncan when he tried to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Forquer was initially a merchant, and then a partner of Daniel Pope Cook, with whom he platted the town of Waterloo, Illinois (also in Monroe County). With Forquer's support, Ford studied law for one term at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, but walked back home to Illinois after learning that Forquer's business had failed. Ford then worked on local farms, taught school and read law under Cook, who would become the state's first attorney general, as well as member of Congress and namesake of Cook County, where Ford would later serve as judge for several years.