Fred Dubois - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Dubois was of part French-Canadian descent. His paternal grandfather, Toussaint Dubois, was an immigrant who distinguished himself at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Dubois' father, Jesse Kilgore Dubois, was an official at the United States Land Office in Palestine, Illinois, a former judge and state legislator, an early supporter of the Republican Party, and a close friend of fellow Illinois Republican Abraham Lincoln. In 1856 the elder Dubois was elected Illinois State Auditor and moved the family to the state capital, Springfield.

Fred Dubois studied at Yale from 1870 to 1872, where he was elected to Scroll and Key. He then participated in business until 1875, when he was appointed to the board of railroad and warehouse commissioners of Illinois. He held this position for one year, resigning shortly before the death of his father. In 1880, he moved to Idaho Territory with his brother, Jesse Dubois, Jr. (1850–1908), a doctor.

In 1882, Dubois was appointed to be the United States Marshal for the Idaho Territory. During this period Dubois launched a successful campaign to disenfranchise Mormon voters in Idaho Territory on the grounds they broke the law by practicing polygamy.

Read more about this topic:  Fred Dubois

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:

    “I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
    —Linda Grant (b. 1949)

    “I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
    —Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)

    “Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
    —Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)