Thomas Ford (politician) - Early Life

Early Life

Ford was born in Uniontown, Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He was the first governor to grow up in Illinois. His widowed mother took him and his siblings west in hopes of crossing the Mississippi River in 1804 to buy cheap land. At St. Louis she was told about the Louisiana Purchase and that land was no longer cheap there because it now belonged to America. So she settled in Illinois instead.

Ford was the half-brother to George Forquer, who later became the state's attorney general. The two would eventually share a law office together, and Forquer aided Ford in his early years as a lawyer and judge. But, he took a brief time away from the law to become a spy against Black Hawk shortly before the Black Hawk War in 1832. He was the state's attorney in Western Illinois, then was elected as a state court judge in the north in 1836. He later served as a municipal judge in Chicago, before becoming a state court judge again. This led to his joining the Supreme Court of Illinois as an associate justice, 1841–42. He was very interested in politics and bragged that he attended every session of the state legislature from 1825–1847.

Ford married Frances Hambaugh in 1828 and had five children by her, but his personal life was never calm. He was accused of taking "stimulants" as governor, suggesting that it might have harmed his career, but there is no definitive evidence of drug abuse. His wife died of cancer in 1850 at the age of 38, and he followed her in death three weeks later from tuberculosis in Peoria, Peoria County, Illinois. Interment was at Springdale Cemetery, Peoria. Ford County, Illinois is named for him.

The couple had three daughters, two of which were said to have died young. Ford's two sons were both lynched as outlaws in Kansas in the 1870s, one dying under mysterious circumstances.