ALTON - On August 26, 1925, an article in the Alton Evening Telegraph titled “Alton Gave to Nation 3 Men for the Senate” described a request received by Alton Postmaster P. B. Cousley. The Joint Committee on Printing for the United States Senate was gathering information on all the men who had served in the Senate, and the Committee hoped to verify or correct what they had gathered with relatives or others living locally who might have had connections to them. (The first female senator from Illinois, Carol Moseley Braun, was not elected until 1992 and served from 1993–1999). The three senators were David Jewett Baker, James Semple, and Lyman Trumbull.
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David Jewett Baker was appointed to the United States Senate as a Democrat in 1830 to fill a vacancy. He served one month. He was also a United States District Attorney from 1833 to 1841. Afterwards, he retired to Alton, where he practiced law. Baker died August 6, 1869, and is buried in Alton Cemetery.
James Semple was appointed and subsequently elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from 1843 to 1847. He returned to Alton, later moved to Jersey County, Ill., and founded the town of Elsah. He died in Elsah on December 20, 1866, and is buried in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. Semple was fascinating – he practiced law, served as Illinois Attorney General, invented a vehicle he called the prairie car, and was appointed by President Martin Van Buren as Chargé d'Affaires to New Granada, which is now Colombia, South America. (Local historian George Provenzano is an expert on James Semple’s life.)
Lyman Trumbull lived in Alton at 1105 Henry Street from 1849 to 1863. His gable-roofed brick house still stands at the corner of Henry and Union Streets and is a registered National Historic Landmark and a stop on the Lincoln Legacy Trail. Trumbull served as Secretary of the State of Illinois from 1841 to 1843, was a judge on the Illinois Supreme Court from 1848 to 1853, and served as a United States Senator representing Illinois from 1855 to 1873. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1864, he helped draft the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. He was also involved in the Civil Rights Act and the Freedmen’s Bureau Act. Trumbull was a staunch supporter of labor rights and civil rights, and switched parties five times in his career. He was an early supporter of Abraham Lincoln (though later they did not always see eye to eye). On the day of the Lincoln-Douglas debate in Alton (October 15, 1858), Lyman Trumbull hosted a reception for Lincoln and visiting delegates at the Franklin House on State Street.
Lyman Trumbull died June 25, 1896, in Chicago, and is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery.
Sources
“Alton Gave to Nation 3 Men for the Senate.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), August 26, 1925.
“Baker, David Jewett.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 2025.https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/B000058
“Hon. Lyman Trumbull of Ill.” United States of America, [between 1860 and 1875]. Photograph. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-cwpbh-00210https://www.loc.gov/resource/cwpbh.00210/
Lupton, John A. “Illinois Supreme Court history: Lyman Trumbull.” Illinois Courts, 2025.https://www.illinoiscourts.gov/News/1564/Illinois-Supreme-Court-history-Lyman-Trumbull/news-detail/
“Lyman Trumbull.” Britannica, 2025.https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lyman-Trumbull
“Lyman Trumbull House.” Great Rivers and Routes of Southwest Illinois, 2025.https://www.riversandroutes.com/directory/lyman-trumbull-house/
“Moseley Braun, Carol.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 2025.https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/M001025
Semple, James. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 2025.https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/S000239
