Lake County IN Archives Biographies.....Fancher, Thaddeus S. 1848 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/in/infiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com December 21, 2006, 10:07 pm Author: T. H. Ball (1904) HON. THADDEUS S. FANCHER. Hon. Thaddeus S. Fancher has been an attorney at Crown Point, Indiana, for over thirty years, and has been interested in the draining and improvement of the swamp land of southern Lake county. He has depended on his own efforts for the advancement made in his profession, having defrayed his early expenses for education by teaching school. He has had a very successful career, both from his individual standpoint and for the general welfare, and his services to the county and state as a legislator and promoter of public improvements indicate his worth as a citizen. His grandfather, Thaddeus S. Fancher, was of French descent, a native of Connecticut, and was a pioneer to Huron county, Ohio, where his son, T. S. Fancher, was born in 1809. The latter lived all his life on one farm in Greenwich township, Huron county, and was a prosperous farmer, living to be eighty-four years old. He was a member of the Methodist church. He married Amy Chapman, who was born and reared in Richland county, Ohio, and is now living in Huron county at the age of eighty-seven. Her father, Cyrus Chapman, was of Scotch descent and a pioneer of Richland county. These parents had ten children, eight sons and two daughters, and five are living at present. Hon. Thaddeus S. Fancher, who is the seventh child and fourth son, was born in Huron county, Ohio, August 31, 1848, and was reared there. His schooling was received in the familiar little red schoolhouse, which was situated a mile from his home, and which contained the primitive equipment of the temples of learning of that day, such as hard slab seats, board writing desk, etc. After leaving the district school Mr. Fancher began attending Oberlin College, teaching school during the winter to pay expenses. He came to Crown Point in 1868, and for the following two years read law with Major Griffin and taught school. In 1870 he went to the Michigan State University at Ann Arbor, and in 1871 graduated in the law department. He had been admitted to the bar in Crown Point in 1870, and immediately on his return from Ann Arbor took up practice. He lost no time in gaining a client or patronage of some kind, for eighty cents was the entire capital to tide him over the initiatory stages of practice. In the same year he was married and settled down to the career of usefulness which has been continued to the present. In 1873 he was elected county superintendent of schools for a term of two years, and was re-elected, but served only a short part of this term, resigning to take up practice. He was prosecuting attorney of the county for four years, and in 1879 was elected to the state legislature by the Republican party. In 1881 he was returned to his seat by the largest majority ever given any candidate in the county up to that time. He was eighty-one days in the first session and one hundred and one in the second; two of the longest sessions on record. The state statutes were revised at the time, and he was one of the revision committee. Since 1881 he has been continuously engaged in practice and also in dealing in land. Mr. Fancher owns a large tract of land in Lake county, and for the past fifteen years has made a specialty of constructing ditches and draining marsh land. He has had the legal business involved in the construction of over one hundred and fifty miles of ditching, authorized under the law of 1881 passed while he was a member of the legislature, and which has cost the landowners up to this time two hundred thousand dollars, and has resulted in untold benefit to the citizens of Lake county. This land in the Calumet district was formerly worth comparatively nothing, but now sells for sixty, seventy and eighty dollars per acre. The first ditch which he constructed in the Kankakee marsh in 1885 is known as the Singleton ditch, and is seventeen miles long and cost seventeen thousand dollars. Mr. Fancher married, in 1871, Miss Ardelle Washborn, a daughter of Charles A. and Marietta (Griffin) Washborn. They have one son, Thaddeus Milton Fancher, who is attending the schools of Crown Point. Mr. Fancher is a member of the Masonic order and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Additional Comments: Extracted from: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Genealogy and Biography OF LAKE COUNTY, INDIANA, WITH A COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY 1834—1904 A Record of the Achievements of Its People in the Making of a Commonwealth and the Founding of a Nation. REV. T. H. BALL OF CROWN POINT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ILLUSTRATED CHICAGO NEW YORK THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1904 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/in/lake/bios/fancher506gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/infiles/ File size: 5.1 Kb