Branch County MI Archives Obituaries.....Fisk, Clinton B. July 1890
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Burt Fuller burtf@msn.com April 14, 2005, 5:18 pm

The New York Times, July 10, 1890
General Clinton Bowen Fisk, soldier, financier, railroad man, and Prohibition 
leader, died unexpectedly yesterday morning at his residence in the Lisbon 
apartment house, 175 West Fifty-eighth Street. His death was caused by fatty 
degeneration of the heart, complicated with a recurrence of influenza, from 
which he suffered last Fall and never fully recovered. About a month ago he 
went to Coldwater, Mich., to attend the funeral services for his wife's mother, 
and contracted a cold, which has confined him to his house ever since his 
return.

Gen. Fisk was born in Griggsville, Livingston County, N.Y., Dec. 8, 1828. His 
parents were natives of Rhode Island, who moved to the Genesee Valley some 
years before his birth. His father, Benjamin Fisk, bore the title of Captain, 
and his great-grandfather was a Major General in the army of Washington. He was 
named Clinton after New-York's Governor and was the sixth son. While little 
more than an infant his parents removed to Michigan and settled in Lenawee 
County, at a place they called Clinton. When Clinton was six years of age his 
father died and his mother shortly afterward lost the bulk of her property. 
Thus it happened when nine years old Clinton apprentices himself until he 
should be twenty-one to Farmer Wright.

The farmer was to give him three months' "schooling" each year, and Clinton 
improved the long Winter nights by reading borrowed books in the fire light. 
The death of his younger brother led him to secure his release from Farmer 
Wright after he had served little more than a year. When he was thirteen his 
mother married again, and his stepfather, William Smith, a well-to-do farmer of 
Spring Arbor, sent him to Albion Seminary. WEhile preparing for Michigan 
University his eyes failed him, and he resolved to go into business. He became 
a clerk for L.D. Crippen, merchant and banker at Coldwater, Mich., and in 1850, 
after marrying his daughter, was taken into partnership. He showed marked 
business ability, and when the financial crash of 1857 came his firm was one of 
the few that was able to meet its obligations. But the bulk of his wealth was 
swept away and his health was severely shaken.

These circumstances led him to go to St. Louis, where he was appointed Western 
financial agent of the AEtna Insurance Company, a position which involved his 
traveling from end to end of the Mississippi Valley. In this way he made a wide 
acquaintance with men, from Abraham Lincoln down. He had from early youth been 
an earnest opponent of slavery as well as the liquor traffic, and when the war 
broke out he offered his services to the Union as a private under three months' 
enlistment.

Before the end of the year, having re-enlisted, he rose to the Colonelcy of the 
Thirty-third Missouri Volunteers. Nov. 24, 1862, he was commissioned Brigadier 
General, and in June 1863, was placed in command at Helena, Ark. He served 
under Grant in the siege of Vicksburg. Later he was placed in command of the 
District of St. Louis, and, while holding this position, defeated Price in his 
attack on Jefferson City. He was made Brevet Major General of Volunteers in 
1865. At the close of the war he was sent to Nashville as Assistant 
Commissioner under Gen. Howard to carry out the work of the Freedman's Bureau. 
His service in the restoration of order and industry were heartily appreciated 
by both whites and blacks. His observation of the needs of the negroes led to 
his founding, in 1867, the Fisk University for the education of colored youth.

In 1866 he resigned from the army and became Vice President and Treasurer of 
the Missouri Pacific and Atlantic and Pacific Railway Companies, positions 
which he held until 1876. In the last fourteen years he had been interested in 
a number of banking, mining, and land operations, and had added materially to 
his previously large fortune. His country house and grounds on Remsen Hill, 
near Seabright, N.J., are among the finest in the country, and are said to be 
worth $250,000. His latest venture was the organization about a year and a half 
ago, with W.W. Hopper, Charles T. Hopper, and C.W. McMarran, of the New-York 
Accident Insurance Company, of which he was President. He held numerous offices 
of public and private trust. In 1873 Gen. Grant appointed him a member of the 
Indian Commission, and he was Chairmanof the board until his death. He was 
President of the Board of Trustees of Drew Theological Seminary, Dickinson 
College, Carlisle, Penn.; the Fisk University, and Albion College, Michigan. He 
was also one of the Vice Presidents of the Evangelical Alliance, a Trustee of 
the American Missionary Association, and a Manager of the Missionary Society of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church.

In politics Gen. Fisk was a Republican until 1884, when he withdrew and took 
the stand of an uncompromising Prohibitionist. He spoke and voted for St. John 
for President in that year. In 1886 he himself was the Prohibition candidate 
for Governor of New-Jersey, and polled nearly twenty thousand votes. In 1888 he 
was the Prohibition nominee for President.

Gen. Fisk leaves a wife, two sons, and one daughter. One of his sons is West. 
The other is a student at Columbia College. His daughter is the wife of Dr. 
Edgar V. Park of this city. The funeral services will be held in the Madison 
Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church Friday, at 3 P.M. The interment will be at 
Coldwater, Mich., Saturday. 

 


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