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Francis was born on January 21, 1802 in Herkimer County, New York, United States, which afterwards became the village of Mohawk. He was the eldest son of the Rev. John Peter and Mary Magdalene Fidelis (Brument) Spinner. His father, a native of Werbach, Baden, had been a Roman Catholic priest in Germany, but in 1801 had renounced that faith and emigrated to America; at the time of Francis' birth he was pastor of the Reformed Dutch Church at German Flats.
Francis was a pupil in four Mohawk Valley district schools and in his old age stated that he learned nothing in any of them. His father apprenticed him to a confectioner at Albany and later to a saddler at Amsterdam, New York; during his spare time he devoted himself to reading and formed an acquisitiveness of mind that persisted throughout his life.
As time went on he became a merchant in Herkimer, major-general of artillery in the state militia, cashier, director, and president of the Mohawk Valley Bank. He was appointed to supervise the building of the state insane hospital at Utica, and during the Polk administration was auditor of the Port of New York.
He served on the committee that dealt with the Brooks-Sumner assault, and was a member of the conference committee in charge of the long-disputed army appropriation bill in the summer of 1856. To the two succeeding Congresses he was elected as a Republican by large pluralities.
A vigorous supporter of Lincoln, he was appointed treasurer of the United States in March 1861. In that capacity he served fourteen years, under three presidents. When he took office, the Treasury was paying out $8, 000, 000 a month; within sixty days the expenditure amounted to $2, 000, 000 a day. It was Spinner's task to guard the government's money chest in a time of perils and difficulties for which there was no precedent. In connection with the issue of
Following his resignation in 1875, caused by friction with the department head over responsibility for appointments, Spinner went to Jacksonville, Florida, where he lived much in the open for fifteen years.
He died in his eighty-ninth year of cancer of the face, after prolonged suffering.
As the Treasurer of the United States, Francis Elias Spinner was the first to suggest the employment of women in government offices. In the result of his actions, the women were first employed to count money, and later took up various clerical duties. He signed the different series of paper money in a singular handwriting, which he cultivated in order to prevent counterfeiting. His signature on the "greenbacks" of the United States was the most familiar autograph in the country.
Identifying himself with the anti-slavery wing of the Democratic party, he was elected to Congress from the Herkimer district in 1854. In the protracted speakership contest of 1855-56 he refused to caucus with the House Democrats and was the only representative elected as a Democrat whose vote was cast for Nathaniel P. Banks. For the rest of that Congress he was affiliated with the Whig-Republican majority.
He became known as an outspoken and inflexibly honest representative who never left his colleagues long in doubt as to his stand on any public question.
On June 22, 1826, he had married Caroline Caswell of Herkimer; one of three daughters survived him.
