Philo Dunning

Background

Dunning was born in Webster, New York on March 23, 1819.

Career

He had a common school education, and became a merchant and druggist by trade. He arrived in Wisconsin Territory in 1840, and settled in Dane County, first in Blooming Grove, where he farmed, and later moved into downtown Madison, reportedly because "the railroad built its tracks across their front yard." His original home in Blooming Grove is still standing. He was a delegate from Dane County to the May 1841 territorial Democratic Party meeting.

Foreign some years prior to 1877, he operated a sawmill on Clyde Creek in the nearby Town of Burke, which he either bought or built in 1841 (accounts differ).

He was elected County Treasurer of Dane county in 1854. When in 1856 the City of Madison was chartered as a separate entity, he was elected to its first Board of Supervisors.

In 1873 he was appointed to the state"s visiting committee on charitable and penal institutions by Government. Cadwallader C. Washburn.

In that same year he was elected to the Assembly"s 2nd Dane County district (the Towns of Blooming Grove, Burke, Dunn and Windsor, and the City of Madison) as the candidate of the Reform Party (a short-lived coalition of Democrats, reform and Liberal Republicans, and Grangers which elected one Governor and a number of state legislators) with 1,388 votes, against 995 for former state senator Clement Warner, a Republican (the incumbent, Levi Baker Vilas, was not a candidate for re-election).

He was assigned to the joint committee on charitable and penal institutions. He was not a candidate for re-election in 1874, and was succeeded by Democrat Silas U. Pinney. He served again on the Dane County Board of Supervisors for the 1878-1879 term from the 2nd Ward of Madison.

In the spring of 1889 he was elected to the executive committee of the American Fisheries Society.

In May of 1893 it was announced that he had retired from business "to take life easy". He died September 10, 1900, and is buried in Madison"s Forest Hill Cemetery.

Membership

In 1851 he was a member of both the Wisconsin Agricultural Society and the Dane County Agricultural Society. In 1852, Dunning was elected to the board of supervisors (city council) of the Town of Madison and served as its chairman and thus ex officio as a member of Dane County"s County Board. From 1879-1893 he was a member of the Wisconsin Fish Commission.

From 1887-1893 he served as president of that body.

Connections

Partner:

Edwin Sumner