HENDERSON, Thomas Jefferson

HENDERSON, Thomas Jefferson, a Representative from Illinois; born in Brownsville, Haywood County, Tenn., November 29, 1824; moved with his parents to Illinois at the age of eleven; pursued academic studies; clerk of the Board of Commissioners of Stark County, Ill., 1847-1849; clerk of the court of Stark County 1849-1853; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1852 and commenced practice in Toulon, Ill.; member of the State house of representatives in 1855 and 1856; served in the State senate 1857-1860; entered the Union Army in 1862 as colonel of the One Hundred and Twelfth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry; commanded Third Brigade, Third Division, Twenty-third Army Corps, from August 12, 1864, to the close of the war; was brevetted brigadier general in January 1865; resumed the practice of law; moved to Princeton, Ill., in 1867 and continued the practice of law; appointed collector of internal revenue for the fifth district of Illinois in 1871; elected as a Republican to the Forty-fourth and to the nine succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1875-March 3, 1895); chairman, Committee on Military Affairs (Forty-seventh Congress), Committee on Rivers and Harbors (Fifty-first Congress); unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1894; appointed member of the board of managers for the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in 1896; appointed civilian member on the Board of Ordnance and Fortifications in 1900 and served until his death in Washington, D.C., February 6, 1911; interment in Oakland Cemetery, Princeton, Ill.

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