Joseph Gurney Cannon (May 7, 1836 – November 12, 1926) was a United States politician from Illinois and leader of the Republican Party. Cannon served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1903 to 1911, and historians generally consider him to be the most dominant Speaker in United States history, with such control over the House that he could often control debate. Cannon is the second longest-serving Republican Speaker in history, having been surpassed by fellow Illinoisan Dennis Hastert, who passed him on June 1, 2006. He was also the first Congressman to surpass 40 years of service (non-consecutive), ending his career with 48 years of cumulative congressional service, a record that held until 1958. He was the subject of the first Time cover.

He was born in Guilford, Guilford County, North Carolina and in 1840 moved with his parents to Annapolis, Indiana, about 30 miles north of Terre Haute, Indiana. He was the elder of two sons of Horace Cannon, a country doctor. Horace Cannon drowned when Joseph was ten years old as he tried to reach a sick patient by crossing Sugar Creek. Young Cannon took charge of the family farm. Gulielma (Hollingsworth) was his mother; his brother William would become a successful banker and realtor.

Asked by Terre Haute politician and lawyer John Palmer Usher, future Secretary of the Interior under President Abraham Lincoln, to testify in a slander case, Cannon became fascinated with the law. Eventually, he asked Usher if he could study law under him and moved to Terre Haute. At age 19 he traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio to attend a semester of law school at the University of Cincinnati law school.

He was admitted to the bar in 1858 and commenced practice in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1858, but was disappointed when Usher refused to offer him a place in his office. That year he relocated to Tuscola, Illinois. His choice of a new hometown was somewhat involuntary, taking place whilst he was travelling from Shelbyville, Illinois, to Chicago to find more clients for his law firm. During the trip, he ran out of money. He boarded a Chicago-bound train in Mattoon, Illinois; after the train had started, he was asked for his ticket. Because Cannon did not have a ticket, he was removed from the train in Tuscola. There, he became State's attorney for the twenty-seventh judicial district of Illinois, holding the position from March 1861 to December 1868. In 1876 moved to Danville, Illinois, where he resided the rest of his life. He and his wife Mary P. Reed, whom he married in 1862, had two daughters.

He became a follower of Abraham Lincoln during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. After Lincoln was elected President in 1860, Cannon received an appointment as a regional prosecutor. Cannon, a member of the Republican Party, was elected as to the United States House of Representatives from Illinois to the Forty-second and to the eight succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1873–March 4, 1891), and was the chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department (Forty-seventh Congress), Committee on Appropriations (Fifty-first Congress). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1890 to the Fifty-second Congress, but was elected to the Fifty-third and to the nine succeeding Congresses that sat between 1893 and 1913. He attempted to gain the Speakership four times before succeeding. His antic speaking style, diminutive stature and pugnacious manner were his trademarks. The newspapers frequently lampooned him as a colorful rube. "Uncle Joe", as he was known, often clashed with fellow Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who Cannon remarked had "no more use for the Constitution than a tomcat has for a marriage license".

Joseph was chairman to the Committee on Appropriations (Fifty-fourth through Fifty-seventh Congresses), Committee on Rules (Fifty-eighth through Sixty-first Congresses), and Speaker of the House of Representatives (Fifty-eighth through Sixty-first Congresses). He received fifty-eight votes for the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention at Chicago in 1908.

In 1910 an Insurgent revolt flared in the House as both Democrats and dissatisfied Republicans stripped the Speaker of some of his powers, such as heading the House Rules Committee and ability to appoint members of other House committees. Cannon was defeated in 1912 but returned in 1914 and was re-elected through 1922. He was a critic of President Woodrow Wilson and US entry into World War I. He was also an outspoken critic of Wilson's League of Nations. Cannon retired in 1922; he was featured on the cover of the first issue of Time magazine on the last day of his term in office. Born a Quaker, he became a Methodist after leaving Congress. However, he may have been effectively a Methodist long before this. After marrying Mary Reed in a Methodist service 1862, a Quaker encouraged him to express regret for this, to which Cannon replied, "If you mean that I am to get up in meeting and say that I am sorry I married Mary, I won't do it. I'm damned if I'm sorry and I'm damned if I will say I am."Joseph Cannon died in his residence in Danville, Vermilion County, Illinois.He had a weakened heart and also suffered from the general effects of old age. Cannon expired at noon on November 12, 1926 while in a deep sleep.He was buried in Spring Hill Cemetery.
(Source: wikipedia)

Cannon, Joseph Gurney, congressman, was born in New Garden, a Quaker settlement, near Greensboro. N. C. May 7. 1836. When four years old his father. Dr. Horace C. Cannon, moved to Bloomingdale. Ind. and there the son obtained his education. He was fourteen years old when his father died. He went to work immediately in a country store, and remained there until he was nearly twenty-one when he began the study of law in the office of Usher & Pattison. He was admitted to practice at Terre Haute. Ind. in 1858 and in 1859 he removed to Tuscola, Douglas co., Ill., where in March, 1861, he was elected state's attorney for the district. He held this office until December, 1868. In 1873 he was elected a member of the 43d congress against a strong Democratic candidate, and he has been elected to every congress since with the exception of the fifty-fourth. In the election of 1890 he went down under the political tidal wave which engulfed so many Republican leaders in the West and Northwest. In his experience as a member of the house Mr. Cannon has been conspicuous in the public eye almost since the time of his first election. As a member of the committee on postoffices and post-roads he advocated the change in the laws whereby postage on second class matter may be prepaid according to weight. He was largely responsible for placing sugar on the free list in the McKinley tariff law of 1890. Hut it is as chairman of the committee on appropriations that Mr. Cannon has achieved his greatest fame. He was, before his election to the speakership of the house, a member of the committee on appropriations for twenty-two years, and for ten years he was its chairman. The responsibility of this position is very great. In fact, it exceeds in importance any other known to either of the lawmaking bodies at Washington. The constant assaults on the treasury which come in the form of petitions, appeals, amendments and recommendations from various quarters must be made to the committee on appropriations in the House of Representatives. The needs of the government must be judged there and just expenditures sorted out from the unjust. For years it has been the custom to speak of the chairman of this committee as the “watch dog of the treasury." In this trying position Mr. Cannon has made a record for carefulness, shrewdness, farsightedness and sterling integrity equal to that of any of his predecessors. It was as chairman of this committee that he was called upon to pass on the appropriations needed for the army and navy at the time of the. Spanish-American war. In every other emergency in the events occurring during the time of his chairmanship Mr. Cannon has been a conspicuous figure before the country. He has also been prominent in the discussion of reforms of government, currency, tariff, internal improvements, shipping, increase of the navy, reorganization of the army and the Nicaragua canal, and he was a member of the committee on insular affairs organized to adjust our relations with the islands acquired in the Spanish-American war. In November 1903, he was elected to succeed Hon. David B. Henderson as speaker of the house of representatives. He was married in 1862 to Mary Reed, and has had two daughters, Helen A. and Mabel, wife of Ernest X. Lesure of Danville. According to a character sketch in the “Review of Reviews," his personality is described as '" unique, peculiar, most interesting and admirable. ' Uncle Joe ' Cannon he is to all who know him ... a nature that is brimming full of sunshine, of kindliness, of good feeling, of quaint humor, and above all of what we Americans know as plain, common ' horse 6ense." . . . He knows the United States as a chess-player knows his board and his pieces. He is sagacious, honorable, faithful. He will make a good speaker, because he will keep his party together and secure results." As illustrating his sense oi humor and his aptness in the art of ridicule, the same writer recalls this instance: A newspaper having reported the disappearance from the White House of a sideboard, which had been presented to the wife of Pres. Hayes, “a Democratic member introduced a formidable and formal resolution instituting solemn inquiry into this most dreadful affair. This was too much for the common sense of the coming speaker. He knew his house better than to be serious. Rolling up his coat-sleeves after his wont in mock appreciation of the solemnity of the moment, with the faint suggestion of a smile playing about the corners of his mouth, he exclaimed: 'Mr. Speaker, it is right and proper that this house should carefully guard all the property of the government. We must do our duty, sir, no matter at what cost of trouble. History tells us that a century ago Abigail Adams hung out her laundry to dry m the east room of the White House. Good God, Mr. Speaker, where is that clothes-line now?'"
(Source: National cyclopedia of American Biography. Vol. XIII. Published 1906)