Location: US 220 (Battleground Avenue) at New Garden Road in Greensboro
County: Guilford
Original Date Cast: 1949
Joseph G. Cannon, U.S. House member from the state of Illinois for over forty years, including eight years as Speaker of the House, was born on May 7, 1836, in Guilford County. He moved with his parents to Bloomingdale, Indiana, in 1840. Cannon eventually studied law at the Cincinnati Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1858. He practiced law in Terre Haute Indiana until he moved to Tuscola, Illinois, in 1859.
Cannon served as a state attorney from 1861 to 1868 before being elected as a Republican to Congress from the Forty-third District. He would serve that district for eighteen years, before losing an election. In that time, he became chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department and served on the Committee on Appropriations. He lost in 1890 but returned to the Congress in 1893, where save for a two-year cycle, he served until his retirement from public life in 1923.
Cannon served for eight years (1903-1911) as Speaker of the House and is regarded by some to be the most powerful Speaker in the body’s history, earning the nickname “Uncle Joe.” As he entered retirement, he was the cover subject of the first issue of Time. In 1908, Cannon received votes for the Republican nomination for president at the party’s convention in Chicago.
On May 28, 1907, Cannon visited Greensboro and was taken out by his hosts to visit the site of his birth. The house was long gone, and little remained to identify the spot. “Uncle Joe, there is where you were born,” the driver told the Speaker. “The hell it is—drive on,” he responded. Cannon eventually retired to Danville, Illinois. He died there on November 12, 1926, and was buried in Spring Hill Cemetery.
References:
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress online: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000121
(Raleigh) News and Observer, November 13, 1926