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BIOGRAPHIES
Source:
1763
COMBINED HISTORY OF SHELBY AND MOULTRIE COUNTIES, ILLINOIS
With Illustrations Descriptive of their Scenery and
Biographical Sketches of some of their Prominent Men and Pioneers.
Published by
Brink, McDonough & Co., Philadelphia
Corresponding Office, Edwardsville, ILL
1881
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HON. CHARLES VORIS.
The ancestry of the Voris family on the paternal side
is German, and on the maternal English and Scotch.
Peter Voris, the grandfather of Charles, was born
and raised in Lancaster county, Pa. He removed to Ohio
in 1815 and settled in Stark county, afterward lived and
died in Summit county in 1849. He married a Miss
Spiker of Lancaster county, Pa. Peter Voris,
Jr., was one of the offspring of that marriage. HE
was born in Lancaster county, Pa., in 1799.
He remained in Ohio until 1858, when he came to Mattoon
in Coles county, Illinois, and died there in January, 1880,
in the eighty-first year of his age. He was by
profession, a civil engineer, and in his life was a
prominent man in Ohio. He was Judge of the District
Court, and Associate Judge under Hon. Ben.
Wade for five years. He also represented his
district in the Legislature of Ohio, and held other minor
though important offices in his county. He married
Julia Coe, a native of Hartford, Conn., but a
resident of Summit county, Ohio at the time of her marriage.
She died in Mattoon in 1859. By this union there were
thirteen children, nine sons and four daughters. Nine
of the children have survived the parents. The subject
of this sketch is the seventh in the family. He was
born in Summit county, Ohio, March 22d, 1839. His
youth was passed upon the farm and in attending the district
schools, until his fifteenth year, when he came to Knox
county, Illinois, and worked on a farm. The same year
he went to Minnesota, and then to Iowa, and remained there
until the fall of 1859, when he came home to his parents at
Mattoon, Illinois, and remained there until the winter of
1860, when he engaged with a party in Mattoon to take charge
of the grain and lumber business in Windsor, Shelby county.
He came to Windsor, and in 1862 engaged in general
merchandizing and grain business, which he continued until
1866. In 1868 he went into banking business. In
1875 he went on a farm. The next year he returned to
Windsor and engaged in milling and grain business, in which
he still continues. In 1866 he was elected a member of
the Legislature for the then 17th Representative District,
now the 31st, and in 1868 was re-elected to the same office.
In 1870 he was nominated and elected State Senator for the
7th Senatorial District for the short term. In 1872
under the redistricting it became the 31st Senatorial
District. He was again elected to represent that
district in the State Senate for the short term. He
retired from office in 1874. While a member of the
House he was on the committees of Railroads, Counties,
Enrolled and Engrossed Bills. While in the Senate he
was a member of the committee on Railways, Penitentiary and
Manufactories, and chairman of the Special Committee to
investigate the Union Stock Yards at Chicago. In 1869
he was elected Vice President of the Bloomington and Ohio
River Railroad, now one of the branches of the Wabash and
Pacific
Politically he was originally a democrat, and was
elected by that party to the honorable positions he held.
In 1873 he joined hands with the National party, or the
party who were opposed to monopolies and in favor of
legislating in the interest of the masses, and not in favor
of the few. Since that time he has acted with the
National Greenback party, and is active in its councils and
connections. In 1876 he was chairman of the committee
on Permanent Organization in the National Convention that
met at Indianapolis that nominated Peter Cooper
for President. He was an elector on the National
ticket for his District in 1876.
He is not a member of any church organization, but he
is what might be termed a “ Restitutionist.” He is a
radical temperance advocate. While a member of the
State Senate, he was one of three members of his party who
voted for the passage of what then became the Temperance Law
of the State. He advocated the cause of temperance
both in private and from the rostrum. In the winter of
1878 he went to Effingham, and organized the temperance
movement, and such was the force and power of his speeches
that in one week he got fourteen hundred names enrolled as
workers in the cause, and completely revolutionized public
sentiment in that hitherto license town.
On the 6th of November, 1860, he was united in marriage
to Miss Mary J. Templeton, a native of Shelby county.
Two children have been born to them, one living named
Annette Eliza Voris. Julia
died in her ninth year.
Source: Combined History of Shelby and Moultrie
Counties, Illinois - Published by Brink, McDonough & Co.,
Philadelphia
Corresponding Office, Edwardsville, ILL - 1881 - Page 239 |
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