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Street Names Fisk Street Major General Clinton Bowen Fisk was born in Griggsville, Livingston County, N.Y., Dec. 8, 1828. His parents were natives of Rhode Island, who moved to the Genesee Valley some years before his birth. His father, Benjamin Fisk, bore the title of Captain, and his great-grandfather was a Major General in the army of Washington. He was named Clinton after New-York's Governor. While little more than an infant, his parents moved to Michigan and settled in Lenawee County, at a place they called Clinton. When Clinton was six years of age his father died and his mother shortly afterward lost the bulk of her property. Thus it happened when nine years old Clinton apprentices himself until he was twenty-one to Farmer Wright.
He was a friend of both Grant and Lincoln. He was Col of the 33rd Missouri Infantry. He seized Camp Jackson and fought in Tennessee and Missouri. He served under Grant in the siege of Vicksburg. Later he was placed in command of the District of St. Louis, and, while holding this position, defeated Sterling Price in his attack on Jefferson City. He was made Brevet Major General of Volunteers in 1865. After the war he was appointed to the Freedman’s Bureau. In 1866 he opened a barracks as a charter school for Negroes that became Fisk University. Grant also appointed him President of Board of Indian Commissioners. In 1866 he resigned from the army and became Vice President and Treasurer of the Missouri Pacific and Atlantic and Pacific Railway Companies, positions that he held until 1876. After that he became interested in a number of banking, mining, and land operations, and had added materially to his previously large fortune. His country house and grounds on Remsen Hill, near Seabright, N.J., are among the finest in the country. He was known to have an "aversion to drink and profanity" and was "an ardent Methodist." He ran for President in 1888 as a Prohibition Party presidential candidate. He died of complications of influenza at his home in New York City in 1890. |
