James B. Weaver

James Baird Weaver was a member of the United States House of Representatives and twotime candidate for President of the United States. Born in Ohio, he moved to Iowa as a boy when his family claimed a homestead on the frontier. He became politically active as a young man and was an advocate for farmers and laborers. He joined and quit several political parties in the furtherance of the progressive causes in which he believed. After serving in the Union Army in the American Civil War, Weaver returned to Iowa and worked for the election of Republican candidates. After several unsuccessful attempts at Republican nominations to various offices, and growing dissatisfied with the conservative wing of the party, in 1877 Weaver switched to the Greenback Party, which supported increasing the money supply and regulating big business. As a Greenbacker with Democratic support, Weaver won election to the House in 1878.

James Baird Weaver was born in Dayton, Ohio on June 12, 1833, the fifth of thirteen children of Abram Weaver and Susan Imlay Weaver. Weavers father was a farmer, also born in Ohio, and a descendant of Revolutionary War veterans. He married Weavers mother, a New Jersey native, in 1824. Shortly after Weavers birth, in 1835, the family moved to a farm nine miles north of Cassopolis, Michigan. In 1842, the family moved again to the Iowa Territory to await the opening of former Sac and Fox land to white settlement the following year. They claimed a homestead along the Chequest Creek in Davis County. Abram Weaver built a house and farmed his new land until 1848, when the family moved to Bloomfield, the county seat.

Source: Wikipedia