Profile · Franklin, Wisconsin
Peter Doyle
Wisconsin secretary of state (1874–1878); Franklin childhood after Irish immigration (not other Peter Doyles)
$1,200
Peter Doyle served two terms as Wisconsin secretary of state from 1874 to 1878 after a Franklin childhood that began when an Irish immigrant family put down roots on a Milwaukee County farm. The raise is the city claim; the statewide office is why he is more than a local filler. He was born in Myshall, County Carlow, Ireland, on December 8, 1844, and moved with his parents to Franklin in 1850 at age six. First lessons came at home, then the common school in a town that was still timber and Root River. His father farmed, kept a store, and held local offices. The son clerked in Milwaukee, read law with Butler & Cottrill in 1863 and 1864, taught school, and in July 1865 took a railway-office job in Prairie du Chien that was supposed to be temporary. It stuck. He declined Prairie du Chien’s first mayoral nomination in 1872, won an Assembly seat from Crawford County, and in 1873 the Reform convention put him up for secretary of state. He served under Governors Taylor and Ludington from January 5, 1874, to January 7, 1878. He later returned to Milwaukee to practice, took a law course at Yale, and died in Jersey City in 1900. Fifteen years in Franklin before the railroad job are the childhood stretch.