Densmore Maxon


Densmore William Maxon was an American farmer from Polk, Wisconsin who served as a Democratic member of the Wisconsin State Assembly and the Wisconsin State Senate.

Background

Maxon was born in Verona, Oneida County, New York in 1820. He was educated at the Oneida Conference Seminary at Cazenovia, New York, and became a farmer. He moved to Wisconsin in 1843, and first settled at Milwaukee and was appointed deputy county surveyor in 1843; but removed to Cedar Creek in 1846.

Political career

Maxon was Town Chairman of Polk from 1846 to 1859. He was first elected a member of the Assembly in June, 1848, and again in 1852; was senator in 1858-1861; and was a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin in 1865 against Wyman Spooner. He again served in the Assembly from 1867 to 1872 and was elected to the Assembly for the last time in 1882 from Washington County's first Assembly district, receiving 797 votes to 613 votes for Republican Jacob H. Goelzer, and 72 for Greenbacker H. A. Forbes; he was assigned to the joint committee on charitable and penal institutions.

Outside the legislature

In May, 1868 Maxon was appointed by President Andrew Johnson as a member of the board of visitors to attend the annual examination at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. In the 1880s he was one of the Commissioners of the Wisconsin Farm Mortgage Land Company, a state commission. He died in 1887 in Santa Cruz, California and was buried in Cedar Creek, Wisconsin.