PoliticalGraveyard.com
The Political Graveyard: A Database of American History
Champaign, Illinois
including West Urbana
Mayors, Postmasters, Collectors of Internal Revenue

Mayors of Champaign, 1874-2015 (may be incomplete!)
S. Richards 1874 Joshua Dickerson 1875 H. Trevett 1876-79 B. C. Beach 1880 L. S. Wilcox 1881-82 J. B. McKinley 1883 William A. Day 1883-84 B. C. Beach 1885-86 L. S. Wilcox 1888 P. W. Woody 1889-90 J. B. Harris 1891-94 E. E. Chester 1895 C. J. Mullikin 1902 S. A. Blaine 1906-09 W. Coughlin 1911-12 O. B. Dobbins 1913-14 E. S. Swigart 1916 S. C. Tucker 1918-22 George J. Babb 1923-27 George B. Franks 1928-30 C. J. Mullikin 1936 James D. Flynn 1936-41 M. Flynn 1942-43 George J. Babb 1944-51 Virgil F. Lafferty 1951-58 E. Dexter 1959-66 V. Wikoff 1967-74 W. Bland 1975-78 J. Severns 1979-82 R. Dodd 1983-86 D. McCollum 1987-98 Gerald Schweighart 1999-2011 Don Gerard 2011-15

Events and Candidates (may be incomplete!)

  • 1905: S. A. Blaine, elected.
  • 1907: S. A. Blaine, elected.
  • 1923 Apr 17: George J. Babb, elected; C. M. Stahl, defeated.
  • 1927 Apr 19: George B. Franks, elected; George J. Babb, defeated.
  • 1947 Apr 15: George J. Babb, elected; Virgil Burgess, defeated.
  • 1951 Apr 17: Virgil F. Lafferty, elected; Lewis S. Colbert, defeated.
  • 2011 Apr 5: Don Gerard, elected; Gerald Schweighart, defeated.

    Postmasters at Champaign, 1860-1971 (may be incomplete!)
    John Mills 1860-61 John W. Scroggs 1861-65 David S. Crandall 1865 John W. Scroggs 1865-66 Joshua Dickerson 1866-67 Eli N. McAllister 1867-87 Isaac Fielding 1887-89 John W. Spaulding 1889-93 Isaac Fielding 1893-97 O. Riley 1897-1914 C. J. Mullikin 1914-22 Orville L. Davis 1922-23 Orville L. Davis 1923-35 Ace C. Parris 1935-50 John J. O'Neil 1950-51 John J. O'Neil 1951-68 John Walsh Miller 1968-71

    West Urbana
    (now Champaign)

    Postmasters at West Urbana, 1855-60 (may be incomplete!)
    John C. Baddeley 1855 John Mills 1855-60

    Champaign

    U.S. Collectors of Internal Revenue at Champaign, 1879 (may be incomplete!)
    John W. Hill as of 1879

    • "Enjoy the hospitable entertainment of a political graveyard."
    Henry L. Clinton, Apollo Hall, New York City, February 3, 1872    		 The Political Graveyard

    The Political Graveyard is a web site about U.S. political history and cemeteries. Founded in 1996, it is the Internet's most comprehensive free source for American political biography, listing 338,260 politicians, living and dead.
     
      The coverage of this site includes (1) the President, Vice President, members of Congress, elected state and territorial officeholders in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories; and the chief elected official, typically the mayor, of qualifying municipalities; (2) candidates at election, including primaries, for any of the above; (3) all federal judges and all state appellate judges; (4) certain federal officials, including the federal cabinet, diplomatic chiefs of mission, consuls, U.S. district attorneys, collectors of customs and internal revenue, members of major federal commissions; and political appointee (pre-1969) postmasters of qualifying communities; (5) state and national political party officials, including delegates, alternate delegates, and other participants in national party nominating conventions; (6) Americans who served as "honorary" consuls for other nations before 1950. Note: municipalities or communities "qualify", for Political Graveyard purposes, if they have at least half a million person-years of history, inclusive of predecessor, successor, and merged entities.  
      The listings are incomplete; development of the database is a continually ongoing project.  
      Information on this page — and on all other pages of this site — is believed to be accurate, but is not guaranteed. Users are advised to check with other sources before relying on any information here.  
      The official URL for this page is: https://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/IL/ofc/champaign.html .  
      Links to this or any other Political Graveyard page are welcome, but specific page addresses may sometimes change as the site develops.  
      If you are searching for a specific named individual, try the alphabetical index of politicians.  
    Copyright notices: (1) Facts are not subject to copyright; see Feist v. Rural Telephone. (2) Politician portraits displayed on this site are 70-pixel-wide monochrome thumbnail images, which I believe to constitute fair use under applicable copyright law. Where possible, each image is linked to its online source. However, requests from owners of copyrighted images to delete them from this site are honored. (3) Original material, programming, selection and arrangement are © 1996-2025 Lawrence Kestenbaum. (4) This work is also licensed for free non-commercial re-use, with attribution, under a Creative Commons License.
    What is a "political graveyard"? See Political Dictionary; Urban Dictionary.
    Site information: The Political Graveyard is created and maintained by Lawrence Kestenbaum, who is solely responsible for its structure and content. — The mailing address is The Political Graveyard, P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106. — This site is hosted by HDLmi.com. — The Political Graveyard opened on July 1, 1996; the last full revision was done on February 17, 2025.