Biographical Details
Date of Birth: November 18, 1822
Birth Location: Botetourt Court House, VA, USA
Major Study: Law
Graduation Year(s): 1847
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelor of Laws
Date of Death: March 20, 1901
Death Location: Ladoga, IN, USA
Daniel Carey Stover
Life Experience
Daniel Carey Stover was born in Virginia. His family moved to Indiana, and they resided in Ladoga. He was raised by his father, George, and his mother, Anna, as the middle child of thirteen children. He was educated at Wabash College. His occupations and positions were numerous. He was a lawyer from 1847 onward. In 1851, he became a member of the Indiana State Legislature. While still in his twenties, he was on the select committee charged with the complete revision of the laws of the state of Indiana for its 1851 constitution (which holds today). His rise in politics was accompanied by corruption of power and money.
From 1859 to 1863, over a period of four years, Stover was part of what Ray Shortridge calls, “The Great Indiana Bonds Fraud.” He was the perpetrator of a twenty million “paper pyramid” fraud case. He was indicted finally by a New York court for having (with a business partner) issued fraudulent Indiana bonds and established a “wildcat bank” in New York based on fake capital.
Stover had been elected a state agent as a Democrat. When his Republican successor, Robert Hudson of Terre Haute, replaced him after the 1860 elections, Hudson uncovered the deception and confronted Stover. Hudson agreed to keep the story out of the news because he knew that prosecuting the fraud publicly could shatter Indiana’s fragile credit standing, and Civil War authorities needed no bad news to discourage the Union cause. Government agents prevented anyone from communicating with Stover for months until he and his partner were found guilty. The courts “quashed” the indictment to keep it quiet. After legal proceedings concluded in 1863, Stover left the law business, repentant and ruined.
Stover briefly became a respectable businessman with a woolen carding mill in Ladoga. He devoted the remainder of his life to ministerial service. He was an elder in the Christian church. He was president of the Indiana State Christian Ministerial Association. He moved to Colorado for a while and organized a Christian church in Denver. He finally returned to Indiana to live out the rest of his life quietly in Ladoga. He died in 1901. His Civil War era crimes were not exposed in the press until after his widow’s death in 1915.
Marriage and Family
Stover married Frances Harney in 1847. Between 1859 and 1863, his mother, his wife (at age thirty-three), and his father all died. In 1864, he married Frances’s younger sister, Mahala “Duck” Harney. They had a son, Urban, and a daughter, Anna.
References
- Wylie
- Findagrave.com
- Wikipedia
- myheritage.com
- Indiana University (1875)
- Indiana Magazine of History March 2003