J. Frank (James Frank) Hanly

Born in Champaign County, Illinois, in 1863, he moved with his family to Indiana as a boy and grew up in modest circumstances. He worked as a printer and teacher before studying law, and he later became involved in newspaper publishing as well as politics.

Hanly served in the Indiana legislature and in the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected governor of Indiana, serving from 1905 to 1909. He built a reputation as a forceful reformer and an energetic speaker, and after his time as governor he became especially well known for campaigning in support of prohibition.

In his later years he devoted much of his public life to the anti-liquor cause, eventually becoming the Prohibition Party’s presidential nominee in 1916. He died in 1920 after an automobile-train collision in Ohio while on a speaking trip, a dramatic end to a career marked by activism, controversy, and tireless public campaigning.