Francis E. Warren: The Cheyenne Merchant Who Became Wyoming's Livestock Baron

Who was Francis E. Warren?

Francis Emroy Warren was born June 20, 1844, on a farm in Hinsdale, Massachusetts, and died in Washington, D.C., on November 24, 1929. In between he became Cheyenne's leading merchant, a major cattle and sheep owner, the last governor of Wyoming Territory, the first governor of the state and a U.S. senator who served 37 years. The WyoHistory essay on Warren calls him a farm boy who changed Wyoming, and the record backs that up.

The Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum lists him as a stockman, governor and senator.

From a Massachusetts farm to Civil War wounds

Warren left school at eight when his father's farm began to falter, and at fifteen he worked on a neighbor's dairy farm for $13 a month. After two years at Hinsdale Academy he enlisted at eighteen in the 49th Massachusetts Infantry, Company C. On May 27, 1863, during a raid on Port Hudson, Louisiana, he was seriously wounded in the scalp and was initially mistaken for dead, until a doctor found him alive and pulled him from a trench.

About thirty years later, while a senator, he received the Medal of Honor for that action. The U.S. Senate biography adds that he was the last Union soldier to serve in the Senate.

Cheyenne merchant to livestock baron

After the war Warren worked briefly in railroad construction in Iowa, then rode the Union Pacific to Wyoming Territory and arrived in Cheyenne in May 1868, when the town was largely tents and temporary buildings. He clerked for hardware merchant A.R. Converse, became his partner and in 1877 bought the business, renaming it the Warren Mercantile Company.

In fall 1883 he formed the Warren Livestock Company, a cattle and sheep operation that grew to 150,000 acres. He also owned the Cheyenne and Northern Railroad and the Brush-Swan Electric Company, which brought Cheyenne its first electric power, and he oversaw downtown construction including the Plains Hotel, the Majestic Building and the Lincoln Theater. The Senate biography describes him as a powerful baron of Wyoming's cattle and sheep industry within two decades of settling in Cheyenne.

Governor and the road to statehood

Warren served in the territorial legislature from 1872, was territorial treasurer four times and became mayor of Cheyenne in 1885. President Chester A. Arthur appointed him territorial governor that year. After the Rock Springs Massacre on September 2, 1885, in which white workers killed 28 Chinese miners and injured 15, Warren went to the scene, requested federal troops and protected the surviving Chinese miners. A grand jury refused to indict anyone.

President Benjamin Harrison reappointed him in 1889, and he worked with Joseph M. Carey to win statehood, which Congress approved in 1890. Warren became Wyoming's first elected governor, was inaugurated in April 1890 and resigned on November 24, 1890, after about six weeks, when the Legislature elected him to the Senate on its seventh ballot. The National Governors Association profile lists his gubernatorial service.

Thirty-seven years in the Senate

His first term expired in 1893, Wyoming had no second senator for two years, and he returned in 1895. He served until his death, a total of 37 years and four days, and chaired the Appropriations Committee for eight years. He built what the WyoHistory essay calls the Warren Machine, a patronage and pork-barrel organization that dominated Wyoming Republican politics.

From 1902 to 1912 he secured more than $1 million in appropriations for public buildings and sites in Wyoming. As chairman of the Irrigation and Reclamation Committee he pushed for ceding federal public lands to the states and for regulated grazing districts. Both efforts failed, partly because of opposition over possible benefits to the Union Pacific and the fallout from the 1892 Johnson County War. He supported women's suffrage, opposed Prohibition and backed tariffs to protect farm and livestock industries.

Family, loss and legacy

Warren married Helen M. Smith in 1871; she died in 1902, and he married Clara LeNaron Morgan in 1911. In 1915 his daughter Frances, wife of Gen. John J. Pershing, died in a fire at the Presidio in San Francisco along with three of her four children.

He died of pneumonia and bronchitis at 85 and was buried in Cheyenne's Lakeview Cemetery. Fort D.A. Russell was renamed for him on January 1, 1930, and became the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in 1949. He ranks twelfth on the all-time list of longest-serving senators.

Visit or learn more

Cheyenne still carries his name through the air base, and the Wyoming State Archives holds his gubernatorial records. For more on Western stockmen, see the ranching section of farm.FM and a farm.FM story about Wyoming cattle barons.