Fillmore Condit

Fillmore Condit (September 4, 1855 – January 6, 1939) was an American inventor, oil executive, and Prohibition Party politician from New Jersey. He was an activist for temperance and women's suffrage and a major financial supporter of these causes.

From 1913 to 1921, he chaired the national executive committee of the Anti-Saloon League, the leading prohibitionist lobbying organization in the United States. In 1919, the League nominated him for governor of New Jersey, but he withdrew after extracting concessions from the Republican Party.

After moving to California, he was also elected to local office in Long Beach.

Biography Fillmore Condit was born on September 4, 1855 in Roseland, New Jersey to Stephen J. and Catherine (née Laffan) Condit. His father was a descendant of the Newark colonist John Condit, through whom the family was related to American revolutionary John Condit, U.S. representative Silas Condit, and Rutgers University president Ira Condict.

As a young man, Fillmore Condit began working at his father's farm in Roseland and the village general store. He also worked at a saw mill and in the meat business. In 1899, the family relocated briefly to California, where Fillmore became interested in the oil industry. They returned to New Jersey in 1901, where he was placed in charge of the Eastern District of the Union Oil Company of California. He also served as chairman of the board of the American Issue Publishing Company,

In 1913, Condit testified to a grand jury investigating James Kennedy McGuire, which later indicted McGuire on charges of soliciting a campaign contribution from a corporation. In addition to temperance, Condit spoke out in support of women's suffrage and was a featured speaker at a National Suffrage Day meeting in Montclair. He was also one of the speakers during the 1915 tour of the "Torch of Victory," circulated under the auspices of the Women's Political Union.

Condit was nominated by the Anti-Saloon League for governor of New Jersey in 1919, but he withdrew after obtaining concessions from the Republican Party to support Prohibition.

Return to California Condit and his family decided to return to California and settled in Long Beach, where he entered into city politics, serving as a councilman and mayor, and succeeded in founding a city hospital there.

Personal life and death Condit was a long-standing member of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Verona.

Marriages and children According to Condit's own biography, he met his wife Ida Rafter as a customer in his store. They were married on March 30, 1881 in Newark.

In July 1912, his wife purchased a mansion next to their home in Essex Fells, New Jersey, to keep it from being converted into a "negro sanitarium." Mrs. Condit was quoted as saying that she "knew all of our homes would be ruined, especially mine, which is just next door."

He adopted at least one homeless child before 1924.