William Plocker

William Plocker (May 28, 1811 – December 20, 1878) was an English-born Dutch-American immigrant, farmer, politician, and Wisconsin pioneer. He served in the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing Fond du Lac County.

Biography William Plocker was born in London, England, but raised and educated in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He emigrated at age 16, landing in Boston, Massachusetts, on .

His farm in Metomen was described as one of the best-managed farms in the county. He sold most of his farm in 1875, during his legislative term.

In the last year of his life, he was named the first village president of Brandon, Wisconsin, after it was established in 1878.

He returned to Boston, Massachusetts, later that year to seek medical treatment for a heart condition. He collapsed after attending a concert there and was brought to the home of a doctor, where he died December 20, 1878.

Personal life and family William Plocker was a son of a Dutch father and English mother. He had several siblings, some of whom emigrated to Wisconsin after him. Plocker never married but his will described intense romantic feelings for a woman whose name was not recorded.

Plocker may have suffered from some form of obsessive–compulsive disorder, as accounts of his life are filled with anecdotes of his eccentric or compulsive behaviors.

He was a meticulous record-keeper and collector, and maintained all of his papers in a careful system. From the time of his departure from Amsterdam until nearly his death, Plocker recorded a comprehensive diary accounting for much of his life, and maintained a scrapbook of useful documents, including a comparison of true and counterfeit bank bills from nearly every bank in Wisconsin. He also kept a separate book of "Anecdotes and Comicalities" where he recorded incidents, stories, jokes, anecdotes, and other interesting facts that he learned throughout his life, often written in patterns of geometric shapes, rather than paragraphs. He collected various other items, he had an extensive collection of coins and stamps, every issue of Harper's Magazine and The Illustrated London News from their inception to his death, over five hundred stereoscopic images of Europe and America, twelve volumes of rare books, and a rare folio-size leather-bound Nuremberg Bible. He also collected nearly a thousand autographs of famous individuals, including Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, and Millard Fillmore. Many of his items were donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society, including the bible.