Lion Silverman (1818April 27, 1894) was an American merchant and Wisconsin pioneer. He was born in the Kingdom of Bavaria and later immigrated to the United States. He was a member of the Wisconsin Senate, representing Ozaukee County during the 1859 session. He was also sheriff of Ozaukee County and also briefly of Washington County before the division of Ozaukee from Washington. He was also the Democratic nominee for State Treasurer of Wisconsin in the 1859 election. His first name was often alternatively spelled Lyon. His last name was also sometimes incorrectly written as "Silberman".
Early life
Lion Silverman was born in the Kingdom of Bavaria about 1818. At age 13, he emigrated to the United States with his parents, settling first at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia, Lion began working as a merchant's apprentice. He moved to Mansfield, Ohio, about 1841, where he started his own merchant business. The exact circumstances are unclear, but his business failed after a short time, and caused some substantial collateral financial damage to the farmers of the community. Several of those impacted later wrote letters denouncing him. After his problems in Mansfield, he moved to Wooster, Ohio, where he met and married his wife Mary Troutman.
A few years after their marriage, Silverman moved his family to the Wisconsin Territory, settling in the town of Trenton, in Washington County. In 1852, he was elected chairman of the town of Trenton and was ex officio a member of the county board of supervisors.
Washington County division controversy
Later that year, he was elected sheriff of Washington County—which then included all the present territory of Washington County plus what is now Ozaukee County—and moved to Port Washington, Wisconsin. Shortly after his election as sheriff, however, the voters elected to split the county. This resulted in some disputes over property and offices, since the government offices of Washington County were largely held in the territory that is now Ozaukee County. Silverman was still nominally the sheriff of Washington County, but he now lived in Ozaukee County, and attempted to act instead as sheriff of Ozaukee County.
The new county board of Washington County ordered that all of their officers and property should be removed to West Bend from Port Washington, but the only officer to comply was the register of deeds, Adam Schantz. The new Ozaukee County government obtained a short-term injunction preventing records from being removed from their Port Washington offices. Schantz sent a petition to their Wisconsin circuit court judge, Charles H. Larrabee, who at that time of year was holding court in Marquette County, far west of Washington and Ozaukee.
Larrabee granted Schantz's petititon, dissolving the injunction, but because of the distance and the primitive communication options of the era, no one in Port Washington was aware the injunction had been lifted. This led to an altercation at the Port Washington offices when Schantz's agents arrived to claim their property. Silverman stopped them and, with a crowd of supporters, chased them out of town. The books and property subsequently disappeared. After this incident, Governor Leonard Farwell formally removed Silverman from office in June 1853 and appointed as sheriff of Ozaukee County.
Silverman, however, was returned to office in February 1854, when the new Democratic governor William A. Barstow appointed him sheriff of Ozaukee County and removed Pidge from office. Silverman did not run for re-election in 1854, and instead sought election to the Wisconsin Senate. He was defeated in the general election by the Anti-Nebraska Democrat Bolivar G. Gill.
During this time, Silverman had also begun operating a pier in Port Washington, and conducted freight forwarding business. He was named postmaster of Ozaukee in 1855, but resigned after less than a year in the job.
Lynching of George De Bar
Also in the mid-1850s, Silverman was involved with the Wisconsin Militia and was captain of the "Union Guards" militia company based in Port Washington. In this role, he was involved in another significant scandal when the Union Guards were summoned to West Bend to provide security for a murder trial which had significantly inflamed the passions of the local community.