Joseph Crocker Sibley, Jr., known to his family and friends as "Joe," was born in Friendship, Allegany County, New York on February 18, 1850.

[1] His father, Joseph Crocker Sibley, Sr., was a medical doctor; his mother, the former Lucy Elvira Babcock, was a school teacher in the years before marriage.

[2] He took a job as a clerk in a dry goods store and harbored the dream of going to college to become a physician, going so far as to study medical books in his spare time.

[4] Although not a total abstainer from alcohol, the newcomer Sibley won the respect of the Democratic establishment for his political courage by pointedly refusing to drink at a private banquet hosted by local brewers in the district, declaring that "I have been trusted by the Prohibitionists with their nomination, and I will not be false to the confidence which they have placed in me, not even in secret and not even as the price of a seat in the House of Representatives.

[2] Sibley proved to be an indefatigable campaigner in his first race for office, delivering as many as six speeches in a single day and developing strong oratorical ability.

The election returns showed that he had not only overcome the big hostile majority with which at the start he had been handicapped, but also that he had piled up for himself the surprising plurality of 3,387 over his principal competitor...[2]Sibley's upset victory in November 1892 won him a place in the Fifty-third Congress.

[1] In Washington the freshman Congressman emerged as a leading critic of the gold standard and advocate of unlimited coinage of silver.

His plan was short-circuited by a severe heart attack in that year,[3] however, leaving Sibley unable to campaign and he was forced to resign the nomination, thereby effectively ending his political career.

[2] During his later years, Sibley resumed his former manufacturing and agricultural pursuits at his well-known estate, "River Ridge Farm," located near Franklin, Pennsylvania.