Joel Foster was an American pioneer farmer, judge and local politician in River Falls, Wisconsin. Background Foster was born the youngest of eleven at Meriden, Connecticut, December 15, 1814. He was liberally educated. He came to Alton, Illinois, in 1830 where he became the ferry master. In 1848 he traveled to what would become Hudson, Wisconsin, then only a few structures at the mouth of the Willow River. After a careful exploration of the surrounding area he settled in the fall of 1848, at the junction of the two branches of the Kinnickinnic River, just upstream from its falls. His first winter was spent in a walled-in overhang cave below the falls of the river with "Dick" an orphan who had been indentured to the family. That same year they began building a small cabin known as Fort Foster. Foster was the first white settler of River Falls, a city which grew at the location of the falls of the Kinnickinnic. He built the first dwelling house, raised the first crops, and helped many other pioneers getting started in that area. He filled many position of responsibility, including judge of St. Croix County, which at that time included what would become Pierce County. During the Mexican–American War he served as a quartermaster in Colonel William H. Bissell's Second Illinois Regiment. Foster was married at Chicago in 1856 to Charlotte Porch. On August 9, 1885, Foster died at his home in town after being gored by a dairy bull on his farm. Foster was buried in the Greenwood Cemetery in River Falls. Politics and elective office Election of 1849 A meeting of the county board of supervisors for St. Croix County was held at the house of Philip Aldrich, June 4, 1849. It was voted at the meeting that the treasurer proceed against the persons elected to office in the several towns, also county, who failed to qualify at a meeting of the justices and clerk of county board of supervisors, September 17, 1849, to canvass the vote for county judge at the election held September 3. Ninety-one votes were canvassed, of which Hamlet H. Perkins received 49, Joel Foster 41, and Bailey F. Baldwin 1. Perkins, though elected to the office of county judge, died before filling the position, in consequence of his deathby drowning during the winter following his election. Perkins was a lumberman, and had received the support