Sherwood Dixon

John Sherwood Dixon (better known as Sherwood Dixon) (June 19, 1896 – May 17, 1973) was an American politician from Illinois, a member of the Democratic Party.

Born in Dixon, Lee County, Illinois, Dixon was a veteran of World War I and the Illinois National Guard. He was a 1920 graduate of the University of Notre Dame. Dixon was a member of the Illinois Democratic State Central Committee (1938), a delegate to the 1952 Democratic National Convention and an alternate delegate to the 1940 and 1956 Democratic national conventions.

He is best known for serving as the 36th Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, under Governor Adlai Stevenson II, from January 10, 1949, to January 13, 1953.

Although Stevenson initially sought re-election in 1952 and won the Democratic primary (Sherwood himself was renominated for Lieutenant Governor), he was successfully drafted as the Democratic presidential nominee that year (losing ultimately to Republican nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower). Dixon replaced Stevenson as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee and went on to lose to the Republican nominee, State Treasurer William G. Stratton.

Dixon died in his hometown of the same name in 1973 and is interred in Oakwood Cemetery there.

His son, James E. Dixon, was Mayor of Dixon from 1983–1991.