A farmer, Joseph Fisher was the oldest child of Jesse and Jerusha (Armsby) Fisher. The family moved from Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire to the town of Baltimore, Windsor County, Vermont circa 1798 when Joseph was a small boy.

They made their home in what was then "sparsely settled forest." According to Philip A. Fisher's book The Fisher Genealogy: Record of the Descendants of Joshua, Anthony, and Cornelius Fisher of Dedham, Mass. (1898), page 287: "He and his brothers and sisters had few opportunities for culture, but understood well its value."

By the time of the 1840 census, Joseph Fisher and his own family were living near Chester, Vermont on his farm.

This excerpt below is from the book "History of Windsor County, Vermont with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers," Lewis Cass Aldrich & Frank R. Holmes, editors (1891), pages 694-695 ("Old Families"):

"Fisher, Joseph, son of Jesse, was born March 10, 1793, and married Orythia Selden [October 30, 1817]. Their children were Orythia (deceased), married William W. Earle; Joseph Selden, resides at Bonzonia [Benzonia], Mich.; Jesse Lyman, born October 7, 1822, married Abigail Maria Harrington, and has three children: Herbert Selden, an attorney at Randolph, Neb.; Charles Everett, connected with a National Bank at Gloucester, Mass.; and Ella Maria, wife of W. O. Davis of Chester; he has always resided in Chester; Mary (deceased), married Abram Whitcomb; Susan, widow of Griffin Shaw, lives at Warsaw, N. Y.; Joanna, wife of Rev. George H. White, a Congregationalist minister, lives in Grinnell, la.; George, lives in Cairo, Ill.; Charles, died at Grinnell, la.; Lavinia, died young ; Edward, born May 8, 1838, died at Chester, la. Joseph married for his second wife [November 26, 1844] Celinda Adams, by whom he had three children: Julia Elizabeth, widow of Merrill I. Howard, who resides at Grinnell, la.; Herman Adams lives at Tacoma, Washington Ter.; and Henry died young. Joseph died September 25, 1866."

It was said (in the Fisher genealogy book cited above) that "The children of Joseph Fisher have all had one marked characteristic. They have been tremendous workers, not a lazy bone in one of them."

Joseph Fisher married a third time, late in life, to the widow Martha Robinson Bigelow, on April 25, 1861. He died age 73 (on his farm?) near Chester, Vermont.

Note: All of his 13 children have been linked below except for his son, Jesse Lyman Fisher, born October 7, 1822 in Chester, Vermont and died November 26, 1897 in Chester, Vermont. So far his grave and that of his wife, Abigail Maria Harrington Fisher, have not been located.