Wilbur F. Sanders (May 2, 1834 - July 7, 1905) was a United States Senator from Montana. Born in Leon, New York, he attended the common schools, and taught school in New York. He moved to Ohio in 1854, where he continued teaching, and studied law in Akron, Ohio, gaining admission to the bar in 1856. During the Civil War he recruited a company of infantry and a battery of artillery in the summer of 1861 and was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Sixty-fourth Regiment, Ohio Infantry, of which he was made adjutant. He assisted, in 1862, in the construction of defenses along the railroads south of Nashville. He settled in that part of Idaho which later became Montana, and engaged in the practice of law and also became interested in mining and stock raising. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for election in 1864, 1867, 1880, and 1886 as a Delegate to Congress, and was a member of the Territorial house of representatives of Montana from 1873 to 1879. Upon the admission of Montana as a State into the Union, he was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate and served from January 1, 1890, to March 3, 1893. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection. While in the Senate, he was chairman of the Committee on Enrolled Bills (Fifty-second Congress.)
Wilbur F. Sanders died in Helena, Montana in 1905 and was interred in Forestvale Cemetery.
