John W. North facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
John Wesley North
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| Minnesota Territorial House of Representatives | |
| In office 1849–1851 |
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| Nevada Territorial Supreme Court | |
| In office 1863–1864 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | January 4, 1815 Sand Lake, Rensselaer County, New York |
| Died | February 22, 1890 Fresno, California |
| Resting place | Evergreen Cemetery (Riverside, California) |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | Emma Bacon (d. 1847). Ann Hendrix Loomis (1848–1890) |
| Children | 6 |
| Occupation | Attorney |
John Wesley North (January 4, 1815 – February 22, 1890) was an American abolitionist, lawyer, and politician. A founder of the Republican Party of Minnesota, North served in the constitutional convention of that state and of Nevada. As a legislator in the Minnesota Territorial Legislature, North was influential in founding the University of Minnesota. He was appointed as Nevada's first surveyor general and as an associate justice on Nevada's territorial Supreme Court.
He was the founder of the cities of Northfield, Minnesota and Riverside, California.
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Early life and career
North was born at his father's sawmill west of Sand Lake, New York, on January 4, 1815. North's family was intimately associated with the Methodist Church, as the Second Great Awakening swept New England and New York State in the early 19th-century. As a young man, North "felt the call" of religion and his father travelled as a preacher.
Through a professional connection with the Reverend Arnold Scholefield, North met Gerrit Smith. Smith, a wealthy leader of the abolitionist movement, was an important influence in North's embrace of anti-slavery.
In 1838, North enrolled at Wesleyan University. After achieving local recognition in an impromptu debate with the pro-slavery minister Francis Hodgson, North was invited by the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society to work as a lecturer. As he gained attention, North's lay license to practice ministry on behalf of the Methodist Episcopal Church was challenged by Augustus William Smith. Though North survived the challenge, he resigned his license.
North founded Wesleyan's Anti-Slavery Society and, after graduation, continued to lecture for two years across Connecticut.
North transitioned to practicing law, forming connections with anti-slavery lawyers and educators Joshua Leavitt, Beriah Green, and William Burleigh, among others. North's relationship with John Greenleaf Whittier from this era would remain a profound influence on his later life.
He moved to the Minnesota Territory in 1849 where he continued to practice law. The first years in Minnesota were spent at St. Anthony. In the fall of 1850, North was elected a member of the second Minnesota Territorial Legislature of the territory. He ran for reelection in the 1851 elections but was defeated. He was one of the founders of the Republican Party of Minnesota in 1855. In 1857, he was a member of the Minnesota state Constitutional Convention. In 1860, he was a delegate to the Chicago Republican Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency of the United States and was a member of the committee that went to Springfield to notify Lincoln of his nomination.
In addition to his legislative career in Minnesota, North was influential in founding the University of Minnesota, wrote the act which became the university's charter and was treasurer of its board of regents (an appointed position) from 1851 to 1860.
Marriage and family
North's first wife was Emma Bacon, whom he married in 1845. She died of tuberculosis in 1847.
In 1848, North married Ann Hendrix Loomis, the daughter of George Loomis. Dr. George Loomis was an abolitionist and country doctor who attended to North during a period of intense sickness.
Of the eight children of John and Ann North, six children lived to adulthood.
Founding Northfield, Minnesota
On August 17, 1855, North purchased 160 acres (65 ha) of land from three farmers: Daniel Kuykendahl, Daniel Turner, and Herman Jenkins. The entire tract of 320 acres (130 ha) was platted in the fall of 1855, and the plat of the Original Town, comprising most of what is now the First and Second wards and a small tract across the river south of the section line now marked by Fourth street, was filed in the office of the register of deeds March 7, 1856. The town was named Northfield, Minnesota.
In the summer of 1855 North started work on the dam and a $4,000 saw mill which began sawing lumber about the first of December of that year.
North's wife, Ann Loomis North, and three children aged four months to four years, joined him in Northfield in on January 3, 1856. A fourth child, John Greenleaf North (b. October 11, 1856 in Saint Anthony, Minnesota), was born later that year. The Norths eventually had six children.
The Norths founded many of the early societies in Northfield. A college-bred man, John was keenly interested in the organization of the Lyceum Society, which was formed October 1, 1856, and of which he was the first president. A number of the early Northfield settlers had known the Norths in Syracuse, New York, including Ann's brother and sister-in-law, George (1835–1894) and Kate A. Loomis.
When North suffered financial failure in the Panic of 1857, his business interests were purchased in 1859 by his friend Charles Augustus Wheaton, who had moved to Northfield from Syracuse on the advice of the Norths after the death of Wheaton's first wife.
North's connection to the community he founded lasted only about six years. He left well before the event that brought the town its most notoriety—the James-Younger Gang's attempt to rob the First National Bank of Northfield in 1876.
Nevada Judiciary
In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln appointed North the official surveyor of the new Territory of Nevada, and North moved to Virginia City, Nevada. The territorial surveyor was a sensitive position in a mining region such as Nevada's Comstock Lode, where the boundaries of mining claims were the constant subject of lawsuits. Lincoln may have counted on North to keep Nevada Territory loyal to the Union, and to bring Nevada in as a Republican state, as he had Minnesota. North surveyed, invested in silver mining properties, began building an ore-treatment mill he named the Minnesota Mill, and practiced law.
In early 1863, when Justice Gordon Mott's resignation from the Supreme Court of Nevada Territory was a certainty, Judge Horatio M. Jones recommended North for the vacancy. On August 20, 1863, Lincoln granted North a temporary appointment to Nevada's highest court, the predecessor of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. Initially, North won praise both for his decisions and for removing the backlog of cases on his docket. He was also elected president of the 1863 constitutional convention (in Carson City) assigned to draft a proposed state constitution for Nevada. In both positions he clashed with William M. Stewart, a prominent lawyer with political ambitions and large mining companies as clients. North's rulings supported the "many-ledge" interpretation of mining law on the Comstock Lode, which favored the smaller mining companies over the larger companies that were Stewart's clients.
Stewart accused North of accepting bribes from litigants. North denied the charge, and Stewart was forced to publicly recant, but Stewart continued to attack North's honesty, and orchestrated a campaign against North in the Nevada newspapers allied with Stewart. Other newspapers supported North.
North resigned because of ill health after less than a year on the bench, but sued Stewart for slander. North agreed to submit his suit to arbitration, and after hearing both sides, the court declared that Stewart had indeed slandered North, and that there was no evidence that North had engaged in corruption. Nevertheless, North left the Territory for California, and Stewart remained and became the U.S. Senator from the new state of Nevada.
Founding Riverside, California
North and his family moved to the northern California town of Santa Clara, and then for a while to Tennessee. There are reports that North, an abolitionist, was shunned in Tennessee after he talked a crowd out of lynching a black man. This precipitated a move in 1870 back to California where, in 1870, North founded the southern California town of Riverside along with associates—some from Minnesota—who joined him there.
In 1879, he and his family moved north to San Francisco and joined a law firm. That year, North was nominated, but did not win, the Republican nomination to the California Supreme Court. In 1880, he became the general agent for the Washington Irrigated Colony, near Fresno, California. He opened a law office in Fresno, built a house and started a farm in nearby small community of Oleander. His wife did not join him in this move.
John North died in Fresno on February 22, 1890, and was buried in Riverside's Evergreen Cemetery.
John W. North High School and the John W. North Water Treatment Plant are located in Riverside and named after him.
