John Jay Jackson, Jr.

John Jay Jackson, Jr. (August 4,1824 – September 2, 1907), was a lawyer and federal judge from West Virginia, at the time of its creation as a separate state.

Jackson was born in Parkersburg, Virginia, now Parkersburg, West Virginia, United States. He attended Princeton University in 1845, then read law in Virginia.

He practiced law in western Virginia counties, both in private practice and as a prosecutor. He served in the Virginia General Assembly from 1851-1855.

Jackson's father, General John Jay Jackson of Wood County, attended the Wheeling Convention on West Virginia statehood. Jackson's brother Jacob Beeson Jackson served as governor of West Virginia and his other brother was Circuit Judge and Congressman James Monroe Jackson. He was a cousin of Stonewall Jackson. His grandfather, John George Jackson, preceded him as judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. His great-grandfathers included George Jackson.

After the Civil War began, Abraham Lincoln nominated Jackson to be judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, after the sitting judge, John White Brockenbrough, resigned to join the Confederate government. Jackson served in the Western District from 1861 to 1864 - or at least the parts that remained part of the Union and became West Virginia. After 1864, the only federal judge for Virginia was John Curtiss Underwood. There was no Western District of Virginia from 1864 until 1871, when Alexander Rives took the bench after the Western District was re-established following the War.

After West Virginia became a separate state, Jackson was appointed to serve as District Court judge in West Virginia. Notwithstanding his status as a Republican appointee, Judge Jackson ruled in 1870 that West Virginia's ex-Confederates were eligible to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment, which had profound effects on the polity in West Virginia.

Judge Jackson was known as "the Iron Judge," and served the federal courts in West Virginia over forty years from 1864 to 1905, when he retired at the age of 80.

He died in 1907, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

External links

[http://www.wvculture.org/HiStory/journal_wvh/wvh50-4.html John Jay Jackson, Jr.: Business, Legal and Political Activities, 1847 - 1859, By Jacob C. Baas, Jr., West Virginia History Volume 50 (1991), pp. 63-78]

[http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=1158 Federal Judicial Center, biographical listing for John Jay Jackson, Jr.]