Maricopa County AZ Archives Biographies.....Doolittle, John Knox 1851 - living in 1896
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com March 5, 2005, 4:09 pm

Author: McFarland & Poole

p. 477-478

JOHN KNOX DOOLITTLE. The subject of this sketch is a native of the state of New
York, born at Scottsville, March 26, 1851. His father was a Presbyterian
clergyman of positive opinions and strong convictions. Young Doolittle's boyhood
days were spent in different states. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West
Virginia. His educational advantages were somewhat meager, limited after twelve
years of age to a year in the academy at Geneseo, New York, and a year at the
Red Creek Seminary in that state. After teaching for some time in Sterling
Valley, he then looked forward to a course of collegiate study. This privilege
was denied him, but untoward circumstances could not quench his controlling
ambition to be a lawyer. By the death of his father our subject, who was the
eldest of the family, was left at the age of twenty the main support of a family
of nine children. For six years he had this great responsibility on his shoulders.

  In the spring of 1872 he entered the employ of a growing wholesale house at
St. Paul, Minnesota, and there he remained for six years. This mercantile
experience was trying and laborious, but it gave him an opportunity to study
from the inside the growth of the West, from the commercial and financial
standpoint. Meanwhile he had devoted many midnight hours to the study of the
law. At last the years of strenuous exertion made serious inroads upon his
strength. To recuperate, and hoping to forward his professional ambition, he
resigned his position in 1878, and moved to South Dakota, then a territory. Here
fortune smiled upon him. He successfully organized a profitable loaning
business, was admitted to the bar in 1880, and commanded a constantly increasing
professional practice. This was largely in the field of real estate law,
especially in reference to government land titles, in which he became a
specialist and a recognized authority. In 1883, he was married to a daughter of
Captain J. C. Whitney of Minneapolis, and two living children bless the union.
In 1885, seeking a larger field, Mr. Doolittle removed to Minneapolis, Minn.,
where he was engaged in the successful practice, of his profession, principally
in the departments of real estate, corporation and irrigation law, until 1891.

  In the latter year he was retained by the Rio Verde Canal Company, a
corporation of Phoenix, Arizona, to assist in its organization and the
formulation of its plans. Later he abandoned his miscellaneous practice and
became officially connected with that corporation as its secretary and attorney.
For this position Mr. Doolittle was peculiarly adapted, both by taste and
training. It required the combination under difficult conditions of energetic
business activity with legal sagacity of a high order. The very difficulty of
the problem has seemed to add to the personal satisfaction of successful
solution. In this field he was free from many of the small annoyances of the
general practitioner, and enabled to devote his time and thought to important
questions. The financial exigencies of the corporation demanded that the lands
to be irrigated be speedily occupied and become revenue producers. The existing
laws were not adapted to the situation, and the attitude of the Interior
Department was somewhat hostile to any special effort to supply the deficiencies
of the law. Time was important, and Mr. Doolittle was uncompromising in his
determination that nothing should be done which was not in accordance with both
the letter and the spirit of the law. Plans were accordingly adopted and
successfully executed which have contributed in no small degree to the
unqualified and unique success achieved by the Rio Verde Company.

  Though not a college man, Mr. Doolittle is emphatically a student. With him
private reading has largely taken the place of formal education. He cares for
knowledge, however, not so much for its own sake, as to make it a means to an
end. He is fond of going to the roots of things. Though recognizing to the
fullest extent the place of tact and policy in business and legal affairs, he
believes the straight road to the gist of a transaction or dispute, the most
direct path usually to a correct and successful conclusion. In his opinion, the
golden rule embodies the fundamental principle which leads to the largest
business success. He is fond of stating the principle in the negative form, that
he will do nothing, which were he on the other side, he would not consider the
fair and proper thing to do. Mr. Doolittle has never been an office seeker, nor
very much of a politician in the ordinary acceptance of that term. He takes,
however, a deep interest in public affairs, and contributions from his pen have
had much influence in the settlement of several important public questions. When
the issues of a political campaign are of a sufficient importance to thoroughly
arouse his interest, his pen and his organizing ability are a tower of strength
to his associates, and a menace to their adversaries.


Additional Comments:
From:

A Historical and Biographical Record of the Territory of Arizona
Published by
McFarland & Poole, Chicago, 1896


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