Pueblo County CO Archives Biographies.....Henry, John Wesley 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 January 1, 2009, 5:03 am

Author: Wilbur Fiske Stone (1918)

JUDGE JOHN WESLEY HENRY.

    No history of the third judicial district of Colorado would be complete
without mention of John Wesley Henry, who was the first to occupy the bench of
the district after the admission of Colorado into the Union. A native of
Kentucky, he was born near the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln and in that
locality was reared and acquired his early education. He was just emerging into
manhood when he went to Dubuque, Iowa, attracted by the business interests which
had sprung into existence with the development of the lead mines there. He
afterward removed to St. Joseph, Missouri, where he took up the study of law and
later engaged in practice for several years, while at the same time he was
active as a local political factor. In the early '50s he became a resident of
Kansas, at which period the state was in a condition at political turmoil and
excitement. There he entered upon the practice of law and also became active as
a supporter of democratic principles, but his peace-loving nature was at
variance with the continuous trouble between the supporters of slavery and the
free-soil people, and in 1859 with his family he left Kansas for Colorado,
joining the caravan that was constantly proceeding across the plains toward the
gold fields of Pike's Peak.

    After reaching the mountains Judge Henry made his way into the Gregory
diggings, then the principal mining camp of the district, and for two or three
years was engaged in washing gravel in the search for gold in the gulches,
meeting sometimes with success and again with disappointment. At the same time
he became actively interested in public affairs, aided in establishing local
laws and government and occasionally practiced his profession in the primitive
miners' courts of that period. In 1863, however, he decided that he had had
enough of the hills and with an inbred longing for the fertile valleys of a
farming country, he removed to the Arkansas valley, settling on a ranch at the
mouth of Chico creek, a few miles below Pueblo. There he turned his attention to
the raising of cattle and corn, irrigated his land and continued its development
in the face of many difficulties and hardships, not the least of which were the
grasshoppers, which turned green fields into deserts in a day and were more
dreaded than hostile Indians. As time passed on, however, conditions changed,
many other settlers coming, and as the town of Pueblo grew there was a demand
for active practitioners at the bar. While Judge Henry continued to reside on
his Chico Creek farm, he also attended the courts of the Arkansas valley and
became a familiar figure at the Pueblo bar. The third judicial district at that
time included all the southern half of the terrritory from the Divide to New
Mexico and from the western boundary of Kansas to the Utah line. Courts were
held at Colorado City and later at Colorado Springs, at Canon City, Pueblo, Las
Animas, Walsenburg, Trinidad and at San Luis de Culebra and Conejos over the
mountains in the San Luis or Rio Grande valley. The court of the district during
the territorial days was presided over by but two judges, covering the period
from 1862 until 1876. The first judge was Allan A. Bradford, who was succeeded
by Moses Hallett. Writing of Judge Henry, Wilbur F. Stone said in this
connection: "Over this vast region, larger in extent than an average state, the
lawyers of the old third district, with the judge and other officials,
witnesses, litigants, Spanish interpreters and often prisoners for trial, used
to travel from court to court in a motley caravan of wagons,, ambulances,
primitive buggies, horseback and muleback, over dusty sagebrush plains and
mountain ranges, fording rivers, in heat, snow, wind and dust, camping out at
night where there was 'wood, water and grass,' fishing trout in the mountain
streams, occasionally shooting an antelope, cooking their own 'grub,' smoking
their pipes round the campfire, swapping stories, singing songs, sleeping in
their blankets on the ground, holding courts within rude adobe walls with dirt
floors, attending Mexican fandangoes at night—got up in honor of the court—and
having more fun, legal and unlegal, than the bench and bar have ever seen since
in the effeminate days of railroads and fine courthouses. After the adoption of
the constitution in 1876, assuring our admission to statehood, there chanced to
meet one day in the office of the writer of this sketch, at Pueblo, a number of
members of the bar, including Judge Henry, (he had long been called 'Judge' in
compliment), who, in course of conversation on the approaching change in
government, said: 'Boys, I want to confide a personal desire of my own. I want
to be the first judge of this district when we come in as a state. I am the
oldest one in years of our early lawyers here, and I know that if I do not get
that office first I shall never get it afterwards. I have never held nor sought
office, as you all know, and I have a little natural ambition to be a judge for
one term only, and on that to end up my professional career. I am outspoken
about this and I want you to be outspoken, boys, and say what you think about
it.' With one voice all present declared the judge was entitled to it and should
have it. The bar of the district saw to it that Judge Henry was nominated and
elected at the first state election under the constitution. At the end of his
six years' term he retired from the law, and with his faithful old wife went
over to Los Angeles and bought a few acres of an orange grove where he spent the
rest of his years in the quiet shade of his own vine and fig tree."

    Judge Henry was married about 1844 in Mercer county, Kentucky, to Ann
Elizabeth Shoots, of an old Virginia family, and to that union were born the
following children: Mrs. Martha Noble; Margaret, who became the wife of John A.
Thatcher, the first merchant and afterward millionaire banker of Pueblo; and
Edna, who became the wife of Perry Baxter, who was a partner of John A. and
Mahlon D. Thatcher in their commercial and banking interests. Mrs. Henry passed
away in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1851. In 1854, Judge Henry married in St.
Joseph, Missouri, Margaret Struby, no children being born of this union. After
the death of his second wife the Judge made his home with his three daughters in
Pueblo, staying with each one for a time—and it was while at the home of his
daughter, Mrs. O. H. P. Baxter that he passed away, November 9, 1903.

    Judge Henry held membership in the Presbyterian church but was a Christian
in the broadest sense of the term and his views were not limited to narrow
denomina-tionalism. He was most upright in all that he did and said. He
possessed a sense of humor that brightened many a weary day for his colleagues
and contemporaries at the bar as they practiced their profession and traveled
from place to place where courts were held. Again we quote from Wilbur F. Stone,
who said of him: "Judge Henry was not such as can be called 'brilliant' as a
lawyer, either by natural adaptation or experience in practice. Without the
advantages of scholastic education, culture, varied experience in extensive
practice or single devotion to the legal profession as a life business, he was
of the old class of plain country lawyers; earnest, straightforward, trustworthy
and utterly devoid of the cunning trickery of the 'smart' lawyer, or the
pretentious theatrical attempts at oratory of the pompous pettifogger. From his
earliest settlement in the Arkansas valley he was spoken of by his neighbors and
acquaintances as 'Honest John Henry.' His administration as a judge was marked
by justice, moderation and a shrewd sense of finding the path which led to the
very right of a cause though it might be at the sacrifice of technicalities in
form and manner. His rulings and decisions, always deliberate and impartial,
seldom provoked contention, were void of offense and never gave occasion for an
instance of 'contempt of court.' At that period—the infancy of litigation in a
pioneer community—it is true that few if any great questions arose in the courts
of that district, such as agitate the courts, the bar and the public at the
present day; still, railroads were building over that region, and mining and
irrigation companies were multiplying, and all bringing into the courts their
newer questions of legal rights and claims, but the record of Judge Henry during
his whole term of office gave general satisfaction to the bar and the community,
his conduct without a taint of malfeasance, bias or prejudice, his personal
character and reputation without a stain, and a blessed memory of unselfish good
deeds and incorruptible integrity is his enduring monument."


Additional Comments:


Extracted from:

HISTORY OF COLORADO

ILLUSTRATED
VOLUME 1I
CHICAGO
THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1918


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