Biography: Winnebago County, Wisconsin: George Gary ************************************************************************ Submitted by Kathy Grace, November 2004 © All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ************************************************************************ History of northern Wisconsin: containing an account of its settlement, growth, development, and resources, an extensive sketch of its counties, cities, towns and villages, their improvements, industries, manufactories, biographical sketches, portraits of prominent men and early settlers, views of county seats, etc. Chicago: Western Historical Co., 1881 p. 1146-7 Hon. George Gary, County Judge; second son of Eli B. and Frances O. Gary; was born at Potsdam, St. Lawrence Co., N. Y., March 16, 1824. When he was five years old, his parents removed to Clintonville, in Clinton Co., and afterward to Keeseville, Essex Co. His father was a carpenter and builder, and also engaged somewhat in lumbering at various points, which caused frequent changes of location and therefore a considerable part of his boyhood was spent in the woods among mountains and trout streams, and remote from any regular schools. When two years old, his eyes were attacked with a violent inflammatory disease, from which they have never recovered entirely, which during his life has seriously impaired his sight, and which during his boyhood and youth rendered any steady application to any occupation impossible. His early education was therefore only such as could be acquired by very irregular attendance at the common schools, and three terms at an academy in Keeseville. In the spring of 1845, when twenty-one years of age, acting upon the suggestion of physicians that a sea voyage might benefit his eyes, he shipped before the mast on board a Nantucket whaler bound around Cape Horn. After various adventures, which included a residence of seven months at Callao, in Peru, he returned home in the fall of 1847, with eyes and health somewhat improved. He was engaged teaching school winters, and in various temporary employments until the spring of 1850, when (after a surgical operation by which he eyes were further improved), he came to Wisconsin. In June, 1850, he landed in the then village of Oshkosh, without any trade, profession, capital or business experience. Two years before, he had declined a proposition from Hon. George A. Simmons, of Keeseville, on the leading lawyers of Northern New York, to enter his office as a student, because it was believed the condition of his eyes would not permit the necessary application to books. After a short employment as clerk in a general store at Oshkosh, he took charge of the forwarding and commission house of W. A. Knapp & Co. from the fall of 1850, until the spring of 1854, when he became cashier and bookkeeper for the steamboat line of Fitzgerald & Moore, which then included all steamers on Lake Winnebago and the Wolf and Fox Rivers. He had participated as a Whig stump-speaker in the Presidential campaign of 1852. In the spring of 1853, he was an unwilling and unsuccessful candidate of the opposition to the Democratic party for City Clerk at the first election in the young city of Oshkosh. In the fall of 1853, he was nominated and elected a member of the Assembly for the First District, comprising the city of Oshkosh and south half of Winnebago Co. During the session of the Legislature the ensuing winter, a breaking up of political parties in consequence of the Kansas-Nebraska agitation in Congress, laid the foundation for the organization of the Republican party in Wisconsin; and the next fall he was nominated without opposition and re-elected to the Assembly of 1855. Of this body, he was elected speaker pro tem (which was then a permanent office for the session, and served as the presiding officer at various periods during the session. In the spring of 1855, he became connected with Hon. Horace Rublee in the publication of the State Journal at Madison, but retired the following spring and engaged as clerk and bookkeeper in the forwarding and transportation business at Green Bay. That business being ruined by a low stage of water, and the suspension of navigation on the Lower Fox River, in the fall of the same year he returned to Oshkosh, and engaged in the forwarding and commission business in partnership with M.E. Tremble, now of Suamico. In the fall of 1857, he was elected without opposition to fill a vacancy in the office of Clerk of the Circuit Court of Winnebago Co., caused by the death of the Clerk. To this office he was re-elected in 1858, and having declined a re-nomination in 1860, retired from it in Jan. 1, 1861. In 1859, he had purchased the Oshkosh Democrat, which under his control was devoted especially to sustaining the national and conservative view of the then much agitated question of State Rights. In December, 1860, he sold this paper to the proprietors of the Northwestern with which it was consolidated. During and preceding his term as Clerk of the court, he had devoted considerable time to reading law, and on the 17th of April, 1861, was admitted to the bar at the age of thirty-seven. In 1862, on the passage of the Internal Revenue Act, through the friendship and influence of Senator T. O. Howe, he was appointed Assessor of Internal Revenue for the old Fifth District of Wisconsin, comprising thirteen counties. Physical debility following a sever attack of diphtheria, and the duties of the editor of the Northwestern, of which he had become proprietor with B.F. Davis, induced him to resign the office of Assessor a few days before the assassination of President Lincoln in the spring of 1865. In the summer of the same year, he sold his interest in the Northwestern to C.G. Finney, and in company with G.W. Burnell, Esq. (now District Attorney), engaged exclusively in the practice of law. In the fall of 1866, he was elected State Senator for Winnebago Co. On the passage of the bankruptcy act in 1867, he was appointed Register in Bankruptcy, the acceptance of which required his resignation as Senator after serving one session. This position he resigned in 1869, to take the office of County Judge of Winnebago Co., which he has held since Jan. 1, 1870. The court over which he presides, besides the general probate jurisdiction, has an extensive civil jurisdiction under a special statute. Judge Gary is the author of "Gary's Probate Law," a work published in 1879, which has been well received and spoken of by the bar in this State and elsewhere, and is the only standard work on the subject, as adapted to the Northwestern States. Judy Gary is able writer and clear-headed thinker, and possesses the confidence of the people to a remarkable extent. He was married Aug. 24, 1854, to Georgiana Enery, then a resident of Berlin, Wis., but who was born near Frederickton, in the Province of New Brunswick; they have two children living- Mary Frances and Paul; lost two children- George H., died September, 1877, aged twenty-one years; Ann Eliza, May, 1862, at the age of five years.