Scope and Content Note
The papers of John Dean Caton (1812-1875) span the period from 1826 to 1947 with the bulk concentrated in the period 1826-1895. Caton was the first lawyer who settled in Chicago and was an associate justice of the supreme court of Illinois from 1842 to 1864 and served as chief justice of that court in 1855 and from 1857 to 1864. For more than a generation he was in correspondence with lawyers and public men of his state including those prominent in its history.
Caton’s papers consist of family, professional and legal correspondence, speeches, drafts of an unpublished memoir, other writings, and a scrapbook. The bulk covers Caton's activities as a lawyer in Chicago, as an associate and chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, 1842-1867, as chief stockholder and director of the Illinois and Mississippi Telegraph Company, 1849-1867, as an investor in western mines, as a stockholder and director of the Oneida Salt Company, the Illinois Starch Company, and other business enterprises, and as a traveler and contributor of articles relating to nature studies and to the bench and bar in Illinois.
Included are Caton's own letters, those of his wife, Laura A. Caton, his brother, William P. Caton, and other members of his family. Other correspondents include Thomas Basnett, Sidney Breese, Thomas D. Catlin, Seldon Churchill, W. C. Churchill, Ezra Cornell, Austin C. French, Melville Weston Fuller, George H. Gatiss, L. Howell, Josiah Macy's Sons, James F. Joy, Norman B. Judd, Joel A. Matheson, Henry O'Riley, Hiram Sibley, Nathan Smith, E. D. L. Sweet, Samuel Hubbel Treat, Lyman Trumbull, Pinkney Houston Walker, Horace White, Norman Williams, and J. J. S. Wilson.