John L. Pennington

John L. Pennington

John L. Pennington (born around 1821 in New Berne , Wake County , North Carolina , †  July 11, 1900 in Anniston , Alabama ) was an American politician and from 1874 to 1878 the 5th  governor of the Dakota Territory .

Early years

Pennington's exact date of birth is unknown. Two sources give the year 1821 as the year of birth, while the North Dakota Historical Society assumes the year 1829. Certainly the place of birth is New Berne in North Carolina. Pennington also attended local schools there. There is no evidence of further education. For most of his life he worked in the press as a newspaper publisher. In Raleigh , North Carolina, he completed an apprenticeship with the newspaper "Raleigh Star". In 1856 and 1857 he founded his own newspapers in Columbia , South Carolina and in Raleigh. During the American Civil War he stayed in the south but supported the north. After the Civil War, Pennington came to Alabama as a so-called carpet excavator . As a member of the Republican Party , he was a member of the Alabama House of Representatives until 1873 . On January 1, 1874, Pennington was named the new governor of the Dakota Territory by President Ulysses S. Grant .

Territorial Governor

John Pennington held his new office until 1878. During this time the country was hit by a plague of locusts. However, the governor declined financial support from the state for the affected farmers because he underestimated the effects of the plague. The other central theme of his tenure was gold discoveries in the Black Hills . This area was actually promised to the Sioux Indians and white settlers were legally prohibited from entering the region. Nevertheless, many soldiers of fortune flocked to the area sacred to the Indians. They were supported in this by a military expedition led by George A. Custer , who in 1874 militarily advanced into the Black Hills and illegally opened the country to the gold diggers. In the meantime, the new settlers even demanded the secession of their area and the establishment of a new state under the name "Lincoln". But they could not implement this plan. Pennington was not particularly popular as governor, and when negative reports of him reached President Rutherford B. Hayes , Pennington was replaced in 1878.

Another résumé

Upon his release, Pennington was appointed Treasury Secretary of the Territory by his successor William Alanson Howard . In 1885 he founded the newspaper "Weekly Telegram" in Yankton . In 1883 he was a delegate to the South Dakota Constituent Assembly in Sioux Falls . There he was against the division of the territory into the two states of North and South Dakota. But he could not get his way with this opinion. In 1891 he left Yankton and South Dakota. He went back to the southern states, where he went back to his journalistic activities. John Pennington died in Alabama in July 1900.

Web links

• John Pennington in the State Historical Society of North Dakota
• Pennington on NCpedia
• John L. Pennington in the database of Find a Grave (English)