Jonathan Dixon

Who was Jonathan Dixon?

Jonathan Dixon was an American jurist and Republican party politician from New Jersey. He was an Associate Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and was the Republican nominee for Governor of New Jersey in 1883.

Dixon was born in Liverpool, England in 1839. His father, also named Jonathan Dixon, came to the United States in 1848 and was followed in 1850 by his family, settling in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers College in 1859 and was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1862. He moved to Jersey City to practice law in 1865.

Dixon was associated with New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Gilbert Collins until 1875, when he was appointed to be a Supreme Court Justice by Governor Joseph D. Bedle. He was subsequently reappointed by Governors Ludlow, Green, Griggs, and Murphy. In February 1880 the socialist leader Joseph Patrick McDonnell, editor of the Labor Standard, was tried for libel after publishing a letter from a brick maker who said of the Clark & Van Blarcom brickyard that the men were overworked and starved, and housed in places no better than pigsties. Dixon presided over the much-publicized trial, earning a reputation for being anti-labor.