James Pearson Newcomb

Who was James Pearson Newcomb?

James Pearson Newcomb was a journalist and Secretary of State of Texas. He was a Republican. Appointed by Governor Edmund J. Davis, he served between January 1, 1870 and January 17, 1874.

Newcomb was born in Amherst, Nova Scotia and with his parents and a brother, in 1839 he emigrated to Victoria, Texas. His mother died in 1841 and the family relocated to San Antonio. James Newcomb was 12 when his father, who was a lawyer, died of cholera in 1849. He was then apprenticed to a publisher.

As a young man he became a journalist and later publisher and editor of newspapers in Texas and California. One of his first publishing ventures was the Alamo Express. It was a pro-Union newspaper, and in 1861 it was mobbed by anti-union supporters, the Knights of the Golden Circle. Newcomb was forced to flee, traveling first to Mexico and then to California where he remained until 1867. In California, in 1862 he acted as a scoutfor James Henry Carleton's California Column, the longest trek through desert terrain ever attempted by the U.S. military.