Nelson Dewey

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Nelson Dewey (December 19, 1813–July 21, 1889) was an American politician and the first Governor of Wisconsin, serving from 1848 to 1852. He was a member of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

Dewey was born in Lebanon, Connecticut in 1813, and later moved to New York State, where he studied at the Hamilton Academy. He went on to study law at practices in Cooperstown and Louisville, New York. In 1836, Dewey moved to the new Wisconsin Territory, settling in the village of Cassville. During the next year, the territory created Grant County on land that encompassed the village. This gave Dewey a chance to enter politics, and so in 1837 he was elected as the county's Register of Deeds. This caused him to move to Lancaster, the county seat of Grant County. Shortly later he was appointed by territorial Governor Henry Dodge to be justice of peace for the Grant County, completing a law degree and passing the territorial bar examination. Later he would serve as district attorney for the county and be elected to multiple terms in the Wisconsin territorial legislature, as an assemblyman from 1838 to 1842, and in the territorial council from 1842 to 1846. During this time Dewey was also kept busy with other interests. He began a law partnership with J. Allen Barber in Lancaster during 1840, and began speculating in land in Grant County. He also invested in the area's lead mines, earning large sums of money in the process.

Although Dewey was not reelected to the territorial council in 1846, he stayed active in politics. After Wisconsin became a state in 1848, he was nominated as the Democratic Party's gubernatorial candidate. He defeated his Whig opponent, John Hubbard Tweedy, in the following general election, and became the state's first governor at the age of 35. Later he was reelected to a second two year term at the post. Dewey spent most of his two terms as governor organizing the transition from territorial to state government and enforcing the new state constitution. Also, during his time as governor Dewey married Catherine Dunn, the daughter of former territorial chief justice Charles Dunn.

Dewey chose not to run for a third term as state governor in 1852, but in the following year he was elected to the Wisconsin State Senate and served as a state senator from 1854 to 1855. After his term ended, Dewey served on the board of regents for the University of Wisconsin until 1865. In the meantime, he returned to Cassville and furthered his investments in land. Cassville's primary land company, the Daniels and Denniston Company, was at this time facing bankruptcy. This gave Dewey the opportunity to buy up most of the property in the village, and he went to work promoting the land to settlers and developers in an attempt to transform the small town into a major city. Dewey also began building up his own estate. He acquired 2,000 acres of farmland outside Cassville and built a three story Gothic-revival mansion on the property in 1868. Dewey named his estate "Stonefield", and today it forms a state historic site.

Dewey's fortunes began to decline during the 1870s. In 1871 Dewey's wife, unhappy with the rural life at Stonefield, left Dewey to live in Madison, Wisconsin. Later she would take herself and the couple's children to Europe. Back in Cassville, Dewey's plans to form Cassville into a large city were mostly failing, and in 1873, a fire destroyed his recently built mansion. Shortly afterward, the Panic of 1873 caused Dewey to lose most of his wealth and property. The Stonefield estate was sold, and Dewey returned to live alone within the village of Cassville. He continued practicing law, and stayed active in Democratic Party politics, but he was seen as mostly irrelevant and appointed to the board of directors of the state prison from 1874 until 1881. In the spring of 1889, Dewey's legal career was ended after he suffered a stroke. He was paralyzed, and died in poverty in Cassville early on July 21, 1889.