Isaac E. Messmore

Isaac E. Messmore (1821 - 1902) was an American legislator, jurist, and Civil War officer.

Born in Canada, near Detroit, on August 21, 1821, Isaac Messmore grew up in Michigan and later studied law as a young man, graduating from the Richmond Law School in Virginia; he went on to live in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he practiced law in the 1850s. In 1861, he served in the Wisconsin State Assembly as a Republican. Later in 1861, he was appointed a Wisconsin Circuit Court judge; however, his appointment to the bench was ruled to have been improperly authorized by the governor, and thus invalid.^[1] Messmore next went on to serve in the 31st Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War, attaining the rank of colonel. After the end of the war, Messmore resettled in Washington, D.C. where he was very soon appointed assistant commissioner of the Internal Revenue Bureau. While in Washington in 1867, he acquired the Meridian Hill estate, an older property which sat a short distance north of the White House; he then subdivided this tract of land, selling its lots to create a new neighborhood.^[2]

In the late 1860s, he next served on the Metropolitan Revenue Board of the City of New York, primarily fighting excise-tax fraud. Messmore subsequently moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan where he purchased and became, in 1881, the editor and publisher of the newspaper The Democrat. He later relocated to Los Angeles, California about 1888, where he was active in the state Democratic Party there—in 1894 running for, but losing, the position of Representative from the Sixth Congressional District.^[3] Colonel Messmore was noted to have been a defender of the rights of the average citizen against the economic power of the Railroads.

Family information. Isaac first married Editha McKenney in 1848; she died about 1860. He remarried, in about 1861, Margaret A. Jones (née Hull) of New York, who lived with him until his death. Children: a son, Charles and a daughter, Margaret, as well as an adopted stepson, William Hull. In 1902 wife Margaret died, two days before the death of husband Isaac, both of pneumonia. Isaac Messmore died in Los Angeles on January 8, 1902, at age 80.^[4]

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