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John Dean Caton was born on March 19, 1812 in Monroe, Orange County, New York, United States. He was a son of Robert Caton, a Virginian of English descent, who, after serving through the Revolutionary War with the American forces, moved to Monroe, and married Hannah Dean.
When, on the death of his father, the family moved to Oneida County, John worked as a farm hand, attending the district school in winter. In 1827 he was apprenticed to a harness maker, but was compelled to abandon this owing to impaired eyesight. He then became a common carrier between Waterville and Utica studying in the evenings, and in 1829 he was, for a short time, a pupil at the Utica Academy. The following summer he engaged as a farm laborer, and studied classics during the winter. In 1831 he attended the Grosvenor High School at Rome intermittently studying law there and at Utica and Vernon.
Two years later he went west, arriving in Chicago, --then a place of 300 inhabitants--June 19, 1833. The town had no lawyer, so he determined to locate there, and, obtaining a license to practise, opened the first law office. He instituted the first civil suit in the circuit court of the county, prosecuted the first criminal tried in a court of justice there, for which he received a fee of ten dollars--"the greatest fee he ever received, " he was wont to say--and also appeared in the first jury case heard in that neighborhood. He was a member and secretary of the first political convention held in Illinois, which met at Ottawa, March 4, 1834. This was followed by his election as justice of the peace. In 1835 he was admitted to the Illinois bar. Much of his time was taken up in traveling the circuit on horseback, which took him through practically unexplored country, involving much hardship and no little adventure. The financial panic of 1837 seriously affected him, and, his health breaking down, he retired to a farm near Plainfield, where he remained for three years, not resuming practise in Chicago till 1841. In August 1842 he was appointed associate justice of the supreme court of Illinois by Gov. Carlin, holding the office till March 1843, when he was defeated. Two months later a vacancy occurring, he was again appointed to the bench, and on the expiration of his term was unanimously nominated and elected to succeed himself. Under the new Illinois constitution of 1848, he was elected to one of the three supreme court judgeships thereby created, becoming chief justice in 1855 on the resignation of Chief Justice Treat. Reelected in 1857, he remained chief justice till his retirement, January 9, 1864. Though not a great lawyer, since he lacked the erudition which can come only through deep reading, he was an excellent judge. His opinions were always logical and expressed with great common sense and vigor. He had little respect for precedent, relying more on principles. Endowed with good business instincts, he was "one of the most practical men that ever sat upon the bench" (James B. Bradwell). Chief shareholder in the Illinois & Mississippi Telegraph Company, it is said that at one time he controlled all the telegraph lines in the state. Ultimately these were leased to the Western Union Telegraph Company, and Caton disposed of his holdings in 1867. The last thirty years of his life were spent in retirement. He had a large estate at Ottawa, where he gratified his taste for the amenities of country life. He traveled widely in the United States, Europe, and the East. He died in Chicago. Caton contributed a number of papers on nature subjects to the Ottawa Academy of Science, and was the author of: Matter and a Supreme Intelligence (1864), A Summer in Norway (1875), The Antelope and Deer of America (1877), and a volume of Miscellanies (1880). He also contributed a series of papers to the Chicago Legal News in 1888-89, which were subsequently published with additional material under the title The Early Bench and Bar of Illinois (1893).
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In July 1835 he married Laura Adelaide, daughter of Jacob Sherill of New Hartford, Oneida County.
