John Walker Fearn was born at Huntsville, Alabama, the son of Richard Lee and Mary Jane (Walker) Fearn.
His mother was a daughter of John W. Walker, United States senator from Alabama and a sister of Leroy Walker, Confederate secretary of war. When he was two years old, his father, who was a physician, moved his family to Mobile.
John Walker Fearn received his early education in Mobile, in the private academy of Dr. Norman Pinney, an eminent classical scholar. He entered Yale and upon his graduation in 1851 he began the study of law under Judge John A. Campbell.
Although Fearn was admitted to the bar in Mobile in 1853, a talent for literature and languages which he had developed at an early age led to his appointment in that year as secretary to the United States minister to Belgium.
Three years later he was made secretary of the legation in Mexico, where he served until 1859, when he resigned ostensibly to return to the practise of law at Mobile.
These were the days of secession, however, and when the Southern states sent their first commission—William Yancey, Pierre A. Rost, and A. Dudley Mann
— to Europe early in 1861 before the outbreak of hostilities, they availed themselves of the experienced services of Fearn.
Fearn thereupon returned to America, running the blockade at Charleston, South Carolina, and after being wrecked under the guns of Fort Moultrie, escaped and secured an appointment on the staff of General Joseph E. Johnston.
On November 19, 1862, Benjamin instructed L. Q. C. Lamar to proceed to St. Petersburg to secure the friendly support of the Czar, and Fearn accompanied him as secretary.
Russia refused to receive the Confederate commissioner ; consequently Fearn returned again and obtained a place on the staff of General William Preston.
Early in 1864, when there seemed some hope of recognition of the Confederacy by Mexico, Fearn accompanied Preston to Cuba on the way to Mexico, but anticipating a cold reception they returned without reaching the Mexican capital.
After 1866 he practised law at New Orleans, Louisiana.
He was interested in the University of Louisiana and is said to have been appointed to the chair of French, Spanish, and Italian at the Tulane University in 1884.
Under Cleveland’s second administration Fearn was appointed one of the judges of the International Mixed Tribunal in Egypt and remained a member of that distinguished body until the failure of his health necessitated his resignation.
Immediately upon the first attack of rheumatic gout, he set out for home.
His friends feared he would die at sea, but he rallied on landing at New York and passed the summer at Newport.
The supreme court of Louisiana adjourned at his death as a mark of respect.
On his physician’s advice, he moved to Hot Springs, Virginia, where he died, being survived by his widow, who was Fanny Hewitt, daughter of James Hewitt, a merchant of New Orleans, and by two children, a daughter and a son.
