John Henry Heitmann was the 25th mayor of Columbus, Ohio and the 22nd person to serve in that office.
Background
John de Villiers was the son of Charles Christian de Villiers, of Paarl, Cape of Good Hope and his wife Dorothea Retief. His father's dying wish had been that he become a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, however after 18 months study he found that he had no true calling to the church, and switched to studying law.
Education
He studied in Berlin and London (where he read law at the Inner Temple), was called to the English bar in 1865 and the Cape bar the next year.
Career
He was Attorney-General in the Molteno Government, Chief Justice for the Cape Colony, and later the first Chief Justice for the Union of South Africa. William Porter, the Attorney General at the time, became his legal mentor and soon afterwards he entered parliament representing Worcester. In parliament, he and Porter supported John Molteno's movement for responsible government in 1872, even helping to draft the bill that secured it.
John de Villiers was called upon to replace him as Attorney-General of the Cape Colony in Molteno's cabinet. He served for only two years, from 1872 to 1874. He was thus the first Attorney-General of the Cape under responsible government.
At the time it was still legal to have a private practice, and de Villiers did so. However this work in addition to his work as legal adviser to the government and drafting parliamentary bills put severe strain on his health. In 1874, on Molteno's insistence, he agreed to take the office of Chief Justice of the Cape Colony - a job he performed with great dedication and skill until the act of Union in 1910.
After the Union of South Africa was created, he went on to serve as Chief Justice of South Africa from 1910 to 1914. Altogether, he served as Chief Justice for 40 years, with "...an ever-growing reputation of the highest character for independence, legal ability, and irreproachable impartiality." Although he had represented Worcester in Parliament and was very much interested in politics, John de Villiers chose not to pursue political power any further. His reserved and sensitive personality, together with a weak physical constitution and his lack of outward charisma, made him ill-suited to the rough world of politics.
However his academic ability, progressive thinking, huge range of intellectual interests and driving work ethic served to make him peerless in the judiciary. He was admitted to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1897 and in 1910 he was raised to the peerage as Baron de Villiers, of Wynberg in the Province of the Cape of Good Hope and the Union of South Africa. He was also a dedicated Freemason of the highest level.
Lord de Villiers married Aletta Johanna, daughter of Jan Pieter Jordaan, in 1871. Lady de Villiers died in 1922.
Membership
[19th United Kingdom Parliament]
He was elected at the 1865 general election as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the borough of Grantham in Lincolnshire, but did not stand again in 1868.