Jonathan Hoge Walker was born near Hogestown, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, the son of William and Elizabeth (Hoge) Walker and the grandson of William Walker, who fought under the Duke of Marlborough and emigrated to Pennsylvania about 1710. His maternal grandfather, John Hoge, a large landholder, was the founder of Hogestown and the uncle of Moses Hoge. His father was a prosperous farmer and during the French and Indian War saw service as a subaltern.
In his late twenties he entered Dickinson College and graduated there with the first class in 1787.
During the Revolution Jonathan accompanied several expeditions against the Indians in western Pennsylvania, from which experiences he developed an interest in the transmontane section of the state and a desire to live there. Then he read law in the office of Stephen Duncan, at Carlisle. In the spring of 1790 he was admitted to the bar of Northumberland County. Shortly thereafter he set himself up in practice at Northumberland, one of the first resident attorneys in that frontier village. In his political affiliations he was a Jeffersonian, though surprisingly mild in temper for one who lived in the democratic hotbeds of Carlisle and Northumberland and fraternized with such radical souls as Robert Whitehill and Thomas Cooper. His Republicanism won him, on March 1, 1806, an appointment from Gov. Thomas McKean as president judge of the 4th Pennsylvania district, comprising the counties of Center, Mifflin, Huntingdon, and Bedford. During the same year he removed to Bellefonte, where he lived until 1810, when he established himself in Bedford. When in 1818 Congress created western Pennsylvania as a separate judicial district, President Monroe appointed him federal judge for the district. He held his first court at Pittsburgh in December 1818, and he removed to Pittsburgh the following year. In 1818 he made an address to the people of the district, which was characteristic of him in its expressions of feeling and sense of his duties and responsibilities as a judge. He died in Natchez, Miss. , while visiting his eldest son. His second son was Robert J. Walker.
He was in private practice in Northumberland, Pennsylvania from 1790 to 1806. He was president judge of the Fourth Judicial District Court of Pennsylvania from 1806 to 1818. On April 20, 1818, Walker was nominated by President James Monroe to a new seat on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania created by 3 Stat. 462.
He was a very large man, more than six feet tall and of heavy build. As a judge he commanded the confidence of the people for impartial decisions. He was an excellent scholar and carried with him through life the taste and appreciation for the classics that he acquired in college.
He married Lucretia (or Lucy). They had two sons.
