Background
Currey, John was born on October 4, 1814 in in Westchester Company, New York, United States. Son of Thomas and Rebecca (Ward) Currey.
Currey, John was born on October 4, 1814 in in Westchester Company, New York, United States. Son of Thomas and Rebecca (Ward) Currey.
Educated academics and Wesleyan University. Studied law in office of Honorary William Nelson, Peekskill, New York, 1839-1842. Admitted to New York bar, 1842.
(Doctor of Laws, Williams College, 1870).
Born in Westmorland County, New York in 1814, John Currey died in Dixon, California in 1912. He came to California in 1849, eventually settling down in Benicia, Solano County, California where he established a successful law practice. Among his clients was Juan Manuel Vaca owner of a large tract of land, a Mexican land grant near the present-day city that bears his name Vacaville, California.
In 1859 the Anti-Lecompton Democratic Party selected Currey as their candidate for Governor of California.
The Republican Party ran its first California gubernatorial candidate in 1859, businessman and railroad tycoon, and later Governor Leland Stanford. Despite being defeated in his run for Governor, Currey would find other promising opportunities for office.
In 1863 several vacancies on the Supreme Court opened the door those aspiring to serve on the state"s highest court. The departed justices included the sixth Chief Justice Stephen Johnson Field who was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to the United States. Supreme Court (becoming the first Californian serve on the high court).
Running as a "union" party candidate at the height of the American Civil War, Currey was elected to the Supreme Court of California, taking his seat on the court in January 1864.
At the time justices served two-year terms. After his first term as associate justice, Currey became Chief Justice in December, 1866. (He was defeated in his re-election bid, for the newly established ten-year term, by associate justice Augustus Rhodes and therefore succeeded as Chief Justice by Lorenzo Sawyer).
Having served four years on the court, two as chief justice, Currey resigned to his home in San Francisco.
When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire left him homeless he move to his estate north of Dixon, California in Solano County, in the Sacramento Valley.
Married Cornelia Scott, September 1845 (died 1877). Married second, Cornelia Ferris, 1881.