1846-1927
Judson Harmon
Attorney/Governor OHIO OH
Judson Harmon (3 February 1846 – 22 February 1927) was born in Newtown, Ohio and named after Adoniram Judson, the famed Baptist foreign missionary.[1] His parents were Benjamin Franklin Harmon, a Baptist minister, and Julia Brunson, a native of Olean, New York.
Harmon graduated from the Baptist-related Denison University in 1866. He graduated from the Cincinnati Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1869. In 1870 Judson married Olivia Scobey, the daughter of a leading physician in Hamilton. They had three daughters.
Harmon was elected judge of the Common Pleas Court in 1876 but left months later to run unsuccessfully for the State Senate. He was elected judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati in 1878 and served until he resigned in 1887 to resume the practice of law.
He was appointed U. S. Attorney General by President Grover Cleveland on June 8, 1895 and served out the remainder of Cleveland’s second term in office. Shortly after his appointment, Harmon urged Congress to fix some of the weaknesses in the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Harmon was elected as Ohio governor in 1908 and reelected in 1910, this time defeating future President of the United States Warren G. Harding.
During Harmon’s administration, the federal income tax amendment to the U. S. Constitution was ratified, and laws were enacted establishing a single board of the state’s penal, benevolent and reformatory institutions; protecting against trafficking in votes; providing for workers compensation; creating a Public Utility Commission; and enabling direct popular election of U. S. Senators.[2]
In June 1912, Harmon led the Ohio delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was nominated as a candidate for the presidency. He was a favorite son of the State of Ohio but found additional support from elsewhere and on the first ballot of the Convention, and he received the votes of 148 delegates. By the time of the 26th ballot, no candidate had yet received the nomination for president, and Harmon’s support had dwindled to 29 votes, Balloting continued until the 39th ballot, when the support of William Jennings Bryan helped Wilson obtain the votes necessary to become the nominee.
Following the convention, Harmon returned home to Ohio to serve out the rest of his term as governor of the state. Accordingly, Harmon left office in January 1913, upon completion of this second term. He occasionally taught classes at the University of Cincinnati Law School in retirement. Judson Harmon died in 1927 at age 91.
Harmon County, in the southwestern corner of Oklahoma, is named for Judson Harmon.
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[1] Judson Harmon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judson_Harmon
[2] National Governors Association. https://www.nga.org/governor/judson-harmon/