Grimshaw, Jackson

Born: 1820-11-22 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Died: 1875-12-13 Quincy, Illinois

Grimshaw studied law in Pennsylvania and was admitted to the Illinois bar in January 1843. He began the practice of law in Pittsfield where he formed a partnership with his brother William A. Grimshaw that lasted fourteen years. He was a member of the 1856 Bloomington Convention that formed the state Republican Party. In 1857, he moved to Quincy, Illinois, and was a partner in the law firm of Williams, Grimshaw & Williams, which dissolved in 1861 after Archibald Williams was appointed a federal district judge. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Grimshaw collector of internal revenue for the Quincy district, a position he held until 1869.

John M. Palmer, ed., The Bench and Bar of Illinois: Historical and Reminiscent (Chicago: Lewis, 1899), 2:882; The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men: Illinois Volume (Chicago: American Biographical, 1876), 573-74; David F. Wilcox, ed., Quincy and Adams County: History and Representative Men (Chicago: Lewis, 1919), 1:151, 166; Albert A. Woldman, Lawyer Lincoln (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1936), 103, 262, 269. Illustration courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL.