Winter, John S.

Born: 1822-08-09 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Died: 1893-02-27 Hawaiian Islands

Flourished: 1849 to 1880 Knox County, Illinois

John S. Winter, publisher and county clerk, was educated in the public schools of his native Pittsburgh as well as under the direction of his father, a Baptist minister. He moved to Illinois at the age of twenty-three, living first in Fulton County, where he worked as a printer. In the late 1840s he briefly edited the anti-Mormon New Citizen in Nauvoo, followed by a short stint as editor of the Register in Canton. Winter settled in Knoxville in 1849, where he was editor of the Journal from 1849 to 1852 in partnership with David Collins, then as sole proprietor until he retired from the role due to ill health in 1855. He briefly pursued a mercantile career, then following the election of 1856 he took over editorship of the Knox Republican, and remained at the helm through the spring of 1858. In politics, Winter was a Republican and he was elected to several terms as county clerk of Knox County, serving from 1857 to 1865, and for a second period beginning in 1869. He represented Knox County at the 1860 Illinois Republican Convention, where he was unsuccessfully nominated to be the party’s candidate for Illinois secretary of state. Winter registered for the draft in the Fifth Illinois Congressional District in 1863, but there is no further evidence that he served in the Civil War. He was a Freemason. Winter married Mary M. Brewer in 1847 and at the time of his death in Honolulu, he was survived by six children.

Chas C. Chapman, History of Knox County, Illinois (Chicago: Blakely, Brown & Marsh, 1878), 240, 253, 408, 418, 419, 421, 445, 463, 537-40, 717; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Fulton County, 29 April 1847, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Franklin William Scott, Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879, vol. 6 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1910), 39, 216, 260; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Knoxville, Knox County, IL, 320; John C. Reynolds, History of the M. W. Grand Lodge of Illinois, Ancient, Free, and Accepted Masons (Springfield, IL: H. G. Reynolds, Jr., 1869), 552, 561; Rock Island Daily Advertiser (IL), 26 March 1855, 2:1; The Knox Republican (Knoxville, IL), 7 October 1857, 2:2; Illinois Daily State Journal (Springfield), 17 April 1860, 2:2; Wayne C. Temple, “Delegates to the Illinois State Republican Nominating Convention in 1860,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 92 (Autumn 1999), 293; U.S., Civil War Draft Registrations Records, 1863-1865 (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2010); The Daily Chicago Herald (IL), 11 May 1860, 3:6; The Daily Bulletin (Honolulu, HI), 27 February 1893, 2:3, 3:1; 28 February 1893, 3:3; Hawaiian Gazette (Honolulu), 7 March 1893, 3:5, 12:2; Gravestone, O’ahu Cemetery, Honolulu, HI.