John Locke Scripps (27 February 1818 – 21 September 1866) was an attorney, journalist, and author.

As postmaster, Scripps was an innovator, conceiving and implementing the use of the streetcar system to help move the mail.

[1] During the presidential campaign of 1860 he wrote a biography of Lincoln which appeared in the Chicago tribune on 19 May 1860,[2] the day after the convention.

[2] When Scripps finished writing, he had too little time before publication to submit the book to Lincoln himself for fact checking.

In fact, in a list of books that Lincoln read as a child, Scripps added Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans.

[2] The biography was republished in 1900 by the Cranbrook Press of Detroit, in a version edited by Scripps' daughter Grace.