William M. Dickson

[1] John quit the copper trade and his mother Rachel moved to Iowa,[9] settling in West Grove in 1850.

For two years, he stayed the weekends in Hanover and walked to school each Monday morning,[1] carrying a week's worth of food and books.

[1] Parker provided a letter of introduction for Nathaniel Wright in Cincinnati, since he decided to move to the area but did not know anyone in the city.

[5] He was a tutor for the Wright family, a reporter at the Cincinnati Times,[1][7] and a teacher of Greek at St. John's College.

[12] He won the election for prosecuting attorney of the police court in Cincinnati in 1853,[7] and he was the first person to hold that position.

He won the favor of the area Germans based on his handling of the Bedinia riots case.

[7] He was an abolitionist, an advocate of the Fugitive Slave Law,[5] and he fought for desegregation of the city's street cars.

[5] He received the order by Major-General Lew Wallace on September 4, 1862, to command the Black Brigade of Cincinnati to build fortifications near Newport and Covington, Kentucky.

[14] As the brigade's leader, Dickson had ensured that the men under his command received the same treatment as white soldiers.

[2][16] He traveled for entertainment and trying to improve his health, he sought out physicians in the United States and Europe.

[5] He had suffered from "nervous prostration" after the war, which had caused Dickson to leave politics and the law at age 39.

He was a semi-invalid for 23 years, during which he "despaired at the corruption and machine politics which increasingly characterized his party during the Gilded Age of late nineteenth century America.

[5] He died on October 15, 1889[7] at the hospital in Cincinnati due to his injuries from the Mount Auburn incline accident.

[19] Judge Dickson was learned, fearless and impartial, as a citizen he was public spirited and generous, and in private life he was exemplary to the highest degree.