# Jabez F. Cowdery

Jabez Franklin Cowdery (11 August 1834 – 9 October 1914) was an American lawyer and politician who represented San Francisco in the 1873–74 and 1880 sessions of the California State Assembly, serving as Speaker in 1880.

## Early life

A 1911 book by Mary Bryant Alverson Mehling gives a picaresque account of Cowdery's early life. According to Mehling, Cowdery was born in Rochester, New York, the sixth and youngest child of Benjamin Franklin Cowdery (1790–1867), a Massachusetts printer, and his first wife, Amanda Munger (1799–1842) of Vermont. Benjamin Franklin, or Frank, was a second cousin of Oliver Cowdery, one of the Book of Mormon witnesses. After Jabez' mother's death, his father placed him in a Rochester orphanage. When he was 10 the orphanage indentured him until the age of 21 at a nearby seed garden, but after two years he ran away, travelling by barge and steamboat to New York City, where he became a sailor on oceangoing merchant vessels. In 1850 he came ashore at Sacramento. He briefly joined the Booth family as a supernumerary on their 1852 theatre tour of California, before running away to Downieville to join the California gold rush. He studied at the private library of a man named Langton and qualified as a lawyer in 1859.

## Political and legal career

At an Alleghany, California meeting after the rival 1860 Democratic National Conventions, Cowdery spoke in favour of Stephen A. Douglas against John C. Breckinridge. At this time he went by "Frank", from his middle name. Cowdery was appointed city attorney of Downieville in May 1863, served as district attorney of Sierra County from 1863 to 1866, and was also a school director. In the Civil War he worked for the Internal Revenue Service and as a court commissioner in California's then 14th district (covering Placer and Nevada counties). After the war, he moved to San Francisco as an attorney in private practice. In 1870 Henry Huntly Haight, the Governor of California, appointed Cowdery one of three commissioners of the Marine Board of the Port of San Francisco, newly established to prevent shanghaiing; it was rendered redundant by the federal Shipping Commissioners Act of 1872 and abolished in 1875.
Cowdery was elected to the 1873–74 session of the California State Assembly on the slate of the People's Union, one of a succession of parties briefly dominant in San Francisco, which in 1873 returned 11 of the 12 seats allocated to the city by plurality block voting. He unsuccessfully proposed to end the mandate for segregated schools for Black children, on the grounds that separate but equal schools were not being provided. At the 1879 Assembly election, Cowdery was one of two Republicans returned, alongside two from the Workingmen's Party, for the four-member 13th Assembly district, comprising parts of San Francisco's 11th and 12th wards. He served as Speaker for the Assembly's ensuing 1880 session, outlining an agenda of reducing public salaries, lowering tax rates by reducing tax avoidance, and updating the legal code following the 1879 Constitutional Convention. As Speaker he was ex officio a regent of the University of California from 1880 to 1881.
Cowdery was elected in 1881 to a two-year term as City Attorney of San Francisco, defeating H. T. Hammond by 16,514 votes to 16,219. In relation to two court appeals by the city which were pending at the expiry of his term, Cowdery was later paid $100 by the attorney for the opposing side not to offer further legal advice to the city. In 1886, the Supreme Court of California ruled this was professional misconduct and suspended him for six months.
Cowdery wrote and revised several legal manuals. His law library was damaged in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, after which he was on the commission to rebuild San Francisco City Hall.

## Family

Cowdery married twice: in 1862 to Mary Buerer of Canton, Ohio (1840–1877) and in 1878 to Lulu M. Chesley. He had two daughters with each wife; the first two died young. The second two were Alice May Cowdery, who wrote for newspapers and magazines, and Ina Louisa Cowdery, a musician, both photographed by Arnold Genthe as society beauties. Alice's 1915 account of a cruise from San Francisco to the Panama Canal ends with the Chagres River reminding her of her father: "a little boy of ten, unhappy, rebellious baby, who ran away from his New York home, and wandered to this same gray-green jungle spot".

## Sources

* Fariss; Smith (1882). Illustrated history of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra counties, with California from 1513 to 1850. San Francisco: Fariss & Smith.
* Mehling, Mary Bryant Alverson (1911). Cowdrey-Cowdery-Cowdray genealogy : William Cowdrey of Lynn, Massachusetts, 1630, and his descendants. New York: Frank Allaben Genealogical Co.
* 20th session: 1st December 1873 to 30th March 1874. The Journal of the Assembly of the Legislature of the State of California. Sacramento: G. H. Springer, State Printer. 1874.
* 23rd session: January 5th to April 18th, 1880. The Journal of the Assembly of the Legislature of the State of California. Sacramento: J. D. Young, Superintendent of State Printing. 1880.

## Citations

* 1 2 Mehling 1911 p. 270
* 1 2 3 Stadtman, Verne A. (1967). The centennial record of the University of California. Berkeley: University of California. p. 412.
* ↑ Vassar, Alex; Myers, Shane. "Jabez F. Cowdery". JoinCalifornia. Retrieved February 4, 2023.
* 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mehling 1911 p. 276
* ↑ Mehling 1911 pp. 195–197
* 1 2 "A Respectable Connection". The Humboldt Register. Vol. I, no. 47. Unionville, Nevada. 19 March 1864. p. 4 col 1. Retrieved 15 March 2025.
* ↑ Frank and Oliver were great-grandsons of Nathaniel Cowdery (1691–1751): Mehling 1911 pp. 67, 172–174, 270
* ↑ Mehling 1911 pp. 271–272
* ↑ Mehling 1911 p. 273
* ↑ Mehling 1911 p. 274
* ↑ Mehling 1911 pp. 274–276
* ↑ Fariss & Smith 1882 p. 431
* 1 2 "Meeting in Southern Sierra". Marysville Daily National Democrat. July 31, 1860. p. 3 col 1 – via NewspaperArchive.
* ↑ Fariss & Smith 1882 p. 460
* ↑ Fariss & Smith 1882 p. 432
* ↑ "Progress of the City; Marine Board". The San Francisco Directory. Vol. 12. San Francisco: Henry G. Langley. 15 April 1871. p. 18.
* ↑ Pickelhaupt, Bill (1996). Shanghaied in San Francisco. San Francisco: Flyblister. pp. 182, 192. ISBN 978-0-9647312-2-6 – via Open Library.
* ↑ Ethington, Philip J. (6 July 2001). The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850–1900. University of California Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-520-23001-9.
* ↑ Journal of the Assembly 1874 p. 6Russell, John A. (1873). "Result of the General Election Held on Wednesday, the 3d Day of September, A. D. 1873, As Declared by Resolution No. 4,438 New Series.". San Francisco Municipal Reports: For the Fiscal Year 1872–73, Ending June 30th, 1873. San Francisco Board of Supervisors. pp. 556–557."By State Telegraph; The People's Union, Liberal Reformers and Women's Anti-Tax League". Sacramento Daily Union. Vol. 45, no. 6972. 8 August 1873. p. 1 col 6. Retrieved 4 January 2025 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection."San Francisco Officers Elect". Russian River Flag. Vol. 5, no. 44. Healdsburg, California. 11 September 1873. p. 2 col. 3. Retrieved 4 January 2025 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
* ↑ A. B. No. 46 of 1874Beck, Nicholas Patrick (1975). The Other Children: Minority Education in California Public Schools from Statehood to 1890. University of California, Los Angeles. pp. 111, 165.Friedlander, Alan; Gerber, Richard Allan (26 November 2018). Welcoming Ruin: The Civil Rights Act of 1875. Brill. pp. 108–109. ISBN 978-90-04-38407-1.
* 1 2 "Appendix; General Election Returns—September 3, 1879". San Francisco Municipal Reports: For the Fiscal Year 1878–79, Ending June 30th, 1879. W. A. Hinton for San Francisco Board of Supervisors. 1879. pp. 822–823, 827.
* ↑ Vassar, Alex; Myers, Shane. "September 3, 1879 General Election". JoinCalifornia. AD-13. Retrieved 5 January 2025."The Next Legislature". Sacramento Daily Record-Union. Vol. 25, no. 3885. 24 September 1879. p. 1 col. 5. Retrieved 5 January 2025 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
* ↑ Journal of the Assembly 1880 pp. 3–5
* 1 2 Mehling 1911 pp. 276–277
* ↑ Tharp, J. L. (1882). "Registrar of Voters' Report". San Francisco Municipal Reports: For the Fiscal Year 1881–82, Ending June 30th, 1882. San Francisco Board of Supervisors. p. 156.
* ↑ In re Cowdery, 10 P. 47 (Cal. 27 February 1886)."Rehearing Denied". Daily Alta California. Vol. 40, no. 13360. 26 March 1886. p. 2 col 5. Retrieved 4 January 2025 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
* ↑ "Cowdery, Jabez F. (Jabez Franklin) 1834-1914". worldcat.org.
* 1 2 3 4 Mehling 1911 p. 277
* ↑ "Alice Cowdery, Author". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved 2 January 2025.
* ↑ Genthe, Arnold (1936). As I Remember. New York: John Day; Reynal & Hitchcock. p. 107.
* ↑ Cowdery, Alice (June 1915). "Southward from the Golden Gate". Harper's Magazine. Vol. 131, no. 781. p. 138. Retrieved 5 January 2025.
| Preceded byCampbell Polson Berry | Speaker of the California State Assembly January 1880–April 1880 | Succeeded byWilliam H. Parks |