The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1900-11-15
ENDS LONG SERVICE,
Jason Lothrop Will Retire From the
Office of Surveyor With the Open
ina of the New Year.
A MEMORABLE CAREER CLOSES
The Old County Surveyor Had Been Con
nected With the Surveying of County
For More Than Fifty Years.

liar political records ever made in
Wisconsin or in any part of the United
States, for when Mr.. Blood begins the
duty of the office, Jason Lothrop, who
has been surveyor or deputy surveyor
for the past ffty-four years, will retire
from active business life,
The political record of Jason Lothrop
is a wonderful one and no man in the
state has held office for so long time.
At the opening of the campaign he
was named as his own successor by the
politicians of the county, but he re-
fused to go on the ticket again and in
his place was nominated Mr.. Blood,
who will be the youngest man that ever
held an office IN the county.
Mr.. Lothrop is now in his eighty
first year. He came to Kenosha
county, then Southport, as early as
1889, but later he returned with his
father to Oswego, N. Y, where he
completed his education. He returned
to Kenosha in 1874 and although the
Democrats were in power and Mr.. Lo-
throp was a Wing, he was named as
the first surveyor of old Racine county.
There was only small settlement al
Southport then and the work of the
surveyor was light, but Mr.. Lothrop
gave nearly all his time to the work
and laid out nearly all the roads which
now intersect the two counties. His
first lob of work after he had been Sc
1ected as surveyor, was to lay line
for road from ''Head's barn to the
state 1ine'', as he puts it at present.
The next one, which perplexed his
mind, was the location of a chimney
which had been the cause of no end of
trouble to a number of pioneers. Jason
Lothrop laid the stakes and the Chin
ney stands today where he placed it in
1914. Nearly every piece of land in
Racine and Kenosha counties bears
the marks of his hand and nearly all
the boundary lines were laid by the
veteran Kenosha county surveyor.
The name of Jason Lothrop is so
closely synonymous with the office of
county surveyor in Kenosha that life
will not seem the same in official Cir
c1es when the old office on Park street
will be closed to open no more. He
has always been a feature of political
campaigns, but has never taken any
part in them. He has always been
either Wing Or Republican, but has
run on the Democratic ticket several
times and his ma jority at the polls was
not affected. Many times during his
long official career his friends and
enemies have sought to name other
men to be the county candidate for
surveyor. but when the votes at the
conventions and at the polls were
counted ''O1d Jason" was always the
man who had the greatest majority.
He never met defeat when he was in
the campaign to win and only twice
in history was he defeated and for
these four years the county surveying
was done without the aid of Jason
Lothrop. However, as soon as he was
in office again the people came to him
to see that the p1ats made by the other
man were correct and Lotkrop states
that all the work had to be done over
again.
Mr. Lothrop was seen at his Office
Friday afternoon with his successor.
He was still bending over his desk and
working out a plat of the county
When asked in regard to his retire
ment he said: Eyes, I am going to get
out of it if l can, but it seems a shame
for man to give up business before
his eye is dim, even if he is the oldest
living resident of the county and has
held office for over half century,"
The old surveyor has other reasons
to be famous besides his long career
in politics. Before he came to South
port he was a ship builder at Oswego,
New York, and he was one of the men
who organized the first strike in the
ship-yards when the men demanded
shorter hours. Mr.. Lothrop declares
that this strike was the start of all
labor unions in the United States and
he was proud to be the founder Of the
great combinations of labor. In 1856
Mr.. Lothrop took little time from his
work of mapping out farms and roads
and applied his knowledge of ship
building to the construction of the first
crane dredge ever used on Lake Michi-
gan. The patentee of the dredge was
a Chicago man and he threatened to
refuse the finished work on account of
the fact that Mr.. LOthrop had changed
the plans to suit his own ideas. How
ever, when the dredge was completed,
it was found that it did twice as much
work in a given time as one construct
ed from the plans of the patentee and
in the next few months Mr.. Lothrop
built six of these dredges, to be used
by the United States government, and
two of these dredges are still used
about the lakes.
The fame of Mr.. Lothrop as a sur
veyor was known far and wide. He
was called to Michigan to lay out the
city of Muskegon and often his bus
mess took him to other cities in the
state. He has a heart big enough to
take in all humanity and his kindness
and generosity has made him friends
in all parts of the state. Many years
ago Capt. Charles Johnson, an early