John Currey
John Moore Currey (October 4, 1814 – December 18, 1912) was the eighth Chief Justice of California, and candidate for Governor of California in 1859. Biography. Born in Westchester County, New York in 1814, John Currey died in Dixon, California in 1912. He attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut (class of 1842). Currey came to California in 1849, eventually settling down in Benicia, Solano County, California where he established a successful law practice. Among his clients was Juan Manuel Vaca, owner of a large tract of land, a Mexican land grant near the present-day city that bears his  name: Vacaville, California. In 1850 and 1852, Millard Fillmore nominated him to be a district court judge in California, but both nominations were unsuccessful; the United States Senate voted to reject the first nomination and took no action on the second. In 1859 the Anti-Lecompton Democratic Party selected Currey as their candidate for Governor of California. The rival faction, Lecompton Democrats, chose Milton Latham as their candidate. The Republican Party ran its first California gubernatorial candidate in 1859, businessman and railroad tycoon, and later Governor Leland Stanford. Despite the Democratic party split in California in the 1850s and the  surge of new Republican Party's candidate in the campaign, Latham won the election, garnering sixty percent of the vote. After defeat in his run for Governor, Currey would find other promising opportunities for office. In 1863, several vacancies on the Supreme Court occurred. The departed justices included the sixth Chief Justice Stephen Johnson Field, who was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first Californian serve on the high court. In 1863, a constitutional amendment meant all of the seats of the Supreme Court of California were open for election. Running as a "union