John Alexander Martin

John Alexander Martin (March 10, 1839 – October 2, 1889) was the tenth governor of Kansas.

Origins

Martin was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, a son of James and Jane Montgomery (Crawford) Martin. His father was a native of Maryland, and his mother a native of Pennsylvania. He was of Scots-Irish extraction, and the family was related to General Richard Montgomery. His maternal grandfather, Thomas Brown, was the founder of Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Among Martin's relatives was nephew Harry Alexander Smith, a US Army major general, who was the son of Martin's sister Anna. Martin was educated in the public schools and, at the age of fifteen, began learning the printer's trade. He spent a brief time in Pittsburgh, where he worked as a compositor in the office of the Commercial Journal.

Freedom's Champion

In 1857, at the age of 18, he came to the Kansas Territory, bought the newspaper known as the Squatter Sovereign, published at Atchison, and changed the name to Freedom's Champion. He continued to publish this paper until his death. He was a firm free-state man and soon became actively identified with the political affairs of the territory. In 1858 he was nominated for the territorial legislature, but declined because he was not yet of legal age. In 1859 he was a delegate to the Osawatomie convention which organized the Republican party in Kansas, and for the remainder of his life he was an unswerving supporter of the principles and policies of that organization. His intelligent activity in political affairs led to his being honored by election or appointment to various positions of trust and responsibility. On July 5, 1859, he was elected secretary of the Wyandotte constitutional convention; was secretary of the railroad convention at Topeka in October, 1860; was a delegate to the Republican national convention of that year, and was elected to the Kansas Senate in 1861.