lawyer, politician, judge, professor, b. South Hartwick, Otsego County, N.Y. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1853. He moved to Wisconsin in 1855, and in 1856 settled in Galesville, where he farmed and engaged in local politics. A Republican, he was county district attorney (1857-1858) and state assemblyman (1860). In 1861 he moved to Sparta and set up a law practice. He was elected judge of the old 6th Wisconsin circuit (1868), serving from 1869 to 1877. In 1877 he was appointed by President Hayes as U.S. district judge for the western district of Wisconsin and held this position until his retirement in 1905. After 1877 he lived in Madison. He served as professor of federal jurisprudence at the Univ. of Wisconsin (1879-1885), and was a special lecturer at Northwestern Univ. J. R. Berryman, ed., Bench and Bar of Wis. (2 vols., Chicago, 1898); A. M. Thomson, Political Hist. of Wis. (Milwaukee, 1900); Madison Democrat, Jan. 26, 1909.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has manuscripts related to this topic. See the catalog description of the Romanzo Bunn Letters for details.

View newspaper clippings at Wisconsin Local History and Biography Articles.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]