lawyer, politician, judge, b. Bullitt's Old Lick, Bullitt County, Ky. He attended school in Louisville, studied law in Kentucky, and Kaskaskia, Ill., and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1820. Dunn assisted in laying out the first plat of Chicago, and served in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War (1832). A Democrat, he served in the Illinois lower house (1835). In 1836 he was appointed by President Andrew Jackson as chief justice of the Wisconsin territorial supreme court. Dunn moved to Belmont in time for the first session of the court, and served on the high court bench until Wisconsin became a state in 1848. He was a delegate to the Wisconsin constitutional convention of 1847-1848, where, as chairman of the judiciary committee, he helped draft the judicial provisions of the state constitution. Dunn was state senator (1853-1856) and an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1858. With the waning of Democratic power in Wisconsin, Dunn returned to the practice of law, and maintained his residence in Belmont until his death. Dict. Amer. Biog.; J. G. Gregory, ed., S.W. Wis. (4 vols., Chicago, 1932); Wis. Mag. Hist., 32; M. M. Quaife, Attainment of Statehood [Madison, 1928]; WPA MS.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]