lawyer, soldier, politician, b. Kent County, Del. He graduated from Albany (N.Y.) Law School in 1859 and in 1860 was admitted to the Delaware bar. He practiced in Dover until the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861 he joined the Union army, was commissioned captain of the 18th U.S. Infantry in 1862, and participated in several battles. From 1864 to 1867 he served in the recruiting office in Detroit, and spent two years as a member of the 36th U.S. Infantry in Wyoming and Utah. In 1869 his name was placed on the supernumerary officer list, and he was assigned to the Chippewa Indian agency at Bayfield, Wis. Knight resigned his commission in 1870, and for several years was register of the land office in Bayfield. In 1880 he moved to Ashland, and shortly thereafter was one of the founders, with William F. Vilas (q.v.), of the Superior Lumber Co., which eventually controlled one of the largest timber tracts in northern Wisconsin. He was also local attorney for the Wisconsin Central R.R., an organizer of the Ashland and Superior R.R., and had numerous other business interests in the area. A Democrat, he was twice mayor of Ashland, served four years as chairman of the Democratic state central committee, and was several times a delegate to Democratic national conventions. In 1893 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate. E. B. Usher, Wis. (8 vols., Chicago, 1914); Mag. West. Hist., 9 (1888), pp. 27-32; H. S. Merrill, W. F. Vilas (Madison, 1954); Madison Wis. State journal, Aug. 22, 1903.

View newspaper clippings at Wisconsin Local History and Biography Articles.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has manuscripts related to this topic. See the catalog description of the John Henry Knight Letters for details.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]