Edwin Hurlbut

Hon. Edwin Hurlbut (October 10, 1817 – November 28, 1905) was an American lawyer, editor, politician and humanitarian and the Mayor of Oconomowoc from 1866 to 1867.

Early years Hurlbut was born in 1817 in Newtown, Connecticut, one of ten children of Philander and Julia Alma (Thomas) Hurlbut. The family moved to Bradford County, Pennsylvania when he was seven years old. They made the trip in a covered wagon, which they lived in until they cleared the land and built a log house on their one thousand acre homestead. During the three months of winter Hurlbut walked four miles a day through the forests to the nearest school, which was held in a log house. The remainder of the year he aided his father in cutting timber, digging up stumps and transforming the wilderness into meadow and grain field. Hurlbut credits these years of hard labor to his later in life gnarled and stiff fingers and joints, which he would state were not the fingers of either a lawyer nor editor. He also attributed these early life experiences to his determination to never shrink from a task.

Eight years later fifteen-year-old Hurlbut walked to New Jersey. He states that "...when quite a chunk of a boy, with light heart and elastic step I left home and walked over the mountains and through the woods to Newark, New Jersey, 100 miles distant, to visit Grandma Thomas." He lived there a year and then walked back to Pennsylvania to resume an occupation as a woodchopper.

Early career Hurlbut left the Pennsylvania homestead and went West to spend a short time in Eaton County, Michigan, but soon returned East to study law at Lodi, in Seneca County, New York, where he opened a law office and married Catherine Chandler in 1840. which she managed after his death for eighteen months until she sold it.

Local histories refer to Hurlbut as a self-made man, with a positive character, who became a lawyer, ranked among the best in the state. He was said to have had strong convictions.

Religion Hurlbut was originally a Baptist, and built, mainly at his own expense, a church for the Oconomowoc Baptist Society, at the cost of $5000.00. It was destroyed by a wind storm and never rebuilt. He later became a member of the Episcopalian church. He was also a 32nd degree Mason, a Knight Templar, a Noble of the Mystic Shrine, and held the office of Grand worthy Patriarch of the Grand division of the Sons of Temperance of the State of Wisconsin. In addition, Israel Washburn, U.S. congressman from Maine, used the name Republican in reference to forming an anti-slavery party, there were private meetings in Crawfordsville, Iowa, Ripon, Wisconsin, Exeter, New Hampshire, and the convention in Jackson, Michigan, which all claim to have first named the party republican in 1854. Research completed by Mrs. Page Johnson in 1976, to which Col. Hurlbut responded by stating that he and Sherman Booth issued the call for a mass convention to establish a new political party without knowledge or reference to the meeting in Ripon. He further clarified his assessment of the meeting in Ripon:

The Ripon meeting was simply that of a little knot of "nickers", and nothing whatever grew out of it except perhaps, the satisfaction of being furnished an opportunity to meet and say unpleasant things about the other people. It was doubtless, well meant, but produced no effect.|Edwin Hurlbut|