John R. Thomas

John Robert Thomas, Sr. (October 11, 1846 – January 19, 1914), also known as J. R. Thomas, was a U.S. representative from Illinois. He was later appointed a U.S. district judge in the Indian Territory, which then encompassed most of the eastern part of present-day Oklahoma, serving from 1898 to 1901. After statehood, he served on the Oklahoma State Code Commission which was tasked with reviewing and editing the new state laws that had been hastily put together during the rush to statehood. After returning to his private law practice, he went to the Oklahoma state prison at McAlester to interview an inmate on January 19, 1914, when he was killed by three other inmates who shot him to death while escaping prison.

Judge Thomas was also the father of Carolyn T. Foreman, who married attorney Grant Foreman in 1905. After their marriage and the judge's death, Carolyn and Grant Foreman become noted Oklahoma historians.

Biography Born in Mount Vernon, Illinois, John Robert Thomas attended the common schools and Hunter Collegiate Institute, Princeton, Indiana. He served in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and rose from the rank of private to that of captain of Company D, One Hundred and Twentieth Regiment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry. Thomas was wounded at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Wilson wrote that he never fully recovered from his wound. He was of Welsh descent.

After the war, Thomas studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1869. He became city attorney of Metropolis, Illinois, 1869 and 1870 and served as State's attorney 1871–1874. which replaced the traditional spoils system with a bureaucratic civil service system. The conservative "Stalwart" faction of the Republican Party which earlier opposed civil service reform almost entirely voted for the Pendleton Act under immense political pressure following the assassination of James A. Garfield.

He was not a candidate for renomination in 1888.

Later career He resumed the practice of law in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and also served as a United States judge in the Indian Territory from June 30, 1897, to June 30, 1901. During this service, he handed down the first death penalty ever issued in the Territory. In 1899, he tried a group of white men who were arrested and convicted of torturing and murdering two Seminole boys. The men were convicted of the crimes, which angered a great many white settlers. They attempted to leave the prison using stenographer Mary Foster, who was wounded in the melée, and parole officer Frank H. Rice as human shields, but were killed. In 1884, while serving as a U.S. congressman, John Robert Thomas was also Grand Master for the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Illinois.