John Hubbard Tweedy, the fifth child of Samuel and Ann Burr Tweedy, was born in Danbury, Connecticut, on November 9, 1814. The Tweedy family was prominent in Danbury. Tweedy's grandfather, Oliver Burr, had entered hat manufacturing in 1787, and Samuel Tweedy had become a hat manufacturer around 1800. By 1815, the firm of Tweedy and Benedict was sole supplier of hats to a wholesaler who grossed approximately $100,000 a year.
Hat manufacturing was not the only interest of the family. Samuel Tweedy was president of the Danbury Branch of the Fairfield County Bank from 1826 to 1833 and from 1835 to 1864. Edgar S. Tweedy, John's elder brother, followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a director of the Danbury Savings Bank in 1849, and on his father's death taking over the management of the hat factory. Edgar was also interested in railroads, in 1835 becoming a founder of the Fairfield County Road. This railroad eventually evolved into the Danbury and Norwalk Road, of which Edgar was secretary and a director.
John H. Tweedy graduated from Yale in 1834, studied law in Danbury under Reuben Booth, a prominent local lawyer, and received his law degree in 1836 after a year's study at Yale Law School. In October 1836 Tweedy moved west to Milwaukee.
Tweedy, better educated than many Wisconsin lawyers, was a success almost immediately. By 1840 he was prominent enough to secure the appointment as Receiver of the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal Company with a salary of $1000 a year.
In spite of his gaining the semi-political receivership, the political prospects for the young lawyer who considered himself a Whig were not good. Because Martin Van Buren, President of the United States, was a Democrat and devoted to party patronage in the territories, few political offices were open to Whigs. In 1840, however, the Whigs, under the leadership of William Henry Harrison, captured the presidency and Whig fortunes in the territories appeared to be on the rise. To celebrate the event, the Whigs of Wisconsin, who had not previously organized, held a mass meeting in Milwaukee on the first day of 1841. Among the speakers were Tweedy, his future law partner, Hans Crocker, and Jonathan E. Arnold.
Harrison died soon after his inauguration, and the new President, John Tyler, broke with the Whig Party. Territorial Whigs were no more in favor than they had been under Van Buren. In spite of the lack of opportunity, Tweedy continued in politics under both Tyler and his Democratic successor James K. Polk. In 1841 Arnold resigned his seat in the Territorial Council and the people of Milwaukee elected Tweedy for the remainder of the term. Crocker served in the same office after Tweedy's single term. Tweedy represented Milwaukee in the heavily Democratic constitutional convention of 1846. There he was one of the most prominent leaders of the minority, leading unsuccessful campaigns relating to an appointive judiciary, banking, internal improvements, Negro suffrage, and the enforcement of contracts. Only in his support of education did he gain the backing of the convention.
After the convention, Tweedy campaigned against the constitution, and the people of the territory rejected it. Moses M. Strong had been the leader of the majority in the convention, and although he was closely identified with the unpopular constitution the Democrats nominated him for Territorial Delegate. The party split, however, and other candidates also ran. With the opposition divided and tied to the unpopular constitution, Tweedy was able to gain nine more votes than his opponents combined and was elected to Congress. In Congress, Tweedy's major task was the admission of Wisconsin. He argued for the constitution, ratified by the people after a second convention, even speaking for some provisions he had opposed in the first convention.
Following his term in Congress, Tweedy's political fortunes declined. In 1848 he was the Whig candidate for Governor and lost to Nelson Dewey. The next year he was defeated in a race for Mayor of Milwaukee. In 1850 he refused to run for Congress. He served briefly as Postmaster of Milwaukee in 1851, and in 1852 was elected to his last public office, serving a single term in the state legislature. His only public appearance after leaving the legislature was a war speech delivered in 1862.
Politics, for Tweedy, was not an end in itself, but rather a means to further commerce and to serve the people, two activities closely identified in his mind. In the convention he had favored contracts, banking, internal improvements, and Negro suffrage, and all, in his rhetoric at least, were ethical and moral problems. Negro suffrage was neither politically nor commercially profitable to Tweedy. Tweedy served as postmaster not because of the patronage involved, but because Milwaukee needed a qualified man to manage its mails. As soon as the government found a qualified replacement Tweedy resigned. His campaign for mayor followed several months on a committee to propose amendments to the city charter.
Tweedy was much more a businessman and a lawyer than a politician. Like his brother, he was interested in railroads, being a director of both the Mississippi and Milwaukee Railroad and the Milwaukee and Watertown Road. He speculated in land, owning city lots and much farm land, quite often retaining the mortgage after selling the land. He had a large and successful legal business. Although much of his work came from Milwaukeeans, he also did a large amount of legal work for Easterners, especially in land cases. Tweedy continued to practice law after 1852, but most of his attention was given to investments, in land in the 1850s and 1860s, but in the 1870s and 1880s tending towards stocks and bonds.
Although retired from public life, Tweedy still served those causes he favored. Hs was a member of the Free-Soil Committee for Kansas and raised $500 for it. A strong supporter of education, he was a member of the Milwaukee Board of Education, one of the first trustees of Milwaukee Female College, and a member of the board of trustees of Milwaukee Normal Institute and High School.
On one of his several trips to New England he met Anna M. Fisher and they were married in Boston on June 8, 1848. They had four children: James Fisher, John H., Jr., Mariette, and Robert B. John H. Tweedy died in Milwaukee, November 12, 1891, and is buried in Danbury, Connecticut.
