Bio of J. Stephens Tripp for your Tripp website.

Regards,
Lance Ware

Source: Men of Progress, Wisconsin, Andrew J. Aikens and Lewis A. Proctor (editors), Milwaukee: Evening Wisconsin Co., 1897, p. 205-206.

TRIPP, J. Stephens, a lawyer and banker of Prairie du Sac, is the son of Silas Tripp, who was the son of Benjamin Tripp and grandson of Ezekiel Tripp, who was a noted Quaker speaker of Dutchess county, N. Y., prior to and during the revolutionary war. He, with other "Friends," settled in the town of Duanesburg, in Schenectady county, N. Y., then a wilderness, and formed a Quaker community, erected a meeting house, and the village which grew up about it was called "Quaker Street," by which it is still known. Silas Tripp was a farmer in good circumstances, who married Martha A. Stephens, and of this marriage was born J. S. Tripp, in Duanesburg, Schenectady county, N. Y., July 5th, 1828, who was the second of nine children. He worked on his father's farm, attending the district school during the winter until he was eighteen years old, when he went to the Schoharie Academy, teaching school a part of the time to get the means for paying expenses. He continued in the academy, acting part of the time as tutor, until 1850, when he entered the law office of Judge Charles Goodyear, in Schoharie, N. Y., where he continued reading law until June, 1853, when he was admitted to the bar at a general term of the supreme court as Albany, N. Y. He practiced at Schoharie until November, 1853, when he removed to Wisconsin and settled in Baraboo, entering into partnership with his cousin, Giles Stevens, now Judge Stevens of Reedsburg, where he remained about a year, when he went to Sauk City and formed a partnership with Cyrus Leland. This partnership continued for about two years, since which time he has been practicing alone, excepting for one year when he was in partnership with the late S. S. Wilkinson of Prairie du Sac. In 1868 he commenced doing a banking business in connection with his law practice, but discontinued the latter in 1887, since which time he has confined his attention to the banking business.

Mr. Tripp was postmaster of Sauk City from 1854 to 1861, was town clerk of the town of Prairie du Sac--then embracing the villages of Sauk City and Prairie du Sac--for twenty years; was president of the village of Sauk City for eight years; president of the village of Prairie du Sac, member of the county board of supervisors of Sauk county much of the time for the past thirty years, and several times its chairman. He was a member of the Wisconsin assembly in 1862, having been elected as a "War Democrat"; was a delegate to the national Democratic convention at Cincinnati in 1880. He has resided in the village of Prairie du Sac since 1873.

He is not a member of any church, and says that he is too much of a Quaker to join any of those where he has resided, but he is a regular attendant of the Presbyterian church of Prairie du Sac, of which he is and has been for many years a trustee.

Mr. Tripp was first married, in 1857, to Fannie W. Hallett, daughter of ex-Sheriff Hallett of Fairfield, N. Y. She died in 1865. He was again married, in 1874, to Nellie W. Waterbury, daughter of the Hon. James I. Waterbury of Prairie du Sac, by whom he had one son, who died in infancy. She died in 1893.