 PIONEER CITIZEN,ANSWERS SUMMONS
One of Bismarck's First Merchants, Long Active in Civic Affairs Is Dead FUNERAL SERVICES TO BE HELD WEDNESDAY John Piatt Dunn, third of that name in a line of American pioneers who have carried westward the star of the empire, passed away at the family home on Third street at 10:20 o'clock Monday evening after an illness extending over a number of weeks. In his passing Bismarck loses one of its first citizens, one of a group of not more than a dozen men who settled
in Edwinton, now Bismarck, within a few weeks after the founding of the town, in 1872, and who from that day to this have made the city their home.
Last rites for the deceased will be held at McCabe Methodist Episcopal church at 2:30 Wednesday afternoon, Rev. W. J. Hutcheson officiating, and interment will be made in St. Mary's cemetery, where rests an infant daughter of the deceased. Mr. Dunn was a founder of the church which tomorrow will receive his earthly tenement for the last time. He served as a member of the original church board and assisted in the building of the first church.
John Piatt Dunn was born at Troy, Ind., on Christmas day, 1839, soon after the birth of that new state. His father, John Piatt Dunn, was one of the hardy pioneers who had forged westward to make a home for his family in the infant commonwealth. The son had such early educational advantages as the frontier country offered, and in 1859, when he was barely 20, the spirit of adventure inherited from warrior ancestry called him west. He joined the hundreds who had answered the lure of the California gold fields and drove an ox team across the trackless wastes of the American desert to Placerville, Cal., where the outbreak of the Civil war in 1861 found him part owner of a successful placer mine on the American river up from Sacramento.
A Dunn had fought for the republic in all of its wars from the revolution, when a great grandfather, James Dunn, had fallen at Bowling Green, to find a last resting place in Old Trinity. The nation's call found a prompt response from the California gold miner, who, with a score of associates, rounded the Horn in a small schooner and beat their way up the eastern
coast. Upon reaching his home in Indiana John Piatt Dunn found the Hoosier regiments of volunteers filled and he immediately sought service in the regular army, with which he was accepted, his California campaigns against the Utes having already given him the standing of a veteran.
He became a member of the great Army of the Potomac, first under McClelland, with which he served at Antietam and Gettysburg and in other famous battles in the eastern division. He was wounded at Gaines Mill, but declined to drop out, and fought in some of the most famous engagements in the Civil war with his arm in a sling. Not until Lee had surrendered did he lay down his arms and accept a discharge. He was mustered out as a Sergeant of Co. H, Sixth United States Infantry. Soon after the close of the war he was married. To this union, in New York state, were born two children, Cassius O. and Ruth F. Dunn, now residing in Dubois, ldaho, and both of whom were visitors here during the last summer.
After the death of his first wife, Mr. Dunn came west. He graduated following the war from the Indiana State Pharmaceutical College, connected with the University at Bloomington, and a drug store which he opened at Brainerd, Minn, in 1871, was the first established in the northwest, west of the Mississippi. In August, 1872, when Edwinton, soon to become Bismarck, was less than two months old, Mr. Dunn came to the Missouri river outpost and here established the first drug store located west of the Red river.
May 13, 1873, he returned to Minneapolis to wed Miss Christina S. Stiles. His bride, one of the first to come to Bismarck, accompanied him back to his frontier town, where a white woman's face, in that day, was a rarity. The first Dunn home was located on four lots, where the Auditorium now stands. Years before Bismarck had even given promise of becoming the city which it is today, John Piatt Dunn predicted that some day a beautiful theater would stand on the site his home occupied. That prophesy was realized several years ago, when the municipal auditorium was built.
John Piatt Dunn was a member of the first board of county commissioners. To his foresight Burleigh county is indebted for the splendid location of its court house. When the township in which Bismarck is located were in litigation, Mr. Dunn fenced off the square where the court house now stands and held it in trust until the legal difficulties had been adjusted, when he turned it over to the county. He did the same thing with the site of the present Will school. He was chairman of North Dakota's first state prison board in 1883, and helped to build the first prison.
He was a member of Bismarck's first school board, upon which he served for twelve years, and the county of Dunn, one of the largest in the state, was named for him. He built Bismarck's first pioneer jail of logs where the bad men of the early days were housed, for their own safety as much as that of the community, and from 1884 until 1886 he served as mayor, being the Capital City's chief executive at the time the territorial capitol was dedicated. For six years,
beginning in 1889, he served as county treasurer. From 1872 until 1889, when he retired from business, he was one of the city's commercial leaders, and in every feature of the life of his city for more than a quarter of a century he took an active and dominant part.
There survive the deceased the widow, a son and daughter resulting from a former union-Casius O. and Ruth F. Dunn of DuBois, Idaho-and a son, John Piatt Dunn, and a daughter, Mrs. Fannie Dunn Quain, residing in Bismarck. The second-born in Bismarck, Lydia, died in infancy. There also survive two brothers—Dr. William M. Dunn of Los Angeles, Calif, and Isaac P. Dunn, Jeffersonville, Ind.
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