JOHN ADAM KASSON
KASSON, JOHN ADAM, congressman, diplomatist, author, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the courts of Austria, and Germany; envoy to the International Congo congress of 1884-85; special envoy to the Trinational Samoan conference in Berlin; codifier of the postal laws of the United States; initiator of the great International Postal union, as well as framer of the laws introducing and legalizing the metric system in the United States, has been in public life for forty years. Scotch-Irish in his descent, he was the son of John Steele Kasson, a farmer, "kindly and cheerful in his character." His death, when his son was but six years old, left to his widow, Mrs. Nancy Blackman Kasson, the care and education of their son. "She was Calvanistic, rigid for truth-telling and against Sabbath breaking, and earnest for the education of her children," says her son. In youth he was strong, with an excitable disposition, fond of dogs and horses, and of reading, as well as of country boyhood's sports. He was born at Charlotte, Vermont, January 11, 1822, and lived in the country until he was fourteen. He then moved with the family to Burlington, Vermont, for his education. His tasks as a boy were slight, "only incidental labor, light duties morning and evening with horses and cattle and 'chores.'" And except for rather narrow means he had no great difficulties to overcome in acquiring an education. He earned something toward his own support by teaching school in winter. His preparatory work was done at Burlington academy, and after the regular classical course he was graduated from the University of Vermont in 1842. He began the study of law in the office of his brother, Charles de Forest Kasson, in Burlington; and after teaching during a part of the year 1843 in Virginia, he resumed his law studies at Worcester, Massachusetts, with Judge Washburn, afterward governor of that state.
His active life was begun at New Bedford, Massachusetts, as a lawyer, and incidentally as a politician. He was chosen a delegate to the first Free Soil national convention at Buffalo, in 1848. That
