John Catron (January 7, 1786 – May 30, 1865) was an American jurist who served as a US Supreme Court justice from 1837 to 1865.

Early and Family Life

Little is known of Catron's early life, other than that all of his grandparents emigrated from Germany to Virginia, as part of the extensive emigration of Germans and Swiss from Hesse and the Palatinate due to wars, and economic and religious insecurity in the area. His father, Peter (Catron) Kettering, had immigrated as a child with his parents from Mittelbrun in the German Palatinate and settled in Montgomery County (later Wyeth County). His mother was Maria Elizabetha Houck, whose parents had settled in Virginia after emigrating from the Palatinate by way of Pennsylvania. His only sibling, Mary, later married Thomas Swift and moved to Missouri and, ultimately, Oregon. John Catron was a second cousin to Thomas Benton Catron, who later became one of the first senators to represent the state of New Mexico. Catron's father had served in Captain William Doack's militia company from Montgomery County during the Revolutionary War.