(1831-1907) Co-founder of Creighton University, born near Somerset, Ohio. He was educated by the Dominicans, early cast in his lot with the American frontiersmen, and was successful in his many mining and agricultural enterprises. Besides founding the university and contributing large sums to other Catholic institutions, he and his brother, Edward, assumed a national character for the heroic part they took in 1861 in laying the first telegraph line that bound California to the rest of the nation. John was made a Knight of Saint Gregory and a Roman count by Leo XIII, and in 1900 received the Lætare Medal.