October 31, 1812

Newspaper editor and politician John Forsyth Jr. was born in Augusta, Georgia on Oct. 31, 1812. He established the Mobile Register as one of the nation’s foremost 19th-century newspapers. During his four-decade journalistic and political career, Forsyth’s outspoken opinions and political actions gained national attention. Forsyth Jr. was born into a prestigious family. John Forsyth Sr. served as Georgia’s governor and senator and also as minister to Spain and secretary of state under presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. John Jr. was educated abroad and at Princeton University, where he was class valedictorian in 1832. He married Margaret Hull of Georgia, and the couple had two sons who would later serve as Confederate officers in the Civil War. Forsyth Jr. began his long association with Alabama when he was appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District in Mobile in 1836. Two years later, he abandoned the law profession and bought an interest in the Mobile Daily Commercial Daily Register. In 1841, Forsyth returned to Georgia after the death of his father, but in 1854, he went back to Mobile and purchased the Register, for which he served as editor.

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