John Franklin Fort
American judge (1852–1920)

John Franklin Fort (March 20, 1852 – November 17, 1920) was an American Republican Party politician, who served as the 33rd governor of New Jersey, from 1908 to 1911. His uncle, George Franklin Fort, was a Democratic governor of New Jersey from 1851 to 1854.
Biography
Fort was born in Pemberton, New Jersey, on March 20, 1852. He attended the Pennington Seminary, and earned an LL.B. degree at Albany Law School in 1872.
An attorney, Fort was appointed by Governor George B. McClellan, a Democrat, to the First District Court of Newark, a position he held through subsequent Democratic administrations until he stepped down in 1886. Fort was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1884 and 1896. In 1900, Governor Foster M. Voorhees appointed him to the New Jersey Supreme Court, where he remained until 1907. Fort was a delegate to the 1912 Republican National Convention.
In 1909 Fort was elected an honorary member of the New Jersey Society of the Cincinnati.
In March 1917, President (and former New Jersey governor) Woodrow Wilson appointed Fort to the Federal Trade Commission, a position he held until November 1919 when he resigned due to illness.
The public source identifies “John Franklin Fort” as american judge (1852–1920). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Franklin and Fort.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q882960. VIAF identifies the subject as 11331157. The Library of Congress control number is n86114403. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1852, 1920, 1908 and 1911.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Franklin Fort” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.