Life
He was the son of Josiah Skinner. He lived at Little Falls. He was Sheriff of Herkimer County, New York from 1847 to 1849.
Little Falls is a town in Herkimer County, New York, United States. The population was 1,587 at the 2010 census. The town is named after falls and rapids on the Mohawk River nearby.
Herkimer County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 64,519. Its county seat is Herkimer. The county was created in 1791 north of the Mohawk River out of part of Montgomery County. It is named after General Nicholas Herkimer, who died from battle wounds in 1777 after taking part in the Battle of Oriskany during the Revolutionary War.
In 1853, he was appointed Superintendent of Canal Repairs for Section 4 of the Erie Canal.
The Erie Canal is a canal in New York, United States that is part of the east–west, cross-state route of the New York State Canal System. Originally, it ran 363 miles (584 km) from where Albany meets the Hudson River to where Buffalo meets Lake Erie. It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. When completed in 1825, it was the second longest canal in the world and greatly affected the development and economy of New York, New York City, and the United States.
He was a Canal Commissioner from 1860 to 1865, elected in 1859 on the Democratic and American tickets, and re-elected in 1862 on the Democratic ticket.
The Commission to Explore a Route for a Canal to Lake Erie and Report, known as the Erie Canal Commission, was a body created by the New York State Legislature in 1810 to plan the Erie Canal. In 1817 a Canal Fund led by Commissioners of the Canal Fund was established to oversee the funding of construction of the canal. In 1826 a Canal Board, of which both the planning commissioners and the Canal Fund commissioners were members, was created to take control of the operational canal. The term "Canal Commission" was at times applied to any of these bodies. Afterwards the canal commissioners were minor state cabinet officers responsible for the maintenance and improvements of the state's canals.
The Native American Party, renamed the American Party in 1855 and commonly known as the Know Nothing movement, was an American nativist political party that operated nationally in the mid-1850s. It was primarily anti-Catholic, xenophobic, and hostile to immigration, starting originally as a secret society. The movement briefly emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party. Adherents to the movement were to reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders, thus providing the group with its common name.
He was a delegate to the 1864 Democratic National Convention.
The 1864 Democratic National Convention was held at The Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois.
