By Wendell Nelson

After Judge George W. Cate returned to Portage County after his one and only term as a U.S. Congressman, he resumed his law practice and never again held elective office. But he was encouraged by others to run for public office again, in 1890.

The location of Judge Cate’s law firm, Cate, Jones & Sanborn, from 1890 to about 1900, on the northwest corner of Strongs Avenue and Clark Street. The building was the original Methodist Episcopal Church, but was sold after the new church was built at the northeast corner of Strongs and Brawley Street in 1890.

The April 23 Gazette paraphrases the Portage Democrat in predicting the election of a Democratic governor that year. After listing the state’s great need for “a man of ability, a man of integrity and one who possesses the confidence of the people,” The Gazette editor says that “the Hon. G.W. Cate, of Stevens Point,” is just such a man. If Cate runs, the paper predicts, “the only question …will be the size of Cate’s majority.”

Also in 1890, Cate was promoted for Congress again. The Gazette of Aug. 27 cites an Ashland newspaper to the effect that he was going to run that year. After denying the story, The Gazette’s editor writes that if Cate were to be unanimously nominated, he would definitely run against Congressman Myron H. McCord. Then the editor calls Cate “one of the most able men in the state, clean, tried and true …. He was the most able man ever elected from this district …. Should the [D]emocrats in convention at Wausau … decide to nominate Hon. Geo. W. Cate, he will be elected next November by a good majority.” But he did not run.

Part five of seven

However, he did serve as Stevens Point Postmaster during President Grover Cleveland’s first administration (1885-1889), and his assistant postmaster was his son, Albert G. Cate (1851-1933), according to Judge Cate’s March 8, 1905, Gazette obituary.

The sign at Cate County Park, north of Amherst Village on the Tomorrow River Trail (formerly County Highway A).

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