Born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, John White Geary (1819-1873) earned distinction through military service in two major American wars and also achieved prominence as a statesman in several localities. Geary served as a colonel in the Mexican War, was the first mayor of San Francisco, territorial governor of Kansas, a major general in the Union Army by the end of the Civil War, and governor of Pennsylvania from 1867 to 1873. He was first married in 1843 to Margaret Ann Logan (d. 1853) and then to Mary Church Henderson in 1858. His eldest son, Edward Ratchford Geary, a Union soldier in the Civil War, died at the age of eighteen in the battle of Wauhatchie in Tennessee in October 1863. John's older brother, Rev. Edward R. Geary, attended Allegheny Theological College in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, joined the ministry, and later went on to become superintendent of Indian affairs in Oregon and Washington.