Thomas W. Sutherland (c. 1817 – February 2, 1859) was an American lawyer and pioneer settler of Wisconsin and California. He was the first Village President of Madison, Wisconsin, was United States Attorney for Wisconsin for several years in the 1840s, was a member of the first Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin, and was the last Alcalde (Mayor) of San Diego, California, prior to statehood. He was the eldest son of Joel Barlow Sutherland of Philadelphia, who had been a militia officer in the War of 1812 and served as a Member of Congress when Thomas was a child. Early life and career Thomas W. Sutherland was born c. 1817 in Pennsylvania (he is listed as 33 in the 1850 San Diego Census). In 1835, he traveled to Indiana as a clerk for Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, who had just become commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office and had been tasked by the U.S. government to travel there to make a treaty with an indian tribe. Ellsworth returned east from here, but Sutherland, at age 18, traveled west, meeting a cousin near St. Louis. They traveled together, exploring parts of what is now Iowa and Minnesota. He followed a river route from the Saint Anthony Falls to the location that would later become Madison, Wisconsin, which at the time was still inhabited only by the Ho-Chunk. He spent some time living with the indians on the shore of Lake Monona, and determined that this would become his future home. He returned briefly to Philadelphia to make preparations, then returned to Madison to purchase his lot as soon as land became available under the newly organized Wisconsin Territory. Wisconsin He was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar Association in 1839 and formed a legal partnership in Wisconsin with David Brigham with the endorsement of his father and several other notable politicians. In 1840, at the first session of court in Dane County, Sutherland was one of the first lawyers admitted to practice law in the territory, along with Edward V. Whiton (later Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court), John Hubbard Tweedy, and Morgan Lewis Martin (later congressional delegates for the territory). In 1841 he married Joanna Hudson (born c.1822), the daughter of Philadelphia Doctor Edward Hudson. That same year, he was appointed United States Attorney for the Wisconsin Territory by President John Tyler and remained in that role until