USA > New Hampshire > The bench and bar of New Hampshire : including biographical notices of deceased judges of the highest court, and lawyers of the province and state, and a list of names of those now living > Part 6
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From 1783 to 1787 he was clerk of the Court of Common Pleas in the county of Strafford, till in the latter year he was made Judge of the same court. From that bench he was in 1795 transferred to the Superior Court, but resigned after about a year's service. Again appointed in 1796 Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, he'officiated as such to the close of his life. In 1792 he was an influential member of the convention to revise the state Constitution, and was a presidential elector in that year, in 1796, and in 1800.
Judge Thompson was a man of reading and much general in- formation ; of a keen, discriminating mind, a retentive memory, and sound judgment. He was also cautious and shrewd ; of much decision of character and perseverance, and in the opinion of those who knew him best, upright and honest. He was plain and unas-
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suming, averse to display, industrious, and devoted to the public interest. He died suddenly at Durham, August 14, 1802.
He married, May 22, 1758, Mary, daughter of Vincent Torr of Dover. They had five children.
DANIEL NEWCOMB.
J. 1796-1798.
Son of Jonathan and Elizabeth (Copeland) Newcomb ; born, Norton, Massa- chusetts, April 19, 1747 ; Harvard College, 1768 ; practiced, Keene ; died there, July 14, 1818.
Mr. Newcomb, after leaving college, is said to have taught a Latin school in Wrentham, Massachusetts. He then studied the- ology and preached for a time. Not satisfied to follow the profes- sion of divinity, he prepared himself for the bar under John Lowell of Boston, Massachusetts, and was there admitted an attorney in October, 1778. The same year he came to Keene. Benjamin West, the distinguished lawyer of Charlestown, was his classmate and friend in college, and Mr. Newcomb is un- derstood to have induced him to come to New Hampshire, offer- ing him his choice between Keene and Charlestown as a place of settlement.
The period of the Revolution was not favorable to lawyers, but Mr. Newcomb was an active, prudent man, and as he found him- self in 1781 in a condition to marry, he must have soon secured such business as the vicinity afforded. In 1783 his practice was large, and he became a man of note and influence. He had risen into notice during the movement for uniting some of the towns on the western border of New Hampshire with Vermont, and was clerk of the convention held by the delegates from those towns at Walpole in 1780, and a delegate from Keene in the convention at Charlestown the year following. He was opposed to a union with Vermont. He was also a member of the convention to revise the Constitution of the State in 1791-92.
In 1789 he was appointed solicitor of the county of Cheshire, and in 1790 a Justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, but resigned October 2, 1793. In 1796 he was commissioned a Jus- tice of the Superior Court, and kept his seat upon the bench until his resignation in 1798. In 1795, 1800, and 1805 he was a member of the state Senate.
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Judge Newcomb's talents were above mediocrity, but not pre- eminent. He was a good classical scholar, and gathered a library of some value, being a true bibliophile. He read much, and hav- ing a tenacious memory was fond of quotations. He is said to have been of an acute rather than a broad mind, and as a lawyer to have been better versed in the forms and proceedings than in the principles of jurisprudence. He had an extensive practice, but was too diffident and sensitive to succeed as an advocate. Though a fair lawyer and an honest man, he was not distinguished as a judge.
It is said that he was a lover of money, and that he was in the habit of repeatedly suing judgments, which he might have col- lected on execution, to swell the amount of his fees. This is a charge which has been made against many lawyers of his time, and no doubt with too much justice. But it is to be remembered that it was always competent for the debtors to prevent such pro- ceedings by satisfying the judgments when they were recovered ; and they understood full well the penalty which the practice of a large proportion of the profession exacted for neglect. Probably Judge Newcomb did no more than most, or many, of his brethren, under like circumstances. He accumulated a handsome fortune, and was the president of the earliest bank established in Keene. He was much interested in the advancement and prosperity of the town. As early as 1793 he established a grammar school there at his own expense, and was largely influential in the erection of the first court house in 1796.
His first marriage, in November, 1781, was with Sarah, daughter of Rev. David Stearns of Lunenburg, Massachusetts ; his second, in February, 1800, was with Hannah, daughter of Major William Dawes, and widow of Benjamin Goldthwaite of Boston, Massa- chusetts. He is said to have sent six sons to college, of whom two died undergraduates. One son, Seth Newcomb, followed the calling of his father.
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EDWARD ST. LOE LIVERMORE.
J. 1797-1799.
Son of Samuel and Jane (Browne) Livermore ; born, Portsmouth, April 5, 1762 ; practiced, Concord and Portsmouth ; died, Lowell, Massachusetts, Sep- tember 15, 1832.
Mr. Livermore, up to the age of thirteen, lived in Portsmouth, and a part of the time in Londonderry ; in the winter of 1775 he was taken by his father to Holderness. There his instruction was superintended by his father, assisted probably by Dr. John Por- ter, a graduate of Harvard College, and afterwards a lawyer in Plymouth. He is not known to have attended any academy or college.' He acquired his preparation for the bar in the office of Theophilus Parsons of Newburyport, and entered upon his profes- sion in Concord in 1783. In a few years he removed his resi- dence to Portsmouth, from which place he was sent as a delegate to the convention to revise the Constitution of the State in 1791. February 15 of the same year he was appointed solicitor of Rockingham County, but acted as such less than three years. The President of the United States, in February, 1794, gave him the office of District Attorney for New Hampshire, but after holding it till June, 1797, he resigned it. In the same year the Executive of the State elevated him to the dignity of a Judge of the Superior Court, but he quitted the bench in little more than a year after, upon the ground of the inadequacy of the salary, which was then no more than eight hundred dollars. President Adams, September 20, 1798, appointed him naval officer for the port of Portsmouth, a place from which he was removed by Presi- dent Jefferson in 1802.
July 17, 1799, Judge Livermore delivered an oration at Ports- mouth upon the subject of our relations with France. The result was a sharp controversy with a citizen of Boston, against whom he had made certain charges. Although the dispute was referred to arbitration, the party who felt himself aggrieved made a per- sonal assault upon Judge Livermore, in Boston; but found that he had mistaken his man, for the hot Livermore blood boiled up, and the Judge gave him a severe castigation.
From Portsmouth he removed to Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1802. He had developed much interest in political affairs, at
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this period, and soon became one of the leading members of the Federal party in his new home. He was chosen to the General Court, from Newburyport, and in 1807 was elected a Represen- tative in Congress. He was kept there four years, and was a determined opponent of the measures of Jefferson and his succes- sor. He made speeches which gained him much credit for firm- ness and ability.
After his return from Congress he became a citizen of Boston, Massachusetts. There he was selected in 1813 to deliver the annual Fourth of July oration. It was a sharp arraignment of the conduct of the Administration in involving the nation in the war with Great Britain, but was undoubtedly in sympathy with the feelings of a large majority of his hearers. The interest in the oration was heightened by the circumstance that the speaker's oldest son had been wounded and made prisoner about a month before, as a volunteer chaplain in the Chesapeake, when, after a hard-fought action carried on almost within view of Boston, she surrendered to the English ship Shannon.
About 1815 he proceeded with his family to Zanesville, Ohio, with the design of making a home there if circumstances were propitious. But he soon abandoned that idea, and returning to New England, purchased a beautiful farm in Tewksbury, Massa- chusetts, near the confluence of the Concord with the Merrimac River. There he spent the remainder of his life.
Judge Livermore inherited the prominent qualities of his race : decision, strong powers of intellect and of will, integrity, and a love of justice. Nor did he lack a jot of the courage, the domi- neering spirit, and hot temper that belong to the name. At the bar these qualities gave him distinction, but not popularity, either among his brethren, or with the public. Though he ranked well in his professional attainments, he never had a very extensive practice, for that would probably have required a greater degree of patient labor than comported with his hasty, ardent tempera- ment. Thus constituted, it might naturally have been a question how far he was adapted to judicial labors. And here the testi- mony of one who knew, and who was not given to over-praise, is conclusive. "He was a good judge. In that office he was modest, calm, and patient, and acted as a gentleman. As a judge he was popular beyond the expectation of his friends, and by his prudence mortified his bitter enemies."
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Ile was married first, about 1783, to Mehitable, daughter of Robert Harris, at Concord. She lived about ten years, and left him five small children. His second wife, to whom he was united in May, 1799, was Sarah C., daughter of William Stackpole of Boston, Massachusetts. By this marriage he had seven children, some of whom are still living. The son who has been referred to as a volunteer on board the Chesapeake recovered, and after- wards became a lawyer in Louisiana, and was the author of two legal treatises, one of which, "Livermore on Agency," was for many years the received text-book on that subject. His sister, Harriet Livermore, a gifted but very eccentric lady, passed sev- eral years of her life in Oriental lands. Of the younger children, one married Judge J. G. Abbott of Massachusetts.
PAINE WINGATE.
J. 1798-1809.
Paine Wingate, a son of Rev. Paine and Mary (Balch) Win- gate, was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts, May 14, 1739. He graduated from Harvard College in 1759, and prepared himself for the ministry. In 1763 he was ordained over the church and society of Hampton Falls, from which he was dismissed in 1776, after some disagreement with his parish, and removed to a farm in Stratham without holding or apparently seeking another pasto- ral charge. It appears that in April, 1775, he expressed the opin- ion that a pacification with England upon honorable terms was practicable. He was chosen a delegate from Hampton Falls to the fourth provincial Congress, and attended at least a part of the session. In 1776 he was one of the forty-two men in Strat- ham who refused to sign the Association Test. It is probable that he took no active part on either side during the Revolution, but lived quietly, busying himself with the pursuits of husbandry.
He was chosen in 1781 a delegate to the convention to frame a permanent plan or system of government for the people of the State, which after repeated sessions produced the Constitution that was adopted in 1783. In the latter year, and also twelve years later, he was a representative of Stratham in the state legislature. In 1787 and 1788 he was a member of the Continental Congress ; in 1789 he was chosen a senator of the United States, and took part in the opening of the new national government under the
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Constitution. In fixing the term of the first senators, his was for four years only, and expired in 1793, whereupon he was chosen to the lower House of Congress, and in that position completed his eight years of congressional service. In 1798 he accepted the appointment of Judge of the Superior Court, and discharged its duties until he reached the constitutional limit of age, in 1809. When he assumed the post he was unacquainted with the science of the law and with the modes of judicial proceedings, besides being nearly sixty years of age, and past the time for ready acquisition of new habits of thought and action. Like many men unlearned in the law, he failed to realize the importance of general rules, and believed that it was practicable to fit an equita- ble decision to every special case. Moreover he was inclined to hold pertinaciously to his first impressions ; insomuch that The- ophilus Parsons remarked "that it was of great importance that Judge Wingate should form a correct opinion before he pro- nounced it, for after that, law, reason, and authority would be unavailing." Though he was a man of talents, of strong mind, retentive memory, and great general information as well as of strict integrity, he appears not to have been considered so well adapted to the judicial functions as some others of less education.
After retiring to private life he passed nearly thirty years in agricultural pursuits, upon his homestead, where he died March 7, 1838.
His wife was Eunice, daughter of Deacon Timothy Pickering of Salem, Massachusetts. They had five children.
ARTHUR LIVERMORE.
C. J. 1799-1813.
Son of Samuel and Jane (Browne) Livermore ; born, Londonderry, July 26, 1766 ; practiced, Concord, Chester, and Holderness ; died, Campton, July 1, 1853.
It is not known that Arthur Livermore received a public educa- tion, but as during his minority his home was in the frontier town of New Holderness, it is probable that his father, or perhaps his father's friend and protégé, Dr. John Porter, was his principal instructor. His subsequent career proved that he was well taught and well informed. The earliest glimpse we have of him is as a youth of sixteen, accompanying the court to Keene in 1782,
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when the discontents of the people led to the attempt to close the courts by a show of force. The story is well told in the Life of William Plumer. John Sullivan, then Attorney-General of the State, was the hero of the occasion, and unquestionably was of the greatest service to the court and to the cause of good order, by the bold front with which he met and disposed of the demands of the disaffected populace. Young Livermore, a youth of courage and spirit, acted as extempore aid to Sullivan. He described, at a later day, the skill and eloquence of the General. "I thought," said he, " if I could only look and talk like that man, I should want nothing higher or better in this world."
He studied law with his brother, Edward S. Livermore, in Con- cord, and opened an office in that place in 1792, but the next year changed: his residence to Chester. There he was chosen repre- sentative to the General Court in 1794 and 1795. In 1796 he proved that he inherited the ardent temper of his race by cow- hiding the notorious "Lord " Timothy Dexter, at that time an inhabitant of Chester. The sufferer gives what is now a ludi- crous account of the assault, in his "Pickle for the Knowing Ones." He dwells especially upon the ingratitude of his assail- ant, to whom he had formerly lent "200 dolors." The merits of the affair are now beyond the reach of investigation, but it is safe to say that there was no loss of time on Livermore's part in resorting to the argument of the cowhide.
On December 6 of the same year he was commissioned solici- tor of the county of Rockingham, and performed the duties of the appointment until December 21, 1798, when he was raised to the bench of the Superior Court. He then quitted Chester, and returned to the paternal mansion, which he had inherited, in Hol- derness. He continued associate Justice until 1809, when upon the resignation of Judge Jeremiah Smith he was made Chief Justice of the Court. On the "reorganization " of the courts in 1813 he was continued on the bench as associate Justice of the " Supreme " Court, while Judge Smith was again appointed Chief Justice. But notwithstanding he accepted his new appoint- ment, he did not believe such a wholesale change of the judiciary to be warranted by the Constitution, and took an early occasion to state this opinion publicly from the bench. Considering this cir- cumstance, it is rather remarkable that, when his party regained the power in 1816, and legislated the "reorganized " court out
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of existence, they did not reappoint Judge Livermore ; but they failed, for some reason, to do so.
The same year he was chosen a Representative in Congress, and rechosen in 1818. In 1821 and 1822 he was a member of the state Senate, and in March, 1823, he was elected to Congress for a third term. In the interval of his congressional service, on July 5, 1822, he was commissioned Judge of Probate for the county of Grafton, but resigned the situation the next year. He was not suffered to remain long out of the public employ, for in 1825 he was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and administered the office until 1833. At the close of his official life he sold his place in Holderness, and removed to Campton, where he spent the rest of his days.
Judge Livermore has been well characterized as a "man of strong, uncertain powers." It was unpleasant to have him against you, and not entirely safe to have him with you. His temper was naturally high, and he had no sufficient control of it. Hence he did acts in his official capacity which involved him in serious trouble. At the opening of one term of the court he was an- noyed, as he had before been, by the want of punctuality in the attendance of the counsel. Without waiting to learn the reason, he directed the crier to adjourn the court without day, remark- ing that by the next term the lawyers would probably learn to ap- pear in proper season. On another occasion he is said in a fit of passion to have grossly insulted a peaceful and reputable mem- ber of the bar, in open court. On both these occasions he nar- rowly escaped severe censure, or perhaps an address for his re- moval, by the General Court.
He must have possessed sterling compensatory virtues, to have received from the legislature and the people such tokens of their confidence and favor for the period of thirty-five years. He is represented as not being remarkably learned in the law, though an anecdote that is related of him shows that he was familiar with its terminology, at least. About the time he ascended the bench, some changes had been introduced in the form of the count in the " writ of entry," not pleasing to the taste of the older lawyers. On one of these declarations being read before Judge Livermore, he exclaimed, " In a plea of land," as that phrase grated harshly on his ear, - "in a plea of land! You might as well declare in an action of trover 'in a plea of a horse !'"
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His wife was Louisa Bliss of Haverhill. They were the parents of several children, of whom three graduated from Dartmouth College, and two followed the law.
JEREMIAH SMITH, LL. D.
C. J. 1802-1809 ; 1813-1816.
Son of William and Elizabeth (Morison) Smith ; born, Peterborough, No- vember 19, 1759 ; Queen's College, 1780 ; practiced, Peterborough and Exeter ; died, Dover, September 21, 1842.
As a child, Jeremiah Smith was noted for his eagerness in the pursuit of knowledge. At the age of twelve he began the study of Latin, and soon afterwards of Greek, under the tuition of Rev. Mr. Emerson of Hollis, and was admitted to Harvard College in 1777. About the same time he volunteered in a military com- pany raised for two months to march under General Stark to check Burgoyne's advance. He fought bravely at Bennington, and was slightly wounded. Returning to college, he completed his sophomore year there, and then migrated to Queen's, now Rutger's College in New Jersey. The five years following his graduation he spent in teaching and in reading law, a part of the time in Barnstable, Massachusetts, where his preceptor was Shear- jashub Bourne, and a part in Salem, Massachusetts, under Wil- liam Pynchon. In 1786 he made application to the bar of Hills- borough County for admission. It was objected that he did not produce certificates of the required period of study. As the court was to adjourn the following day, Smith rode all night to procure the certificates, and returned the next morning with them ; but was then told it was too late to hold another bar meeting at that term. This put him upon his mettle, and he rose in court and stated the conduct of the bar towards him. The judges at once ordered his admission. Smith wrote to a friend that "it was devilish hard to be refused admittance to bad company." The lawyers were discomfited, but the candidate's fitness was so indis- putable that they were quite willing to keep on the right side of him, afterwards.
He first settled in his native town, whose citizens soon made him useful as town clerk and selectman. In 1787 and the two following years he was a representative in the legislature, and was placed in 1789 upon a committee to revise the laws of the
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State, a duty to which he devoted much labor. In 1791 and 1792 he was an active and influential delegate to the convention which framed the Constitution of the State under which our fathers lived for more than half a century.
Mr. Smith was first elected to Congress in 1790, took his seat in March, 1791, and retained it by repeated elections till 1797, when he resigned. Though never deeply interested in party politics, he was recognized as a leading man in the national legis- lature, and was the intimate friend, and afterwards the corre- spondent, of such eminent statesmen as Fisher Ames and Chris- topher Gore. During his political career he was at one time a guest at Mount Vernon of President Washington, for whose character he conceived the highest admiration and reverence.
When he left Congress he changed his residence to Exeter, which was thereafter his home until a little time before his de- cease. He received the appointment of United States District Attorney for New Hampshire in 1797, and acted as such until 1800, at which time the office of Judge of Probate for Rocking- ham County was conferred upon him. While occupying the latter position, he gathered from all the scattered sources then accessible the materials of a treatise on Probate law. They formed a valuable compend, which was published after his death, in the volume of his " Decisions."
One of the later official acts of President John Adams was to sign the commissions of a number of Judges of the Circuit Court of the United States, in pursuance of a law constituting that tri- bunal. Mr. Smith was the Judge designated for New Hampshire. This was presumptively a life appointment, and of high impor- tance, and Judge Smith proceeded with more than his usual dili- gence to fit himself for the post, by unintermitted study for some fourteen hours per day, during a period of three months. But to his extreme disappointment, no doubt, President Jefferson gave the word for repealing the act establishing the Court, and after a few terms' attendance his tenure of the office ceased. What was a loss to the nation was a gain to the State, for in 1802 he was persuaded to accept the Chief Justiceship of the Superior Court. He was reluctant to do it, chiefly because of the obvious in- adequacy of the salary ; but the legislature increased it in order to induce him to undertake the office, and a few years later added a much larger increase, to keep him in it. He presided in the court
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most satisfactorily till 1809, when he resigned upon the desire of his friends in order to take upon himself the office of governor of the State. He held it a single year, and was not reelected, very little to his regret, however, for he had no liking for the place. He had found that the ways of politicians were not his ways.
He returned to his professional work, and was busily employed in it until 1813, his engagements taking him into several counties, and measuring him with such antagonists as George Sullivan, Daniel Webster, and Jeremiah Mason. He could hardly be said to suffer by comparison with even the greatest of them; for in certain respects no one of them was his superior, to say the least. They were his friends and admirers, and it was chiefly by the persuasions of the latter two that he was induced again to take his place upon the bench.1 The political party to which Judge Smith belonged had made a radical change in the judiciary of the State in 1813, partly on account of the defects of the former system, and partly to rid the State of some incompetent judges. The voice of the leading men of the party was unanimous in urging Judge Smith again to take the chief justiceship. They felt that no appointment save that of a jurist of his high attainments and character could justify the wholesale revolution of the courts, and reconcile the indignant minority to the change. He yielded to their importunity, and somewhat reluctantly took the appoint- ment. He found it, as he feared, no bed of roses. One of the ousted judges had been reappointed, and even he made no secret of his opinion that the abolition of the old courts was unconstitu- tional ; while the other two ex-judges for a while went the circuit, and held court in rivalry with the new judiciary. The sheriffs of two counties adhered to the old judges, and it was perhaps only the fact that the latter were not strong men nor able lawyers that prevented a great minority of the people from actively taking sides with them.
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