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Anderson, Joseph Inslee (05 November 1757–17 April 1837), jurist, U.S. senator, and Treasury official, was born near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of William Anderson and Elizabeth Inslee (occupations unknown). When not yet twenty, Anderson enlisted in the Continental army as a private and rose to the rank of major by the war’s end. He was regimental paymaster during much of the war, and his experience in that capacity served him well in positions he held later. He was with ...

Bradley, Stephen Row (20 February 1754–09 December 1830), jurist and senator, was born in Wallingford (now Cheshire), Connecticut, the son of Moses Bradley and Mary Row. Moses Bradley’s occupation is not known, but he may have been a silversmith like his father. He had the means, at any rate, to send his son Stephen to Yale College for an education. After receiving his baccalaureate degree in July 1775, Stephen Bradley became captain of the Cheshire Volunteers, a militia unit that joined the Continental army in January 1776. Enlistment periods were brief, typically for ninety days, and Bradley served intermittently from 1775 through 1779. He was an aide-de-camp to General ...

Burnet, Jacob (22 February 1770–10 May 1853), Ohio lawmaker and U.S. senator, was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of William Burnet, a doctor and farmer, and Mary Camp. His father was the son of Scottish Presbyterian immigrants and served in the Continental Congress and as surgeon general in the Continental army. Jacob Burnet graduated from Nassau Hall in September 1791, studied law, and gained admittance to the New Jersey bar in spring 1796. He promptly moved to Cincinnati in the Northwest Territory, where he married Rebecca Wallace, daughter of a former pastor of the Presbyterian church, in 1800. They had seven children....

Butler, Andrew Pickens (18 November 1796–25 May 1857), judge and senator, was born in Edgefield, South Carolina, the son of William Butler, a soldier and politician, and Behethland Foote Moore. Butler attended the well-known Dr. Moses Waddel’s Academy at Willington in neighboring Abbeville County, which also produced Senators ...

Chipman, Nathaniel (15 November 1752–15 February 1843), jurist, U.S. senator, and conservative political leader, was born in Salisbury, Connecticut, the son of Samuel Chipman, a blacksmith and farmer, and Hannah Austin. Chipman entered Yale University in 1773. He joined the Continental army as an ensign during his senior year, in spring 1777, receiving his degree in absentia. Chipman was promoted to lieutenant during the winter at Valley Forge and was present at the battle of Monmouth in June 1778. In October Chipman resigned his commission to study law, complaining that an officer’s salary was insufficient to “support the character of a gentleman” (Chipman, p. 32). One of the first graduates of ...

Christiancy, Isaac Peckham (12 March 1812–08 September 1890), lawyer, judge, and senator, was born in Johnstown, Fulton County, New York, the son of Thomas Christiancy, a blacksmith, edge tool maker, and farmer, and Zilpha Peckham. When Isaac was twelve, his father was injured, leaving Isaac responsible for helping to support his family by tending their small farm. At age eighteen Christiancy began to teach school while attending academies at Johnstown, Kingsborough, and Ovid, New York. In 1834 he undertook legal studies with the help of John Maynard. Via an Erie Canal packet boat and a Great Lakes steamer, he journeyed to Monroe County, Michigan, in May 1836. There he soon entered the law office of ...

Clark, Bennett Champ (08 January 1890–13 July 1954), senator and federal judge, was born Joel Bennett Clark in Bowling Green, Missouri, the son of James Beauchamp “Champ” Clark, a congressman, and Genevieve Bennett. As the son of a long-time Democratic congressman from Missouri and Speaker of the House of Representatives, young Clark was reared largely in the political environment of Washington, D.C. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Missouri in 1913 and received a law degree from George Washington University in 1914. From 1913 to 1917 he served as parliamentarian in the House of Representatives and even wrote a manual on parliamentary procedures....

Clark, Daniel (24 October 1809–02 January 1891), politician and jurist, was born in Stratham, New Hampshire, the son of Benjamin Clark, a farmer and blacksmith, and Elizabeth Wiggin. He began his education at the district school near his farm home, but preferring books to farm labor, Daniel went to Hampton Academy intermittently, which qualified him to enter Dartmouth College. Because his family had limited means, Clark had to pay for his advanced education by teaching during vacations from his own studies. After graduating from college in 1834 with the highest honors of his class, he studied law in Exeter, New Hampshire, first with ...

Daniel, John Warwick (05 September 1842–29 June 1910), Confederate soldier, legal scholar, and U.S. senator, was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of William Daniel, Jr., a lawyer and judge, and Sarah Ann Warwick. He attended private schools in the Lynchburg area; after attending Lynchburg College from 1855 to 1859, he enrolled in a classical school administered by Dr. Gessner Harrison. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, Daniel interrupted his education to enlist in the cavalry. He rose to major and fought in several battles, including Gettysburg. At the battle of the Wilderness in 1864 he received a wound that put him on crutches for the remainder of his life and earned him the sobriquet of the “Lame Lion of Lynchburg.”...

Drake, Charles Daniel (11 April 1811–01 April 1892), U.S. senator and jurist, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Daniel Drake, a physician, and Harriet Sisson. After attending several academies in Cincinnati and Kentucky, he entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1827 but resigned three years later because of a sudden decision to study law, which he undertook with his uncle ...

Ellis, Powhatan (17 January 1790–18 March 1863), jurist, politician, and foreign minister, was born at Red Hill plantation in Amherst County, Virginia, the son of Josiah Ellis and Jane Shelton. Powhatan’s lineage can be traced backed to 17th-century Virginia; despite his assertions to the contrary, however, there is no evidence that he was related to the Indian leader for whom he was named....

Ferguson, Homer (25 February 1889–17 December 1982), U.S. senator, ambassador, and judge, was born in Harrison City, Pennsylvania, the son of Samuel Ferguson, a coal mine supervisor, and Margarete Bush. At the age of fifteen Ferguson took his first job, working in the local coal mines. He attended the University of Pittsburgh from 1910 to 1911 and in 1913 received a law degree from the University of Michigan. In 1913 Ferguson married Myrtle Jones, was admitted to the bar, and began practicing law in Detroit, Michigan. He had one child. He continued in private practice until 1929, teaching night school to supplement his income....

George, Walter (29 January 1878–04 August 1957), judge and U.S. Senator from Georgia, was born Walter Franklin George on a farm near Preston, Georgia, the son of sharecroppers Robert Theodoric George and Sarah Stapleton George. George's formative years in hardscrabble South Georgia imbued him with an understanding of the struggles of the common man. His father subscribed to the ...

Goldthwaite, George (10 December 1809–18 March 1879), Alabama jurist and U.S. senator, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Thomas Goldthwaite and Anne Wilson. Anne, apparently deserted by Thomas, eked out support for her family by operating a boarding house. George attended the Boston Latin School and in 1824 received an appointment to the military academy at West Point. In his junior year he was expelled in connection with a hazing incident. He then moved to Alabama, read law in Montgomery under his brother Henry B. Goldthwaite, subsequently a justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and was admitted to the bar in 1828. He formed a law partnership with his brother-in-law ...

Harper, William (17 January 1790–10 October 1847), jurist and U.S. senator, was born on the island of Antigua, the son of the Reverend John Harper, a Methodist missionary, and Henrietta Hawes. The elder Harper moved his ministry to Boston in 1794, then to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1799, and finally to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1802. Following the death of their mother in 1795, William and his younger brother, John Wesley, were sent to school in Baltimore for three years. After rejoining their father in South Carolina, the boys attended Mount Bethel Academy and, later, the Jefferson Monticello Seminary under the Reverend James Rogers’s strict eye. When South Carolina College opened its doors in 1805, both young Harpers joined the entering student body. After graduating with distinction in 1808, William took charge of Cambridge Academy in the Edgefield District and, while there, studied medicine for a time before reading law under Abram Dozier. Admitted to the Columbia bar, he embarked on a practice that eventually fixed him among the most prominent South Carolinians of the time....

Hemphill, John (18 December 1803–04 January 1862), jurist and U.S. senator, was born in Chester District, South Carolina, the son of the Reverend John Hemphill and Jane Lind, both of Scotch-Irish descent and of the Presbyterian faith. Raised primarily by his father after his mother’s death, and by his stepmother Mary Nixon after 1811, young John attended local schools before enrolling at Jefferson College (now Washington and Jefferson College) in Pennsylvania. In 1825 he graduated second in his class and returned to South Carolina, where he taught in various classical academies. After a few years he abandoned teaching to take up the study of law and in 1828 entered the office of D. J. McCord, a prominent attorney in Columbia. A year later the two of them established their own practice in Sumterville....

Johnston, Josiah Stoddard (24 November 1784–19 May 1833), judge, congressman, and U.S. senator, was born in Salisbury, Connecticut, the son of John Johnston, a physician, and Mary Stoddard. The family moved west in 1788 and settled on the Kentucky frontier in Mason County. In 1796 Johnston’s father returned to Connecticut to enroll his son in school in New Haven. After completing preparatory studies, Johnston entered Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Upon graduation in 1802, Johnston read the law under the tutelage of the famous ...

Keating, Kenneth Barnard (18 May 1900–05 May 1975), congressman, senator, ambassador, and judge, was born in Lima, New York, the son of Thomas Mosgrove Keating, a local businessman, and Louise Barnard, a schoolteacher. Much of Keating’s early education was at Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York. He then attended the University of Rochester (N.Y.), from which he graduated in 1919, and Harvard Law School, which granted him an LL.B. in 1923. From that date until he entered the U.S. Congress in 1947 Keating was active in the law firm of Harris, Beach, Wilcox and Dale, earning a reputation as an adroit trial lawyer. In 1928 Keating married Louise Depuy; they had one daughter....

Kenyon, William Squire (10 June 1869–09 September 1933), senator and jurist, was born in Elyria, Ohio, the son of Fergus Lafayette Kenyon, a Congregational minister, and Harriet Anna Squire. In 1878 the family moved to Iowa City, Iowa. Although his father hoped he would enter the ministry, William took an early interest in the law. Since his family’s financial resources were limited, he worked his way through two years at Iowa (later Grinnell) College before transferring to the University of Iowa, where he completed the law course in 1890. The next year he passed the Iowa bar exam, moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa, and set up practice. In 1893 he married Mary J. Duncombe, daughter of a prominent and well-regarded lawyer in the area. They had no children....