Hon. James Thompson and [Unk] Snowden
Husband Hon. James Thompson 1 2
Born: 6 Oct 1805 or 1806 - Middlesex Twp, Butler Co, PA 2 3 Christened: Died: 29 Jan 1872 4 Buried:
Father: William Thompson, Sr. ( -Bef 1850) 5 6 Mother: Mary Sanderson ( - )
Marriage:
Wife [Unk] Snowden 1
Born: Abt 1801 Christened: Died: Aft 1884 Buried:
Father: Rev. Nathaniel Randolph Snowden, D.D. (1770- ) 7 8 Mother: Sarah Gustine (Abt 1774- ) 9 10 11
Children
1 M J. Ross Thompson 12 13
Born: 6 Dec 1832 - Franklin, Venango Co, PA 12 Christened: Died: Buried:Spouse: Josephine Mayer ( -1877) 12 Marr: 1858 12
2 F Sarah Thompson 13
Born: Christened: Died: Buried:Spouse: Samuel Robb ( - ) 12
3 F Clara Thompson 13
Born: Christened: Died: Buried:
4 M Samuel Gustine Thompson 6 13
Born: Christened: Died: Buried:
5 M William E. Thompson 13
Born: Christened: Died: Buried:
General Notes: Husband - Hon. James Thompson
In May, 1839, a special district court was created for the purpose of disposing of the accu-mulated business in Venango, Crawford, Erie, and Mercer counties. James Thompson, of Franklin, was appointed to the district judgeship, and filled the position until May, 1845. The term originally was for five years, but it was extended one year by request of the bar. Judge Thompson was one of the most distinguished jurists of Pennsylvania, and a man of more than state reputation. In early life learned the printer's trade and later prepared himself for the legal profession, and was admitted to the bar at Franklin, February 23, 1829. In 1832 he was elected to the state legislature, and twice re-elected, and in 1834 was chosen speaker of the house. He subsequently served in the congress of the United States, and in 1857 was elected judge of the supreme court, in which capacity he served fifteen years, the last five of which he was chief justice of the state. Judge Thompson moved from Franklin to Erie in 1842, and shortly after his election to the supreme bench removed to Philadelphia. Judge Thompson was one of the prominent Democrats of the state. He was a man of great brain power, and as an orator ranked among the most eloquent men of the country. As a lawyer he was thorough, practical and brilliant, and in his official capacity both on the district and supreme bench his name will always be mentioned among the most learned and eminent jurists of the state. [HVC 1890, 169]
He became chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, but for some years prior to his elevation to that office was a resident of Kittanning. He was twenty-two when he went there in 1826 to work as a printer on the old Kittanning Gazette. Working three hours a day at his trade to sustain himself, he studied law during the remaining time, and was admitted to the bar at Kittanning in March, 1828. He practiced law there for a time, and finally moved to Franklin, from whence he was elected chief justice.
Whatever educational advantages he had preliminary to his study of the law he owed to his mother, who, according to tradition and his own testimony, was a woman of remarkable natural endowments, and to whose sole care he was left by the early death of his father. When a small boy he entered a printing office in Butler, Pennsylvania, then an inconsiderable village, to learn the printer's art. While so engaged an incident occurred which furnished the inspiration that contributed largely to making him what he became. Its relation came originally from his own lips, long after he had become eminent, to his friend the late Judge William A. Porter, to whom we are indebted for a repetition of it in one of the beautiful tributes pronounced in the Supreme Court room the morning after Thompson's death. Said Judge Porter: "I once said to him: 'Judge, how did you come to be a lawyer? How under such adverse circumstances, and obliged to labor with your hands, did you find your way to the bar?' He thereupon mentioned this incident: When a little boy, I should suppose nine or ten years of age, he was sent on an errand, and he happened to pass the county Court House on his way. A large crowd was assembled about the door, and in the windows, and great interest was manifest in a murder trial which was proceeding. He entered the court room, went through the crowd, passing between many of the persons standing there, and came within touching distance of the speaker; the speaker was Henry Baldwin, of whom some of us know much. We all know something of the power which he wielded in that western country for many years. There the little boy stood, looking sometimes at Mr. Baldwin, without knowing who he was, then at the criminal who was within a few feet of the speaker, and then at the judge. He seems to have been particularly struck with the play of the features of the jurors and their emotions under the speech, many of them several times giving way to tears. When the address was concluded he left the court room with the thought, 'I should like to be such a man, and stand in such a place.' He told me that in all his subsequent labors, by night and by day, this idea was continually in his mind."
Those who have written about Mr. Thompson are not agreed as to the name of his legal preceptor, the place of his study or the date of his admission to the bar. This is immaterial. He needed no preceptor and no place of study. The weight of authority is that Thomas Blair, Esq., of Kittanning, and John Gilmore, Esq., of Butler, were successively his pre-ceptors, and there is record evidence that he was practicing law in Venango County as early as February 13, 1826, when not more than twenty-one years of age, and that his practice rapidly increased thereafter.
In 1832 he was elected to the Legislature and again in 1834 and was speaker of the House of Representatives that year chosen; was a member of the 29th and 31st Congresses.
By Act of 23d March, 1839, a temporary court, limited to five years' duration, was established for the relief of the Courts of Common Pleas of Erie, Crawford and Venango Counties, afterwards extended to Mercer and Warren Counties, to be styled the District Court of the respective counties, and of this Court Mr. Thompson was the first and only judge.
In 1842 he removed from Franklin to Erie. In 1846 he was elected a member of Congress, and again in 1852. By the end of his last term in Congress, the controversy respecting the location of the western terminus of the Erie and Northeast Railroad at a considerable distance south of the Erie harbor, and outside of the city as then existing, and the location and construction of the Franklin Canal Company's railroad in such manner as to connect the Erie and Northeast with other roads in Ohio and form an unbroken line between Buffalo and Chicago, avoiding the harbor, and practically the city, after having been before the Supreme Court had reached an acute stage; and although the people of Erie county had, by reason of the "know nothing" and anti-slavery agitations, become out of harmony with his political views, they nevertheless, with a near approach to unanimity, elected him to the Legislature in the hope that his great ability would save them from what appeared to them to be an impending calamity. What his precise attitude under his responsibility as a legislator was, may not now be stated with certainty, but the ensuing legislation was in the nature of a compromise generally approved after the passions engendered by the strife had subsided, and it may be safely assumed that he contributed in no small degree to that result.
In 1857 he was elected a justice of the Supreme Court for the then term of fifteen years, during the last four of which he was Chief Justice.
At the conclusion of this last term of service he returned to the bar a comparatively poor man, not because he had squandered his professional income and the salaries of his offices in luxurious living or reckless speculation, but because twenty-seven of the mature years of his life had been spent in the public service upon salaries insufficient to support a family in any but a plain style of living, and during the last fifteen years of service he must have used up his savings from his professional income. His life was singularly free from the slightest indication that he had ever neglected a duty either public or private, that he might profit by a selfish employment of time or thought. His judicial opinions reported in 30 to 73 Pa. furnish the best evidence of his ability and devotion to duty.
Some of the leading members of the Philadelphia Bar voiced the sentiment of the entire Bar of Pennsylvania respecting this great man, by their utterances the morning after his death, printed in 72 Pa. State Report.
Judge Thompson died January 29, 1872, in the ripeness of years but in the full possession of all his great faculties and while arguing a cause before the Court of which he had been the Chief Justice less than a month before.
1 Editor, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Brown, Runk, & Co., Publishers, 1890), Pg 364.
2 —, Proceedings of the Celebration of the First Centennial of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Franklin, PA: The Venango County Bar Association, 1905), Pg 70.
3 Editor, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Brown, Runk, & Co., Publishers, 1890), Pg 169.
4 —, Proceedings of the Celebration of the First Centennial of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Franklin, PA: The Venango County Bar Association, 1905), Pg 73.
5 Editor, History of Butler County, Pennsylvania (R. C. Brown & Co. Publishers, 1895), Pg 923.
6 James A. McKee, 20th Century History of Butler and Butler County, Pa., and Representative Citizens (Chicago, IL: Richmond-Arnold Publishing Co., 1909), Pg 246.
7 Editor, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Brown, Runk, & Co., Publishers, 1890), Pg 191.
8 Leander James McCormick, McCormick Family Record and Biography (Chicago, IL: Publisher Unknown, 1896), Pg 239.
9 Conway P. Wing, D.D., History of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations (Philadelphia, PA: James D. Scott, 1879), Pg 182.
10 Editor, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Brown, Runk, & Co., Publishers, 1890), Pg 192.
11 William Henry Egle, M.D., M.A., Pennsylvania Genealogies; Chiefly Scotch-Irish and German (Harrisburg, PA: Harrisburg Publishing Co., 1896), Pg 586.
12 Editor, History of Erie County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Warner, Beers & Co., 1884), Pg 962.
13
Editor, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Brown, Runk, & Co., Publishers, 1890), Pg 170.
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