Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/45

 STEPHEN JOHNSON FIELD

, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was born at Haddam, Conn., November 4. 1816; removed with his family in 1819 to Stockbridge. Mass., where he spent ten years of his boyhood; in 1828 accompanied his sister to Asia Minor, her husband, Rev. Josiah Brewer, having undertaken an educational mission to the Greeks; remained two and a half years, for the most part in Smyrna and Athens, and learned to speak and write the modern Greek language; graduated from Williams College in 1837; began the study of law in 1838, in the office of David Dudley Field, and in 1841 became his partner and so remained for seven years; in 1848 traveled extensively in Europe; returning from Europe, started for California in November, 1849, arriving there December 28, 1849; located in Marysville in January, 1850, and was elected first alcalde of that city; under Mexican law the alcalde was an officer of limited jurisdiction, but in the anomalous condition of affairs he was called upon to administer justice, punish crime, and to enforce necessary police regulations until relieved by officers under the new constitution; was elected to the second legislature, and was a member of the judiciary committee and framed the laws creating the judicial system of that State; from 1851 to 1857 he practiced his profession, and was then elected a judge of the supreme court for six years, from January 1, 1858; a vacancy occurring on the bench, he was appointed judge to fill it on the 13th of October, 1857; became chief justice in 1859; in 1863 was appointed by President Lincoln to his present position; in 1866 Williams College conferred upon him the degree of LL. D.