Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/59

 RUFUS W. PECKHAM

, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was born in the city of Albany and State of New York, November 8, 1838; his father was a native of Albany County, and had been district attorney of the county, justice of the supreme court of the State, and, at the time of his death in the shipwreck of the Ville de Havre, November 22, 1878, was one of the judges of the court of appeals of New York State. The son was educated at the Albany Academy and at one of the schools in Philadelphia; he studied law in the office of his father, who was then in partnership with Lyman Tremain, attorney-general of the State, practicing law under the firm name of Peckham & Tremain, in the city of Albany; he was admitted to the bar of the State in December, 1859 his father was in that year elected to the bench of the supreme court, and the son formed a partnership with the former partner of his father, under the firm name of Tremain & Peckham, which continued until the death of Mr. Tremain in December, 1878. In 1866 Mr. Peckham was married to a daughter of D. H. Arnold, an old New York merchant and at that time president of the Mercantile Bank in New York City. In 1868 he was elected district attorney of Albany County; was subsequently corporation counsel of Albany City, and in 1883 was elected a justice of the supreme court of the State. While serving as such he was elected, in 1886, an associate judge of the court of appeals of New York State, and while occupying a seat on that bench he was, in December, 1895, appointed by President Cleveland an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.