Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/96

 The Supreme Court of Vermont.

75

He was Chief Judge of the Windsor It is a singular coincidence that the able County court. In 1801 Woodbridge, Hall lawyer and accomplished scholar, Judge and Noah Smith, Federalists composing the Jacob, who brought a slave into the State Supreme Court, were retired, and Israel with his title in writing, should have been Smith, Royall Tyler and Jacob elected. succeeded by the unlettered Republican lay Mr. Smith declining, Jonathan Robinson man, Theophilus Harrington, whose opinion was chosen Chief. The latter was a Repub upon the title to slaves will soon be noted. lican, Tyler and Jacob Federalists.

In Although his practice was large and his 1803, the Legislature still Republican, some income great, his hospitable manner of living changes were made and his obligations to strengthen the in behalf of others party by legislative made serious inroads appointments, and as upon his estate, and he died comparative Tyler's Federalism was of a mild char ly poor, illustrating acter, but that of Ja the adage that " A cob pronounced, and good lawyer works as his opponents hard, lives well and claimed, of a malig dies poor." His tombstone records nant and virulent type, the latter was that he was "One of retired. He was then the fathers of the in his forty-seventh State of Vermont, year and afterward Hon. Stephen Jacob, held no official posi an eminent counselor, an able judge, a dis tion. tinguished citizen, a His family stood benevolent neighbor high in the social and an honest man." scale. His hospitality was unbounded, his benevolence prover Theophilus bial and his enter Harrington, a naasa aikens. tive of Rhode Island, tainments extensive. Among his domestics came to Clarendon in he kept many servants, some of whom were 1785, taking a wife upon the way. Among colored, purchased and brought into the State his ancestors were many remarkable men : where they were free to go and come. He Theophilus Whaley was one of the judges purchased one Dinah, a negro woman slave who beheaded King Charles I. A son of about thirty years of age, on the twenty- his married a Harrington, from whom sixth day of July, 1783, for forty pounds. Theophilus descended; among his ancestors He was afterwards sued by the town of were Thomas Harris, one of the Pilgrims Windsor for her support. The case was of 1620, Dr. John Clarke, Governor of tried when he was upon the Bench, and Rhode Island, and Dr. Michael Dwinelle, defended by Charles Marsh, the then re who fled from Paris upon the revocation cognized leader of the Vermont Bar, and of the Edict of Nantes, and settled in Topsis reported in second Tyler, 192, and is field, Mass., his mother being a great-grand well worth reading. daughter of the latter.