The Supreme Court of Michigan.
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August 4, 1797, and died at Detroit, June igan as " the great court." He will be com 22, 1867. He sat in both branches of the memorated later. Legislature in the early forties, and was in Josiah Turner was another Vermonter, the Constitutional Convention of 1850. He born at New Haven in that State, Sept. 1, is said to have passed the only sentence of 1811, and educated at St. Albans and at death ever pronounced in Michigan under Middlebury. He practised a little in his a State law; and this was not executed, for native State, but came to Michigan before the recipient escaped. At the time of his 1840, and held some minor offices as a Dem death he was president of the Soldiers' Mon ocrat, winding up with that of county judge. ument Association, He was among the and he had a son who earliest of the Repub before the war was a licans, and was made lieutenant in the reg probate judge, which ular army, under post he held till Gov Twiggs, and who ernor Bingham put started North from him in Green's place. Texas with such of his He continued by suc command as remained cessive elections to loyal. Judge Withhold the circuit judge erell was also president ship until 188 1, when of the State Historical he was made consul Society, and was him at Amherstburg, On self diligent in record tario, where he re ing his recollections of mained undisturbed local history, upon during the Cleveland which, as was sup administration, — his posed, no one was so son and grandson well informed as he. were stiff Democrats, He had been judge of — and he is there an early district crim still, under the same inal court which was Secretary who first legislated out of exist appointed him. He ence while he presided was Mayor of Owosso
in it; and as he was in 1864, and a mem always pretty hard ber of the futile Con upon old offenders, his Whig brother-in-law stitutional Convention of 1867 Tom Palmer used to explain the abolition of Edwin Lawrence — a Vermonter again his office by telling him it was because his — was born at Middlebury, Feb. 28, 1808. sentences were decimating the Democratic He came early to Michigan, and between party.1 As the judge himself was a Demo 1835 and 1840 published the "Michigan crat, and the Legislature also, — indeed, State Journal; " he was a Whig candidate Michigan was not at all a doubtful State, — for Congress in 1844 and 1846, and in 1848 the dominant party could take the joke, as he was a representative in the thirteenth Michigan Legislature. He was circuit judge the narrator says, without wincing. Judge Graves was to become one of the from 1857 to 1869, and died of apoplexy famous four who are remembered in Mich- June 26, 1885. In appointing him the gov 1 Senator Palmer's Sketch of the Witherells; 4 ernor maintained the equilibrium that would have been disturbed by the retirement of Pioneer Collections, p. 109.
