the war. In the War of 1812, he was major general of one of the divisions called into service to defend Massachusetts from threatened invasion in 1814, and com manded the defenses at Boston while it was feared that that city would share the fate of Baltimore and Washington. General Whiton returned to South Lee after the war, and represented the town of Lee nine years in the general court of the commonwealth. He had three sons, all of whom became judges : Joseph Lucas, who settled in Lorraine County, Ohio, and was there the founder of a distinguished family; Daniel Garfield, who resided awhile in Ohio and then came to Wisconsin, where he died; and Edward Vernon, the subject of this sketch. The latter resided in his native town until about thirty years of age. He read law with William Porter, Esq., a law yer noted for the solidity of his learning and the soundness of his judgment. Young Vernon was of a studious turn, and was at one time librarian of the town library, which consisted of some three hundred volumes, mostly of history and travel. He read these volumes and laid in that stock of ac curate historical knowledge that made him afterwards the marvel of his associates in the legislature, constitutional convention and on the bench in Wisconsin. It is recorded in the annals of his native town that he, with a dozen other leading citizens, subscribed, each, twenty-five cents a week, in 1832, for the privilege of " seeing" a daily New York paper, "to be informed daily of the progress of the cholera." He left for the West in the year 1835, and went to Lorraine County, Ohio. There he remained until 1837, when he came to Wisconsin, and settled on a tract of prairie land near the present site of the beautiful and enterprising city of Janesville on Rock River, in one of the most fertile re gions of the Northwest. In his youth he had learned the trade of millwright and carpen ter, and it was an easy matter for him to build his own cabin. Afterwards, with his own
hands, he built the more pretentious house in which he lived and died. In September, 1838, an election was held in the Territory for members of the legisla tive assembly. Mr. Whiton was a Whig in politics, but party lines were not then drawn in the Territory on merely territorial matters, and he was elected one of the members of the House of Representatives from the coun ties of Rock and Walworth, then recently created in the south central part of the State. This council held three sessions, be ginning November, 1838. Mr. Whiton at once took prominence. A ready and courteous debater, with vast stores of political informa tion at his command, drawn from a memory of remarkable tenacity, he spoke upon every question which related to the formative law of the new Territory, with a wisdom and fore sight that stamped him one of the foremost men of the Territory. His solid learning amazed the members of the Bar, of whom there were several in the council, themselves men well trained in law and public affairs. He left his mark on every measure. A vast amount of labor is thrown upon the builders of a new state. The founding of institutions and systems calls for men who " look before and after." One of the labors of the session of 1839 was a revision of the laws, then in a chaotic state. Mr. Whiton served on a committee which collated, revised, borrowed, pieced out, and codified a quite complete body of statutes which served the Territory for ten years. To him was entrusted the care of the printing and publishing of the volume of these laws. The work was carefully done, and the book was for the ten years of territorial life the vade mecttm of the lawyers and judges of the Territory on all points of statutory law. The legal practice in a new Territory is usually a jumble of uncertainty. Lawyers coming from various jurisdictions each bring the methods to which they were ac customed. The revision of 1839 was espe cially valuable in settling the procedure.
