Mississippi Genealogy Trails

Mississippi Genealogy Trails
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Thomas G. Shackleford

Courts, Judges, and Lawyers of Mississippi, 1798-1935, by Dunbar Rowland, BS, LLB, LLD, Printed by Press of Hederman Bros., Jackson, Miss., 1935, pg 96

Thomas G. Shackleford, chief justice during reconstruction in the South was a native of Kentucky. He was educated at Transylvania University, and after graduation settled in Mississippi for the practice of law. He was appointed in 1868 to the supreme bench by General Adelbert Ames, the military commandant, and acted as chief justice during his term. After his retirement from the supreme bench, in 1870, he was circuit judge for several years.

William Lewis Sharkey

Governors - Sharkey County - High Court of Errors & Appeals - Warren County

Courts, Judges, and Lawyers of Mississippi, 1798-1935, by Dunbar Rowland, BS, LL.B, LL.D, Printed by Press of Hederman Bros., Jackson, Miss., 1935, pgs 87-92

William Lewis Sharkey, chief justice of Mississippi from 1832 to 1850, was born near the Mussell Shoals of the Holston River on the East Tennessee path from the Atlantic coast to the Natchez in the year 1797, at a period when the demand was being made upon the Spanish government for the surrender of Mississippi to the United States. He was of Irish ancestry, from which he inherited the characteristic wit and fortitude. His father, Patrick Sharkey, a native of Ireland immigrated to America with his brother Michael, who afterwards held the rank of captain under Washington. After the Revolution, Patrick Sharkey sought the Indian border along the Holston. He married the daughter of a German frontiersman, who bore him three sons: William Lewis, Jacob Rhodes, and James Elliott. William early developed great strength of character. Born amid the wild splendor of nature his life partook of the environments of his birth, commingling the quiet majesty of the river with the loftiness of the rugged mountains. In 1803 the Sharkey family migrated to the famed Natchez country and settled on a little farm, in what is at present Warren County, near the now extinct town of Warrenton, the first county seat. While yet a lad, William offered his services to the army, and participated in the battle of New Orleans. His parents, unable to stand the conditions of a new country, having died, quite early the boy was forced to provide for himself and orphaned brothers. By his own exertions he was enabled to attend college at Greenville, Tennessee, and later to read law at Lebanon. Having a decided taste for the profession of law he continued its study under Judge Edward Turner at Natchez. In 1822 he was admitted to the bar and opened an office at Warrenton in 1825. When the county seat was moved from that place to Vicksburg he located there and formed a partnership with John I. Guion. His education was not scholastic in the full meaning of the term, but possessing great native intellect and being an unwearying (sic) student his progress to fame was rapid, and he was soon recognized as the ablest lawyer at the Vicksburg bar.

His first public office was that of a member of the legislature, 1822-1829, when he was an influential member of the judiciary committee; he was afterwards elected circuit judge. In 1832 the second constitutional convention was held in Mississippi; the constitution adopted in 1817, in many respects, needed revision. One of the provisions of the new constitution was the establishment of a High Court of Errors and Appeals, the three judges to be elected by the people for a term of six years each, one of whom was to be chief justice. Judge Sharkey, though strongly opposed to an elective judiciary, claiming that the supreme judgeship should be above the whims and caprices of the people, was chosen on the three members of the High Court of Errors and Appeals. In that position he sternly opposed the poplar policy of repudiation of the Union Bank bonds. At the convention of the anti-repudiation party at Jackson, June, 1843, he would have been nominated for governor had it not been for an appeal from S. S. Prentiss, who declared that Judge Sharkey could not be spared from the bench at such time. He was associated during his first term on the supreme bench with Judge D. W. Wright and Cotesworth Pinckney Smith. These three being the first judges elected to this position by the sovereign vote of the people. Judge Sharkey’s associates chose him for chief justice, which high office he filled for four successful terms.

In 1849 a discussion of slavery agitated the minds of the people. Should slavery be allowed in the newly acquired territory on the Pacific, was the question of the hour. At a convention held in Jackson, Miss., in October, 1849, a call was issued for a convention of the Southern States to meet at Nashville, Tenn., in June of the following year. Judge Sharkey was chosen president of this convention. The distinguished jurist believed that he saw in the situation a question of equity between the states of the Union and stood by his convictions with a fine courage and commendable zeal. Referring to his attitude upon this occasion Foote says: “He evinced a mingled courage and wisdom that tended much to calm the excitement of that body and commanded the respect of all true lovers of their country.”

The political career of Judge Sharkey is a subject of great interest, and one which has in the past elicited much comment, favorable and adverse. Some have luded (sic) him highly as jurist and excoriated him as a politician. In political faith he was an old Line Whig, strictly adhering to its doctrine. As an accepted adherent of this party he was proferred (sic) a position in the cabinet of President Taylor in 1848, but declined the honor, preferring to remain on the supreme bench of Mississippi. He was a close personal friend of Henry Clay and warm advocated the political principles of the Great Pacificator. He was one of the distinguished coterie of Whig in Mississippi, William Yerger, and Alexander K. McClung were prominent leaders.

October 1, 1850, Judge Sharkey resigned from his office as chief justice and returned to the practice of law, locating for that purpose at Jackson. It has been said that he was moved to this step by pecuniary embarrassment growing out of the insufficient salaries at that time allowed the judiciary of the State. After retiring from the bench, he built a home on the plot of ground, now known as Poindexter Park, in the western portion of Jackson; and there in the society of his amiable wife, and cultured and brilliant adopted daughter, Fannie (later wife of Col. Charles E. Hooker), he spent the leisure and restful moments of his long and eventful career. He was not, however, permitted to remain in the seclusion of home enjoyments more than a few brief days at a time, but constantly called to the public service. It was about this time that he was invited by President Fillmore to serve as consul to Havana and adjust complications which had grown out of filibustering expeditions; but, finding that the emoluments of the position had been exaggerated he resigned and resumed his practice. “In the critical year of 1850, “says Foote, “he visited Washington City and was able to make many valuable suggestions to individual congressmen that tended tp pacify the rising storm of sectional strife.” He was at this time tendered by President Fillmore the office of secretary of war which he promptly declined, alleging his inexperience in such a public function, and leaving the capital hurriedly to avoid solicitation. In 1858 he exerted his powerful influence to prevent the adoption by the State of the policy of the Vicksburg Convention in favor of the re-opening of the African slave trade. He had long before construed the constitution of 1832 as absolutely prohibiting the importation of negro slaves into Mississippi as merchandise.

Thus, though not aggressive in an obnoxious sense of the term, we find him always a fearless thinker, who refused to enslave himself to public opinion. He was a man of decided personality and so attracted men and inspired them with confidence, that, in hours of necessity when a string man was wanted they chose him without thought of his private opinion or political bias. In personal appearance Judge Sharkey was a man of commanding and distinguished presence, with great personal dignity and sincerity of manner, and with the look of conscious power upon him. His career as a judge was marked by great common sense, sound judgment and a profound sense of justice. Though now what we call learned in the science of the law, his knowledge of it was extensive; his mental equipment was intensely legal, and he was quick to grasp the facts and apply the law. On the bench he was patient, kind, and attentive, and in the discharge

In 1854, under an act of the legislature, William L. Sharkey, William L. Harris, The work was completed and presented to the legislature in 1856; was adopted by that and a succeeding session and printed in 1857. In the matter of secession Judge Sharkey was a Unionist, though his loyalty and devotion to his State and section were never questioned. When Mississippi had returned to the Union it was under the counsel and leadership of the venerable and trusted personage that the people immediately reorganized their former government which was later summarily dethroned by military rule ordered by the Republican Party.

In 1865 Governor Clark appointed William L. Sharkey and William Yerger commissioners of the State to go to Washington to propose a method of reconstruction. After they had accepted the North Carolina plan, Judge Sharkey was appointed by President Johnson Provisional Governor of the State. Johnson and Sharkey were both the State of Tennessee, a circumstance which worked greatly in the latter’s favor. Governor Sharkey’s commission, however, was complicated and his position perplexing. His office was partly civic and partly military. General Osterhaus, commander of the Department of Mississippi was to cooperate with him in restoring and maintaining order in the State. Governor Sharkey was to receive a salary of $3,000 to be paid by the United States government, which he refused, saying that he would look to his people for compensation for his services. He came in conflict with the military authorities the first week of his incumbency, and the Jackson papers wished to know who was the governor, Sharkey, Slocum, or Osterhaus. The people of the State stood solidly with Governor Sharkey, and aided him in the performance of his duties to the extent of their ability. He issued a call for a constitutional convention to make the constitution of Mississippi accord with the existing constitution of the United States as the president had outlined. The convention was held, and was harmonious and orderly. Governor Sharkey and James L. Alcorn were chosen United States senators; but congress repudiated President Johnson’s plan of reconstruction and the senators-elect from Mississippi, along with those of the other Southern States, were refused seats in the Senate. Governor Sharkey accepted the defeat of his patriotic efforts in behalf of a restored Union with dignity, and resumed his practice at Jackson. He died in Washington City March 30, 1873. His remains were brought to Jackson and allowed to rest in state in the rotunda of the old capitol for the last honors of a sorrowing people. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery of Jackson and there was present at his funeral many distinguished men from all parts of the State. The resolutions of the supreme court, adopted May 19, 1873, referred to his life as one “made honorable and distinguished by great public service, which conferred enduring public benefit,” and recalled his integrity, firmness and independence; the mingled dignity and courtesy of his bearing on the bench; the simplicity, decorum and purity of his private life; his steadfast devotion to constitutional liberty and his pure and elevated patriotism.

The memorial in Morris’s State Cases classes Sharkey among the great lawyers who have been authors of the best precedents and continues, “Their acts are the precedents themselves, which grows brighter with receding years; and to them the advocate of the oppressed shall turn in ages to come and find encouragement and strength in the struggle for the right. It is upon such foundation that must forever rest the fame of a Hardwicke and a Mansfield. And upon it, with still more commanding consequence to those respectively concerned, must rest the claims of such men as John Marshall and William L. Sharkey.”

This biography below is from "The Bench and Bar of Mississippi" by James Daniel Lynch, ©1881 -- Submitted by Janice Rice:

WILLIAM L. SHARKEY
William Lewis Sharkey was born near a place called at that time Mussel Shoals, on the River Holston, in the State of Tennessee, during the year 1797. His maternal grandfather, Robert Rhodes, was a native of Germany, from near the city of Cologne, on the Rhine. His father, Patrick Sharkey, was a native of Ireland, and was reared in the vicinity of Dublin. He came to America when a young man, in company with his elder brother Michael, who was afterwards the captain of a Virginia Company in the Continental army during the War of the Revolution ; at the termination of which, Patrick found his way to the new and beautiful country between the Cumberland and the Alleghauies. Here he married and settled, and here resided until his family consisted of a wife and three sons William Lewis, Jacob Rhodes, and James Elliot.

In the year 1803, Patrick Sharkey removed his family to the Mississippi Territory a country which at that period offered but the roughest features of life, especially to those who were destitute of means sufficient to command the few costly comforts and conveniences that it was possible to obtain in a new and thinly settled community. The family fixed their abode on a small farm on the Big Black River, in Warren County, near the village of Warrenton, then the county seat. Here, amid the heterogeneous population of a country whose richness of soil was attracting all classes of people from the States, William Lewis Sharkey grew to that manhood which was destined to shed such lustre upon his State and upon his age.

Compelled by the straitened circumstances of his parents to perform the labors incident to a farm, he had but little opportunity to avail himself of even the limited educational advantages afforded by the primitive schools of the Territory; but, as if with an intuitive consciousness of a grand destiny, the boy labored on, devoting his leisure hours to the acquirement of those rudiments which were to kindle the fires of genius and emblazon the laws of his country.

Before the expiration of his fifteenth year he entered the army of General Jackson as a substitute for his uncle, was present at the battle of New Orleans, and witnessed the overthrow of the British on the plains of Chalmette, on the memorable 8th of January, 1815. Both of la's parents having died, he found on his return the horrors of orphanage superadded to the other hardships under which he labored, and his two younger brothers depending upon his care. Yet, with a judgment and discretion rare in one of his years, he determined to remain upon the farm until he could earn and garner sufficient means to enable him to gratify that desire for knowledge which, though thwarted by untoward circumstances, had always burned in his bosom. This purpose he achieved in a few years, and with determination in his heart, ambition in his soul, and the proceeds of the sweat of his own brow in his hands, he repaired to Greenville, Tennessee, and at a school of some note in that place acquired, by close application, a respectable knowledge of the English branches in a comparatively brief period. He then visited Lebanon, Tennessee, and there read law a short time, under the instruction of the distinguished Dr. Hall.

On his return to Mississippi he entered the office of Messrs. Turner & Metcalf, an eminent law firm in the city of Natchez. Having now for the first time the practical advantages suitable to his inclination and commensurate with his ambition, he applied himself to the study of law with the utmost interest and assiduity, and with all the vigor of his nature. The result was speedy and proportionate with his efforts, and in 1822 he was admitted to practice at the bar of the Supreme Court, and established his office at Warrenton.

Here his ability, integrity, and application, soon fruited into a respectable and growing practice, but on the removal of the county seat of Warren County to Vicksburg, in 1825, he moved his office to that place, and formed a copartnership with the distinguished John I. Guion. Here, under more favorable auspices, he rose rapidly in professional reputation, and soon attained a lucrative practice. '

In 1827 Mr. Sharkey was chosen the representative of Warren County in the Legislature, in which he was assigned to the Judiciary Committee, with Judge Pray and General Quitman. In this capacity a more ample opportunity was afforded him for the exhibition of those eminent features of his mind which afterwards gilded his career upon the bench.

On the organization of the High Court of Errors and Appeals, under the Constitution of 1832, he was elected by the people as one of the three judges which composed that tribunal, and was appointed Chief Justice, which position he held during eighteen years.

Prior to this he had been elected the circuit judge of his district, but held that office only a few months before he was promoted to the high bench.

About this time, Judge Sharkey married Mrs. Wren, widow of Belfield Wren, an estimable lady, whose qualities of mind and heart rendered her an eminently fit companion for the great jurist, and who is yet living to cherish the memory of those amiable qualities which so highly adorned his private character.

During his long continuance upon the bench, Judge Sharkey established many eminent precedents, and settled many questions of law that had hitherto been held in conflict both in our own courts and those of other States. He also made many novel applications of the common law to render it conformable to our polity and suitable to our condition and the state of our society. These will be found sprinkled through many volumes of the Mississippi State Reports.

In 1850 Chief Justice Sharkey resigned, and resumed the practice of law in Jackson, where he then resided. It is understood that this action was induced by pecuniary embarrassment, arising from obligations which he had incurred as surety for his friends, and which, notwithstanding the respectable salary of his office, So rapidly diminished his means that he was compelled to return to the bar, which offered him much greater emolument.

Not long after his retirement from the bench he was appointed by Mr. Fillmore, then President, as United States consul at Havana. This he declined for like reasons the state of his private affairs. As a politician Judge Sharkey had few superiors in,wisdom and purity, and it is a noteworthy fact that during the whole time of his public services he was a stanch Whig, while his constituency was as intensely Democratic. He was bitterly opposed to the scheme of repudiation, which he considered as both ruinous and dishonorable, and at the end of his third judicial term, in 1847, he was opposed by a candidate who was in favor of that policy, and with whom a large majority of the people were in accord. Yet so unbounded was his official popularity, and so great was the popular appreciation of his services, he was triumphantly re-elected to the bench.

Judge Sharkey was a member of the celebrated Nashville Convention, held in 1850, and was chosen the president of that body, and in this capacity his great candor, firmness, and impartiality, together with his cheerful complacency and urbanity of manners, gained for him universal respect and admiration. On the adjournment of the convention he proceeded to Washington where he was much consulted in regard to measures proper for allaying the excited sectional feelings of that period.

Full of years and of honors, he carried with him to the grave the love, the admiration, and the regrets, of his fellow-citizens. His name is inscribed in letters of gold upon the jurisprudence of Mississippi, and there it will remain so long as the voice of justice shall be heard in the land, and will be handed down from age to age, through the vastness of incomprehensible time, as a magistrate distinguished and venerated for his talents and integrity, a citizen honored for his splendid public services, a man beloved for his untarnishable virtues.

Horatio F. Simrall

Courts, Judges, and Lawyers of Mississippi, 1798-1935, By Dunbar Rowland, B.S., LL.B., LL.D., Press of Hederman Press, Jackson, Mississippi, 1935, pgs 98-99

Horatio F. Simrall was born near Shelbyville, Kentucky, February 6, 1818. He was of Scot and Irish descent, and his father was an officer in the War of 1812. He attended the Hanover (Ind.) college; then taught school for a while, after which he took a law course at Transylvania University, and was admitted to the bar. He came to Mississippi in the fall of 1838; stopped at Natchez, but located at Woodville in 1939, and soon became prominent as a lawyer. He was in the legislature of 1846-48; made a strong effort to secure free schools for the State, and secured a system of free schools for Wilkinson county. In 1857 he became a professor of law in the University of Louisville, but returned to Wilkinson county in 1861. Meanwhile a Confederate State government had been set up in Kentucky and he was elected lieutenant-governor. He returned to that State, but it was soon in the possession of the Federals, and he came back to Mississippi. After the war he was a member of the legislature of 1865-66 and as chairman of the committee on Federal relations recommended rejection of the Fourteenth amendment. In 1867 he removed to Vicksburg. He was prominent in defending people who were tried before the military courts. He went to Washington with a committee of Democrats and appealed to President Grant against the proscriptive features of the Constitution of 1868; was appointed supreme judge in 1870; held this place for nine years, becoming chief justice in 1876. He retired to private life in 1879 and was offered a professorship of law in the University of Mississippi in 1881, but declined.

In 1890 he was unanimously elected a member of the Constitutional Convention of Mississippi, acting as chairman of the judiciary committee. He was the author of the report of that committee as to the Constitutional right of the Convention to adjust the right of suffrage, notwithstanding the condition in the act of readmission of the State should not alter or change the franchise article in the Constitution of 1869, abridging or denying suffrage to any person by that Constitution entitled to it. The argument of the report was that the State was sovereign over the question and conditions of suffrage upon one State not common to all. He also reported the judiciary system which was afterward adopted by that Convention. Judge Simrall married Lydia Ann Newell, of Wilkinson county, February 22, 1842, and this union was blest with five children. The family were members of the Episcopal church of Vicksburg, and for years Judge Simrall was a member of the vestry. Politically he was a Republican in national matters, but in State affairs voted with the Democratic party of the State. He was venerable in appearance, his hair being snow white; but the brilliancy of his intellect in old age was undimmed, and his memory as active as ever. Judge Simrall died August 15, 1901.