Edwin Thomas Merrick (1809–1897) was the third Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from July 1855 to April 3, 1865.

Biography

Edwin T. Merrick was born in Wilbraham, Massachusetts on July 9, 1809.[1][2] He moved to Ohio, where he was admitted to the Bar of Ohio in 1833, and then in 1838 moved to Clinton, Louisiana.[3][4] There, he was appointed as a district judge, and upon the resignation of Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Slidell in 1855, Merrick was elected to that office.[3] Merrick is reported as having been "a very industrious, able, and efficient judge".[3]

Though in politics he was "an earnest Whig and Union man", once the American Civil War had begun, he "embraced with great zeal the Southern cause".[3] When New Orleans was occupied by Federal troops, he went with the Confederate State Government to Shreveport, where the Supreme Court met and discharged its duties. After the war he returned to the private practice of law in New Orleans, and as of the 1890s was reported as still being an "active, persevering, and laborious practitioner at the bar".[3]

At the age of 37, he married 15-year-old Caroline Elizabeth Merrick, who went on to become noted as an American writer and temperance worker. They had two sons and two daughters.[5]

He died in New Orleans on January 12, 1897.[1][2][4]

References

  1. 1 2 Johnson, Rossiter; Brown, John Howard, eds. (1904). The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans. Vol. VII. Boston: The Biographical Society. Retrieved May 17, 2022 – via Internet Archive.
  2. 1 2 "Edwin T. Merrick, Ex-Chief Justice". The Daily Picayune. January 13, 1897. p. 8. Retrieved May 17, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Lamar C. Quintero, "The Supreme Court of Louisiana", in Horace A. Fuller, ed., The Green Bag, Vol. 3 (1891), p. 118.
  4. 1 2 Celebration of the Centenary of the Supreme Court of Louisiana (March 1, 1913), in John Wymond, Henry Plauché Dart, eds., The Louisiana Historical Quarterly (1922), p. 119.
  5. ↑ Willard, Frances Elizabeth, 1839-1898; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice, 1820-1905 (1893). A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. Buffalo, N.Y., Moulton. pp. 499–500. Retrieved August 8, 2017.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.


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