 Samuel
Blatchford was born in New York City on March 9, 1820. His father
Richard was a lawyer. His mother was Julia Mumford. Blatchford read law
in the offices of William Seward, a governor of New York and later
Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War. In 1842, he married Caroline
Appleton. Blatchford practiced law with his father in New York, and with
Seward in Auburn, New York. He was appointed a federal district court
judge in 1867, and was named to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in
1878. In 1882, Blatchford was nominated to the Supreme Court by
President Chester Arthur, and he was quickly confirmed by the Senate.
Blatchford remained on the Court for eleven years. He was considered a
centrist on a Court that, during the Gilded Age, was becoming more
divided.
Further reading: Aviam Soifer, Samuel
Blatchford, in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United
States (1992). |
