Dropped stitches in Tennessee historyAllison, John
History
Dropped stitches in Tennessee history
Allison, John
Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845 -- Homes and haunts -- Tennessee; Tennessee -- History
On the old record books of the minutes of the proceedings of the Court
of Pleas and Quarter Sessions kept at Jonesboro will be found the
following entry: “State of North Carolina Washington County, Monday the
Twelfth day of May Anno Domini One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty
Eight. Andrew Jackson Esq. came into Court and Produced a license as
an Attorney With A Certificate sufficiently Attested of his Taking
the Oaths Necessary to said office and Was admitted to Practiss as
an Attorney in this County Court.” The entry immediately preceding
recites that “Archibald Roane, David Allison, and Joseph Hamilton
Esquires Produced sufficient Licenses to Practiss as Attorneys and were
admitted,” etc.; and the entry immediately following recites that “John
McNairey Produced a license as an Attorney,” etc., and “was admitted to
Practiss as an attorney,” etc.
Thus this old record shows the admission to the bar, on the same
day, in the one-story log court-house, twenty-four feet square, at
Jonesboro, of five young men.
Jackson’s promotion from one office to another, until he reached the
highest and most exalted office on earth, the Presidency of the United
States, is known to all; but that “Twelfth day of May Anno Domini One
Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Eight” must have been a lucky day,
or there must have been good material in those young men--for Andrew
Jackson was not the only one of them who attained eminence. Jackson
was first United States attorney for the “District of Mero,” but Roane
held the same office at the same time in the Hamilton District, while
McNairy presided over both of them as federal judge for “the territory
of the United States of America south of the river Ohio.” Jackson
met both McNairy and Roane as fellow delegates in the constitutional
convention for Tennessee, in 1796. Jackson was afterward a judge of
the Superior Court of Law and Equity, but so were both McNairy and
Roane--and this, too, before Jackson reached the bench, they having
been elected at the first session of the first general assembly of
Tennessee, in April, 1796, before the state had been formally admitted
into the Union by act of Congress. Their decisions, however, were never
called into question on that ground.
In 1797, McNairy was appointed a district judge of the Federal Court
in Tennessee, which position he held continuously until his death in
1831 or 1832, leaving his reputation as a wise and just judge and an
upright man as a heritage to Tennesseans.
Roane resigned his judgeship in June, 1801, and was elected Governor
of Tennessee in the following August. On retiring from the office
of Governor, after having served two years, he remained in private
life until 1811, when he was appointed circuit judge. Thereafter--in
October, 1815--he was again appointed to the Superior Court bench,
where he remained until April or May, 1818, and then retired from
public service, honored and esteemed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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