The galaxy of the names of Alabama's worthy sons would be incomplete with the omission of that of Governor Benjamin Fitzpatrick. An uneducated and orphaned boy, he came to Alabama from Greene County, Georgia, in 1816, to assist in the planting interests of his elder brothers, whose lands lay along the eastern bank of the Alabama River, about six miles outside of Montgomery. He never attended school more than six months of his life, and in his early days was inured to the rough encounters of the world. Colonel Brewer states in his history of Alabama that Mr. Fitzpatrick, in subsequent years, was accustomed to point out a field near Montgomery where he tended a herd of swine for his brothers as the hogs would feed on the mast of the oak woods. Service as a deputy sheriff in Elmore County, which position brought him into contact with the courts, aroused an ambition to become a lawyer, and he prepared himself for that profession under the tutelage of the Hon. N. E. Benson. Admitted to the practice of the law when he was barely 21, he rapidly won popularity as a lawyer by his devotion to the interests of his clients. After practicing for a period in Elmore County, he removed to Montgomery, where he entered into co-partnership with Henry Goldthwaite. The legal development of Mr. Fitzpatrick was rapid, and he was elected to the solicitorship of the Montgomery circuit, and after serving one term was again elected to the same position. By his marriage to a daughter of General John Elmore his political fortunes were greatly enhanced. The Elmores were one of the most distinguished families of the state, a son of the general being a national Senator from South Carolina, another a distinguished lawyer in Montgomery, still another was the attorney general of Louisiana, yet another was secretary of state of Alabama and later collector of the port of Mobile, while another was a federal judge in Kansas. By his marriage Mr. Fitzpatrick became a brother-in-law to the Hon. Dixon H. Lewis. Driven by broken health from the seclusion of his law office, in 1827, he repaired to his plantation near Montgomery, where he maintained a princely country home in which was dispensed the hospitality for which the old-time southerner was proverbial. At no period in the history of any land was hospitality more sumptuous than in the princely homes of the South during the régimé of slavery, and the home of the Fitzpatricks was a typical one of the hospitality of those days now gone. For full twelve years he lived contented and happy on his fertile plantation, unsolicitous of public office, but in 1840 he was summoned from his retreat by the state democratic convention to serve as a Van Buren elector, and succeeded in swinging the state into the column of the democratic candidate from New York. His ability was so distinguished during his campaign that he was honored with the governorship of the state at the close of the same year.