Category Archives: Litchfield Law School

Blog posts that relate to the Litchfield Law School, America’s first law school, and the students who attended.

Law School Letters

The Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library at the Litchfield Historical Society has recently purchased three new letters pertaining to the Litchfield Law School and its students. Two of the letters are likely relatable to many of today’s parents as they discuss the expense of educating children.

The first letter, written in 1815 by Putnam Catlin, father of Litchfield Law School student George Catlin (who later left the law to paint) was addressed to his friend Steuben Butler and detailed the financial difficulty in providing for his children’s education:

I am obliged to consider myself as a mere farmer, republican farmer, Beechwood farmer, without a hired man in this hurrying season of the year. How then am I to spare George and James? I admit that your reasoning is just in regard to George but I know not how to spare him at this time. I shall not be able to give him a public education. If he shall persist in the choice of law he will have to glean for himself an education in some law office, perhaps. I may indulge him a year at Litchfield, in the meantime, I will do better for him if it be in my power. Should my ‘ship arrive from England’ or should I make sale of some land I can spare he may be more favored.

Putnam Catlin to Steuben Butler, May 3, 1815
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Putnam Catlin by George Catlin, Smithsonian American Art Museum, between 1840-1849
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A Book Review by the Chief Justice

The Litchfield Historical Society is thrilled to announce the acquisition of a previously unpublished letter from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall to Judge James Gould, instructor at the Litchfield Law School, in which Marshall provides feedback on Gould’s book about pleadings.

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Engraving of James Gould
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Young Lawyers Head West

Contributed by Leith Johnson, Project Archivist

Among the women and men who settled the Connecticut Western Reserve in the early 1800s were students of the Litchfield Law School. To get an idea of the impact these individuals had on the development of the territory, I selected one student more or less at random and researched his life and the lives of his children. What I am going to sketch out here is by no means comprehensive, but it does offer an illustrative case study. Much of what I am writing is taken directly from The Firelands Pioneer, a journal first published in 1852 by the Firelands Historical Society, that is an indispensable resource for information about the settling and development of the area farthest west in Western Reserve known as the Firelands.

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A “Hare-Brained Scheme”: Prosecuting Tapping Reeve

Contributed by Bob Goodhouse

A grand jury indicted Tapping Reeve, founder of America’s first Law School and an esteemed Connecticut Superior Court Judge, for seditious libel against the United States and President Thomas Jefferson in the April 1806 New Haven Circuit Court.

The charge was based on an article Judge Reeve, an ardent Federalist, had sent to Litchfield’s The Monitor newspaper more than four years earlier, on December 2, 1801, in which Reeve had heatedly declared Jefferson’s violation of the U.S. Constitution, which he passionately insisted was now “marked for destruction.”

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Elephant on the Green Part 2, Contributed by Bob Goodhouse

The Festival Program began that Wednesday morning at sunrise on our current Green area with a 17 gun salute and military music, which must have caused some early-morning consternation at the Deming and Tallmadge homes. It included orations and many references to Osborne and Freedom of the Press, an outdoor meadow lunch with 17 toasts given and cannons regularly fired,  as well as a salute to Osborne when a military-style parade passed the old 1806 jail.  Notably, one of the parade marchers was Litchfield Law School student John C Calhoun, later U.S Vice President, U.S. Senator, and famous secessionist leader.

Uriah Tracy by Ralph Earl
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