Edwin Thomas Merrick (July 9, 1809 – January 12, 1897) was the third Chief Justice of the
Louisiana Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of Louisiana (french: Cour suprême de Louisiane) is the highest court and court of last resort in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The modern Supreme Court, composed of seven justices, meets in the French Quarter of New Orlea ...
from July 1855 to April 3, 1865.
Biography
Edwin T. Merrick was born in
Wilbraham, Massachusetts on July 9, 1809.
He moved to Ohio, where he was admitted to the Bar of Ohio in 1833, and then in 1838 moved to
Clinton, Louisiana.
[Lamar C. Quintero, "The Supreme Court of Louisiana", in Horace A. Fuller, ed., ''The Green Bag'', Vol. 3 (1891), p. 118.][''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.] 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.
Merrick is reported as having been "a very industrious, able, and efficient judge".
Though in politics he was "an earnest Whig and Union man", once the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
had begun, he "embraced with great zeal the Southern cause".
When
was occupied by Federal troops, he went with the Confederate State Government to
Shreveport
Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, respectively. The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, with a population o ...
, 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".
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.
He died in New Orleans on January 12, 1897.
The Boston Club
The Boston Club is a private gentlemen's club in New Orleans, Louisiana, US, founded in 1841 as a place for its members to congregate and partake in the fashionable card game of Boston. It is the oldest remaining social club in the city, after ...
of New Orleans.[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cu09362126&seq=338]
References
External links
Merrick Family Papers
a
The Historic New Orleans Collection
Justices of the Louisiana Supreme Court
1809 births
1897 deaths
People from Massachusetts
19th-century American judges
{{Louisiana-state-judge-stub