Samuel Church (born

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wil ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

, February 4, 1785; died September 13, 1854) was a lawyer, politician, and chief justice of the

Connecticut Supreme Court The Connecticut Supreme Court, formerly known as the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, is the supreme court, highest court in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It consists of a Chief Justice and six Associate Justices. The seven justices sit in ...

. Church graduated from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1803 and then studied law, being admitted in 1806. In 1808 he returned to Salisbury to open a practice and remained a resident there for the rest of his life. In 1818 he was a member of the Connecticut constitutional convention. Between 1821 and 1831 he spent 5 years as a representative in the assembly and 3 as a state senator. He also served as a probate judge and as the State's Attorney for

Litchfield County Litchfield County is in northwestern Connecticut. As of the 2020 census, the population was 185,186. The county was named after Lichfield, in England. Litchfield County has the lowest population density of any county in Connecticut and is the ...

. He resigned these offices in 1832 when he was appointed as a superior court judge. In January 1833 he was appointed to the Connecticut Supreme Court. He became chief justice in 1847 and held that position until his death in 1854. St. John's Episcopal Church in Salisbury has a

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

window dedicated to Church. Church's son Albert E. Church (1807–1878) became a mathematics professor at

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

and authored a number of textbooks.http://www.math.temple.edu/~zit/Revolution/Bio/Church_Albert.pdf bio of Albert Church

References

Members of the Connecticut House of Representatives Chief Justices of the Connecticut Supreme Court Connecticut lawyers 1785 births 1854 deaths Yale University alumni People from Salisbury, Connecticut Justices of the Connecticut Supreme Court 19th-century American legislators 19th-century American judges 19th-century American lawyers 19th-century Connecticut politicians {{Connecticut-state-judge-stub