Background
Arthur Livermore, the third son of Judge Samuel Livermore, and Jane, daughter of the Reverend Arthur Browne of Portsmouth, was born on July 29, 1766 in Londonderry (now Derry), New Hampshire, United States.
Arthur Livermore, the third son of Judge Samuel Livermore, and Jane, daughter of the Reverend Arthur Browne of Portsmouth, was born on July 29, 1766 in Londonderry (now Derry), New Hampshire, United States.
His early education was begun at a school in Portsmouth and was continued after 1775 at Holderness by his father and by Dr. John Porter. He was sent when about fifteen to a school in Concord.
Livermore read law in the office of his brother, Edward St. Loe Livermore. Admitted to the bar in 1791, he practised in Concord till 1793, and then in Chester. Already he was showing signs of both the ability and the fiery temper which distinguished him in later life, for besides building up a practice, he was elected a representative to the legislature (1794 - 1795), was commissioned solicitor of Rockingham County (1796 - 1798), and gave a thrashing to the notorious "Lord" Timothy Dexter, then living in Chester.
In 1798 he was appointed a judge of the superior court of New Hampshire, and in 1809 he was made chief justice. When the courts were reorganized in 1813 he was appointed associate justice of the supreme court. This court, however, was dissolved in 1816, and Livermore, for a time, exchanged the bench for the floor of Congress, to which he was three times elected a representative, in 1816, 1818, and 1822. In 1820 he was elected to the Senate of New Hampshire, and in 1822 he was made judge of probate in Grafton County, but he resigned the next year. At the expiration of his third term in Congress, in 1825, he returned to the bench as chief justice of the New Hampshire court of common pleas, but in 1832 this court was abolished, and he retired from public life, after thirty-eight years of continuous service.
Soon after his father's death (1803), he purchased from his elder brother the family estate at Holderness. Obliged to sell the Holderness property, he retired in 1832 to a small farm, "Craigie Burn, " in the neighboring township of Campton, where he spent the last twenty years of his life. He lies buried in the old churchyard at Holderness.
Livermore was a strong opponent of the extension of slavery in general, and of the Missouri Compromise in particular. He was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party.
Livermore was not a great speaker, but he effectively employed his sarcastic wit. As a judge he was guided by honesty and common sense rather than by precedents, and he refused to allow the discussion of technicalities to obscure justice. He numbered prominent Southerners among his friends, even including John Randolph of Roanoke.
Livermore had married, on March 27, 1810, Louisa Bliss, daughter of Joseph Bliss of Haverhill, New Hampshire. There were eight children, six of whom were sons.