Elbert Hartwell English was born in Madison County, Alabama, the son of James and Nancy (McCracken) English.
His forebears came from England to Virginia about the middle of the eighteenth century. His father was born in Virginia but was taken to Kentucky in early life and later moved to Alabama, where he engaged in cotton culture in the “flush times. ”
Elbert entered the academy at Athens at the age of fourteen and finished the course as then given.
For several years he was undecided about a vocation.
He taught, learned to be a silversmith and opened a shop in Athens, began the study of medicine, but finally turned to the law, reading under the direction of George S. Houston, afterwards United States senator and governor of Alabama.
English was admitted to the bar at Athens in 1839 and practised there several years.
He served two terms in the Alabama legislature.
In his seven years as reporter he issued eight volumes of reports, and A Digest of the Statutes of Arkansas was published in 1848.
While engaged in these tasks he continued his practise, traveling extensively over the state to attend the courts.
In 1854 he was elected chief justice in the place of Judge Watkins, resigned.
He was reelected in 1860 for a term of eight years and continued to serve until the Confederate state government, with which he had cast his lot, was displaced by the loyal Murphy government under the constitution of 1864.
He then resumed the practise of his profession.
While not a member of the convention of 1874 he was a constant attendant at the sessions of the committee which drew up the articles dealing with the judiciary.
He was considered by his associates and the bar an ultraconservative man.
English was a member of the Methodist church and of the Democratic party.
He was a Royal Arch Mason and a Knight Templar, held high office in the order, and his Masonic decisions were translated into several languages.
According to his successor, Chief Justice S. R. Cockrill, he never undertook to fashion the law according to what he thought it ought to be, but only to find out what it was and to stand rigidly by it. Technicalities counted much with him, and perhaps this fact explains his concurrence in the decision repudiating the state debt In twenty three volumes of State Reports, said Mr. Cockrill, “he has placed the indelible impress of his learning, and has therein buildcd for himself an honorable monument, more enduring than any we can raise to his memory” (43 Arkansas, 14).
admitted to the bar at Athens in 1839
He was a Royal Arch Mason and a Knight Templar.
On September 30, 1840, he married Julia Agnes Fisher in Athens, Alabama. She died in 1871, and in July of the next year he married Mrs. Susan A. Wheless.
