(Excerpt from Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Superior Co...)
Excerpt from Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Superior Court of the State of Connecticut From the Year 1785, to May 1788: With Some Determinations in the Supreme Court of Errors For the principles of their elect/ions were fiaon forgot, or me: under/lood, or erroneozg/ly reported from memory - Hence the determinations of our courts - the. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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lawyer military politician Soldier
Ephraim Kirby was born on February 23, 1757 in Woodbury, Connecticut, United States, the eldest of the twelve children of Abraham and Eunice (Starkweather) Kirby, and a descendant of Joseph Kirby who emigrated from Warwickshire, England, and was one of the early settlers of Hartford, Connecticut.
Kirby was educated at Yale University, but left college without a degree. Later he studied law in Litchfield in the office of Reynold Marvin, formerly King's Attorney. In 1787 the honorary degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon him by Yale College.
Kirby left his father's farm in Litchfield at the age of nineteen and joined a company of volunteers which participated in the battle of Bunker Hill. He was a private in the 5th Company, 7th Connecticut Regiment, from July 10 to December 19, 1775; reenlisted in the 2nd Continental Dragoons on December 24, 1776, and, serving until August 7, 1779, was with Washington's army in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He took part in the battles of Brandywine, Monmouth, and Germantown, and in the last action was left for dead on the field. Subsequently he served as ensign in Olney's Rhode Island battalion (August 23, 1782 - December 25, 1783).
After the close of the war, Kirby started to practice the law in Litchfield and quickly became a leading citizen with varied interests. He was secretary of St. Paul's Masonic Lodge, Litchfield, and was an organizer and officer both of the Grand Lodge of Connecticut and of the Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of the United States.
His political career began in 1791 when he served the first of his fourteen semiannual sessions in the state legislature. President Jefferson, in January 1802, appointed him supervisor of the national revenue for the state of Connecticut. He had been successful in business, having been a director of the company organized in 1795 to purchase Connecticut lands in the Western Reserve; but in 1802 he lost his entire fortune in a Virginia land venture.
His appointment by President Jefferson, on July 14, 1803, as a commissioner on the Spanish Boundary, to receive and determine the titles of lands held on the east side of Pearl River, offered him an opportunity for a new start. In April 1804, Kirby was appointed the first Superior Court Judge of the Mississippi Territory. He had reached Fort Stoddart, Mississippi Territory, and had begun hearings, when he fell sick and died at the age of forty-seven.
Starting out with few opportunities for education, Kirby rose to a position of leadership by sheer force of character, and won the friendship and respect of many national figures of his time. He made a permanent place for his name in the annals of American law by publishing, in Litchfield, his Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Superior Court and Court of Errors of the State of Connecticut, From the Year 1785 to May, 1788 (1789). It was the first fully developed volume of law reports published in the United States. In American legal literature it holds a place comparable to that which Plowden's Commentaries holds in English legal literature.
(Excerpt from Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Superior Co...)
Kirby was an original member of the Connecticut Society of the Cincinnati, its secretary for three years, and a delegate to the meeting of the National Society at Philadelphia in 1796.
As a lawyer, Kirby is said to have been "remarkable for the frankness and downright honesty of his advice to clients, striving always to prevent litigation".
On March 17, 1784 Kirby married Ruth Marvin, the daughter of his legal mentor Reynold Marvin. The had eight children. One of these, Frances, was the mother of Edmund Kirby-Smith.
