Career
As a youth he was employed as a store clerk in Blandford, Massachusetts when he was given the opportunity at the age of 19 to read law as a clerk in a law office. The firm became one of the most successful in the state and in 1860 Chapman was appointed an associate justice of the state supreme court, subsequently being elevated to chief justice in 1868. He was a presidential elector for Lincoln in 1860, and served on the Harvard Board of Overseers.
He handled some legal matters for John Brown when Brown was in business in Springfield, and later, when Brown was imprisoned in Virginia facing hanging after the abortive Harper"s Ferry raid, he wrote to Chapman asking him to either come himself or send legal assistance: "I have money in hand here to the amount of $250 do not send an ultra abolitionist," which Chapman was unable to do at the time.
Chapman died in Switzerland in 1873.
