Stephen Mix Mitchell was born on December 9, 1743, at Wethersfield, Connecticut. He was the son of James Mitchell, a merchant and West-Indian trader who had emigrated about 1730 from Paisley, Scotland. Stephen was the only child of his father's second marriage. His mother, Rebecca, a first cousin of Jonathan Edwards, was a daughter of the Rev. Stephen Mix (Harvard, 1690), a native of New Haven and pastor of the First Church of Wethersfield.
Prepared for college by the aid of a private tutor, Stephen entered Yale where he graduated with the class of 1763. He continued his studies there as a Berkeley scholar for the next three years. He studied law under the direction of the elder Jared Ingersoll.
In the fall of 1766, Mitchell began a three years' service as a tutor at the college. Mitchell was admitted to the bar in 1770 and practiced first at Newtown, thereafter at Wethersfield, until in May 1779, he was made an associate judge of the Hartford county court. He began here a judicial career which lasted with but one interruption (1793 - 95) until his retirement from the bench in 1814. He was a chief justice until 1814 when he retired under the age limit. Not given to words, he wrote few of the opinions of his court, preferring to concur with, or dissent from, those of his associates. During his service on the bench and in the interim from 1793 to 1795, Mitchell held numerous legislative positions. During the Revolution, from 1778 to 1783, he served in the lower house of the Connecticut legislature. In 1784, he was transferred to the Council where, except for 1786, he sat until 1793 when he was chosen to fill the unexpired term of Roger Sherman in the United States Senate. He retired from this post in 1795 to take his place in the superior court of his state. He had meanwhile been chosen to represent Connecticut in the Continental Congress from 1783 to 1788. Here he was partially responsible for securing Connecticut's title to the Western Reserve. In 1818, he served in the state constitutional convention. In 1814, he retired to Wethersfield where he spent his last score of years. He died in 1835 having outlived his wife and all but four of his eleven children.
In May 1790, after eleven years as an associate judge, Mitchell was placed at the head of the county court. As an Assistant, 1784-85 and 1787-93, he was a member of the supreme court of errors. In October 1795, he was raised to the superior court of the state and when in 1807 the powers of a supreme court were transferred from the Council to his tribunal, he was made chief justice.
Throughout his life, Mitchell was a stanch Federalist.
As a jurist, Mitchell was less distinguished for deep learning and brilliance than for impartiality in the conduct of judicial proceedings; he was much more interested in justice than in the intricacies of the law.
Mitchell was a benevolent patriarch with abundant white hair, clean-shaven face, and aquiline nose, a venerable figure dressed in knee breeches, woolen hose, and a long coat with capacious pockets, trudging about his farm with the aid of a great oaken staff or riding through the village in a low chariot specially constructed for him.
On August 2, 1769, Mitchell was married to Hannah Grant of Newtown, Connecticut, whose father had left her a large fortune. His six sons all graduated from Yale. The youngest was the father of Donald Grant Mitchell, "Ik Marvel, " whose descendants possess an admirable portrait of the Judge done by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1827. Another by the same painter is owned by the Connecticut Historical Society at Hartford.
April 12, 1822 – December 15, 1908 Was an American essayist and novelist who usually wrote under the pen name Ik Marvel.
1749 - 14 February 1830
1 November 1779 - December 1866
11 September 1770 - 22 December 1852
12 January 1793 - July 1878
26 March 1782 - August 1831
1780 - 9 October 1807
7 October 1777 - July 1849
22 September 1787 - June 1826
28 July 1775 - May 1820
31 August 1785 - June 1831
3 April 1773 - August 1798
19 May 1790 - December 1831
