Timothy Walker was an American lawyer, writer on legal subjects, jurist, and teacher.
Background
Timothy Walker was born in Wilmington, Middlesex County, Massachussets, the son of Benjamin Walker, a farmer, and Susanna (Cook) Walker, and a brother of Sears Cook Walker. He was sixth in direct descent from Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower.
Education
Until he was sixteen he worked on his father's farm with scarcely any schooling, but in 1822, having succeeded in preparing himself for college, he entered Harvard. In 1826 he was graduated as first scholar.
Career
He taught mathematics in the Round Hill School, Northampton, Massachussets, conducted by George Bancroft. During this time he contributed to the North American Review, delivered lectures on natural science, published Elements of Geometry (1829), and attended law lectures given by Judge Samuel Howe. In the fall of 1829 he entered the Harvard Law School, where he remained one year, coming under the instruction of Justice Joseph Story and his colleagues. Early in August 1830 he arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, and entered the law office of Storer and Fox as a student. After being admitted to the bar in 1831 he began the practice of law. Two years later with Judge John C. Wright, who had been a judge of the supreme court of Ohio and a member of Congress, he organized what was a private law school, with a few students and without the power to confer degrees. In 1835 it became a part of Cincinnati College, founded in 1818, and until 1867 was known as the Law School of Cincinnati College; in 1896 it became a part of the University of Cincinnati. In 1842 he accepted an appointment as judge of the court of common pleas of Hamilton County to fill a vacancy, and in 1843 became the editor of the Western Law Journal. When in 1855 Ohio was divided into two federal judicial districts he was appointed to draw up rules of practice for the circuit and district courts of the southern district. He had published an argument in favor of codification as early as 1835 and continued for the rest of his life to work for simplification of the rules of pleading and practice, and for changes in the laws having to do with crime and with the status of married women. Most of the reforms he advocated he saw before his death incorporated into the laws of Ohio. His most important contribution to the law, however, and his greatest achievement, was a series of lectures delivered in the law school he founded, published as Introduction to American Law (1837). "While pursuing my legal studies, " he writes, "I found myself much in the condition of a mariner without chart or compass. I experienced at every step the want of a first book upon the law of this country. In a word, I came to the conclusion that fewer facilities have been provided for studying the elementary principles of American Jurisprudence, than perhaps for any other branch of useful knowledge". The book received instant recognition by the legal profession and went through eleven editions, the last published in 1905. On Aug. 1, 1855, Walker was thrown violently from his carriage. Returning to his office before complete recovery, he contracted a heavy cold which settled on his lungs and in the following January caused his death at his home in Walnut Hills, Cincinnati.
A contemporary legal magazine commented on "the vigor and clearness of his mind, the absolute precision of his ideas, his quickness and his conciseness . " and on the fact that he "never did a discourteous or an unfair thing".
Connections
He was married on March 11, 1840, to Ella Page Wood, by whom he had three sons and two daughters.