Daniel Coleman (Alabama judge)
Daniel Coleman (August 2, 1801 – November 4, 1857) was an American jurist who served as a justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama in 1851.
Life and career[edit]
Born in Caroline County, Virginia, Coleman left home at the age of sixteen, his father's death having reduced the family to poverty.[1] taught school for a year at the Kanawha Salt Works in Kentucky, and used the money thus obtained to attend Transylvania University in Lexington.[1][2] He then obtained employment as a scribe at a court in Frankfort, Kentucky, and read law under the supervision of Judge Jesse Bledsoe.[1][2] In 1819 Coleman moved to Alabama, settling in Mooresville, Limestone County, Alabama, where he opened a law office.[1][2] In 1822, he was chosen by the state legislature to serve as judge of the Limestone County court; though he was only nineteen years old, "the gravity of his deportment led no one to question his majority, and he held the office several years".[1] In 1829 he represented Limestone County in the state legislature.
In 1835 he was elected by the legislature to serve as a judge of the Alabama 8th judicial circuit, continuing in this office for twelve years.[1][2] In June 1851, Governor Henry W. Collier appointed Coleman to a seat on the Supreme Court of Alabama vacated by Silas Parsons.[1] However, he only served for six months, and "declined a candidacy before the Legislature, feeling that his enfeebled health would not permit him to undergo the labors of the post".[1] He retired to Athens, Alabama.[2] In December 1851, Coleman was elected as one of several vice presidents of the Alabama State Colonization Society, a group formed "to promote the emigration of free persons of color of this State to Liberia".[3]
Personal life and death[edit]
Coleman was a conspicuous member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. His wife, a native of South Carolina, survived her husband many years, and died at Athens, February 14, 1885.[1] Their children included Reverend James L. Coleman; Daniel Coleman, an attorney; John Hartwell Coleman, also an attorney; Richard H. Coleman, who was killed during the American Civil War; and Dr. Ruffin Coleman, who studied medicine at the University of Nashville, Tennessee.[1]
Coleman died at Athens at the age of 56.[1]
References[edit]
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- 1801 births
- 1857 deaths
- People from Caroline County, Virginia
- Transylvania University alumni
- U.S. state supreme court judges admitted to the practice of law by reading law
- Members of the Alabama Legislature
- Justices of the Supreme Court of Alabama
- 19th-century American legislators
- 19th-century American judges
- 19th-century Alabama politicians
- Alabama state court judge stubs