Samuel D. Lockwood

Samuel D. Lockwood
3rdIllinois Attorney General
In office 1821–1822
Governor	Shadrach Bond
Preceded by	William Mears
Succeeded by	James Turney
2ndSecretary of State of Illinois
In office 1822–1823
Governor	Edward Coles
Preceded by	Elias Kane
Succeeded by	David Blackwell
Illinois Supreme Court Justice
In office 1824–1848
Personal details
Born	August 2, 1789 Poundridge, New York
Died	April 23, 1874 (aged 84) Batavia,Kane County, Illinois
Political party	Whig
Other political affiliations	Republican Party
Spouse	Mary Stith Nash
Children	3
Profession	Lawyer, judge

Samuel Drake Lockwood(August 2, 1789 – April 23, 1874) was anIllinoislawyer and politician who served as the state'sAttorney General,Secretary of State,Justice of theIllinois Supreme Courtand the state's trustee on the board of theIllinois Central Railroad.

Early and family life

Lockwood was born inPoundridge, New York.His father, Joseph Lockwood (1764-1799), was an innkeeper who died ofyellow fever(as did his infant son Cornelius) when Samuel was ten.His mother, Mary (1765-1819), was the daughter of Col. Samuel Drake and would remarry after about a year, to Duncan McCall. Samuel was the oldest of Lockwood's four children, and would be sent to boarding school in New Jersey with his brother Jesse Close Lockwood (b.1791), when his mother moved to Canada with her new husband and young daughter Rebecca (1792-1827; who would marry Jacob Potts in Canada).

The Lockwood boys only remained in that school for a few months before their uncle, Francis Drake, assumed responsibility for them.Samuel studied law with Drake and was admitted to the bar inBatavia, New Yorkin 1811.

In 1826 Lockwood married Virginia-born Mary V. S. Nash (1800-1875), who would survive him by less than a year. They had four daughters. By 1850, Lockwood also had two 20-year-old male clerks living with his family and sharing his last name (R.A. Lockwood and J. Lockwood), so he may have repaid his uncle's tutelage of himself and his brother by raising other young relatives.

Law career

Lockwood had practiced law in Batavia, the seat ofGenesee County, New Yorkfor a year before relocating his practice somewhat eastward. He then practiced inSempronius,Cayuga County, New Yorkfor about a year and a half. From 1815 until August 1818, he had a law partnership in nearbyAuburn, New Yorkwith George B. Throop. Lockwood ended that practice when he decided to move westward to the new state ofIllinois.

In 1818, he and a friend, William H. Brown, took a flatboat and descended theAllegheny Riverinto theOhio Riverbefore disembarking atShawneetown,Gallatin County, Illinois.They walked across the new state toKaskaskia,the first capital, but Lockwood returned to the "Little Egypt" region and settled inCarmi,White County, Illinois.He moved toEdwardsvillearound 1823, when he accepted the federal revenue collector job discussed below. Lockwood purchased land further north inMorgan Countyin central Illinois in 1828,and further land when such became available in the 1830s. He lived in Morgan County for more than two decades.Lockwood would move further north following his judicial retirement, and finally settled with his family inBatavia,Kane County, Illinoisin 1853.

Political career

In 1821, Illinois voters elected Lockwood the young state's thirdAttorney General.During his brief tenure in that office, Lockwood successfully prosecuted the only known duel to come to trial in Illinois.He resigned after only a year when GovernorEdward Colesappointed him as Secretary of State after Illinois' first Secretary of State,Elias Kane,was elected to theIllinois House of Representatives.Three months later, Lockwood received an appointment as the Receiver of Public Moneys from PresidentJames Monroe;the job involved receiving money for settlers buying public lands from the federal government, and Coles had previously held the job. One of the reasons Lockwood accepted continued appointment from Madison was that it would afford him the time and money to ensure that Illinois would remain a free state, although both Presidents were slave owners.Like Governor Coles, Lockwood resisted slavery advocates (particularly from "Little Egypt" ) who wanted another Constitutional Convention to adopt a pro-slavery Constitution for the state; voters rejected the proposed convention in April 1824.

Meanwhile, after various native American tribes ceded land in the1821 Treaty of Chicago,northern Illinois was developing. In 1824, Lockwood was appointed to the First Board of Canal Commissioners, and became responsible for contracting with engineers to survey the route of theIllinois and Michigan Canal.Planned since 1818, it would connect theGreat Lakes(through the soon-to-be-incorporated town ofChicagoat the confluence ofLake Michiganand theChicago River) to theMississippi River(and the transportation hubs ofSt. Louis, MissouriandNew Orleans, Louisiana) via theIllinois Riverin the state's central section. The route was surveyed in the following years, and the first land grants delivered (or bought) in 1827.

Judicial and later career

In late 1824, the state legislature reorganized theIllinois Supreme Courtand the outgoing Governor Coles appointed Lockwood a judge on that Court, with the legislature's approval.Judge Lockwood took office on January 19, 1825 (as perhaps its only anti-slavery member) and served until December 1848.Early on, Lockwood revised the Illinois Criminal Code, and he resigned after the 1848 Constitution (which he helped draft and supported) reduced the Court's membership to three judges. The Court had also reorganized in 1841, after which Lockwood became responsible for the first judicial circuit.

In 1837, Lockwood was the only dissenting judge in a case concerning the pre-emption homestead rights of traderJean Baptiste Beaubien(brought by then fellow Morgan County lawyer Murray McConnell) shortly before the formal closing ofFort Dearbornfollowing the1833 Treaty of Chicago.The United States Supreme Court would overrule the other Illinois justices inWilcox v. Jacksonin 1839, before the federal government sold the contested land as the "Fort Dearborn Addition" to the town (which had incorporated as a city in 1837).

Several times, Lockwood adjudicated cases involving slaves who claimed freedom based on being brought and/or living in Illinois, as well as to Illinois residents who assisted. He upheld slave status on several occasions, both as a trial and appellate judge, citing "comity" with laws of southern states that permitted slavery, and that the slaves were only traveling through the free state. InPhoebe v Jay,Lockwood, despite his previous anti-convention and abolitionist views, held that the 40 year indenture of Phoebe (entered into in 1814) could be transferred to Joseph Jay's heir, his son William Jay, reasoning that the new state's Constitution superseded the anti-slavery provisions of the Northwest Ordinance.However, Illinois courts began chipping away at the state's Black Code and indenture laws around 1843, led by JudgeJohn D. Caton,who threw out a charge againstOwen Lovejoyfor harboring "Nancy", a black woman without freedom papers.In 1844, Lockwood was the only dissenter in the case of abolitionist William Hayes for assisting "Sukey",slave of Andrew Borders who moved toGalesburg,kidnapped her two sons from jail and sold them southward, the remaining judges upholding the transaction.In 1845, the Court found Joseph Jarrott not a slave, although his mother Pelagie had been since her purchase in 1798 when she was four years old; it thereafter held that slaves born in Illinois after the Northwest Ordinance were born free (overrulingPhoebe v. Jay.Nonetheless, the road to abolition was slow. Lockwood participated in two other underground railroad conductor convictions, of Jacksonville's perhaps most visible abolitionist, Julius Willard and his son Samuel Willard (Illinois' governor Pat Quinn pardoned both posthumously in 2014). Lockwood became one of the framers ofIllinois' second Constitutionin 1848, representing Morgan County at that assembly.He also served as a trustee ofIllinois Collegeand the state insane asylum, also in Jacksonville for several years.

In 1851 Lockwood was appointed the state's trustee on the board of theIllinois Central Railroad.That caused him to move his family to Batavia,Kane County, Illinois(an abolitionist hotpot in Illinois, especially compared to Jacksonville, much less Little Egypt), so he could catch a train to attend board and other meetings in Chicago. Lockwood continued to serve on that board for the rest of his life. With the demise of the Whig Party, and because he remained anti-slavery, Lockwood joined the newRepublican Party,whose Presidential candidate in 1860 he knew well from his days in Morgan County and tenure on the Illinois Supreme Court,Abraham Lincoln.In both the 1860 and 1870 federal censuses, Lockwood characterized himself as a farmer in Batavia. President Lincoln characterized Lockwood as "one of the best men in the world" upon receiving a letter from him in December 1864.After theAmerican Civil War,Lockwood also accepted an appointment by Governor Palmer and served on a committee to find a site for an insane asylum in northern Illinois in 1869 (perhaps in part because he was a trustee of the asylum at Jacksonville), at which Mary Todd Lincoln would briefly reside in 1874.,

Retirement and death

Lockwood died at his home in Batavia in 1874, at age 85. After a funeral at the Congregational Church, he was interred in the West Batavia cemetery across from his home (and to which he had donated some land to enable a stone fence).His wife Mary, who died the following year, and 26 descendants would ultimately be buried at that family plot.

Some of his family's papers are held by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.Batavia named a street after Lockwood. His former home, built in 1849 in the Greek Revival Style and locally known as "Lockwood Hall" and later owned by legislator and public welfare director Rodney Brandon, still exists at 825 Batavia Avenue, off State Route 31.