In the summer of 1812, before I commenced reading law regularly, I became acquainted with the Hon. John Catron, now an associate Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was then engaged as a partner with a brother or kinsman of his, in buying beef cattle and steers, and driving them to market, or in buying for the Zimmermans or Simmermans, Dutchmen who were kinsmen of his. They had all once lived in Wythe County, Virginia. The Catron family, all Pennsyivania Dutch, were there called Catherines or Katherines-and all the family that remained there, still continue to be called so. But the Judge adopted the spelling of Catron-and I think induced his father and family to do so. The old men of the family could scarcely speak English and perhaps could never read or write it. The way I came to know the Judge was this.

He came by our store one afternoon, having known Andrew Buchanan when he was a clerk for John M. Moore at Montecello, Kentucky. He had been raised and his father's family then lived near Burkesville, Cumberland County, Ky., where the Simmermans also lived. When he called, Buchanan was not at home. He told me he was an old acquaintance, and was then engaged in buying and driving cattle. We had in the store a fine copy of some book, of Blaire's Lectures on Rhetorick I think, and he wished to buy it on credit-said he would be passing and pay for it soon. Being a decent looking young man but exceeding uncouth and self-important, I trusted him for it and he did pay for it as he promised. At that time, he had the same nasal twang of voice, the same self-consequence that has ever marked him since. He was then, however, exceeding illiterate and Mr. Buchanan, who had a good knowledge of books, and of Mr. Catron, laughed very much at the character of his purchase. He afterwards, perhaps in the fall of the same year, or in beginning of 1813, came from Kentucky to Sparta, and commenced reading law and history, and geography in the office of Gen. Gibbs in White County. About the season he came there, or the season before, he had kept a stallion for his father called Agricola-and many stories are told, by way of characteristic anecdotes, of his manner of showing off and praising his horse to the people on public occasions. Harry H. Brown, formerly of the Tennessee Senate from Perry-Adam Huntsman, formerly a member of Congress from the Western District, and others who witnessed these displays, used to repeat them with much effect, and greatly to Mr. Catron's annoyance after he came to the Bar, and to the Bench.

After Mr. Catron commenced study, he read hard and diligently, but though he acquired knowledge-a knowledge of facts, history, and in his profession, yet, properly speaking, he has ever remained illiterate. He has never learned to pronounce, or speak pure English, adhering to the old pasal, and cant word kind of style in which he was bred-and he has never learned to write his mother tongue or any other tongue. His mother tongue might be said to be Dutchy which he forgot in youth-but I mean, he has never learned English. About the year 1835-6, since he had been a Judge of the Supreme court of Tennessee, he and his wife visited the falls of Niagara. He wrote a description in a letter to his wife's sister, Mrs. Marshall, which she published in the paper at Nashville. It was a most ridiculous piece of bombast. Thomas Washington, a lawyer of Nashville, who always hated him, wrote a criticism on it, in the same paper which the Judge will never forget. It took the skin off.

After Mr. Catron came to the Bar, on the resignation of Isaac Thomas, now of Alexandria, Louisiana, he obtained the appointment of Attorney General as they were called, for prosecuting state cases in the White and Warren Circuit, then called the 3rd Circuit. This was after the war. While a student, he served in volunteer campaigns in the Creek Nation. He was not, perhaps, one of those who were afterwards called retrograders-those who insisted on leaving Gen. Jackson and breaking up the campaign on a real or supposed expiration of the time for which they had turned out-but it is understood that he was of the dissatisfied party, and it is understood that Col. Wm. Martin of Smith-one of the bitter enemies of General Jackson ever since whose enmity grew out of his disgraceful course in wishing to return to Tennessee from the nation at an improper time, has a written certificate or statement of some sort from under Judge Catron's hand, given about that time which it is believed the Judge would give thousands to be able to recall.

After practicing law for a time in the third circuit, part of the time State Attorney, and after Judge Gibbs had gone to Nashville to live after the war, he went to Nashville to live and practice also. He assessed great consequence at the Bar and because he affected professional learning, and had no capacity for public speaking, having never delivered an argument before a jury or court that deserved the name of a speech, he had acquired among the people, as all stammering and dumb lawyers do, the name of a man of deep law, learning. The dignity he assumed, and the wise, mysterious, knowing manners he assumed-avoiding all social intercourse with the common people-added to his reputation for knowledge. He went to Nashville and assumed the same and still more dignified and distant habits. He continued to make and save money. After a year or two he married Matilda, a daughter of the late John Childress, who had long been United States Marshall for the district of West Tennessee-by which office and a previous mercantile connection, he had realized a considerable estate.

After this, about the year 1821 or 1823, on a change of the Judicial system of the state, as related to the Supreme Court, he came to Murfreesboro where the Assembly sat from 1819 to 1825, and was elected. When he first mentioned his pretensions, I know that with Mr. Felix Grundy and Andrew Buchanan, who were both members at the time, one being a representative of Davidson and the other from Warren, the subject of his claims were treated as a matter of jest; but in a few days, from his assumptions of pretension and dignity, it became pretty clear he would be elected, as no lawyer of distinguished standing, who had a good practice desired it. He electioneered for-the office incessantly; and it was during this canvass that Harry H. Brown, then a member, told the story that ten years before, when he was a peddler with a horseman's pack, and Catron a groom to the stallion Agricola, who would have thought they would ever meet again, as they had then met at Murfreesboro, one a State Senator, and the other a candidate for a judgeship on the bench of the Supreme Court.

After his election, he continued on the Bench, having become Chief Justice under the system adopted under the old constitution of 1796, until he went out of office under the constitution of 1834, ratified in 1835, by vote of the people in the spring, and under which the newly organized and apportioned legislature met in October 1835, to adopt a judicial system, and fill all the offices vacated by the new constitution, of which the chief Justiceship was one. He had taken sides against Judge White's nomination for the Presidency in 1835, and was otherwise unpopular and could not be reelected. In 1836, he became a warm friend of Mr. Van Buren in the presidential election-wrote many articles-some signed Kinderhook-all rewritten by me, and published in the Union. In this way, he scribbled and electioneered himself into the nomination for an associate, Judgeship on the bench of the Supreme Court, on an increase of the number of circuits and Judges, by which he, and John McKinley, still a lightn (sic) man and a Whig, came on the bench. He was nominated by Mr. Van Buren, and since this elevation, has assumed great and vast dignity. Although profoundly aristocratic in all his habits and bearing-as all men raised to wealth and station, by a concurrence of accidents and false pretensions ever have been-and always will be-yet he still professed to belong to the democratic party and was in favor of Van Buren's election in 1840-and of Mr. Polk's in 1844. At one time, he and his kin had all the federal offices in Tennessee worth having. He was a Circuit Judge, pay $4500.00 per annum. His brother-in-law, Morgan W. Brown-a shallow pretender who was starving at the Bar at Nashville for want of talents and want of energy and want of character-the worst appointment Gen. Jackson ever made or Mr. Grundy as Senator ever assented to-was appointed District Judge in place of Judge John McNairy at $2000.00 per annum. Sam Marshall since a defaulter who has ruined his securities, Judge Catron, Morgan W. Brown, V. K. Stevenson, nor none of his near kin being of them-who was another brother-in-law-all those named having married Childresses-was U.S. Marshall for the District, an office worth five or six thousand dollars a year. Benjamin Litton, another of the same, was by the family, procured to be appointed clerk of the Chancery Court at Nashville and Franklin, an office worth from two to three thousand dollars. All these men were unpopular-Marshall and Morgan Brown worthless and mean-but pretension and intrigue carried every thing-as they too often do.

After reading law with Maj. McCampbell, hard and diligently, I obtained a license, and in October or September, 1815, removed to and settled in Murfreesboro by advice of Col. Mitchell and other friends. Col. James Wilson, who once lived at the Fox Camp in Rutherford, lived during 1813 and 1814 in McMinnville, in the log house east of L. D. Mercer's store-then considered a large house, and kept tavern. I had boarded with him. After he removed back to Rutherford, he presuaded me to go to that county.

In 1814, while I still did business for Mr. Buchanan to support myself, I went with John M. Lowry in the employ of the Fultons, with a drove of horses to Pennsylvania, having gone by my native home on the way, saw my parents and family, and gone through the valley of Virginia by Lexington, Christianburgh, Whythe C. H. Staunton, Hammerburg, Winchester, Woodstock, Maitensburg, Lights Ferry at mouth of Cannecocheaque, crossing the Potomac there, thence by Hagerstown in Maryland, accross the mountains to Gettysburg Pa. and by Yorke, Lancaster, etc. to Philadelphia. I kept an old journal at the time-very brief and obscure in its remarks-of all this journey, which is among my old family papers and memoranda.

On my return I engaged in practice in 1815, and well remember the first speech I tried to make in the county court in the present court house in McMinnville. It was upon a motion to dismiss a writ of certiorari as it was called in our practice-upon purely a question of legal forms and practice. After I was done, I was and had been so much confused, that I have no recollection, and had none at the time, of one word I had said. The present Judge Samuel Anderson, who had then just come out from Knoxville to practice law in Middle Tennessee, and who about that time settled in Lebanon, was engaged in the same cause. After staying at Lebanon a short time, he also went to Murfreesboro to live a few months before I did. A month or two after I went to Murfreesboro, Samuel R. Rucker of Rutherford who also had a license, came to town to live. Charles Burrus, a son of the late Col. Joseph Burrus, also came to Murfreesboro to settle and practice about the same time. He died the next year. The late Judge, Joshua Haskell, who died at Jackson a few years since in West Tennessee, after having been a Judge for some years, had also settled in Murfreesboro, having married Nancy Ready, a daughter of Chas. Ready Sr. of Readyville, to practice law. In 1820 or 1821, he was elected a Judge for the Western Circuit, and moved to Madison County. He died at Jackson, Madison Co. Tenn. about the year 1832.

When I went to reside at Murfreesboro, I found a very different condition in the state of society from that which exists there at present. It was just after the war. Gen. Robert Purdy, who afterwards was Marshall of Middle Tennessee, after the death of the late John Childress, after having risen to the rank of a Colonel in the United States Army, being disbanded on the reduction of the army to a peace establishment, came and settled in the neighborhood, on a farm inherited by his wife who was a Miss Phillips. He was a man of the most liberal hospitality. His wife was an excellent woman-a perfect lady-fond of gaity, fashion and company. The late Mrs. Nancy Lytle, wife of the late Capt. Wm. Lytle, an old revolutionary officer, was and had always been the leader of fashion, and patron of all balls and parties at Murfreesborough, as she had once been at Nashville in her younger days. In her former life, there had been many doubtful circumstances, in relation to a Capt. Ricard of the army, and the late Judge John C. Hamilton of Paris when a young man, but her husband's wealth, and her liberal hospitality, living in sight of the town where her son William Lytle now lives, and the fact of her raising a large family of handsome, virtuous, and rich daughters, who all married respectably, had enabled her to outlive all those old tales. The late Joel Dyer-the old gambler, famous in the old traditions of East Tennessee and Nashville-also rich, and whose handsome daughters had also married respectably, lived in town, having removed there from his farm where John McIver now lives, about the time I went to live there, kept a tavern in town, where Col. William F. Lytle now keeps tavern. Col. Wm. Mitchell, who was principal land surveyor of the Mountain District, who had been distinguished in the Creek War, and at New Orleans at the seige of 1814-15, as a Major of Volunteers, also lived in town and kept tavern in the old Jetton House, on the East side of the public square, where Col. Robt. Smith afterwards lived for many years. Mr. Joel Childress, a merchant, owned and lived in the framed portion of the tavern house on the West side of the square, now owned and kept by Capt. Geo. Allen Sublett. Mr. C. was a highly respectable man, and was the father of Mrs. Sarah Polk, the lady of James K. Polk, now President of the United States. He had only three other children-a son named Anderson, who died when quite a young man, as did his wife, of consumption. His other son, Maj. John W. Childress, a married man with a family now lives on the farm where his father died about the year 18-- of fever. His other child-his oldest except Anderson, is Mrs. Susan Rucker of Murfreesboro. Capt. Childress' widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Childress, now lives in Murfreesboro. She was a sister of Col. Whitsitt, once of Sumner County, Tennessee, where Mr. C. married her. Col. Whitsitt once lived at the old Marable place in Rutherford, and afterwards removed to, and died in south Alabama.

John M. Tilford, now of Warren Co. Hickory Creek, was a prosperous merchant in Murfreesboro when I went there to live. He was son-in-law of Capt. W. and Mrs. Lytle. Nicholas Tilford, and James M. Tilford, now both dead were merchants there at the same time. The widow of Nicholas, now the Widow Brandon, lives near Readyville on Stone's River, below Woodbury. The late William Barfield, and James D. Caruthers, and Joseph D. Smith, were also merchants, as was one Jonathan Estill, now all dead. In 1816 and 1817, the late Jonathan Currin and the late David Wendel, came there as merchants, Currin from Franklin, in Williamson Co. and Wendel from East Tennessee. Old Alexander Carmichael, and James D. Rawlings, both deceased, were tavern keepers. Dr. W. E. Butler, and Dr. W. T. Henderson, and Dr. Elisha B. Clarke, a cousin of my late father-in-law, and Dr. Henry Homes, were all practicing physicians. Homes now lives in Mississippi, and Dr. Butler in Jackson, Tennessee-the others are dead. Maj. Bennett Smith, a remarkable man, is still living, had removed to town to enjoy his fortune about the time I went to the place to live. He pretended, however, now and then, especially when drunk, to engage in the practice of law. He is the son-in-law of the late Gen. Joseph Dickson, for whom Dickson County is said to have been called- a Revolutionary soldier who was in Congress from North Carolina when the contest took place between Jefferson and Burr in 1800-01. He often told me that he was the man in the North Carolina Delegation who caused the vote of that state to be changed in the final result. His son-in-law Smith, I have heard Judge John Haywood say, was the only man he ever knew to amass a fortune at the Bar in five dollar fees. -The late Gen. Blackman Coleman, before mentioned, who died some years since at Brownsville Tennessee, a son-in-law of old Joel Dyer lived in town, and was clerk of the County Court, then a valuable office. My brother John R. Laughlin (notices of whom see at pages 41-42. 43-44 ante) succeeded him in his office.

In the neighborhood, Col. Robert Henery Dyer lived- a son of old Joel-D a gallant officer wounded at New Orleans, who afterwards died in the Western District. Dyer County was called in honor of his name, Gin B. Hegg, now discarded, the father in law of James Grundy, a son of Felix Grundy, and a son-in-law of old Joel, also lived in the neighborhood- both gay men.

I cannot enumerate all those who then lived in Murfreesborough, but of those who were then living near Rucker scarcely any remain, and most of them are dead. Gaming was then a most prevailing and fashionable vice, and was carried on almost openly. Cards were played for money by almost everybody---and Billiard tables were a common resort.

About December, 1815, was the first time I ever saw President Polk. He was then a very young man, little older than myself, and was a student at the Bradley Academy, an institution which had been removed from near Col. Rucker's to Murfreesborough, and was under the care of the late Samuel P. Black, an excellent and learned man. The old Academy House was a spacious log building, and stood near where the brick Presbyterian Church now stands. About the date named, Mr. Black had an examination of his students, which concluded with the enacting of portions of Plays, and delivering of orations. In attending this examination, called an exhibition, I saw and was remarkably struck with young Mr. Polk. He was small for his age---like myself not arrived at his full growth---and his hair was much fairer and of lighter color than it became afterwards. He had a fine eye---was neat in his person---boarded I think at old Capt. Lytte's---and evinced the capacity for public speaking I had ever heard in a youth.

In one of the Plays, I recollect perfectly well that he enacted Levy Sneak, in the "Mayor of Gamet," in which he manifested infinite humor. I remember after leaving the examination to have told the late Col. Wm Mitchell with whom I then boarded and Capt. Samuel Watson, that he was much the most promising young man in the school, and that if he lived, he would rise to high distinction. I became acquainted with him shortly afterwards---before he went home to Maury County where his father lived---and that acquaintance has ripened into a friendship which has lasted ever since. I believe that shortly after that examination he went to the University at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, having completed his preparatory studies under Mr. Black. At the University, on finishing his course, he afterwards graduated with the first honors. His subsequent history is before the world.

The same Academy House was used on Sabbath days as a place of public worship, until it was afterwards set on fire and consumed by a deranged man from Kentucky named Forsyth. The Rev. Jesse Alexander, still a preacher, and other Presbyterian clergymen preached, and held sacramental meetings in the House. At this House, about 25th of December 1815---it was the Sunday succeeding Christmas day in that year---an event happened to me which I shall never forget---can never forget.

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