Justice of the Peace

My 4g-grandfather, David White, Sr., was a justice of the peace of Ohio Township, Clermont County, Ohio, from 1815 to 1838. By virtue of his office, his name appears on many of the early marriage licenses of Clermont County. I have more questions than answers about what it meant to be a justice of the peace at that time. He performed marriages; did couples come to his home for the solemnization of their vows? What were the qualifications to serve as a justice of the peace? So far I haven't found any literature that deals with this specific question. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the early Ohio state code.

An 1880 history of Clermont County says about David, Sr. that "he served as justice of the peace of Ohio township from 1815 to 1838, and finally declined any further re-elections. His magistrate's commissions, signed by Governors Thomas Worthington, Ethan Allen Brown, Allen Trimble, Jeremiah Morrow, Duncan McArthur, and Robert Lucas, are still preserved as heirlooms by his son David" (J.L. Rockey, History of Clermont County, Ohio, 1795-1880, Philadelphia: Louis Everts, 1880, p. 428).

I discovered this reference in 1981, and let out a whoop of joy when I read it for the first time! Fortunately, there weren't many people on that floor of the library at the time. ;-) For years I wondered if the magistrate's commissions still existed but I was unable to locate any descendants in the vicinity of Clermont County. Twenty-five years later I chanced upon a direct descendant whose son had inherited from her father a mysterious black box containing old documents. She and her son agreed to meet me when I went to Ohio to visit my sister.

We met on a cold, rainy February day at a Denny's in Columbus, a convenient halfway point between their home and my sister's. We picked out the largest banquette there and began to unearth treasures. One of these treasures was this:



This was only one of several magistrate's commissions, land documents, and other papers of David White, Sr. and his son David White, Jr. In addition to legal documents, there was some personal correspondence, including an 1853 letter written by my 3g-grandfather Alexander White (who had moved to western Indiana some sixteen years earlier) to his brother David in Clermont County. Two years later I was fortunate enough to be able to return to Ohio and spend an afternoon scanning these documents. They will be appearing in future posts.

I am continually astounded at what seems to me the near-miraculous survival of family documents such as the one above. The descendants who now own these materials knew that they had to do with the history of their family, but they did not precisely know what they had. They kept them out of a sense that they were somehow important. Thanks to them, my children will have a better sense of their family's history than I had when I was growing up. How long will the instinct my distant cousins had to preserve the remnants of the past continue in our throw-away culture?