Biography of Thomas Lacy, Arkansas *********************************************************** Submitted by: Joy Fisher < > Date: 16 Dec 2007 Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm *********************************************************** BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ARKANSAS. BY JOHN HALLUM. VOL. I. ALBANY: WEED, PARSON'S AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 1887. Entered according to act of Congress in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-seven, BY JOHN HALLUM, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. NOTE. [Before receiving the last twelve sketches by General Albert Pike, the author had prepared short biographies of some of the same men, to-wit, John Taylor, Thomas J. Lacy, Edward Cross, David Walker, William Cummins, Archibald Yell and Terrence Farrelly, hence these characters appear in duplicate; not, however, with the unwarranted assumption that they will lend any thing to what the greatest of American scholars has written, any further than to fill in the details omitted by that great man.] JUDGE EDWARD CROSS. This venerable old Roman was born in Virginia on the 11th of November, 1798, of Welsh extraction from both ancestral lines. His grandfather, Edward Cross, being a cripple, was unable to enter the military service of the colonies in the war of the revolution, but he sent his son Robert, the father of the subject of this sketch. When the child was six months old, his father moved to Cumberland county, Kentucky, where he was carefully reared and educated. At the age of twenty-one, Judge Cross moved to Overton county, Tennessee, and there read law two years under the celebrated Adam Huntsman, the political opponent of Davy Crockett, and finally his successful competitor for a seat in congress. In 1822 he opened a law office in the town of Monroe, Overton county, Tennessee, and practised there three years, being a hard student, all the time laying deep the foundations which supported his fame in after years. But he was born on the border, reared in her wild and restless lap, and loved the forests and streams and wild-wood glens of simple, unadorned nature more than all the allurements and enchanting scenes of refined civilization; and this hereditary spirit led 1dm in 1826 to seek its indulgence in the wilds of the territory of Arkansas. He towers amongst us the representative of two past generations and of the last century, like a solitary oak reft of its branches - in the broadest sense a grand old man of whom General Albert Pike says in his autobiography, "a man whom Arkansas ought to delight in honoring;" a well-earned and deserved compliment from a truly great man, worth more than all the plaudits of unthinking thousands. He began the practice of law in Washington, Hempstead county, in copartnership with the late Chief Justice Daniel Ringo. In 1828 he was on the staff of Governor George Izard, and actively aided in organizing the militia of the territory. In 1832 President Jackson commissioned him as one of the justices of the superior court of the territory, and the commission was afterward renewed by President Van Buren. He continued to fill this office until Arkansas was admitted into the Union, June 16, 1836, and the office became vacant, extinct. In 1836 he was appointed surveyor-general of the public lands and held the office two years. In 1838 he was elected to congress and served the State in that capacity for three consecutive terms. In 1852 he was by Governor Drew appointed special judge of the supreme court of the State. He took an active part in organizing the Iron Mountain railroad and was its president from 1855 to 1862. In 1852 he was chosen a member of the electoral college and voted for Franklin Pierce. He was a member of the national democratic convention held at Baltimore in 1844, and in that convention disregarded the instructions of his constituents to vote for Martin Van Buren, because after being so instructed, Van Buren addressed the celebrated letter to Silas Wright, declaring himself opposed to the annexation of Texas. Polk was nominated, and the judge's constituency approved his action in the convention. He was brother-in-law to Chester Ashley who died while serving Arkansas as a senator in congress; they married sisters. His good morals and integrity are of the highest type, and the old patriarch is universally esteemed. Since the above was written he died (May, 1887) at Little Rock.