Bio: Judge Thomas Thompson Land, Caddo Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller
Date: 1999-2000

Source:
Biographical and Historical Memoires of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 485-486.
Published by the
Goodspeed Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892.





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Judge Thomas Thompson Land, ex-associate justice of the supreme court of
Louisiana, was born in Rutherford county, Tenn., December 7, 1815, and is the
oldest son of Charles Land and Sarah Bass.  His father, who was a planter, was
a native of South Carolina, and his mother, who was the daughter of a planter,
was a native of North Carolina.  Judge Land received his education
at the University of Virginia and also attended the law school there.  On
September 25, 1839, Judge Land married Miss Mary E. Dillingham, of Washington
county, Miss. Mrs. Land, who is a lady of great culture and refinement, is
still living.  Among her distinguished relatives are numbered the late
Governor Runnels and the late Governor Humphreys, of Mississippi.  In the
year of his marriage Judge Land was elected a member of the Mississippi
legislature from Holmes county, and was reelected at the expiration of his
term.  At the end of his four years' service in the Mississippi legislature,
he declined a nomination for the state senate, tendered to him by the whig
party, of which he was a member.  In November, 1845, Judge Land emigrated from
Mississippi, and after visiting and prospecting for some months in Texas,
before the admission of that state into the Union, he returned in 1848 to
Shreveport, La., where he established his permanent domicile and commenced the
practice of law.  In 1854 he was elected judge of the judicial district
composed of the parishes of Caddo, De Soto and Bossier, to fill the vacancy
occasioned by the election of Judge Henry K Spofford associate justice of
the supreme court of the state.  At the end of his term Judge Land declined a
reelection.  In 1858 Judge Land was elected associate justice of the supreme
court of Louisiana to fill the unexpired term of Judge Henry M. Spofford, who
had resigned.  After his election to the supreme bench, Judge Land purchased a
home in the city of New Orleans, and resided there with his family until the
second year of the war.  In 1881 Judge Land was reelected associate justice of
the supreme court without any opposition for the full term of ten years, and
remained on the bench until the end of the war in 1865.  He then resumed the
practice of law at his domicile in the city of Shreveport, where he had taken
refuge after the fall of the city of New Orleans in 1862.  In 1879 he was
elected a delegate to the constitutional convention, and was appointed
chairman of the judiciary committee, which was composed of twenty-one able and
experienced lawyers, to whose painstaking labors the people of Louisiana are
indebted for their present judiciary system.  The union of Judge and Mrs. Land
was blessed with fourteen children.  Seven children and eighteen grandchildren
are still living.  Three sons--Alfred D.,  David T. and  John B.
Land--reside in Shreveport, and follow their father", profession of the
law.  The fourth son, Charles A. Land, is a planter, residing in Caddo parish. 
The three daughters are married; the eldest,  Sallie, to General Leon
Jastremski, of New Orleans; the second, Maggie May, to the Hon. George A.
Wilson, of Lexington, Miss.; and the third, Carrie, to Col. James K
Ho1lingsworth, of Kosciusko, Miss.  In 1884 Judge Land retired from the
practice of the law, his two younger eons succeeding him in the law firm of
Land & Land.