John Inglis (South Carolina Bench and Bar)

 CHANCELLOR

INGLIS.

 

1. James Inglis, of Paisley, Scotland, Judge Inglis's grandfather, came to America, June, 1759, and settled in New York city as a merchant. In January, 1767, he married Marie Janvier, who was born in Ireland in 1744, a daughter of Pierre Janvier, a French Huguenot, who, at the time of his daughter's birth, was refugeeing with his family in that country. In 1810, James Inglis, with his wife and two daughters, removed to Baltimore, where, after a long life of honor, enterprise and usefulness, he died, February 8, 1846, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. 

2. Rev. James Inglis, D. D., of Baltimore, a son of the above marriage, and Judge Inglis's father, was educated at Columbia College, N. Y., where he graduated May 4, 1795, when in his eighteenth year. In the following June he began reading law in the office of Alexander Hamilton, and in 1798 was admitted and began practice at the New York bar. He soon, however, abandoned law for theology, and on the 25th of April, 1802, was ordained second pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore. He died August 15, 1819. 

3. Judge John Auchincloss Inglis, LL.D., was born in Baltimore, Maryland, August 26, 1813, and was the fourth and youngest son of the Rev. James Inglis, D. D., the second pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore and one of the most accomplished pulpit orators of his day. 

Judge Inglis's mother was Miss Janet Swan Johnston, a daughter of Mr. Christopher Johnston, of Baltimore, a merchant in the East India trade and an elder in Doctor Inglis's church. 

Judge Inglis, by the death of his father and mother, became, in his sixth year, the ward of Mr. Alexander Fridge, of Baltimore, and was by his guardian sent to begin his education under the tuition of Rev. Dr. James Magraw, principal of the West Nottingham Academy, Cecil County, Maryland. Here he remained for seven years. 

In 1826 he matriculated at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where, at the expiration of three years, he graduated with high honors at the age of sixteen. During the next two years he was tutor of Latin and Greek at Carlisle, and thenremoved to South Carolina to become principal of the Cheraw Academy. 

On the 8th of November, 1832, he married Miss Charlotte Laura Prince, a daughter of Mr. Lawrence Prince, of Cheraw, and soon after, at the suggestion of his wife, began the study of law. He was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1840, at the age of twenty-seven. 

In 1855 he was elected to the South Carolina Legislature, and upon the expiration of his first term was reflected for a second term of two years. In 1857 the Governor of the State appointed him one of the trustees of the University of South Carolina. In 1859 he was elected a judge of the Circuit Court, but at the same session of the Legislature he was transferred to the Court of Equity and became one of the four chancellors of the State. In 1860 he was a member of the secession convention, and at the session in Columbia drew and presented the famous resolution that the State secede at once, and which was unanimously adopted the same evening. He was, at the session in Charleston, made chairman of the committee which drafted the ordinance of secession, 

which he presented December 20, 1860. 

The United States army in 1865, while on its march through South Carolina, burned Judge Inglis's house and destroyed everything 

of value on his plantation. The library contained over three thousand volumes and was worth something more than ten thousand dollars, the law library alone costing about five thousand dollars.

Judge Inglis was the same year (1865) elected junior Associate r Justice of the Court of Appeals of South Carolina, but was soon 

after, by the Federal Government's reconstruction measures, retired to private life. In August, 1868, he returned to Baltimore and resumed the practice of his profession. In February, 1870, he was elected professor of commercial and testamentary law and equity in the law department of the University of Maryland. In 1872 he was elected president of Oglethorpe University, Georgia, but felt himself compelled to decline the honor. The university in 1873 conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. In March, 1874, he was appointed by Governor Whyte chief judge of the Orphan's Court of Baltimore city, and at the general election in 1875 he was unanimously elected to fill the same position, having received the support of all parties in consequence of his high character and eminent qualifications. The Baltimore board of trade, in June, 1878, elected him judge of the Court of Arbitration, 

then being organized under an act of Assembly drawn by him at the request of the board. 

Judge Inglis became a member of the Presbyterian Church in his seventeenth year, was for many years a ruling elder in the church at Cheraw, and at the time of his death was a ruling elder in the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, Baltimore. 

He died at his residence, No. 124 Cathedral street, Baltimore, Maryland, August 26, 1878, and is buried in Loudon Park Cemetery, Baltimore.