My Genealogy Hound

JUDGE HENRY PIRTLE, one of the ablest lawyers and jurists that ever practiced at the Louisville bar, located in that city in 1826, from Hartford, Ohio County, Ky., where he had been admitted to the bar some five years before. He was born in 1799, and was not yet thirty years old when he came to Louisville, yet so quickly did his professional brethren recognize his great abilities that within a few months he was unanimously recommended to the Governor for the appointment of Circuit Judge. He was accordingly appointed, and again in 1846. In 1850 he was appointed chancellor of the Louisville Chancery Court, and appointed again in 1862. He was for twenty-seven years professor of constitutional law, equity and commercial law, in the law department of the University of Louisville. He compiled a Digest of the Decisions of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, and was the author of a valuable historical introduction to the journal of Gen. George Rogers Clark, published in Cincinnati some years ago, as a number of the Ohio Valley Historical series. He took no active part in politics; his only office outside the judicial service was that of State Senator, being elected in 1840, and serving one term. His influence, however, upon politics and legislation was great. To a letter of his, addressed to the Secretary of the United States Treasury, about 1850, is attributed the building of the Marine hospitals at Louisville and elsewhere on the Western waters. He was an active promoter of historical, literary and scientific societies, and was regarded as a walking encyclopedia. He died March 28, 1880, aged eighty years.