Biographical Details
Date of Birth: 1819
Birth Location: Charlestown, SC, USA
Graduation Year(s): 1841
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelors
Date of Death: December 14, 1873
Death Location: Lexington, KY, USA
Charles Benjamin Thomas
Life Experience
Charles Benjamin Thomas was born in South Carolina in 1819. Obtaining his bachelor's degree from IU in 1841, he was admitted to the bar and practiced law for many years. From 1868 to his death in 1873, Thomas was circuit court judge in his home town. John Gresham quoted one of his contemporaries as saying, “Charles B. Thomas was truly the people’s judge, and this universal sentiment was due largely to his natural impartiality and high sense of honor in all matters. No decision of his could be questioned, because the people said whatever he said was right....When on the bench he seemed not to know his most intimate friend. His prompt decision in almost all cases made the juries and the people generally style him a ‘judge by nature.’”
Marriage and Family
Thomas never married or had children. He had two sisters that died young. His younger brother, Barak Thomas, lived to 1908 and became a prominent horse breeder in Lexington.
Interesting Anecdote
Thomas’s father was a machinist who ran one of the first steamboat engines in America.
References
- Wylie
- genealogytrails.com/main/military/
- Gresham, John M., et al. (1896) Biographical Cyclopedia of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (Chicago: Donohue & Henneberry)